War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with William Kaufmann, 1986

What did you get your doctorate in. I got my Ph.D. in international relations at Yale 1948. How do you characterize yourself professionally. Most people are involved in this field or are generals are you. General I'm certainly not a general. I never got hired for just it. I suppose. Eclecticism would be the best way to do that. I've dabbled in a lot of things. But when you ran for a. Long time in the 50s What were the what were your chief concerns. At that time. I started out that. First of all I've been. Very involved with. Studies as to nuclear proliferation. And. Became very opposed as I think most people do. And this was a time when. People a lot of people thought it was the solution to what was

expected and with the decline in the credibility of the U.S. deterrent would be to share nuclear weapons with with. Our. Allies. And. That set off a considerable controversy within Iran and subsequently and. Governmental circles. So really that was the first major. Project that I became involved in. There. Was. Were you involved in the concerns about vulnerability and the need for a second strike capability and now most of that work which had been done under the aegis of Albert Wolter and Henry Rohan and Fred Hopman and others had really been pretty well completed by the time. I got there and in fact as best I can recall they had just completed their work completing study on. Missile vulnerability.

They done a lot of work on. Bomber vulnerability prior. Prior to my coming there. I got there and I guess it was January of 1956. And as best I can recall that they had really essentially completed that word. So the whole concern about you know a nuclear Pearl Harbor you're so good when you came in talked to us about. These concerns. I wondered if if this was part of your conceptual work or if you'd asked me I'd like to talk to you about it. Unless you think it's really somebody else's province. Oh I don't think I made it. No I'm not sure how much of a contribution I have made in any of this but. I don't feel that. I had any particular. Thing to offer in place so that was the second strike argument. So I think those were pretty well

developed and. Articulated by the time I got there. And force structure decisions and saying that there wasn't that much work that I can recall that was done on force structure. In fact when I finally did get very heavily involved in studies on strategy and force structure I had a lot of difficulty sort of trying to get suggestions as to just what changes if any should be made in in in force structure. When. Secretary McNamara. When McNamara became secretary of defense what was our policy for defending Europe at that time. At that time it was what's known as MC 14 slant to too which was a

document that had been issued back in the 1950s and which in effect said. That. The United States and its allies would resist any attack with nuclear weapons. And although there was no specification to my recollection as to the precise time everybody understood that to mean that it would be almost immediately and there was considerable consternation I think it was in 1957 or 58 when General nor did it become. The supreme allied commander suggested that there might be what he called a pause before these weapons were used and it was generally assumed that at that time. That not only would nuclear weapons be used tactically in Europe but they would be accompanied by a major strike by the

strategic air forces. Is this what we mean by massive retaliation. Yes. What. What was the war plan wasn't it one strike against Europe for me before McNamara and. The Pentagon revised that what was. What would have been the scenario. The general assumption at least in so far as I was familiar with it was the that. The Soviet Union. And its. Cohorts wouldn't engage probably in a major attack in Europe. That it would start off as a conventional attack and that the United States and its allies would respond with nuclear weapons both tactically and strategically. And that it. Would immediately become an all out war. Nuclear. Weapon. Against Europe China who works for

a communist world. I'm trying to remember the first single integrated operational plan which is the war plan for these strategic nuclear forces wasn't really. Promulgated until 1968. So in the 50s no such integrated plan existed. But. Basically I think they could exclude China but I'm not certain about that. But. Bombers were essentially going to fall on. Just about every other. Satellite. And. Country and the Soviet Union. Did. Did you participate in well I was wrong what was wrong with this point.

