Interviewer: THE SENSE WE HAD FROM OUTSIDE THE ADMINISTRATION WAS THAT WHEN REAGAN COMES INTO OFFICE, BRINGS IN A BRAND NEW TEAM OF PEOPLE, MANY OF THEM FROM THE COMMITTEE ON THE PRESENT DANGER, THAT THERE IS A SEMBLANCE OF A CRUSADE.
Interviewer: THERE'S A REAL STRONG FEELING THAT AMERICA'S IN ENORMOUS TROUBLE AND NEEDS TO BE SAVED AND THIS IS A TEAM OF PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO RESTORE SOME KIND OF POWER AND DIGNITY TO THE COUNTRY.
Interviewer: I WONDER IF YOU COULD REFLECT, THINK BACK TO THOSE EARLY DAYS AND TELL US IS THAT A PROPER ASSESSMENT OF THE MOOD, LOOKING FROM INSIDE OUT?
Perle: The President, coming into office, was made quickly aware of immense deficiencies in our defense posture.
Perle: Added to that, there was the psychological burden of the Iran hostage taking and our helplessness in the face of that, the sense that drift in the Carter administration had left us without much prestige, un-respected in the world and certainly diminished as a military power.
Perle: And that was the practical reality.
Perle: It was both psychological and material.
Perle: In a material sense, there were terrible deficiencies.
Perle: Ships that couldn't go to sea because they hadn't been overhauled, empty ammunition bunkers and declining skill level among entrants into the armed forces made necessary because low pay and allowances were not attracting people with higher skill levels.
Perle: We were losing more tactical aircraft than we were building, losing them through normal attrition.
Perle: And as one looked across the board there were problems that needed immediate solution.
Perle: So it would not have taken much of a crusade simply to occupy one's self with fixing things that were broken.
Interviewer: IN THE AREA OF STRATEGIC ARMS, ONE OF THE PHRASES THAT ONE REMEMBERS FROM THE BOTH THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE PRESIDENCY WAS THE WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY.
Interviewer: COULD YOU DEFINE THAT FOR US.
Perle: The phrase "window of vulnerability" was not Ronald Reagan's phrase.
Perle: It was Harold Brown's phrase or a variation of Harold Brown's phrase.
Perle: Harold Brown's phrase was a bathtub of vulnerable.
Perle: This is just an historic footnote.
Perle: And it was called a bathtub because that was, because a bathtub was roughly the shape of the curve in which the number of American missiles surviving Soviet attack at varying levels of Soviet missiles followed the shape of a bathtub, the bathtub of vulnerability.
Perle: And it was a fact.
Perle: It was a fact that at, the numbers of warheads with their yield and accuracy, that the Soviets had achieved they could anticipate attacking and destroying a significant faction, virtually all of our land-based missiles.
Perle: Now this would not have destroyed everything.
Perle: But because our land-based missiles operate synergistically together with our sea-based missiles and our bomber aircraft, we were vulnerable to a Soviet attack that would significantly deplete our ability to respond.
Interviewer: IT'S A WONDERFUL ANECDOTE.
Interviewer: I'D NEVER HEARD THAT BATHTUB OF VULNERABILITY, THAT'S IS TERRIFIC.
Interviewer: ALMOST EVERYTHING, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE B-1 BOMBER AND A NEW BASING MODE FOR THE MX, CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG HERE, ALMOST EVERYTHING REAGAN PUT MONEY INTO HAD REALLY BEGUN TO BE FINANCED UNDER CARTER.
Interviewer: SO, WHAT'S THE DISTINCTION HERE?
Perle: All administrations, when they come into office seem to repeat the mistake of insisting that everything they're doing is new and different and necessarily new and different, because everything their predecessors did was wrong.
Perle: In fact, the Reagan strategic modernization consisted principally of continuing forward programs that had been started in previous administrations, and in most cases programs that had been sustained, although not at adequate funding levels, through the Carter administration.
Perle: But new people coming in were keen to differentiate themselves from their predecessors, so they overstated and distorted in so doing it the differences between the Reagan program and its antecedents.
Perle: In fact, virtually everything the Reagan administration proposed in the strategic area was carried forward from the past.
Perle: Its sole exception was the B-1 bomber.
Perle: And even the B-1 bomber had been a close call within the Carter administration with some of Carter's advisers recommending for it and others recommending against it.
Perle: It was hardly a litmus test of the attitude towards strategic forces of the Carter administration.
Perle: I believe the incoming Reagan administration made a mistake in stressing differences rather than continuity, because continuity was the single most important note of the new administration's policies.
Perle: Continuity of programs, continuity of doctrine, the only difference was increased levels of spending and a readiness to spend money on some low visibility, but very important sustaining programs like improvements in command, control and communications.
Interviewer: COUPLED WITH THIS BUILD UP IS A NEW LEVEL OF ANTI-SOVIET RHETORIC, A SEVERE CRITICISM OF PREVIOUS ARMS-CONTROL AGREEMENTS AND NEGOTIATIONS ON THE PART OF THE ADMINISTRATION, A GENERALLY HOSTILE STAND TOWARD THE SOVIET UNION, MORE HOSTILE THAN WE'VE SEEN BEFORE.
Interviewer: I GUESS MY QUESTION IS IT'S EASY TO SAY IN HINDSIGHT THAT THIS WAS ALL DESIGNED TO LEAD US TO WHERE WE ARE TODAY: THAT IS, TO NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE SOVIET UNION, AN AGREEMENT.
Interviewer: BUT AT THE TIME, IT APPEARED TO MANY, THE QUESTION WAS ASKED BY MANY, "IS THIS ADMINISTRATION BUILDING UP IN ORDER TO NEGOTIATE FROM A STRONGER POSITION OR IS IT BUILDING UP TO POSITION ITSELF TO, IF NECESSARY, FIGHT SOME KIND OF NUCLEAR EXCHANGE OR TO GAIN SUPERIORITY OVER THE SOVIETS SO WE CAN DICTATE TERMS?" COULD YOU COMMENT ON THAT?
