War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Denis Healey, 1987

As I said the first question is if you could just explain to us what your position was and how you still maintained an interest in defense matters on the island. Well as you know I was defense secretary in Britain six and seven with that model and in the set of problems to do they can you. And of course nuclear disarmament. And when I went back into government in 74 the five year besides being on the normal weekly meetings of the detention of she's politicking to the Cabinet giving kind of good as prime minister on a very small committee dealing with nuclear weapons problems which was not set up and I think 977 time to consider our view on a comprehensive test ban treaty. And our view as to

whether the so-called forward based systems like the American bombers and the British and French nuclear forces should be included in that time we expected to agreement which sounded as if the negotiations and others are gone. In addition you could start the following. Now you've written you settle on about your experience said the minister. How seriously do you think politicians generally don't run. I think most politicians haven't the slightest idea what any of these words mean. I'm sorry to say in most countries even the defense ministers who are the link if you like between this area of policy and the government cabinet are in office for too short a time really to

both string it. In many European countries defense ministers tend to be ex military people who hold the job as functionaries or most with bit of political clout. In Britain the Conservatives had nine defense ministers during the mid and hese period which is Sacha's had five in eight years and defense strategy for somebody who's not started to told in advance is a very very difficult thing to get the words are different from the words you use in normal life it's almost difficult if you like as if you just. I mean you've asserted you have referred to the decision to deploy a crew person a sound being taken by our nuclear Matthew. Why did you say that. Well because since politicians don't have the time energy

and sometimes capacity to master this policy they tend to hand it over to a small group of middle ranking officials and middle ranking stock officers who concentrate on this issue and who form part of an international trade union or method of similar officials in other countries and really develop the WHO saying entirely on their own without much reference to governments and if governments are told about their decisions they normally rubber stamp them. They they pay very little active. It was different a little bit in my time because I'd been in the Army for six years in the second world war. And incidentally the disappearance from politics of people who actually experience in fighting is rather important because if you have a beaner so to say in a real war you know that Murphy's Law anything that can go wrong will go wrong. You always do second live events when the fighting

actually starts. But in my time we had McNamara who paid an important role in the Second World War in the American strategic bombers. Who had also paid a similar We had help which met in Germany and myself in Britain who had been writing and thinking about should be the problems in the small intelligentsia from Maine almost entirely Germany Britain and above all the United States so that in a sense we came into office at least knowing what the problems were understanding the language. It's not just RC about wanting to see a Mafia and I mean that the period that we're really looking at moving the crews searching anybody now since it started. Schmitz the RSS set in and in 1977.

What do you think was really on his mind when he made a major and let me show you two things First of all Helmut Schmidt for whom I have the greatest admiration I think he was the last great statesman in Europe we haven't got any of them. He had a disconcerting habit of thinking aloud about a problem without thinking the problem through. And the reason he thought aloud about this problem was that he had been voted down by President Carter with a nuclear bomb. Carter had. Persuaded Schmidt that the neutron bomb should be deployed in the Schmidt had gone through the cabinet which it is and then Carter suddenly decided not to deploy to Tor Schmidt disliked and distrusted Carter. And he didn't like what he saw as the risk that the Americans would to protect Europe in their arms negotiations against a threat from the east and he was

particularly worried when the Russians started deploying the SS 20 a very accurate multi warhead missile in face of the SS fortune and he referred in broad terms to this is a danger in a speech in London. Although I'm two particular words in the speech were written into the text at the last minute in the taxi from the German embassy by the man who was then his advisor on foreign ambassador in the vehicles. And he didn't know then what he wanted me to do but caught it was determined that he should say what he wanted in a way it was Carter's revenge on Schmidt for Schmidt's rude remarks about Carter and the whole period. I was trying to be expecting the Culligan government neither we nor the Americans who get to say precisely what he wanted Western go to do. We finally made up his mags you know later in the summer and that was the beginning

of the dual track season but I think it's important to recognize that this argument between politicians started by European If Schmidt who was then chancellor of that of Republic of Germany was running parallel with an argument inside the maffia which was a very serious logical argument. Now when McNamara and I were defense ministers in the middle 60s we had a long argument in there about how to replace the doctrine of massive strategic nuclear retaliation with something which was tolerable to the Americans in terms of risk. McNamara really wanted to do with nuclear weapons all together in a defensive war. The Germans didn't want to move for massive retaliation. I tried to develop a compromise between them which was the doctrine of that civil response in which nature would fight with conventional weapons until it was in danger of being overrun and maximise its conventional capability and

then introduce nuclear weapons in stages giving the Russians a chance at the stage to stop or see nature escalate and the nature officials who went to work on this policy after we developed it was one of the few examples where politicians played a central role in developing a strategy. They took it very seriously and they said You've got to have enough rungs on this that you have escalation and there'd be something missing in a nest of a land based missile in Western Europe with the land based missiles which would hit Western Europe from the Soviet Union. And this group the high level group which was essentially the native math I was talking about they wanted these weapons whether or not the Russians had SS 20s after that. And that's it's become very clear in the argument that the double zero option as it

