War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Richard Perle, 1988

Somebody said somebody who I interviewed said of all the mistakes that were made in this thing the two track decision is I think the worst. Do you agree that you know there's a line by the. Way a Welsh poet. Who says after the first death there is no other. After that. There were no other mistakes that could be made that essentially side of the issue. Once we said to the Soviets we will deploy but we will also know she had to. None deployment. The future was sealed. So yes I think it was a fundamental mistake if it was vital to us to have those weapons and we should have decided to go ahead and have them and not very sorry. Oh OK so you know right well with all the benefit of that rehearsal Mr. Powell can I ask you the first question again. Trip before you start I mean you just pull your shirt. Thank you a great deal trucker said was the worst mistake that was made in how and how

much the dual track decision determine the future of the deployment. If it was vital to deploy intermediate missiles in Europe we should have made a decision to do so without making that deployment contingent upon a negotiating process. The results of which couldn't be predicted because you don't believe in the missile that you you didn't think that having a military Russian army. They didn't have the. Critical military quality of survivability that I believe to be important for a deterrent force is if it isn't going to survive attack it isn't a very effective deterrent. And the way in which these missiles were ultimately constructed and based and operated they were far too vulnerable to attack. So I didn't believe that we were giving up very much and abandoning them. When you came into office in 1981 What was your own personal attitude towards the Soviets. My other question but you presented your views. I've said it on time.

What was your own personal attitude to the negotiating track in the dual track position. Well we had no alternative but to pursue the negotiating track. And it seemed to me the important thing was to choose a negotiating posture that both protected the deployment because of the deployment fell apart so with the negotiation and at the same time would produce a useful result if we achieved a negotiating success. Although it was clear it was not going to be easy to achieve in negotiating success as we move to the right. OK I'm I'm surprised by that answer but because the administration took a very long time to agree a position and there are those who would say that it was it was pressure from the Europeans that brought brought them to the negotiating I don't know not at all.

One of the earliest decisions of the administration made in fact during the transition was to return to the negotiating table. There was a question of where and with what policies and I don't believe it took very long. It was spring by the time we found our offices. And October by the time we settled on a policy that's not an unreasonable period of time what was effectively the peace movement in Europe on which meant what was doing. Because of this of the peace movement you know when it contacts with. I'm trying to recall what I mean. Schmidt was like other Europeans quite keen for us to get on with the negotiating process and I think he was delighted when. We did get into the negotiations and proposed the total elimination of intermediate nuclear missiles was a policy he welcomed.

I've done interview with Hans sample who as you know was the German minister of defense at that time who said that the the Reagan administration was the best recruiting I was in for the peace movement at the time. Do you think the regular expression of the way that the anti-Soviet rhetoric which was going on in that period and if you want to talk of fighting them to nuclear wars and so on however Mr. reported in the newspaper was transforming the political climate in Europe and making this whole thing much more difficult. So I think we were quite aware of the political climate in Europe and appalled that the ease with which the European peace movement was mobilized in some cases in response to statements the president never made in other cases in response to statements that were deliberately misunderstood and to distorted and in rare instances in response to things the president shouldn't have said but did say scuse you start where you are or we're okay time to face. OK.

Why was the zero option put forward by the right moments right. Well I think different people had different attitudes toward it. In my own case we did studies in the Department of Defense that led us to the conclusion that if the Soviets retained more than 50 SS 20s that would be sufficient to attack and destroy virtually every important military target in Western Europe. And if one were aiming therefore at reducing the size of the Soviet SS 20 force down to so small a level it was better to go for eliminating them entirely. Partly because you had a much better chance of verifying compliance with. The total elimination of those weapons and partly for political reasons. It was a much more appealing proposal to say let's get rid of these weapons on both sides than to say let's have some number on both sides that would have guaranteed that a controversial deployment would go

forward. But it wasn't of course a serious quote negotiating because of course it was a serious position and the proof of that is that resulted in an agreement. What was most unserious was the shallow calumny of the critics who were entirely wrong about the politics of it about how to go about the negotiations and who were in that kind of aggressive arrogance. Presume to know better than those of us who made the policy that it would fail. And of course it didn't fail and they now look ridiculous and unrepentant and let it. Let me just move on now to the the negotiations in Geneva to the celebrated walk in the woods proposal. Why he. Why did the administration in particular you yourself feel that that was not a something which you could accept.