Perle: I believe that the administration's principal goal was in correcting problems that had arisen in the decade of the 1970s, when in most of the years of the 1970s we reduced the defense budget by an average rate over that period of three percent a year in real terms.
Perle: And the aggressive rhetoric had little to do with the reality of the administration's programs.
Perle: I don't believe there was any deliberate policy of building up weapons in order to negotiate other than there was surely a sense that our ability to extract agreements and extract concessions from the Soviets at the negotiating table would turn in large measure on what we brought to the table.
Perle: And if we had nothing to bring to it, we couldn't expect to get much back.
Perle: But precisely because the administration's program, more ambitious rhetorically than in any other sense, it couldn't be expected to move mountains.
Interviewer: I GUESS TO ME THE RHETORIC HEARKENED, PARTICULARLY AS I REREAD IT IN THE LAST YEAR, IT HEARKENED BACK, THERE WAS A PERIOD WHEN, WHEN WE HAD A MONOPOLY, A NUCLEAR MONOPOLY, WHEN WE REALLY COULD, IN A SENSE, OUR OWN SECURITY DEPENDED UPON OUR OWN RESOURCES.
Interviewer: OUR OWN ABILITY.
Interviewer: WE COULD DECIDE WHAT HAPPENED TO US ON THE BASIS OF OUR OWN POWER.
Interviewer: FOR A PERIOD AFTER THAT, BUT SECURITY DEPENDED UPON NEGOTIATIONS REACHED WITH THE SOVIET UNION, AGREEMENTS REACHED WITH THEM.
Interviewer: AND I THINK THE SENSE THAT I HAD WAS THAT THIS ADMINISTRATION WAS LOOKING FOR A WAY TO GO IT ALONE, TO TRY TO RETURN TO A TIME WHEN WE WEREN'T DEPENDENT UPON COMPLICATED AND QUESTIONABLE NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE ENEMY.
Interviewer: ANY SENSE OF THAT AT ALL, DO YOU THINK?
Perle: I don't believe that our security has ever depended on concluding agreements with the Soviet Union.
Perle: And, indeed, the principal arms-control agreements in the decade and a half preceding the Reagan administration barely touched the Soviet weapons program and barely touched our own.
Perle: We built what we had it in mind to build and the Soviets built what they had it mind to build and with or without those agreements, the resulting nuclear forces from the two sides would have been pretty much the same.
Perle: Indeed, they might have been lessened by not concluding agreements, since in some respects the agreements of the early 1970s were a stimulus to growth in areas not covered by those agreements.
Perle: The best example being the Soviet SS-20 missile, which the Soviets began to deploy only after limits were put on SS-16 missiles that were essentially SS-20s with one additional stage.
Perle: And because of that additional stage, their range was such that they fell under the SALT limitations, the strategic arms treaty limitations.
Perle: So, our security has depended and will in the future depend on how intelligently we organize our retaliatory forces and the other elements of our military power.
Perle: And it is a great mistake to believe that we can turn to agreements as a means of insuring our security.
Perle: They have a role to play, but they're not an alternative for real military power.
Interviewer: BUT IN A WORLD OF MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION, MAD, OUR SECURITY WAS IN THE END DEPENDENT UPON GOOD WILL OR WHATEVER YOU WANT TO SAY OF THE ENEMY OR THE RATIONALITY OF THE ENEMY IF YOU WANT TO SAY?
Perle: It's quite true that mutual assured destruction, the threat to destroy the civilian population of the Soviet Union, which is what it amounts to, if they attack us, assumes that they will make a rational calculation that they would rather not be destroyed and that suffering their own destruction is too high a price to pay for the privilege of attacking us.
Perle: That, I believe, is one of the reasons why Ronald Reagan would like to move to a strategic posture that is less dependent on decisions made in Moscow and on decisions that, over which we have no direct control.
Perle: All we can do is structure the incentives for the Soviets and hope that their priorities and their reasoning parallel the priorities and reasoning with which those incentives are structured.
Interviewer: I DON'T WANT TO BELABOR THIS, BUT THE ONLY PROBLEM, OF COURSE, IS IF YOU HAVE A MAD MAN.
Interviewer: I MEAN.
Interviewer: WE, ALL OF US REMEMBER OR, AT LEAST IF YOU'RE MY AGE OR OLDER, THE TIME WHEN THERE WAS THE GUY WHO PROBABLY WOULD HAVE TAKEN THE REST OF THE WORLD DOWN WITH HIM IF HE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO SO.
Perle: I have not only not forgotten that the world was at one time afflicted with a mad man who would have taken us all with him, but that seems to me one of the very important reasons for not remaining utterly defenseless which is the condition in which we find ourselves today, To refrain deliberately, as an act of policy, from developing and deploying any defense whatsoever against ballistic missiles is to ignore that lesson of history and to ignore the possibility that an accident or a miscalculation could bring terrible destruction.
Perle: I think Ronald Reagan is right in believing that for the long-term future we have to have some means of defense other than the threat to deliver brutal destruction on anyone who attacks us.
Interviewer: IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE ADMINISTRATION, PRIOR TO THE MARCH 23RD SPEECH, THE SDI SPEECH, WHEN HE ANNOUNCES THE PROGRAM, WHAT'S THE THINKING THAT WAS GOING ON WITHIN THE ADMINISTRATION OR HIS SUPPORTERS ABOUT AN ABM DEFENSE OF SOME KIND? WAS THERE ANY EARLY TALK ABOUT IT?
Perle: I'm not aware of any.
Perle: There is a widely-reported briefing that had been given to the President by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in which remarks were made to him, as I understand it, I wasn't present, about the evolution of some technologies that might make it possible for us to develop a strategic defense.
Perle: But I don't believe there was any serious careful deliberation.
Interviewer: THERE, OF COURSE, HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CONSTITUENCY OUT THERE PUSHING FOR ABM DEFENSES, I MEAN, SINCE THEY WERE ABANDONED IN '76.