develops. So if I was a politician. On 0 5. So far as the politicians are concerned this is set. Schmidt and the important thing was the SS 20 it was in you very accurately which is a much more serious threat to Western Europe than its leadership says for the push for the military and the intellectual method. It wasn't the point the point was they felt that there should be something between. Shorter range better and better for you your weapons and the long range weapon. You see that time and since the NATO supreme

allied commander has had allocated to him a lot of warheads from America's Poseidon Trident submarines to deal with and a nuke but the math here didn't believe that that was enough and their decision to go for non base missile was independent of the SS 20 on the other hand the politicians could only sell the deployment of cruise and Pershing in Western Europe by reference to the threat from the SS 20 so that when in the end the Russians would need to get rid of all medium and short range missiles. The defense math was left very very unhappy and the then NATO supreme allied commander General made this very clear whether or not the Russians had been Western Europe needed land based missiles and the British government took the same position initially until they realised it would be so unpopular in the coming British

general election they decided to fall in the door. You know you've said you've been flexible response is no longer a tenable position. Why do you say. Well there are many reasons. First of all those of us who devised flexible response didn't realize that although many of the scientists that the first explosions of nuclear weapons on the battlefield would knock out communications for hundreds of miles and therefore you'd lose control of the bat and for this reason alone the gradual escalation from one level of nuclear weapons to another with knobs and second day it became clear when we looked at the various options. The ladders on the steps on the ladder of escalation in the UK are pending which we've set up inside me to consider matters. Nobody was really keen on any

steps the first step would have been the ocean of nuclear land the so-called Atomic Demolition Munitions which would be faced in areas where they cause very little collateral damage. But even the Turks wouldn't be too facing these a DMZ in an occupied mountain defiles. And the Germans would never agree to having the exploded on German territory so that went out of the window and I don't believe natives ever reach agreement on how they would fight a nuclear war at any level and I think anyone who's had experience of real war. The idea that when literally millions of people are being killed you can control the battle is nonsense. And then I think the decisive argument is the. Even if you could control the number of explosions in the place where they took place on a better you. We know from the Chernobyl disaster

that it can cause bravely damage in consequence of hundreds perhaps even thousands of miles away. And if it is all too light and we native compound that any use of nuclear weapons exactly to escalate into all out war. Well the scientists now tell us that you have all out war. Life may become impossible throughout the northern hemisphere and everybody would be there whether they're involved in the OR and so that whole approach to the problem I think is a busted flush. Well I lost my face inflexible respons really towards the end of my career as defense secretary round about 1970 when I found in the meetings we had of a

new kind of group that we couldn't really reach agreement on even the first step on the ladder. And this feeling developed steadily over the years for the other reasons come into. I think you've got to recognise a certain point about nuclear weapons. They've only been you twice in war they were used by a nuclear power which only had at that time two were against and none due to celebrate victory. They've never been there and they've never been used for war fighting. And nobody really knew what would happen. We've all those of us who take it seriously wrestled with the problem. Modeled I mention the military dimension the difficulty I mention and we often start by making mistakes. Who among the first people on either side of the Atlantic to worry about this problem in the early years and years and

years of we believed at that time in route to us that it was possible to fight a limited nuclear war in Europe it would be just like a conventional war but on a bit larger scale now within two years each of us and the band and you and one of the worries about you know weapons is that the uncertainty is attending here is about a bang for the main and as you fight him you get war. But after a nuclear war there'll be nobody to learn the lessons. Yes noted in the 80s that this whole debate about who and the right the bipartisan consensus and the political one about it. And. Why do you think that.

Well first of all there was a purely military argument. Many people thought there was no military case for deploying the medium range missiles on land in nature done very well without land based missiles for 20 years nothing had essentially changed since the hollow and so on themselves were taken out of Western Europe following the Cuban missile crisis and even the Reagan administration's initial view was that it was not militarily necessary to deploy them. Mr made this clear unguarded moment in an interview with The Boston Globe way back I think in 1980 to war 1983. The second thing was that the argument used by many people especially governments was that there may be no good militarily but they're very important because they strengthen the nuclear link between Western Europe and the United States now. I took exactly

the opposite view. I saw many people in Germany did and some in America that the only rationale for putting these missiles in your world is that the Americans might be more ready to authorize their use and your it because they could keep America the sanctuary in other words it raised the possibility of a limited nuclear war in Europe and decoupling the American deterrent. And I remember making this point to an American German meeting in New York at the end of 79 when I was free to talk. The last election and the German fan coming out and saying to me he's never say that in public because it cutting the ground from the needs which Mitch and I agreed not to say it again in public and we lost the election and was on the backbench to argue very strongly in the debates. Now a lot of people like my so opposed the

