Interviewer: MR.
Interviewer: PIPES, YOU WROTE A PAPER FOR THE COMMITTEE ON THE PRESENT DANGER IN 1977 ENTITLED, "WHAT IS THE SOVIET UNION UP TO?".
Interviewer: WHAT DID YOU FEEL THEY WERE UP TO?
Pipes: Well, the principal theme of that document, and everything else I've written on the Soviet Union, is that the Soviet Union basically strives for global hegemony and uses a great variety of instrumentalities, that is a grand strategy, including military, but also political, economic, psychological, and so on.
Pipes: So that the objectives of the Soviet Union are not détente and stability, but destabilization and world hegemony.
Interviewer: INSTEAD OF HEGEMONY LET'S USE WORLD DOMINATION....
Pipes: Well, hegemony is a better word, because you can exercise hegemony without actually dominating; you know hegemony can be indirect rule.
Pipes: You know, Britain was a hegemonial power in the 19th century, we were right after World War II — we didn't dominate the world, but our word counted a great deal.
Interviewer: WHAT DO WE MEAN BY GRAND STRATEGY?
Pipes: Grand strategy is the employment of a great variety of means: political, economic, psychological, as well as military, for the attainment of ultimate political objectives.
Pipes: It is different from normal military strategy, which employs only military tools.
Pipes: So a totalitarian state like the Soviet Union can employ all its means.
Pipes: For example, when the Soviet Union uses economic inducements to get its political ways, by offering contracts to a country which is, to get it to swing certain ways, or when it can organize, or threaten to organize strikes in a given country in order to have the country issue it credits, or give it technology — that's the employment of economic means for a grand strategy.
Pipes: And so on so forth.
Pipes: It's, it's the sort of thing that's very difficult for us to understand, because you can only have it in a dictatorship.
Pipes: The grand strategy is not an objective; it's a means.
Pipes: It's...
Pipes: Yeah the grand strategy is not an objective.
Pipes: The objective is hegemony, or if you will, global domination.
Pipes: Grand strategy is a means towards that objective.
Interviewer: SOME PEOPLE SAY THAT IF THERE'S A POWER VACUUM THE SOVIETS WILL OPPORTUNISTICALLY FILL IT.
Interviewer: HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN THE SOVIETS ARE DIRECTLY, OR WITH SURROGATES, IN A COUNTRY LIKE ANGOLA, WHETHER THIS IS JUST STRATEGIC OPPORTUNISM OR GLOBAL DESIGN?
Pipes: Well, there is no obvious link, but in the first place it is not true that the Soviet Union will fill any vacuum in the world: they choose their targets rather carefully, because they have limited resources.
Pipes: So for example when Mozambique got into deep economic trouble not long ago and turned to the Soviet Union for admission to the COMECON, or the East European Soviet economic bloc, the Soviet Union rejected it, because it didn't think Mozambique was a worthwhile objective, and Mozambique then turned to South Africa and to the United States.
Pipes: In Chile, for example the Soviet Union did not make a really great effort to save Allende's government; they didn't think Chile was worth it.
Pipes: You know, Jamaica, for example, they didn't think particularly worthwhile.
Pipes: So they don't grab anything? They grab things which are, for one reason or other, important strategically important, economically important regionally important.
Interviewer: I WOULD THINK MOZAMBIQUE AND ANGOLA AND SOME OF THOSE SOUTHERN AFRICAN COUNTRIES THAT SURROUND SOUTH AFRICA, THAT WOULD BE A PERFECT WAY TO PUT THE SQUEEZE ON SOUTH AFRICA.
Pipes: Well, Angola definitely but Angola is self-sustaining, thanks to our oil, or the oil we pump.
Pipes: That oil covers something like 70 percent of Angola's budget, so in a sense, all they have to pay for is the Cuban mercenaries.
Pipes: But it's not a great expense to them.
Pipes: Mozambique is a bottomless hole, without any resources, total chaos.
Pipes: The anti-Marxist guerillas control a good part of the country; they disrupt traffic and so on.
Pipes: So they looked at and said it isn't worth it; Angola is worth it.
Pipes: So you know, it's cost-effectiveness.
Pipes: It's not an imperialism that simply moves everywhere, they calculate.
Pipes: They miscalculated in Afghanistan; they thought they can take Afghanistan very quickly.
Pipes: They calculated on six months at the most, and they didn't count on the kind of resistance they encountered.