Interviewer: WERE THOSE PEOPLE INFLUENTIAL TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE IN THE ADMINISTRATION? DID THEY PLAY ROLE IN THE PRESIDENT, OR THE ADMINISTRATION'S THINKING OF MOVING TOWARD AN ABM DEFENSE?
Perle: I don't think so.
Perle: I can't be sure.
Perle: But I am quite sure that the stories about an individual going into the Oval Office and, like Paul on the road to Damascus, delivering an epiphany that changed the President's mind, are quite wrong.
Perle: He has for years, I gather even as governor of California, believed that some form of defense is a natural requirement for a great power threatened by nuclear weapons.
Interviewer: THAT'S MY IMPRESSION TOO.
Interviewer: I THINK HE MADE RADIO ADDRESSES, WHICH I'M TRYING TO GET HOLD OF TO THAT EFFECT.
Interviewer: I'M GOING TO GET BACK TO SDI BUT I WANT TO ASK ONE QUESTION ABOUT THE FREEZE MOVEMENT.
Interviewer: THE COUNTRY IS CLEARLY VERY SUPPORTIVE OF THE ADMINISTRATION'S MILITARY BUILD-UP.
Interviewer: CONGRESS, VIRTUALLY CARTE BLANCHE IN THE EARLY FIRST COUPLE OF YEARS.
Interviewer: BUT THERE IS ALSO, IT SEEMS, A GROWING CONCERN AMONG AMERICANS THAT WE AREN'T TALKING TO THE SOVIETS, EXPRESSED, I WOULD SUGGEST, IN GROWING SUPPORT FOR THE NUCLEAR-FREEZE MOVEMENT, WHICH LIKE THE MILITARY BUILD UP BEGINS UNDER PRESIDENT CARTER.
Interviewer: WE HAVE TO REMEMBER.
Interviewer: THE FREEZE PERCOLATES ALONG.
Interviewer: SUDDENLY IT GETS, WHEN THOSE NEW ENGLAND TOWN MEETINGS VOTE, SUDDENLY IT BECOMES A NATIONAL NEWS STORY AND THE ADMINISTRATION BEGINS TO TAKE NOTICE.
Interviewer: WAS THE FREEZE MOVEMENT OF CONCERN TO THE ADMINISTRATION, TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE?
Perle: I think it was a, I think the freeze movement.
Perle: Let me start that over again because it wasn't a complete thought.
Perle: I believe that the freeze movement was more a nuisance than anything else.
Perle: It was driven by ignorance and fear in equal measure, hopelessly unsophisticated as a way of looking at the strategic arsenal of the United States and the Soviet Union.
Perle: It missed one absolutely fundamental point, which is that it came at a moment when the Soviets were completing the modernization of their strategic forces and the United States was just beginning the modernization of American strategic forces.
Perle: So, had we frozen at the point at which the freeze movement was most aggressive in urging that we do so, in a very short period of time our antiquated strategic deterrent would have become hopeless ineffective, while the Soviet strategic deterrent was becoming even more effective.
Perle: They could have stood up under a freeze much better than we could.
Perle: But the people who were supporting the freeze didn't look at the facts.
Perle: And they also had a wonderful way of begging the crucial questions by defining the freeze as a mutual and verifiable one, even though a verifiable freeze was a practical impossibility.
Perle: And mutuality if it meant anything had to mean that the consequences for the strategic forces for the two sides would be roughly comparable when, in fact, they were wildly disparate and disadvantageous for the United States.
Perle: But I don't believe that anyone in the administration thought that the votes would be there to freeze American strategic programs.
Perle: And, so, while it was a nuisance, it was never more than that.
Interviewer: ACTUALLY THAT'S A PROVOCATIVE ANSWER IN A WAY BECAUSE YOU'RE SUGGESTING, OR MAYBE I'M MISINTERPRETING IT, IF WE DID HAVE AN EQUALITY OF FORCES, WHATEVER THAT MIGHT MEAN THAT A FREEZE MIGHT NOT BE A BAD IDEA.
Perle: Well I, as a general rule, I think it is a mistake to impose constraints on military forces so vital to our security, that prevent us from responding in situations where we think we can improve our security, either by replacing a weapon that is becoming obsolete with one that isn't or a relatively unsafe weapon with a much safer one or reducing numbers of weapons, because the effectiveness of individual weapons is higher than the effectiveness of the weapons that are replaced.
Perle: Dynamism in the construction of our strategic posture is I believe a good thing and has paved the way for significant arms control which you couldn't have if you were stuck with dinosaurs that you felt you had to keep around because they were so ineffective.
Interviewer: THE PRESIDENT'S START PROPOSALS, WHICH I THINK HE BEGINS TO HINT AT IN THE EUREKA SPEECH, MAY '82, ALONG IN THAT TIME PERIOD, WERE YOU INVOLVED IN THE FORMULATION OF THAT?
Perle: Well, I certainly tried to bring some influence to bear on the administration's START proposals and I argued vigorously for deep reductions, rather deeper than the ones that we did, in fact, propose.
Perle: Because it seemed to me we could maintain an adequate deterrent with forces significantly smaller than the ones we had.
Perle: There we no point in maintaining this unwieldy inventory if we could get the Soviets to reduce theirs as well.
Interviewer: I NOTICE THAT YOU USE THE WORD DETERRENCE.
Interviewer: IS THAT THE BEST THAT WE CAN HOPE FOR IN A SENSE AS A NATION, THAT WE, A POSTURE THAT ALLOWS US TO DETER THE SOVIET UNION FROM ATTACKING US?
Perle: I believe that for the foreseeable future deterrence of Soviet action by maintaining the capability to respond if attacked is the best we can hope for.
Perle: Over the long term, maybe we can do better than that, but it will take a lot more perestroika than we've seen so far to change the relationship to the point where we can think of other ways of defending ourselves.
Interviewer: DID YOU HAVE ANY ROLE IN THE PREPARATION OF THE MARCH 23RD SPEECH, THE SDI SPEECH? I MEAN, I IMAGINE YOU MUST HAVE HAD SOME ROLE IN THE REST OF THE SPEECH AT LEAST, BECAUSE THERE WAS A START PROPOSAL AS I RECALL IN THAT SPEECH, WASN'T THERE, IN THE EARLY PART OF THAT, AND THE DEFENSE OF A BUILD UP.