Well it isn't how I felt. I thought it was unlikely that the Soviets would agree to the proposal the poets have put forward. In fact I was sure they wouldn't agree to it. This was prior to the German elections they were still hoping that the German electorate would halt the deployment. And they weren't about to agree to a formula that would enable us to deploy significant numbers of missiles in Europe so there was never an agreement as a result of that walk in the woods it was simply an American proposal and it was a proposal that carried very considerable political risks for how much made among others. And because he here was Schmidt and here we have the Western alliance. Arguing that it was vital to deploy these weapons while our chief negotiator in secret was offering not to proceed with the deployment. So I I thought because it was un promising in terms of leading to a result and politically damaging it was a poor idea.

As a final outcome. The formula was not a bad for me it was rather favorable to the United States. I mean in retrospect those negotiations were bound to fail. I mean because the Soviets because the two thoughts were negro and the Soviets were not going to take him seriously. Well they were they were bound to fail because the Russians had not yet abandoned the prospect of stopping the Western deployment without having to give up anything of significance on their side. And it was only after the deployment began that they became persuaded they would have to deal with us on the basis in which we had been proposing. What do you think brought them back to the negotiating. Their departure from the negotiation was a political disaster and it was evident from the moment they left. For years we've had demonstrations against the deployment of cruise missiles and Persian tubes and hardly a word about the Soviet SS 20 the day the Russians walked out of the talks the demonstrators threw down their stop the US deployment signs and they lay

down in front of the limousine and like that the peace movement was transformed from an engine of Soviet policy into a into an opponent of Soviet policy it was a disastrous Soviet miscalculation. We never had it easier than in the aftermath of the Soviet walkout. And it's curious that they would have repeated the mistake they made in the Korean period for example when they walked out of the UN and permitted international policy to be made in their absence. So they were bound to come back. Now to spur them on. You had the SDI program the president announcing that we were going to go forward with the strategic defense and that got their attention. Can you explain to us something which remains a genuine sort of two to your claims of genuine enigma which is the apparent switch in President Reagan from the Empire of Evil stuff to the sorts of things which he was saying in his second inaugural and also the sorts of things he then was saying and to some extent doing in his

meetings with Gorbachev in Geneva in Reykjavik and so on. In other words the seeming abandonment of the notions of the towns and sights and nuclear weapons. I don't think Ronald Reagan has ever been comfortable with nuclear weapons. And this notion of a nuclear free world which I think is rubbish and dangerous rubbish that. Has always been present in his thinking just wasn't obvious to his supporters and even less evident to his detractors. You couldn't the detractors didn't have the good grace to accept this transformation when it began to emerge. Why do you think that because it didn't much time because I think it was always there and it is bound to some degree to affect all presidents this notion that that we are protecting ourselves and our civilization by wielding the threat to destroy. Others and their civilization this is bound to make politicians uncomfortable.

Let me move on this part to the the period between the Shultz Gorbachev meeting in early 1985 through Geneva and towards Reykjavik was the period of great complexity which I shall have to deal with very quickly in a program where a number of things are writing in time currently 85 to get structure. Thank you. Can you just tell us very briefly how the IMF question developed over that period. Well it was the principle question along with SDI. It was the principle question because it was the issue that captured the public attention in Europe. That was the issue in which in which the Soviets thought they had some momentum of the deployment was moving forward so in a sense time was running out and the Soviets resisted as you know the zero option when it was initially proposed they

resisted it through their walkout in 1083. They resisted it during their absence throughout any foreign in a way D5 they resisted it in 95 it was only at the Reykjavik summit that we first began to get an indication that they might at the end of the day except the zero option. We were surprised by that. Well I was gratified by it. I have always believed that we do not test Soviet tractability because we've been much too tractable ourselves much too willing to change our proposals change our objectives abandon our goals. Just in order to get agreements. And so we've never really put to the test until now how far the Soviets can be pressed by a successful negotiating strategy. And now I think we've demonstrated that we can do a lot better at the bargaining table with the Soviets than had previously been believed.

Let me just and if I may say so. To achieve that sort of success at the negotiating table you have to take. You have to have people who are serious about the negotiating process and not these arms control doves who know how to negotiate which is what we've had in the past. Let me just ask you to clarify one point about Reykjavik which I certainly am a little bit unclear about you know. Did the president at Reykjavik agreed to the elimination of all nuclear weapons. No he didn't. Though the proposal was the elimination of all offensive ballistic missiles the most destabilizing and threatening weapons deployed on both sides. But to the best of my knowledge the president never agreed to the elimination of all. The nuclear weapons I don't know how you would verify such an agreement if you had. Gone. Let me put you quickly to as you know I'm concerned of the Europeans out of us

not the Europeans slackly got their knickers in a twist of this point. We have a piece of tape from Dr. David I would use to Gregory that gave away all the terror which was very monstrous and it was awesome not to give oh I didn't give anything of the sort away and bits not clear the day even though it can hold onto it even with the news own political party to say nothing of his collapsing annoyance. Nonetheless he does as he does speak for a number of people who feel this privately but also publicly. I mean what would your response. Well I'm delighted that there are still people on the center left in England who believe it's useful to have a nuclear deterrent and we would not take that away from David Owen and didn't it was not in our power to do so. The United States has always taken the position that we can negotiate only with respect to our own weapons and not to anyone else. Nonetheless as you know there was in Germany to a feeling the whole basis of the Law and Security.