Pipes: I think if they could roll the clock back, and find and know that what is it now, seven years after the invasion, they still would not conquer the country, they might have decided not to do it.
Interviewer: WHAT ROLE MIGHT ANGOLA PLAY IN THE GRAND STRATEGY?
Pipes: Well, Angola is a stepping stone to Namibia, which they would like to control, and Namibia has a very profound effect on the security of South Africa.
Pipes: And they definitely would like to destabilize South Africa.
Interviewer: WHY?
Pipes: Well, for obvious reasons; South Africa is an extremely rich, mineral-rich country.
Pipes: The European continent, Western Europe, heavily depends on South African minerals.
Pipes: Secondly, if they control regimes friendly to them control South Africa, they have a virtual monopoly on a number of key minerals, say platinum, chrome.
Pipes: If they control South Africa, we would have to purchase all our platinum and chrome from the Soviet Union; that's very nice market control.
Interviewer: WHAT ABOUT THE HORN OF AFRICA? DO YOU SEE THIS AS PART OF THE GRAND STRATEGY?
Pipes: Well, it's also very important, because the bulk of the maritime trade in petroleum, goes by the Horn of Africa these huge tankers cannot go through the Suez Canal, so they travel around Africa; if you look at the map you will see that the heaviest traffic of oil tankers travels around Africa, so that it gives them again a very strategic position, of being able to disrupt the traffic in case of war.
Interviewer: WHAT ABOUT INDOCHINA? WERE THEY DOING ANYTHING THERE THAT MIGHT BE EVIDENCE OF THE GRAND STRATEGY?
Pipes: Yes, I think that China is most of well, Indochina has several uses; I think the principal use of Indochina is to be able to encircle China from the south.
Pipes: It, it becomes a base for the Soviet Union against China.
Pipes: The second utility of it is that the naval bases, in Indochina, make it possible to disrupt the traffic, maritime traffic, going to Japan through the straits of Malacca.
Pipes: So it gives them again a stronghold on maritime routes.
Pipes: They are very conscious of the fact, and they describe it in their manuals, strategic manuals, that where, whereas they control the land mass their opponents are essentially strung out around, along the rim of the, of the land mass, and have to heavily rely on maritime routes, so they have a very keen interest in being in a position to disrupt maritime routes, so that is their interest, heavy interest in Cuba, because by controlling Cuba, they could, in case of any hostilities, disrupt a great deal of our traffic — we have a lot of traffic commercial traffic, going through these routes.
Pipes: During the war German submarines wrought a lot of havoc in that, in that region.
Pipes: They could the same do the same thing in South Africa, and the same thing in Southeast Asia.
Pipes: Not to mention, of course, the North Atlantic, which is key.
Interviewer: IN ONE OF YOUR PAPERS, YOU SAID THAT STRATEGIC OPPORTUNISM DOESN'T PRECLUDE THE GRAND STRATEGY.
Interviewer: MARSHALL SHULMAN DESCRIBES HIS VIEWS AS DIFFERENT FROM YOURS.
Pipes: Well, I mean, I think if you read Soviet internal writings on the subject they make it very clear they have a grand strategy; they don't just grab things, they grab things which have utility.
Pipes: I quote in my book, for example, a statement made by Sakharov in 1955, when he was still in good standing with the establishment, he heard a lecture by a high Soviet official, explaining why the Soviet Union is giving military assistance to Egypt, because that's when the Soviet Union began to penetrate the area.
Pipes: And this official said that the reason we're doing it, because Egypt gives us access to the oil resources, and through control of oil, we can exercise leverage over Europe.
Pipes: Now that's grand strategy.
Pipes: You push in one way to get the effects in another.
Pipes: This is chess playing; it's not poker playing.
Pipes: And I think Americans are not great chess players; and they think of poker.
Pipes: The Russians, when they take land, when they, when they exert influence, when they give foreign aid, or so on, or support terrorist activities, they do so with a certain objective in mind, and not just scatter the resources globally.
Pipes: There's a lot of Soviet literature on the subject, which one has to read to appreciate it.
Pipes: Books have recently come out, written by Soviet experts, who say, you know, we have to really limit our resources, because we have just so much money and we can't scatter our resources over the globe; we have to pick our allies in the Third World very carefully.
Interviewer: BUT IN TERMS OF US POLICY, WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE WHETHER YOU BELIEVE THE SOVIETS HAVE ONE INTENTION OR THE OTHER? IN OTHER WORDS, SECRETARY VANCE SAID THAT HE THOUGHT THAT THE SOVIETS IN ETHIOPIA WAS A LOCAL PROBLEM THAT...WELL OUR POLICY SHOULD BE TO ELIMINATE THE PROBLEMS IN ETHIOPIA THAT HAD INVITED THE SOVIETS IN.