Perle: Well, most of that March 23rd speech was about the defense budget.
Perle: It was an argument for the defense budget and I was indeed involved in the preparation of that part of the speech, not directly as a speech writer, but had been following it rather closely.
Perle: My only role in the March 23rd speech was delaying it for 24 hours.
Perle: I was in Portugal with the secretary of defense attending a meeting of NATO defense ministers.
Perle: And the White House sent the speech over for the secretary to examine.
Perle: He had gone to bed, 11 o'clock at night, in the Algarve.
Perle: And I read the speech and I was stunned to read the paragraphs at the end that announced the launching of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Perle: It wasn't called that in that speech.
Perle: We tried to call it that later.
Perle: It ended up getting called Star Wars.
Perle: I think that was predictable.
Perle: But it seemed to me unwise to launch a program of those dimensions without any advance preparation, without consultations with Congress, without consultations with our allies, without defining carefully the plan that we were going to pursue.
Perle: And, so, I urge that we hold off until we could do those things.
Perle: And the decision was made to hold off for 24 hours.
Interviewer: I GUESS THE OTHER SIDE SAID IF YOU RUN IT THROUGH THE REGULAR BUREAUCRACY AND IT'S GOING TO GET SO DILUTED OR SO, OR LEAKED TO THE PRESS.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS THE ARGUMENT ON THE OTHER SIDE?
Perle: I'm not sure what the argument against taking time before announcing SDI, to prepare the way for it, was.
Perle: In retrospect it seems clear that we would have been far better off explaining the extent of the Soviet strategic defense developments before launching our own.
Perle: In part, because we didn't do that, what the administration tried to say about the Soviet program tended to be dismissed as an effort simply to sustain support for the American program, when, in fact, the Soviets had been vigorously pursuing strategic defense technologies for the last twenty years.
Perle: So, I don't know why, I don't know what argument was used not to do the kind of normal preparation.
Perle: As between working a program like that through the bureaucracy, which would probably have been unwise, and springing it full born like Venus emerging from the sea, there was a middle ground and that middle ground was for the President to decide that he would proceed with the program and instruct the department of defense, department of state and others to take thirty or sixty days in consultation in preparation for officially launching the program.
Interviewer: TACKED ON THE END OF THE SPEECH, NOT A MAJOR PART OF THAT SPEECH, AND YET BIG REACTION WHEN IT CAME OUT, THE SENATE WENT CRAZY AND THE PRESS, WELL, NOT THE PRESS, SOMEBODY, I FORGOT WHO IT WAS DUBBED IT STAR WARS, WHICH WAS BOUND TO CATCH ON.
Interviewer: YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.
Interviewer: I TRIED TO CALL THIS PROGRAM STAR WARS BUT THEY SAID IT WOULD BE TOO OFFENSIVE TO CONSERVATIVES.
Interviewer: ALTHOUGH MOST SCIENTISTS I TALK TO...
Perle: It's true.
Interviewer: WELL IN A WAY, NOT REALLY, THEY REALLY REFER TO IT THAT WAY AMONG THEMSELVES.
Interviewer: BUT IT'S DIFFERENT, I UNDERSTAND IT'S DIFFERENT FOR THE FRATERNITY TALKING ABOUT ITSELF.
Interviewer: WHY THAT REACTION? I MEAN, COULD YOU PUT THE IDEA OF ABM DEFENSE IN A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE FOR US.
Perle: I think the vehement, negative reaction to the President's SDI speech reflected fifteen years of acceptance in the community of experts of the proposition that defenselessness is next to godliness.
Perle: That it is desirable to be defenseless.
Perle: That only if we are naked before our enemies can we have a stable relationship with the Soviet Union.
Perle: I think that's rubbish.
Perle: The Soviets never accepted that notion.
Perle: The ABM Treaty of 1972 which was said to be the document that enshrined it did nothing of the sort.
Perle: It was a tactical maneuver on the part of the Soviets to buy time to achieve parity in ABM technology, which is precisely what they did in the period after the ABM Treaty.
Perle: But it became an article of faith, a part of the catechism that it was a bad idea to be defended.
Perle: And any effort to mount the defense would surely bring in its wake soviet increase in offensive forces and you would get a spiraling arms race out of control at the end of which we would be worse off than if we never embarked on the defense in the first place.
Perle: This ignores entirely the fact that if we are defenseless we are defenseless not only against the unlikely event of a deliberate Soviet nuclear attack on the United States, but defenseless with respect to all other far more likely ways in which nuclear weapons could cause terrible destruction, like an accident or a miscalculation or an unintended or an unauthorized launch.
Perle: Or a launch by a third party.
Perle: All of which contingencies in my view are far more likely than a massive Soviet deliberate attack from the United States.
Perle: And, so, we are, those who believe that it is unwise to have any defense at all are prepared to run the extravagant risk of a disaster in an area where the probabilities will probably catch up with us sooner or later in order to implement a theory that has to do only with the least likely way in which nuclear harm can be done.
Interviewer: WHEN ONE FIRST HEARD THAT SPEECH, THE SENSE THAT I GOT ANY WAY WAS THAT THE PRESIDENT WAS REALLY OFFERING AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE A VIRTUALLY, IF NOT ENTIRELY, IMPENETRABLE DEFENSE, AN UMBRELLA THAT WOULD PROTECT BOTH OUR CIVILIAN POPULATION AND OUR MILITARY RESOURCES.
Interviewer: DO YOU THINK THAT WAS WHAT THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH SAID? DID WE MISINTERPRET IT OR DID HE MISLEAD US OR DID WE MISS...
Perle: I think the President set for the Strategic Defense Initiative a goal that can't possibly be realized in the near future, if it can ever be realized, of a perfect defense, an impenetrable shield.
Perle: It seems to me unlikely that we will be, unlikely that we will be able to achieve that level of perfection in any weapons system, offensive or defensive.