The terror bases have been sort of thrown off and yeah this lies behind a lot of the German neurosis at the moment doesn't have to we have a need to be what you're going to let him have it talking about. What's your answer to that particular job and why are you why Germans are deeply neurotic on security issues no matter what you do you're bound to stimulate erratic behavior and it was the Germans more than anyone else who were a constant source of pressure on the United States to make concessions in these negotiations. You know hardly a day passed and certainly there were no meetings of any consequence in which the Germans didn't say get on with it abandon your position and get an agreement. We don't care what the terms are just get an agreement of some sort. So the Germans drove us crazy that we were able to hold on to a fairly coherent Russian strategy despite German tanks at all the meetings we attended is

really quite remarkable. So I think the president has undoubtedly complicated. His own situation by these remarks that seem to point in the direction of a nuclear free world and that is concerned and confused are more thoughtful allies and I wish he'd quit. I wish he'd quit making those remarks. Let me turn now to the so-called double zero which arose out of the meeting between Schultz and for another good week in Moscow and I put my seven now you know I don't think actually that meeting but none of us who were involved in the subsequent discussion which arose out of it. When you are listed as it were to reassure everyone why you want to do something and why are you not worried by the fact that there is a short run stalking. Well I have been for the double zero from the beginning and the original

Defense Department proposal put to the president in 1981 was for double zero the only reason why it wound up single zero is that Al Haig kicked and screamed to the point where the president because he didn't like even the single zero kick and scream to the point where the president did not want to deliver a double defeat to his secretary of state. So in the usually usual incoherent when we make these decisions we said Alright we'll give Weinberger one zero and we won't give him the second. That will give give that issue to hang. So I was always for for eliminating the SS 21 22 23 years as well. We didn't have any systems in that range and no prospect for developing. But you weren't worried by the effect of that would have on NATO's structuring. No not at all. Can expect one.

Well I mean it it hardly strengthens your strategy to win. Do not have weapons that your adversary is permitted to have. No that whole issue was really as in Germany was a surrogate for anxiety about the agreement about the zero option. And the truth is there were a lot of Germans who supported the zero option because they believed it would never. Result in a treaty and then when it did they were horrified but they were committed to it and they could not credibly dissociate themselves from the policies they didn't they had indorsed so they grabbed another issue on which they hadn't been committed and that really became a substitute for their anxiety about the zero option. And that was the second zero and it was wrong. No it will be the third. OK I want the people who said the Soviets would never agree were obviously wrong because they have agreed now they can they can say well we were right except we didn't count on Gorbachev placing. Russia and you can never

prove one way or the other how it would have come out under different different leadership. I think we have negotiated that they were never able to appeal to public opinion. I think you're right that people oversimplify this tremendously and obviously there were good military reasons for getting rid of the SS 20s which but of course the other factor in all this is that people felt that the right ministration wasn't interested in negotiating at all. They were wrong about that. And these were their preconceived notions they were they paid no attention to what they were doing or say they thought that anybody who says it's an evil empire is not going to be prepared to negotiate. I mean I'm not talking about you know people in journalism I'm talking about people and people I can sample in the west of the ministration who the times Apple know well he did have some experience of talking with when I was president on virtually every occasion that he talked with us

was listening to what we were saying because I think the way that argument goes the way it was the meeting of going Eagles and one where the Americans realize that. They have to do something on their own no that was completely wrong interpretation of what happened at Gleneagles what happened at Gleneagles was that we were fighting for the zero option in Washington that is Cap Weinberger and me. We had a proposal on the president's desk for the zero option and along come this unruly band of Europeans. Who want to stick the zero option in NATO communiqué Al Haig at that moment in the Department of State and most of the rest of the government were vigorously opposing the zero option and there was no way Cap Weinberger could sign a communique calling on the United States to propose the zero option without making it look as though Weinberger was using the Naida alliance to win an internal policy battle in Washington. So we were in the ironic

position of opposing a statement by NATO's supporting the proposal we were arguing for in Washington. And we explained that to some of our allies and it's just rubbish that the all this agitation on the part of the allies to Gleneagles had anything at all to do with our policy. In fact the European indorsement of the zero option didn't help that it probably harmed. To be effective this had to be a proposal that came from the United States not one that was forced on the US by its allies. I think what they want was just more. Oh yes perhaps that brought us news right. Oh yeah that's another thing you see. Yes OK going on right now. I always see where you were.