Interviewer: BRZEZINSKI THOUGHT IT WAS NOT A LOCAL PROBLEM, BUT MORE OF WORLDWIDE PROBLEM...
Pipes: Well, I mean, what's the local problem in Ethiopia? They are massacring hundreds of thousands of people; they're starving them to death.
Pipes: What kind of a problem is it for us to solve? They've marched into Ethiopia, they are transplanting hundreds of thousands of farmers from their traditional homes, because they offer resistance to Marxism into other areas, and hundreds of thousands have died, are about to die.
Pipes: How can one say this is something that is some kind of a social economic problem? It isn't; they're, the Marxism is the problem, they're creating it.
Pipes: Ethiopia was always a very poor country, one of the poorest, but there isn't what caused what caused the Communists to get in there, any more than Afghanistan's poverty had anything to do with Communists coming there.
Pipes: I think this is very naive to think in this way.
Interviewer: WHAT'S THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SOVIET MILITARY AND THE GRAND STRATEGY?
Pipes: Well, the military power, of course, is the key element in grand strategy; it's not the only one, it's a key element, because ultimately, the Soviet Union expands through military power, either directly or more often indirectly, by selling weapons, providing weapons providing military instruction, by backing friendly governments and so on.
Pipes: By intimidating through the use of threat, nuclear threat.
Pipes: So, military weapons are a key element of grand strategy.
Interviewer: THE SOVIETS HAD A HUGE MILITARY BUILDUP IN STRATEGIC NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE 1970s.
Interviewer: WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS MEANT?
Pipes: Well, I think they tell us what it meant.
Pipes: We don't have to guess; the, they have decided after giving the matter a great deal of thought in the '50s, after Stalin's death — they have decided that nuclear weapons are the decisive weapons of modern warfare.
Pipes: And that if there's going to be another world war, these weapons will decide who wins.
Pipes: Therefore, they have developed a dual strategy for nuclear weapons; one is offensive, the other is defensive.
Pipes: Offensive, they developed a very large first-strike force, land-based, with very heavy throw weight and huge yields, which in the event of war, or approaching war, would destroy the bulk of our retaliatory power.
Pipes: And then they've paid a lot of attention to defenses.
Pipes: That is hardening their silos, hardening their communications providing for shelters for the leadership, evacuation programs...
Interviewer: CIVIL DEFENSE.
Pipes: Well, it's civil defense, then, several levels.
Pipes: One kind for the leadership, another for the masses.
Pipes: And very intensive work on strategic defenses.
Interviewer: WHAT DOES THIS EMPHASIS ON DEFENSE TELL YOU?
Pipes: Well, that they don't believe in mutual assured destruction; that is, they don't, they believe in that if war breaks out you have to fight it.
Pipes: And protecting yourself from retaliation is a very important factor of it.
Pipes: In fact there are people in the Pentagon who estimate they spend as much on defenses as on, as on offenses.
Pipes: A very major effort.
Pipes: Well, they have the only working system in the world; the only anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow....
Interviewer: DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT THE SOVIETS WANT A WAR?
Pipes: No, they don't want a war.
Pipes: But Hitler didn't want war either, of course.
Pipes: The aggressor always wants peace.
Pipes: War is always imposed on the, on the victim.
Interviewer: DO YOU THINK THAT THEY PLACE A HIGH PREMIUM ON NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY?
Pipes: Certainly.
Pipes: You don't get it by accident.
Pipes: They have it, and they sought it.
Pipes: How else do you get it? It's like asking whether Hitler wanted superiority in tanks, in 1940; he very deliberately wanted it, because he believed that tanks would be the decisive weapons of the war.
Pipes: Build tanks.
Pipes: Tanks, airplanes.
Pipes: And he won.
Interviewer: BUT IS IT SUPERIORITY SO THAT IN AN EXCHANGE OF WEAPONS BY EACH SIDE THEY WILL COME OUT VICTORIOUS, OR IS IT FOR THE PERCEPTION OF GREATER POWER?
Pipes: Well, I think it's both; one doesn't preclude the other.
Interviewer: IN COMPLETE SENTENCES.
Pipes: Well, I think they use, they use it both for purposes of psychological intimidation and for purposes of effective fighting, if war should break out.