Perle: Nevertheless, a partially effective strategic defense, one that would intercept, let's say, half the missiles aimed at the United States, in a deliberate attack, would destroy the effectiveness of that attack.
Perle: It would not achieve it's objectives, if the objectives were to destroy the American capacity to retaliate.
Perle: And, of course, it would be available to deal with accidents or miscalculations.
Perle: I believe it's a mistake to argue that SDI is only worth pursuing if it can lead to perfection.
Perle: Partial defenses have a vital role to play in protecting this country, not only against a missile attack, but against a variety of contingencies that seem to me more likely.
Interviewer: MY OBSERVATION AGAIN IS THAT WHEN THE SPEECH FIRST COMES OUT, IT GETS A LOT OF CRITICISM, NOT ONLY FROM THE OBVIOUS CRITICS, BUT ALMOST FROM MANY SUPPORTERS OF THE ADMINISTRATION WHO ARE CONCERNED ABOUT IT BECAUSE OF THIS PROMISE.
Interviewer: LATER THEY GET ON BOARD, THEY BECOME SUPPORTERS OF SDI FOR A VARIETY OF REASONS, ONE YOU JUST MENTIONED.
Interviewer: IS THAT AN ACCURATE RECOLLECTION ON MY PART OR...
Perle: I believe that it is possible to support a vigorous program of research, development and testing aimed at determining whether we can produce an effective strategic defense, without setting an impossibly high criterion for it.
Perle: And it would be terrific if we could have an impenetrable shield, but even if you can't get that there are good reasons for proceeding with SDI.
Perle: So, no one should be disappointed at the inability to achieve that rather grand objective of a perfect impenetrable defense.
Perle: I think, like any military system, a strategic defense can serve multiple purposes.
Perle: You know, I frequently hear the argument made that the SDI that I support, which would include a partially effective defense is not the SDI that the President supports and critics will say which is it? Well, it's both.
Perle: You don't have to accept perfection in order to attempt to build the best defense you can.
Perle: And we don't do it with other weapons systems.
Perle: Most of the things we build have multiple purposes and the strategic defense as well would have multiple purposes, only one of which, which may not be achievable, would be the kind of impenetrable defense that the President seemed to have in mind in 1983.
Interviewer: EVERY SCIENTIST I'VE TALK TO AGREES THAT IMPENETRABLE DEFENSE IS JUST NOT LIKELY.
Interviewer: I GUESS WHAT WE ALL HOPE IS THAT THERE WOULD BE SOMETHING THAT WOULD DELIVER US FROM LIVING UNDER DAMOCLEAN SWORD OF DESTRUCTION THAT WE CONSTANTLY HAVE TO, IT WOULD BE WONDERFUL TO WAKE UP IN THE MORNING AND SAY, HEY, THE ESSENCE OF THE NUCLEAR AGE IS DONE AND OVER WITH.
Perle: But we are not going to wake up in the morning and discover that nuclear weapons have been abolished or even rendered impotent or obsolete.
Perle: Nevertheless, it would be worth rendering them ineffective for military purposes and it would be worth defending ourselves against an accident.
Interviewer: LET ME TURN TO THE SUMMER OF '83 AND GOING INTO THE FALL OF, AND WINTER OF '84 WHEN SOVIET-AMERICAN RELATIONS GO INTO A, WHAT SOME HAVE REFERRED TO AS A TWENTY YEAR NADIR, OR THE LOW POINT OF TWENTY YEARS.
Interviewer: JUST TOUCH ON A COUPLE OF EVENTS AND HOW THEY WERE PERCEIVED FROM THE ADMINISTRATION.
Interviewer: OBVIOUSLY GREAT REACTION TO SDI.
Interviewer: WHAT ABOUT THE SOVIET INITIAL REACTION TO THE SDI? VERY CRITICAL FROM THE VERY START.
Interviewer: RIGHT?
Perle: The initial Soviet reaction to SDI was in equal measure critical and hypocritical.
Perle: Hypocritical because the Soviets had their own program.
Perle: And I recall a letter signed by a significant number of Soviet scientists deploring American work on strategic defenses and declaring ex-cathedra that it couldn't possibly work.
Perle: And included among the signers of this open letter, which was widely published, was the man who runs the Soviet SDI program as well as the principal designers of their offensive nuclear weapons.
Perle: It was their military-industrial complex saying to the world that we Americans had no right to divert science to the cause of defense.
Perle: And it was intensely hypocritical and they repeated that line ever since.
Interviewer: ALTHOUGH GORBACHEV CAME CLOSE IN HIS PRESS CONFERENCE, NOT THAT CLOSE, BUT HE ADMITTED THAT THEY WERE ENGAGED IN THEIR OWN SDI RESEARCH.
Perle: At the Washington summit, Gorbachev for the first time acknowledged that the Soviets had a program but then he quickly said its purpose was not to develop a defense, it was something else.
Interviewer: I WANT TO GET BACK TO THAT.
Interviewer: A FEW MORE THINGS.
Interviewer: THE SHOOTING DOWN OF THE KLA PLANE, WHAT WAS THE REACTION OF THAT AT THE TIME.
Interviewer: I MEAN, WAS THAT A HUGE SHOCK OR SURPRISE? WAS IT, ANY LEVEL AT ALL SAID BOY THIS REALLY SHOWS THEM FOR WHAT THEY ARE.
Interviewer: NOT, OBVIOUSLY NOT WELCOME IN NOBODY LIKES TO SEE THE DEATH OF THREE HUNDRED AND WHATEVER IT WAS X PEOPLE.
Interviewer: IT DID CERTAINLY MAKE A CASE DIDN'T IT?
Perle: Great many people reacted to the Soviets shooting down a civilian airliner by recognizing that they applied a different standard than one would expect in any other country in taking the action that they had taken.
Perle: And it wasn't the first time they had fired on a civilian airliner.
Perle: So, there was shock and dismay.
Perle: There were Americans aboard that aircraft to add to it.
Perle: And the Soviets lied, of course, initially about what had happened.
Perle: There wasn't the slightest sign of contrition.