You're completely right is in saying you need to take the long view and the Europeans presumably were not neocons but worried because they were politicians and some of the more left wing politicians whose parties were getting a little concerned and therefore they are going to have different different preconceptions and to that extent the sort of threat of consensus across the Atlantic was getting what was taught to pull rather touchy because you have a right wing administration and the US and the left wing woman in Germany. Well you had a left wing administration in Germany that had called for the deployment of the missiles that was now giving us fits about doing precisely what they asked us to do. And it was true elsewhere. You had a Labor Party in the UK that had been part of the decision to deploy but was now opposed to the point. In the same thing happened in the Netherlands. So for it was a ludicrous situation then the left socialist party is by and large and approve this decision and now they were all lining up against it and the

conservative parties that have never been part of the original decision were left trying to implement it over the objections of those who gave birth to it. Let me pick up something you're talking about before which is the zero option and so where did it come from. Well it was sort of in the air but I think it was born in my typewriter in a memorandum with the secretary of defense who thought it made a lot of sense and argued for a vigorous and prevailed. You see if one traces it back I think one fine that comes from it but I'm sure had nothing to do with the bag was against it. OK but he was the messenger of it but then you know he wasn't the messenger at all the thing itself originates with the Dutch peace movement of 1979. Well there were people talking about it but the Dutch were not talking about eliminating all SS 20s. I mean their their notion of the zero option was zero for the United States.

I'll tell you a story that's never been told before. In early in 1991 long before the U.S. administration settled on the zero option I had a meeting with a Dutch defense minister. And made a proposal to him I said How would you react to the Dutch decision to deploy which they had not yet made. If we were to propose the elimination of intermediate missiles on both sides total elimination and we were to work this out together so it was a bilaterally agreed upon us Dutch proposal and we would table it in the talks in Geneva. Could you then give us a firm commitment that if we fail to achieve that you would deploy and this Dutch defense minister thought it was a terrific idea. And he raced off to the Hague. We were meeting in Brussels

to present it to the others in the government. And I believe there was some considerable interest in that until my colleagues at the State Department got on to the Dutch and shut it down. And the last thing that the State Department wanted was the zero option paying for it. My colleagues at the State Department took every opportunity in the intervening period to try to undermine it. It was not the product of the peace movement of the of the dubs of the diplomats they caused were given it because they felt that it was the company know they were against it because they they thought it would never lead to an agreement. They were so convinced the Russians wouldn't buy it and they didn't care what an agreement said as long as there was no remit of some kind. Let me move on to the 283. The people in the administration knew down to these conservative administrations If you

talk about Europe would have the political will because it's now become a test of NATO's political will. But the dance the nature of your prerogative because of course there were doubts and opinion was very much divided. And for the most part the pessimists those who thought they would not deploy in Europe were for throwing in the towel and cutting whatever deal we could with the Soviets and one of his motivations in proposing the formula he did during the walk in the woods was a deep pessimism about the political situation in Germany. He was convinced the Germans would never agree to deployment. They did of course but along the way they did. They did ask for modifications you know and I mean the Germans had a hand in the interim thing which we don't know and the Germans wanted to change the American proposal. Every time we sat down and talked to the Germans because they couldn't bear the the lack of movement in the

negotiations as I said earlier they drove us crazy. I never want to go into a negotiation again with the Germans advising us on how to proceed they can't stay put for 30 seconds because it's too long. I just have to three final questions to ask you about the deal the kind of deal. Let me first ask you the central question which is what's the significance of this in terms of European history in terms of the alliance What's the significance do you and I don't know I suppose the significance is that after a decade of chaos and confusion no harm was done that despite the unbelievably fickle quality of the Europeans whose views on these subjects change from one day to the next. The alliance somehow muddled through it faced up to the very serious political challenge to its very existence that was inherent in the possible failure of

this decision to deploy. And in the end it all came out OK. I won't put to you we your apparent point of view which is that the Americans remains the fickle cowboy but you're familiar with them. Let me put to you the question to Rogers why I think it's true that a wimp was succeeded by a cowboy but the cowboy got results beyond the wildest dreams of the Europeans. They should have more respect for cowboys in Europe. OK let me put you the kids in the Rogers line which is the guy why the wrongness. You got nothing back in the conventional. But we never tried to get anything in the conventional. Nor is it likely that we would get anything on the conventional nor would any of the allies in Europe have stood still for asking for something in the conventional That was all we could do to get them to stay still for asking the Soviets to give up their missiles. So I think this is just an unrealistic view of what might have been done.