Pipes: So that is to say the enormous nuclear power, which they possess, tends to intimidate particularly Europeans.
Pipes: But it also would serve military purposes if war should break out I mean, they have very elaborate plans for nuclear war.
Interviewer: WHAT DO YOU THINK DÉTENTE MEANT TO THE SOVIETS?
Pipes: Détente to the Soviet Union meant that they have good commercial relations with the West it's very important for them is to get credits, technology, and so on, building of factories in the Soviet Union indeed, a lot of this did occur under détente.
Pipes: While they can go on, basically, and do what they want in terms of military buildup, ideological warfare, and expansion of the third world.
Pipes: These were the, these were the terms they laid down.
Pipes: They, again, it's not a question of what I think, they said so.
Pipes: Not exactly in those words -- they used more you know code language, but that's what's, what they meant: we will, we will maintain stable relations with the United States and its allies, but we insist on building up towards nuclear superiority, we insist on being able to wage ideological warfare, which is basically hate campaigns against the West, and we insist on being able to support all kinds of revolutionary movements, pro-Soviet movements, in the third world.
Interviewer: I HAVE A FEELING THAT DÉTENTE, FOR US, IS AN END IN ITSELF, AND FOR THEM IT'S A MEANS.
Pipes: That's correct, because détente — well, we really believe, you know, we believe in world stability, and getting on with, the business of life, which for us is, uh… accumulation of property and pursuit of happiness, but not for them.
Pipes: So for us détente was really a, an end in itself, as you say, and for them it was a, a tactical device.
Pipes: It's not the first time they used it; they used they used the same concept, though not exactly the same term, in the early 1920s, when they talked about peaceful coexistence, but only as a tactical device.
Interviewer: THE SOVIETS, IF YOU ASK THEM WHAT THEY WERE DOING IN THE '70S, THEY'LL SAY THEY WERE JUST BUILDING UP TO PARITY, THEY WERE TRYING TO CATCH UP, BECAUSE WE HAD THE LEAD IN THE '60S.
Interviewer: IS THAT RIGHT?
Pipes: No, they were simply factually incorrect, because it is, generally accepted that by 1969 they achieved parity, nuclear parity, in terms of destructive power, warheads and so on.
Pipes: Anything they did after '69 — because we pretty much froze our forces in the '70s — anything they did gave them the edge of superiority, which we only began to realize by the late '70s.
Pipes: We were so convinced that nobody would strive for nuclear superiority it's become a dogma in the United States.
Pipes: Kissinger expressed it, you know, what would you do with superiority? He later recanted, he now, he now has different view, but at that time, that's what he believed, so we just didn't believe our eyes.
Pipes: At that time they would tell us, in the early '70s, that they were doing it…because they have China on their, on their mind, so they have two enemies.
Pipes: But it obviously wasn't, that was not the reason.
Pipes: They, they achieved parity by '69, and everything they built after that was meant for superiority.
Interviewer: THEY ALWAYS TALK ABOUT DEFENSE, SOME PEOPLE SAY, BECAUSE THEY HAVE MEMORIES OF HITLER AND NAPOLEON AND THEY HAVE CHINA AND ALL KINDS OF HOSTILES ON THEIR BORDERS.
Interviewer: DOESN'T THAT MAKE SENSE?
Pipes: Does it?
Interviewer: AREN'T THEY A DEFENSIVE COUNTRY?
Pipes: Are they the largest country in the world or not? How do you become the largest country in the world? By being constantly attacked.
Pipes: This is a myth.
Pipes: They are the most aggressive power in the world, and they have been for a long time.
Pipes: They have waged wars of conquest from the 14th century on.
Pipes: The 14th century Russia was as big as Belgium is today, and today, they are the largest state in the world.
Pipes: They already were the largest state in the world in the 17th century.
Pipes: It is through conquest.
Pipes: It's true there was an invasion by Napoleon, invasion by Hitler, but how many times did they invade other countries? Poland, for example, they partitioned, destroyed, in the 18th century together with Austria and Prussia.
Pipes: They were constantly itching to destroy the Ottoman Empire; they conquered the territories from Sweden, from the Persians, from the Turks, from the Chinese — huge territories — that's what made them so large.
Pipes: So this is a mythology.
Interviewer: THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT THINGS AS TACTICS.
Interviewer: WHAT WERE THE SOVIET GOALS IN THE SALT II TALKS? WHY DID THEY WANT SALT II IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Pipes: Well they like arms control in general; I'm without specifying SALT I, SALT II, SALT III, or START, or what have you.