Perle: They brought out generals to explain how it had all happened.
Perle: It, I don't 'know why that should not have been the nadir of US-Soviet relations or indeed Soviet relations with the world rather than some of the other events that are often described as having touched a low point in US-Soviet relations.
Interviewer: I WANT TO MOVE ON FROM THERE.
Interviewer: WE INVADE GRENADA.
Interviewer: NOT A BIG DEAL TO THEM, I IMAGINE.
Interviewer: WE PUT OUR MISSILES IN WESTERN EUROPE.
Interviewer: THEY WALK OUT OF, FIRST, THE INF TALKS AND THEN THE START TALKS.
Interviewer: WHAT ABOUT THEIR WALKING OUT OF THE START TALKS?
Perle: The Soviets did themselves a great deal of harm when they walked out of the talks in Geneva.
Perle: And if anyone doubted it, it was evident immediately when the demonstrators who used to hang around the meeting site in Geneva, always with placards deploring American deployment of intermediate missiles, suddenly lay down in front of the Soviet limousines taking their negotiators away from the talks.
Perle: And from the moment the Soviets left, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before they returned, despite the statements they made at the time that they would never come back until we had withdrawn the missiles that we had begun to deploy in December of 1983.
Interviewer: SO, THIS WAS NOT, I MEAN, THE ADMINISTRATION CLEARLY IS NOT CONCERNED THAT SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED THAT HAS DAMAGED OUR REL...
Interviewer: THIS IS JUST A PLOY ON THE PART OF THE SOVIETS AND A STANDARD PLOY ACTUALLY, TO POSE THEMSELVES IN A STRONGER NEGOTIATING POSITION.
Perle: The Soviets walked out of the negotiations in Geneva in the hope that this would lead to massive protests in the streets of Europe, with the result that the West would be forced to abandon its plans to deploy cruise missiles and Pershing II missiles.
Perle: It was a dreadful miscalculation from the Soviet point of view.
Perle: From the day they walked out, I was convinced that they had taken the one action that could guarantee deployment.
Interviewer: BUT SOMETHING DOES HAPPEN.
Interviewer: THE ADMINISTRATION IN '84, POSITIONING ITSELF TOWARD THE ELECTION, REAGAN AT LEAST BEGIN TALKING ABOUT ACCOMMODATIONS WITH THE SOVIETS, THE FIRST TIME MAYBE.
Interviewer: THAT SUMMER AS I RECALL, GROMYKO OR SOMEBODY COMES AND THERE'S TALK OF A SUMMIT.
Interviewer: WHAT'S THAT ABOUT? WHY THIS CHANGE THEN?
Perle: I have never been able to explain the careening rhetoric of the President.
Perle: I thought it was unnecessary and abrasive hostility in the beginning and it became sometimes even pathetically accommodating in the end.
Perle: And if you draw a middle line between the early statements and the late statements, that's about what should have been said all along.
Interviewer: I WANT TO TALK A LITTLE ABOUT GORBACHEV.
Interviewer: NOW, AND I WANT TO BEGIN IN THE PRESENT, BECAUSE YOU HAD DINNER WITH HIM.
Interviewer: YOU WERE SEATED, FOR REASONS WHICH ESCAPE ME, ANYWAY YOU WERE SEATED AT THE TABLE WITH HIM WHEN HE WAS HERE IN WASHINGTON AND I WONDER IF YOU HAD ANY, FIRST WE'LL BEGIN WITH ANY PERSONAL IMPRESSION AND THEN MAYBE GO ON FROM THERE TO MORE THOUGHTFUL COMMENTS.
Perle: You mean first impressions are never thoughtful.
Interviewer: I THINK NOT.
Interviewer: THERE'S A SURFACE IMPRESSION THIS GUY MAKES AND THEN THERE'S A DEEPER ANALYSIS OF WHAT HE'S DOING.
Perle: Well, he, Gorbachev can be very engaging, amiable, conversational, but he remains, and he would not be in any way annoyed by my so characterizing him, a tough Marxist-Leninist of the old school, despite all the efforts that he has under way at reform.
Interviewer: HODDING CARTER TOLD ME A STORY.
Interviewer: HE WAS AT A PARTY WITH YOU AND A BUNCH OF RUSSIANS AND HE SAID THAT ALL THE RUSSIANS WERE FASCINATED TO MEET YOU.
Interviewer: ALL THE RUSSIANS WANTED TO COME UP AND TALK TO YOU BECAUSE YOU REPRESENTED TO THEM THE WORST, THE MOST STRIDENT ANTI-SOVIET OR WHATEVER.
Interviewer: WHAT DO YOU REPRESENT?
Perle: They make the mistake of believing own propaganda.
Perle: What can I say.
Interviewer: DID THEY COME UP AND SOLICIT COMMENTS FROM YOU? DO THEY? WHAT ARE THEY CONCERNED ABOUT? WHAT DO THEY ASK? WHAT DO THEY TALK TO YOU ABOUT?
Perle: Well, about, I mean, in my conversations with various Russians, we've tended to talk about issues that were on the immediate agenda.
Perle: They're here with a mission and, particularly just prior to a summit, fishing for intelligence and so on.
Perle: But they have portrayed me in the Soviet press for so long now as some sort of demon, that you get the feeling that they're curious, but they don't want to get too close.
Interviewer: THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS.
Perle: Prince of Darkness.
Perle: Although that has not been the sustained reaction of those Russians that I've come to know.
Perle: And among the Russians with whom I've worked across the negotiating table, it had been possible to develop relations at least of mutual respect.
Interviewer: GORBACHEV COMES ON THE SCENE, FIRST GRABS AMERICAN ATTENTION, PROBABLY WITH THAT TRIP TO LONDON IN, JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS OF '84, BEFORE HE BECOMES GENERAL SECRETARY.
Interviewer: THE PRESS DESCRIBE HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH MAGGIE THATCHER IN ALMOST COURTSHIP TERMS.
Interviewer: HE BECOMES GENERAL SECRETARY.
Interviewer: HE AND THE PRESIDENT SEEM TO BE ENGAGING IN A INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION FOR MR.