troops pushing deployment for military and political reasons. But there was a large number of people both sides of the Atlantic within what you might call the consensus who were very unhappy about it. She was made to the wonderful issue to be exploited by the people who were against nuclear weapons under any instances and the use pushing deployment decision was of course grist to the mill. The anti-nuclear movement on both sides of it and they naturally exploited their opportunities to the maximum. But I think it should be said that the contradictions in which nature strategy was becoming involved whose pushing decision did lead a lot of people including bias so to think again about the whole nuclear problem I'd always taken the view that you couldn't actually use nuclear weapons in war.

I wrote an article in Fountain magazine or the bomb would go off in the early 50s and many of us been dead by circumstance. Particularly the unpredictability of Soviet policy of the Cuban Missile Crisis the invasion the invasion of Czechoslovakia came to really sink our approach and of course it became much easier to think Vetter about it when the Russians were clearly in particularly when Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union because he has carried out a revolution in Soviet should be thinking which I would like to see the question being. OK let's get on to that. There's probably going to be an IMF deal signed it weeks and so long for

the world and. What do you think should be the next step. But in the nuclear field the obvious next step should will be a 50 percent cut in strategic nuclear weapons in Compton and the weapons that will concentrate on the weapons which destabilized the balance between Russia and the United States by presenting what one side believes to be a first strike capability and that would be the SS 18 missiles in the Soviet Union multi warhead very active and in the United States the end of the five. And I suspect that they will move into the center of the argument. But oddly enough I think the most important thing especially for the US and Europe is to concentrate on battlefield nuclear weapons and conventional forces. What worries me very much by accident. The

American Russia started the big issue by talking about intermediate nuclear forces. But if a war happens it will happen by accident and accident is much more likely a nuclear accident. If nature has got a very large number of very short range battlefield weapons right up against the front line bombs for going a few miles. And the important thing is to get them out of the way and I think there's a lot to be said. Having a nuclear free corridor or both sides of the dividing line is. And as you know there's varying support that in many countries but so long as Russia is thought to have a big preponderance particularly of tanks in Eastern Europe the West European governments will be reluctant to see nuclear disarmament go very far.

So in an odd way I think the most important single thing is not so much nuclear disarmament but to make a success of the talks which the Russians have offered and nature has accepted in principle to cut Conventional Forces in Europe. From the Atlantic to the euro well back in you go to Russia and to get rid of any area where one side or the other has a superiority by abolishing the superiority that would get rid of the Soviet superiority and what depressed me in the early months following the development of the honor to see is the inability of the nature of governments to get their act together so that there's been no really effective response to the proposals made by the Warsaw that in the course of Mr. Gorbachev I mean a lot of the night government. Is still very determined to hold nuclear

I mean they were determined to prevent these negotiations going below 600 kilometers going where that is. If you've got a very interesting thing that's developed since the talks began and that is the germ of God one of them is right with God in terms of domestic policy. Once to get rid of the battlefield nuclear weapons you want to get rid of the spies because the weapons that are left are those that can only kill Germans. They would be exploded on the soil of western Germany or Eastern. And from this point of view humans make no distinction. East Germany is in the Common Market. It's regarded back to Germany and the French and the British on the other hand are not too worried. Providing the nuclear weapons are there and in their view the

Russians were unlikely to risk anything so long as nuclear weapons are likely to go off. So in a way this issue is drifting west in Europe between Germany and France and Britain. The other thing of course is the French and British governments are terrified that if the movement towards nuclear disarmament in Europe goes and then their own strategic forces bound to be under pressure and this terrifies misses that terrifies the government. Yes could you just tell us now. I mean what would you what was your position about the UN strategic missile the exit I was always against it went through in Cabinet Office the records of the meeting. And I strongly oppose the idea of creating the euro strategic balance because I thought it would decouple

the United States and Western Europe. This view was held by a different group. Oh yes I mean this is a complex of the questions about song from set. The first one really I mean is up until the start of this debate and I suppose really we're talking about 1977 and that and that. It's been a complete quiescence by governments of whatever punk. If you have a bank it will make a statement to them just what you will. Well I think sleeping dogs lie and talk the government didn't really know or care very much what was going on. Earlier they tended to be the

thing to. The maffia of officials and stock officers and not when I was deep in check if you're on the other hand I used to debate these things in Parliament used to surprise people very much I would talk about strategy and debate but the interesting thing was that I think people welcomed that there was discussion. That I mean to go back to something you said earlier. For the politicians they needed the existence of the SS 20 to justify it so other people was purely a dark theory. Why do you think that mismatch occurred. I mean why do you think it's impossible for the politicians actually to get out and argue for the doctrine. You know I did it when I was a pilot I was defense secretary for six years and I argued my case in public and all and the Royal United Services Institute at the VA in force in the United