Pipes: They like them because for one when you start discussing arms control democratic legislatures are loath to fund weapons programs, because they feel you can negotiate them away in arms control.
Pipes: So they've used that very effectively for the purpose of influencing our Congress, to say, "Well let's wait.
Pipes: You know, why must we fund this? Let's wait, we'll see what whether we can negotiate that with them." Uh, secondly they have very clear notions of what their needs are, and they come into these meetings asserting their own needs, getting them, getting them pinned down, legitimized.
Pipes: And at the same time we don't have a very clear notion of what we want so they can for example have us agree that we will not develop certain weapons systems, which they have.
Pipes: In SALT II, we agreed not to build heavy missiles, which they have.
Pipes: The the SS-18 — we gave monopoly on that.
Pipes: They very effectively limited, in the, in the protocols to SALT II, the deployment of, cruise missiles and so on, of which they were afraid.
Pipes: ABM Treaty is a classic example.
Pipes: They are proceeding with anti-ballistic missile defenses in a, in a very big way in the '60s, and when we started doing that, they suddenly realized that our technology is more advanced.
Pipes: When they refused to agree to limiting anti-ballistic missile defenses, until the Congress voted with a s-slender small majorities, and the Senate majority won, to fund our own ABM program, immediately they agreed to limit it.
Pipes: So, you know that's how they use the, they always use arms control one eye on public opinion, especially on the legislature in the United States.
Interviewer: DO YOU THINK THEIR GOAL IN THE ARMS TALKS IS TO SEEK SUPERIORITY?
Pipes: To freeze superiority, and to inhibit developing of certain American systems.
Pipes: Because because if you have a first-strike strategy, you have to know what you're facing.
Pipes: So they want to be very clear of, as to what they face, and they want to freeze it the arms control agreements, freeze our forces.
Interviewer: AND ONCE YOU FREEZE THEM IT'S EASIER TO...
Pipes: Well, you can calculate what you need.
Pipes: This is a problem with their problem with the president's Strategic Defense system, because they're not certain just how many of their warheads would get through, and therefore calculation of a first-strike becomes very difficult, almost impossible.
Interviewer: FOR VANCE AND FOR WARNKE, THE ARMS TALKS WERE THE CENTERPIECE OF THE US-SOVIET UNION RELATIONSHIP.
Interviewer: WARNKE SAID, IF WE CAN'T AGREE NOT TO BLOW EACH OTHER UP, THERE'S NOT MUCH HOPE FOR AGREEING ON OTHER THINGS." DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?
Pipes: No, it doesn't make sense for a variety of reasons: one is that you don't blow yourself up even if you don't have arms-control agreements; I mean, we haven't had an arms-control agreement for years, we haven't blown each other up Mr. Warnke believes when you have an agreement like this — he's a lawyer by profession; he thinks of an agreement like that prevents you from shooting at each other, but we don't, we don't have to have an arms-control agreement not to shoot at each other, because we know, on both sides, how destructive these weapons are.
Pipes: And so that's the first fallacy; the second fallacy is that the Soviet Union doesn't attach anywhere the same importance to arms control that Mr. Warnke and Mr. Vance do.
Pipes: They don't even have an arms-control disarmament agency.
Pipes: Their arms-control effort is entirely dictated by the military.
Pipes: And in their literature, which I am reasonably familiar with, the issue of arms control plays almost the strategic literature — plays almost no role.
Pipes: It, you know, it's not it's far from being a centerpiece, not even on the periphery of their considerations.
Pipes: It's pure tactic.
Interviewer: ALL THESE TALKS IN GENEVA ARE JUST TACTICS.
Pipes: It's pure tactics.
Pipes: All arms control negotiations, for them, are tactics.
Pipes: Or have been so far.
Interviewer: TO WHAT END?
Pipes: Well, I've just said so, it's just a way of inhibiting weapons developments on our side.
Interviewer: THERE WAS A LOT OF DISCUSSION DURING THE CARTER YEARS AS TO WHETHER OR NOT WE SHOULD LINK ARMS TALKS TO SOVIET BEHAVIOR ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLD.
Interviewer: DO THEY WORRY ABOUT THOSE THINGS, THE QUESTION OF LINKAGE?
Pipes: No, I think they would, they'll be perfectly happy to have arms control, because it serves their purposes without any linkage at all.
Pipes: And they have never allowed it to inhibit arms-control talks.