Interviewer: GOOD GUY, MR.
Interviewer: PEACENIK, WHICH GORBACHEV DOES VERY WELL.
Interviewer: AND, IN FACT, MAY HAVE AT ONE POINT ACTUALLY BEEN AHEAD OF THE PRESIDENT, AT LEAST IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLLS.
Interviewer: ANY COMMENT ON THAT WHOLE PEACE OFFENSIVE THE SOVIET PEACE OFFENSIVE?
Perle: This is not the first Soviet peace offensive that we've ever seen.
Perle: There have been a succession of them historically.
Perle: People's memories are so short.
Perle: The Soviets began saying in December of 1987 that they were going to shift their policy to one of sufficiency, that they would only require sufficient weapons.
Perle: They never explained what the policy was before sufficiency.
Perle: And, indeed, they never acknowledge having any policy other than sufficiency.
Perle: The real test of the Soviets, and by now it is a test of Gorbachev, because he has been in office long enough to affect changes, is whether they diminish the terribly burdensome investment in military things that is now running in excess of 20 percent of their gross national product, which they can ill afford.
Perle: We are staggering under the weight of 6.7 percent.
Perle: No President, no democratically-elected leader could hope to propose half of what the Soviets are spending.
Perle: And the Soviet economy is a poor economy.
Perle: So, the burden, the opportunity costs, the privation that results from their exaggerated emphasis on military power is very great indeed.
Perle: And if Gorbachev is serious, as I believe he is, about trying to rescue the Soviet economy from oblivion then he will have to diminish the rate at which they're squandering their resources on military things.
Perle: And that is the test of the peace offensive.
Perle: Not the words with which a military build-up is otherwise described.
Interviewer: NOW, SOME HAVE USED THAT ARGUMENT TO ARGUE THAT THAT OF ALL REASONS IS WHY WE SHOULD VIGOROUSLY PURSUE SDI, BECAUSE, IN FACT, IT'S OUR STRONG SUIT BOTH TECHNOLOGICALLY SPEAKING AND IN TERMS OF THE SYSTEM THAT WE'RE OPPOSING, THAT IS THEIR ICBM FORCE.
Interviewer: AND ALSO IT'S GOING TO COST THEM AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY AND WE CAN BEAT THEM IN THAT RACE.
Interviewer: DO YOU SHARE THAT ASSUMPTION?
Perle: I don't believe that pursuing SDI necessarily means a race.
Perle: A strategic defense that was partially effective, let's say 50 percent effective, and even the skeptics will grant that you might be able to achieve 50 percent effectiveness, would deprive the Soviets of half the number of warheads they might otherwise deliver against American targets.
Perle: And even if the arsenals of the two sides were limited say to six thousand warheads, so they would be able to deliver only three thousand warheads against the United States, can anyone argue that that deprives the Soviet Union of a deterrent capability? And is it inevitable that they would respond to that strategic defense? Is it certain that they would not be content with the ability to deliver three thousand warheads, that they need the ability to deliver six thousand warheads? It's much too simple to suggest that there would inevitably be a race that would result from our mounting a defense.
Perle: The Soviets have mounted defenses against which we have chosen not to race for a variety of reasons.
Perle: And there's nothing inevitable about a race flowing from SDI.
Interviewer: TELL US, I WANT TO TURN TO REYKJAVIK, AN EXTRAORDINARY SUMMIT AS I UNDERSTAND IT.
Interviewer: I SAW THAT PBS, NOT PBS, DONE BY GRANADA TELEVISION.
Interviewer: DID YOU BY ANY CHANCE SEE THAT? WAS THAT AT ALL ACCURATE?
Perle: I thought it was pretty accurate in describing the events.
Perle: The President is a multi-dimensional character and he comes off rather one-dimensional.
Interviewer: AWFULLY ONE-DIMENSIONAL.
Interviewer: ALMOST LIKE A CARICATURE.
Interviewer: TELL US IF YOU CAN JUST A LITTLE BIT OF THE STORY OF THAT SUMMIT.
Interviewer: I MEAN, WE GO INTO IT AT THE LAST MINUTE.
Interviewer: DO WE GO IN AS THEY SAY WITH INADEQUATE PREPARATION? ARE WE TAKEN BY SURPRISE AT THE RUSSIAN PROPOSAL?
Perle: I believe we were well-prepared for Reykjavik and the President had his usual two inch thick briefing books, painstakingly prepared by staffs of the various departments.
Perle: The members of the delegation who accompanied them had been working on these issues for years and in some cases for decades, in Paul Nitze's case, half a century.
Perle: We were ready for that negotiation and to those who believe we were ill-prepared, I would only comment, look at the outcome.
Perle: We left Reykjavik with the Strategic Defense Initiative in tact, with the Soviets having moved substantially toward the elimination of intermediate nuclear missiles, which was ultimately the result, ultimately resulted in the INF Treaty.
Perle: And with the Soviets moving significantly in the direction of deep cuts in strategic forces which was Ronald Reagan's proposal and Ronald Reagan's agenda.
Perle: So, he left Reykjavik with everything he wanted or at least having set in motion everything he wanted.
Perle: And Gorbachev left Reykjavik essentially empty handed.
Perle: Now, if that's poor preparation, then we ought to yet rid of the briefing books and quit preparing for these meetings.
Interviewer: AND, YET, WHEN THEY BOTH EMERGED AT THE END OF THE DISCUSSION, THEY LOOK, THEY, GORBACHEV, REAGAN, SHULTZ, THEY LOOK EXHAUSTED DISCOURAGED, DEPRESSED.
Interviewer: AND THE INITIAL TAKE THEY PUT ON IT IS ONE OF, IF NOT FAILURE, AT LEAST OF DISAPPOINTMENT.
Interviewer: IS THAT ACCURATE?
Perle: One gets caught up in the toils of the critical negotiation and immediately after the last session in which no agreement resulted, even though a great deal was done to advance the President's agenda, it was easy to be disappointed.