If you say shouldn't we have got rid of other missiles rather than these. The answer is probably yes in the abstract although these missiles were permitted to become vulnerable to a degree that. That Gen. Rogers would not acknowledge and Henry Kissinger doesn't understand right. Let me think a final question. OK my final question is really essentially this that you have always been very consistent in saying that you can't hurry these kinds of negotiations. You even force your colleagues to censor a quotation from the time the whole point went over and over again and used to drive them crazy. I never thought that would be quoted for anybody. However how do you react to the charge that again has been made by these fickle Europeans that the Reagan administration largely has been falling over itself to get deals for all sorts of political reasons and that your notion of how you tough is being thrown to the wind.

I'm afraid that's true. And it troubles me deeply. I'm sorry I was going on to in short to say what's true. I'm afraid it's true that the administration having demonstrated the utility of patience and perseverance in negotiations is now throwing that to the winds and falling all over itself to conclude agreements as quickly as it can. And with almost certainly bad results. Well I'm deeply troubled by the collapse of this administration's philosophy with respect to negotiating agreements with the Soviets and this unseemly rush to conclude a strategic arms treaty is bound to produce a bad treaty. My phone question was the part of this can you. You've lived with us have quite a long period of time. Can you just give us a sense of the way in which the Russians changed not you would say to some extent that they've changed because certain circumstances turned but the new thinking is a lot of it is bullshit but it's not all that they have changed.

What's your sense of that. I think they've changed I think the Soviets have changed in the sense that the repression. What does characterize that society the heavy hand of the party. Repressing creativity and ingenuity and independent thinking has been lifted just a little bit. And that is a welcome development from the point of view of those who are a little freer now to give expression to their thoughts. And even for your to think and you listen to are bought off as a hack propagandist for yours. He sounds different today than he did just a couple of years ago. How he can look in the mirror and recalling what he was saying a couple of years ago. Not the be torn. By an identity crisis of massive proportions I don't know but they've a lot of these fellows have

changed their line because they're now freer to say what to what they think and that's a significant development. I don't know how long it's going to last but diplomatic times become much more. I mean from the top has written some very complex in diplomatic terms the Soviets are far more agile than they were before. They're far more. Creative and imaginative. They no longer say yet it's they say but. And then they lay out a series of conditions that make the affirmative answer they appear to give you wholly unacceptable. And so that in a highly manipulative manipulative way they have managed to avoid doing the things that are awkward in the public relations sense while achieving the same results in other ways and they are a much more formidable one in the sense more dangerous negotiating partner. OK final final question I pose as someone who will be my own person. You said that

the the right ministration has been a little hasty last week but none of us your. Really independent of what happened at Reykjavik. Can you just give us some sense and don't mind that I'm more into that I guess to be honest and you know some sense of the significance of what happened at Reykjavik was not a sort of extraordinary breakthrough but with with respect to IMF I think we made a mistake at Reykjavik that is we accepted Gorbachev's proposal. To eliminate intermediate missiles in Europe but to keep some in Asia in Asia on the Soviet side in the continental United States on our side. That was a foolish mistake. It shows you what can happen at summits when you get caught up in the emotion of the moment. Fortunately we were able to walk that back and subsequent Reykjavik successfully pressed the Soviets to abandon the remaining missiles that they would have had in Asia and that we would have

had god knows where and so we recovered from that although we had to pay a price to do it we had to lower our standards of verification and that was unfortunate. But Reykjavik was the first time that the Soviets began to negotiate more or less on the basis of zero option and I'm convinced they did that as part of an overall strategy to capture the American SDI program and to offer to concessions on intermediate missiles. And then as the president reached out to pocket those concessions Gorbachev in essence set up just a minute Mr. President you'll have to give up your SDI if you want that agreement on a NF. That was the Soviet policy at Reykjavik. Now it turned out to be an untenable policy you know Gorbachev abandoned it six weeks later and the residue of Reykjavik was pluses for the United States both thought IMF and on strategic dog where the concessions that Gorbachev had used as a lure to get SDI

remained although he didn't get anything on his to thank you no thank you.