Pipes: I mean, we were, you know, in Vietnam and fighting their allies, and when we agreed to SALT I, they never allowed that to inhibit it.
Pipes: Because they see such enormous benefits from it for themselves that it's almost irrelevant what we do; they will still want that, on their own terms, that is.
Interviewer: IF WE TAKE YOUR THESIS OF A GRAND STRATEGY, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE US AS WE CONSIDER WHAT OUR NUCLEAR ARSENAL OUGHT TO BE?
Pipes: Well grand strategy does not just comprise nuclear weapons; nuclear weapons are one element in it.
Pipes: First of all, let me say that it is very difficult for a democracy to conduct a grand strategy, because the, our executive does not control the media, does not control the economy, and so on and so forth, so we can't really conduct a grand strategy, but we should know that they do, and until you know that, you can't really a conduct a skillful counter strategy, even without our within our terms.
Pipes: But if you're talking about nuclear strategy that is you have to realize where they are very serious about use of nuclear weapons.
Pipes: That means you have to maintain parity at all times, and you have to the extent it's technically feasible, develop defenses.
Pipes: Because they inhibit a first strike.
Pipes: If we succeed in developing a good SDI system the Soviet nuclear arsenal would become a deterrent arsenal, a retaliatory arsenal, and not a first-strike force, and that's very desirable, I think.
Interviewer: BUT IF WE THINK THAT THEY ARE GOING TO SEEK SUPERIORITY ON A FIRST-STRIKE CAPABILITY, DOES THAT MEAN THAT WE SHOULD SEEK SUPERIORITY ON A FIRST-STRIKE CAPABILITY?
Pipes: No, you don't need to; I think parity's enough, I mean, superiority presumes that you, that you stay frozen.
Pipes: I think we should keep up with them, at no point allow them to think that they could win a nuclear war.
Interviewer: WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS FOR ARMS TALKS?
Pipes: You mean on arms control or in general?
Interviewer: IN GENERAL
Pipes: I mean, they look entirely, you have to realize, this question of what I think is what the facts tell you — we have a lot of experience after all, I mean, we're not dealing with an unknown quantity.
Pipes: We know for example, that they have been dead set all along against on-site inspection.
Pipes: We also know that experts believe that without on-site inspection arms-control agreements are not really very viable.
Pipes: Now these are, let's assume these are facts.
Pipes: What I would say, if these are facts, and you can also say the Russians are not really serious about arms control.
Pipes: Because we cannot take them on the faith that they are conducting tests of a certain within certain limits and so on.
Pipes: So it isn't — I'm not, I'm not saying that they are not possible, arms control agreements, serious agreements with them, but so far they have not been possible, because some of the basic elements have been missing.
Pipes: So, can we, risk the security of this nation and trust in Soviet leaders? They don't have such a good record, you know.
Pipes: They are not controlled by free press, by legislatures at home, by public opinion — they can do almost anything they want.
Pipes: We have to have verification, for example.
Pipes: You can make deals with then, provided that you know what the deals are, if you, if you realize that you cannot have eternal peace with this political system, you can still have some very good agreements, but you have to enter into them with open eyes, and not be naive about it.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS YOUR THINKING IN THE LATE '70S ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES IF SALT II WERE REJECTED?
Pipes: On the contrary, I worked very actively to have it rejected; I, I lectured around the country against SALT II and I joined the Committee on the Present Danger, which was very much against it; so far from it, I, I welcome, I welcomed the demise of SALT II.
Interviewer: PRESIDENT CARTER SAID TIME AND TIME AGAIN THAT WITH THE SALT AGREEMENT, WE WOULD LIVE IN AN INSECURE WORLD, BUT WITHOUT SALT IT WOULD BE AN INSECURE AND MORE DANGEROUS WORLD.
Pipes: Well, it hasn't been more dangerous, has it? This is now, Mr. Carter left office six years ago, and I don't see it's any more dangerous than it was then, is it? I think it's a myth, somehow, that these pieces of paper, signed with the Soviet Union, make us more secure.
Interviewer: OUR MILITARY PLANNERS SAID THAT THEY COULD LIVE WITH IT BECAUSE AT LEAST IT GIVES THEM AN INDICATION OF WHAT THEY HAVE TO PREPARE AGAINST.
Pipes: Well I don't know what was in the mind of the Secretary of Defense, but it seems to me the Secretary of Defense cannot disagree with his, with his president, can he? And certainly not, and the, and neither can the chiefs of staff; they have to agree, or they have to resign.