Perle: But recollected in tranquility, and it didn't take very long, a matter of hours, it became clear that a great deal had been accomplished in Reykjavik and the negotiations that followed would undoubtedly accomplish still more.
Perle: So I believe Reykjavik was a great success.
Interviewer: THIS WAS NOT SIMPLY A QUESTION OF BOTH LEADERS RECOGNIZING THE ENORMOUS HEARTFELT FEELING ON THE PART OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD FOR SOME KIND OF STEP TOWARD PEACE, REINTERPRETING WHAT HAS REALLY BEEN A FAILURE.
Perle: I think that Gorbachev left Reykjavik without having stopped the SDI program which is what he went to Reykjavik to do.
Perle: Ronald Reagan left Reykjavik without an INF treaty or a START treaty in hand.
Perle: The difference is that such momentum was imparted to both an INF treaty and a START treaty at Reykjavik that on reflection it was a good outcome for the President, but on reflection it was a bad outcome for Gorbachev.
Perle: And I believe Gorbachev subsequently understood that when he felt compelled to back away from the position he took as he left Reykjavik which was that there could be no further movement toward agreement on intermediate nuclear forces or strategic force until the United States abandoned SDI.
Interviewer: IF THE PRESIDENT HAD SAID, "I WILL RESTRICT SDI TO THE LABORATORY RESEARCH, MR.
Interviewer: GENERAL SECRETARY," WOULD THERE HAVE BEEN AGREEMENT IN YOUR VIEW AT REYKJAVIK?
Perle: Had the President agreed to restrict SDI to laboratory research there would have been a very broad framework agreement at Reykjavik.
Perle: And the Soviets would have proceeded thereafter to ignore the parts they didn't like, pocketing the part they did like, which would have the limitation on SDI research.
Interviewer: YOUR INTERPRETATION OF THE ABM, THE BATTLE IN THE SENATE, WITH SAM NUNN IN THE SENATE.
Perle: No administration prior to the Reagan Administration had to deal with the ABM treaty in the way one had to deal with it when there was a Strategic Defense Initiative under way.
Perle: That is, you had to know more or less precisely what you could and couldn't do.
Perle: Previous administrations weren't troubled by that because they weren't doing anything, or at least they weren't doing anything that could conceivably be interpreted as encroaching on the treaty limitations.
Perle: So, we actually went and read the treaty and when you read the treaty, you find that there are two provisions of it that are in direct contradiction to one another.
Perle: One that says no testing in space and the other one that says that in the event that systems based on new technologies are developed, the parties will consult about what to do about it.
Perle: You can't read those two provisions and not ask yourself which one applies in the case of an SDI type experiment.
Perle: So, you have to go back and read the negotiating record to shed light on what that apparent contradiction means.
Perle: And when we did that we came to the conclusion, which is unambiguous as one reads the record, that the Soviet Union never, never accepted the proposition that there should be no research, no development and no testing of systems based on other physical principles or new technologies, precisely the kinds of things that the SDI program has been doing.
Perle: And it was on the basis of a reading of the treaty and the negotiating record that the administration came to the conclusion that it was free, under the treaty, to pursue development and testing with respect to SDI technologies.
Interviewer: FIFTY YEARS FROM NOW HISTORIANS ARE WRITING BOOKS ABOUT THIS PERIOD, WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO SAY ABOUT THE PRESIDENT'S, THIS ADMINISTRATION'S CONTRIBUTION OR LACK OF CONTRIBUTION TO STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SOVIET UNION, NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
Perle: I would think that fifty years from now, historians would observe that Ronald Reagan was the first President in the nuclear age to put to the Soviet Union a proposal for the limitation of nuclear weapons that, that cut deeply into Soviet nuclear programs and American nuclear programs.
Perle: That he did it in the face of near consensus that it couldn't possibly succeed and he succeeded.
Perle: So, it will be the high water mark, I suspect, for a tough-minded approach to negotiating with the Soviets.
Interviewer: LOOKING FROM THE OUTSIDE, THE FEELING, ONE WAY YOU CAN LOOK AT THE LAST EIGHT YEARS, IS YOU COULD SEE THIS, THE PRESIDENT COMES IN WITH ENORMOUS SUPPORT FROM A VERY CONSERVATIVE CONSTITUENCY, ANTI-SOVIET, ETC.
Interviewer: ETC.
Interviewer: DOESN'T WANT TO TALK, MILITARY BUILD-UP.
Interviewer: AT THE END OF THE EIGHT YEARS, A LOT OF THE CONSERVATIVES SEEM TO BE FLEEING THE ADMINISTRATION IN DROVES, LEAVING, LEAVING HIM ALONE THERE IN A CERTAIN SENSE WITH THAT SAME OLD CORE OF WASHINGTON MODERATES WHO HAVE ALWAYS, IT'S LIKE A PROCESS THAT EVERY PRESIDENT HAS GONE THROUGH IN A WAY, FROM MILITANCY TO CONSENSUS AND, HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THAT PROCESS?
Perle: Well, the process by which the President's views of, and his supporters have changed over the years may be the mirror image of the change that affected the Carter administration.
Perle: Carter came in, you will recall, deploring an inordinate fear of Communism, and he left having been stunned by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Perle: And with little confidence in his administration and the broad public clamoring for a rebuilding of our defenses.
Perle: So I suppose history is full of bizarre twists and turns.
Interviewer: ARE YOU ESSENTIALLY, PERSONALLY, DO YOU THINK THAT, HAS THIS BEEN A GOOD, ARE WE IN A GOOD STANCE NOW? WAS THIS A GOOD THING THAT HAPPENED OR SHOULD THE PRESIDENT HAVE MAINTAINED A MORE FORCEFUL STANCE?
Perle: I think the President has been pretty forceful all along.
Perle: There’s a tinge of romanticism following the Washington Summit.
Perle: But deep down I think he realizes that the Soviet Union continues to be an adversary armed as Sakharov said “to the teeth.” And one that if we are not very careful, will exploit its military potential in order to expand its influence, broadly speaking.
Perle: Ronald Reagan knows that, and his view on that hasn’t changed.