States I think politicians must be prepared for it because a politician argue the things honestly and not in comic strip fashion the way that Mrs Thatcher did then of course the argument is entirely in the hands of people who didn't take defense and such all that seriously. I think the very well informed indeed. I mean I wrote and spoke a great deal about it right from the moment I started taking interest in the early 50s when I was defense secretary in 64 to seven I talk about it as I say in Parliament and outside I think you got silence under the

Conservative government. Fall is a great pity. But I went on talking about it. So you know. I mean Fred money for example who is defense secretary. Son and Fred money who I think was a very good defense secretary and Jim Callaghan when I was child abuse he taught them both about it a big deal villian book nuclear strategy in Western Europe. But I'm afraid the real trouble is that the media were interested and you see you're talking in a vacuum if the television companies take no interest in what you're saying the newspapers then I think what I'm getting at is that you know that the debate started there was a serious increasing concern within Germany in this country and also in the United

States when if you like the justification for war it started emailing and yeah. The planning for fighting a nuclear war then you can see Inception it might be possible that she wanted to know. Stanton is in the 60s wanted to 175 yet I may say so from wonders why you know suddenly in 1977 becoming actually as far as public opinion was concerned significant I mean would you do you think in fact the whole question of nuclear weapons as I did answer to education is actually at sea. No I do think it's the fault of the people who write articles and leading. Everything is publicly available. One interesting thing I discovered when I started writing about this might so shortly after the last world war and nearly all of that are available in the United States which were regarded in Britain as deadly secrets I remember once telling the

story when I went to the defense ministry in 1964 I was given a list of the sayings which are so secret I must forget I had even heard of them. The moment after being told in one of the secret things was the actual physical configuration of a Pandora's submarine. Well the following week I happened to be in New York on business and I went into a toy shop and I bought a scale replica of the largest submarine made by the metal toy company. And you know there is no excuse what ever for the public to claim ignorance to that. And the one who is being. I got the Institute of Strategic Studies set up in the later 50s before I became defense secretary and that published monthly digests of articles from the world's defense establishment on all these problems and

on military strategy and on the military balance which frankly is the inertia and laziness of the media which prevented the public from being fully aware of what was available. And I think the tragedy which really is running can be made by people who were not terribly interested in defense. Perhaps so. There was no threat at all and indeed there was no danger of war. Never mind whether that came from the Russians or anybody else but that nuclear weapons were uniquely morally horrible and shifted the argument into what I've always regarded as the stream the Baron and. Dangerous fight between unilateral and multilateral disarmament when the real issue is to get disarmament and sometimes unilateral action will be the best course and sometimes months for that negotiation.

But it's become like an argument in the church in the middle ages between the unilateralists of about it after this so I'm glad to say that that's beginning to go and the evolution of Labor Party's policy in the last year or so I think. My personal political life in some ways has been dominated by the nuclear bomb. When is the end of the war in Europe by the Americans with bombs on Japan My personal feeling like that of millions of others. Thank God that means we're not going to have a god battle and fight another war then and for several years the total revolution

in politics and strategy with nuclear weapons we're going to introduce was little understood but many people got very concerned. Shortly after the war including mainly for moral reasons because there was a new dimension of the death of millions of noncombatants. And there were groups in America who were worrying about it. There were groups in Britain very oddly assorted collection of chaps and so. The bishop a Futurist and leading Methodist who gets less who'd been had a ball in force and the head of Naval Intelligence to anybody and we got together and we held a conference on the problem. Some of us including Pat businesses wrote a book the Chatham House called on limiting nuclear war this was in the early 50s. At the same time Kissinger was working in the United

States and they were part of governmental institutes like the Rand Corporation. Job was to think about seeing those who were doing a lot of work and Helmut Schmidt who had been in the Army just about my age right through the war started getting very interested in the problem. He wrote a book about it in the late 50s and then we set up an institute in Europe to organize thinking in the Institute for Strategic Studies and I got the money for it out of the Rockefeller Foundation the bloody day that The Sputnik went up and the Americans if that was so worried they were pushing to provide the money. And since then there's been an enormous amount of very intelligent writing about the problem. By academics by military people and by some politicians. So it's in your in the United States.

The tragedy is that the competitive the interest in these problems defense correspondents tended to write only about what regiment the company would get this or that aircraft contract and the strategic problems were largely ignored although all of material was there for it. This is no longer true. You have some very good people right. Yes but this was a competitively recent thing it developed partly in the 60s and I tried to cut it into law. So by putting money and resources into the military think tanks like the bed of Defense College the Star College raising their level and allowing the people to write things for the public. And this was the difficulty I think was to get the You dominated the media to recognize the importance of the problem.