Pipes: Well, one member did resign, General Rowney, he resigned, and went into open attack against SALT II.
Pipes: There were some others, but clearly the president, who picked those people, would agree with them on it you know, so, you know, if you mean to say that any time the Pentagon agrees with the president the Pentagon is right, then you have to agree the same thing with Mr. Weinberger, who thinks just the opposite of what Mr. Brown thought.
Pipes: But I don't every president picks people who are, who are in accord with him, who follow his policies.
Interviewer: WITHOUT A SALT AGREEMENT, DIDN'T YOU FEEL, IN '79, THAT THIS WOULD JUST UNLEASH MORE OF AN ARMS RACE?
Pipes: No, I don't think so; and it hasn't happened, in effect.
Pipes: I mean, I don't understand Mr. Warnke's view; Mr. Warnke on the one hand believes that we have such an accumulation of nuclear weapons in the world that we're ready to blow each other up 20 or 30 times, and on the other hand, he believes unless you limit this, the world is a more dangerous place.
Pipes: Now what? You mean, 50 times is more dangerous than 30 times, of capability to blow yourself up? It makes no sense.
Pipes: So, if indeed his presumption is premise is right, that the, that the world has 20, 30, I don't know how many times more weapons than it needs to blow its, itself up, it really doesn't matter what the Soviet Union does, how many more weapons it builds up, does it? So we'll have a capability of a hundred times, to destroy the world.
Pipes: It's just a waste of money on his part, it's not any more dangerous.
Interviewer: THEY WOULDN'T NECESSARILY, WITHOUT A SALT AGREEMENT, CREATE THAT MANY MORE WEAPONS.
Pipes: They haven't in fact, it just so happened.
Interviewer: THEY'RE GOING AT FULL CAPACITY ANYWAY.
Pipes: That's right.
Pipes: That's exactly what they did.
Pipes: They built it up to the present level, which they must judge satisfactory, it gives them a considerable preponderance, and they would like to freeze it now; they have a throwaway preponderance of two and a half to three times.
Pipes: And that's what they would like to freeze it at.
Pipes: And this is why they are very much in favor of perpetuating SALT II, an unratified accord.
Pipes: That's exactly what happened.
Pipes: But, the notion that they are just, as soon as SALT II is not ratified, they'll start manufacturing masses of nuclear this is absurd, and they haven't done it.
Interviewer: PD-59.
Interviewer: DID YOU, OR DO THE MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE PRESENT DANGER, AGREE WITH THIS?
Pipes: Sure.
Pipes: Because those like myself who believe the Russians have a war-fighting strategy, believe that we must have one too.
Pipes: That is, there's no point in sticking to a strategy which the opponent does not share.
Pipes: So if, indeed, it is true that the Soviet Union has a war-fighting strategy in, strategy of a preemptive strike in the event of war, then it is not enough to threaten the Soviet Union with destruction of its civilian population; you have to go after military targets and political targets, which indeed is what has happened, I mean, in our development of our weapons.
Interviewer: WHY DO YOU THINK THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION CAME OUT WITH THIS NEW STRATEGY?
Pipes: I think this has to do with the, with the, with Team B of which I was a member, which was set up by the director of Central Intelligence George Bush, in the fall of or the summer of '76.
Pipes: There were a lot of people in government who were getting worried about the Soviet buildup, and they felt that the agency was minimizing it.
Pipes: Because the agency was, the Central Intelligence Agency was the victim of mirror imaging: they believed that the Russians share our own view and maybe that you, once you have enough of these weapons, you have enough — there's no point in building more, because they don't serve any utility; they're only retaliatory.
Pipes: The, they serve a deterrent purpose, not a war-winning purpose.
Pipes: And the question was, if the Russians have obtained in '69 parity with us, why did they keep on developing new systems? Particularly the fourth generation, which they deployed in the '70s, with these awesome weapons — the SS-18 with ten MIRVed warheads, So the director of Central Intelligence appointed this group — Paul Nitze was in it, and there were others experts, and it was a, was a secret panel, and its report to this day is highly classified, but the general result leaked to the press, that we concluded that the Soviet Union indeed had a war-fighting strategy, and is building up its forces to give effect to this, strategy.
Pipes: Well, the Carter Administration, when it came in, rejected this.
Pipes: But Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor, appointed a panel to study this, and this panel came up with very similar conclusions within a couple of years, namely, the Soviet Union is indeed preparing to fight a nuclear war, and on this basis President Carter issued PD-59, which was quite a revolutionary document, which said, "Very well, we have to accept this as a fact, and ourselves be prepared to fight this kind of a war," and this of course is also President Reagan's premise.
Interviewer: WHY DO YOU THINK THE SOVIETS WENT INTO AFGHANISTAN?
Pipes: They went in Afghanistan because it is a stepping-stone, to the Persian Gulf, and to the Indian Ocean, and they thought this is a, they had a pretty good control over it; there was some sort of messy, Muslim fundamentalists were making trouble, and they will be able to occupy; they, I think the schedule was between three and six months.
Pipes: Well, once in control of Afghanistan, they cut the distance to the Persian Gulf for their planes and rockets by half.
Pipes: And secondly, they surround Iran, because they now can approach Iran from the east, as well as from the north, and they are at the very doorsteps of Pakistan.
Pipes: So it's strategically, Afghanistan is very important.
Pipes: It performs the same role that Outer Mongolia performs in East Asia.
Pipes: It performs the same role that Mongolia, Outer Mongolia performs in East Asia.
Interviewer: BUT THEY ALREADY HAD A SOCIALIST, SYMPATHETIC REGIME THERE.
Pipes: It wasn't, but it couldn't manage, it just wasn't in control; there was this rebellion, and they thought that the regime wasn't effective enough, and furthermore the regime of Amin was beginning to flirt with the West, and that's something they don't forgive.
Pipes: So they killed him, a gangster-type murder, and replaced him with a man who they thought was very reliable, whom they now again replaced.
Pipes: They, they have not been able to find the right formula.
Pipes: They're actually very inept there, but they're extremely brutal.
Interviewer: HOW DO YOU RELATE THE SOVIETS' INTEREST IN AFGHANISTAN IN RELATION TO THEIR INTEREST IN THE HORN OF AFRICA? WHAT DOES THIS TELL US?
Pipes: Well, they pick strategic areas in the world, you know, Middle East, South Africa, Central America, Southeast Asia — they're the strategic points — where they explore.
Pipes: They are very cautious.
Pipes: They push, they see if they get resistance; if they get resistance they withdraw; they take the time.
Pipes: These are two areas, and Central America's another area where they're very active.
Pipes: And these things are not necessarily directly related, but they're all strategic points.
Pipes: They're strategic for economic reasons, because Afghanistan gets you closer to the oil, Middle Eastern oil, and South Africa, because it gets you closer to the mineral resources of South Africa, which are very important, and the wealth of, mineral wealth of South Africa.
Pipes: If you control South Africa, if the Soviet Union controlled South Africa and Middle Eastern oil, it has Europe at its feet.
Pipes: Without firing a shot.
Pipes: Because Europe cannot survive economically, without Middle Eastern oil and the mineral resources of South Africa.
Pipes: Therefore Europe will become very accommodating to the Soviet Union, and if the Soviet Union demands that Europe drop out of NATO, or so on, Europe may have to accommodate that.
Pipes: Now that's their tactic.
Pipes: They prefer, much prefer this to fighting.
Pipes: So you ask me at the beginning: Do they want war? No, they don't want war; they want to get their objectives this way.
Pipes: Central America's important because there they can cause a lot of trouble to the United States; threaten the United States at its doorstep; and if they are successful the United States may very well decide to withdraw its troops from Europe, because it has trouble closer at home, or it may want to strike a deal — say, "You give us the Middle East, we'll, we'll, we'll pull out of Central America" — that's the kind of deals they are perfectly prepared to make.
Pipes: You know, we'll, we'll, we'll sacrifice the Sandinistas, but you let us have Afghanistan.
Interviewer: DID YOU SEE THE '70S AS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS TIME?
Pipes: Well, it was dangerous not because of what the Russians did, but because of what we did, uh; we were highly demoralized in the '70s because of Vietnam, domestic problems of various kinds, and the Russians watched this very carefully, and when they see a country demoralized like this then they tend to get more aggressive.
Pipes: Under President Reagan, whom they saw as a strong leader, or see as a strong leader, who has revitalized America, they've been on much better behavior; they have not been in any aggressive, they've committed no aggressive actions.
Pipes: So the danger is that when we become weak, disoriented isolationist, that's when they strike; when we are, when we stand tall, then where they know they'll have to contend with us, then they're much more cautious.
Pipes: So the '70s were dangerous, but not because of them but because of us, what we were doing to ourselves.