I would say a number of things. Were. Wrong with it. First of all. It. Just on least the entire force regardless of how anything started who was involved. It. Just was a very massive. Unloading of every bomb that the Strategic Air Command could carry. And in those days we were talking strictly about bombers. Secondly. It. Didn't give the president any kind of choice. As to what he might want to target and or how we might want to target or when he might want to target. And it's just this massive and intentionally meant to be a very crushing blow delivered at. A whole range of targets

including both the. Military and. Urban industrial. Targets so that. There was no sense of attempting to limit anything. And. It meant just the enormous. Immediate destruction. Although all the weapons were meant to be ground first so as to maximize the amount of fallout that would be created. And. Furthermore there was always this question of whether. Given various presidential declarations not from statements and policy but declarations that the United States would never strike first with these. Strategic Forces. There was a question well. Were we really abiding by that. Kind of. Presidential

declaration. Finally as Soviet nuclear capabilities developed. Questions began to arise both in the United States and among our allies as to the credibility of this kind of an attack. Given their ability presumably or so was thought. To do. Roughly comparable damage both to our allies and to the United States. Well I thought the policy was that this was the way we would respond even if it was assumed that we would go first. In in the tactical use yes that. Was and remains the United States declaratory policy however much one really believes that as far as the strategic forces the. President I think starting with Mr. Truman said you know we would not use those first.

Although there were various alarms and excursions as to the possibility of their being used but there was always this rather controversial issue. I remember discussing it with General Weightman when he was chief of staff of the Air Force as to what. The. The interpretation of the second strike was to be particularly when talking in public about these issues and he wanted to downplay the notion that well in some formal sense the United States would be attacking with its strategic forces first conceived. And. Wanted to sort of blur the issue. And. We used to talk about well after all of us the assumption was the Soviet Union had attacked first even though it might have been with

conventional forces and therefore this was a second strike even though it was a second strike with nuclear capability. So there was a lot of hairsplitting that went on about that issue but there was never any doubt in my mind that as far as the. The US senior military were concerned the the intention was to. Unleash the strategic forces right off the bat. And that in effect even though secular had his plan and SAQ had its plan that they were meant to operate. Julie. Did you participate in efforts to to re-evaluate the war plans and change. My my original involvement with all of this was

not with the intention. Of changing the war plan because among other things I wasn't that knowledgeable at the time for the basic national security direction of a policy. It really is. Again one is memory gets hazy here but to the best of my recollection. There had been a number of discussions ongoing at random among people who. Had. Differing motives for wanting to see whether it wasn't possible to change the general attitude about. The use of nuclear weapons and particularly to see whether it was feasible to fight something corresponding if you will more to a traditional war than this all out kind of attack

on both military. And urban targets which was as it turned out characteristic of the earlier war plans and a number of people were concerned about this from Hermann Khan. To. Andrew Marshall and a number of people and I stepped into this discussion. And Jim Digby was another who was thinking of in 1961 in 1961. By that time. And. Yet. Here. We are we are just now. Well the. But let's talk about how that can be considered a moment heralded a massive plan of massive

retaliation so to speak. There were efforts to change it. What role did you play in the efforts to get away from this. I guess first of all. That was the foundation work that had already been done at Rand but had never really been pulled together in a way that could be presented to individuals in Washington. And I along with two other people Frank Trinkle and David McGarvie started working on preparing a series of briefings in response initially to a request from a general Parrish who was close to the Air Force chief of staff and who recognized that this may sound cynical but he recognized. First of all. That. The the approach that the Air Force was taking to get the

war plans and the forces. Was coming under increasing attack particularly from the Army and the Navy. And that is a is a serious possibility that a position would be taken within the Pentagon and by the secretary of defense and even by the president which said we're wasting our money buying all these large forces when especially with the anticipated introduction of the Polaris submarine and the missile with a relatively small force you could do enormous damage to the Soviet Union and save a lot of money in the process. The Air Force itself is. Losing a very large share of the market as it were. And so that was a very great concern to them. And General Weightman. Who was an Air Force

chief of staff and a very thoughtful. Person who was genuinely concerned on other grounds as to whether indeed the. The policy the programs the plans that the Air Force had been advocating and in fact implementing it had become obsolete. Partly as a growth of the Soviet or assumed growth of the Soviet. Capability And he was genuinely looking for alternatives. And in fact started asking the questions that I have in Iran. I think it is in 1958 and this led to a big study at Rand which sort of fell apart a number of individuals went off mad and that. Then and when General Parrish got in touch with me through a mutual friend in Washington George Tenet met

at the RAND Corporation. I started picking up some of the pieces from this study that had been worked on I think nineteen fifty eight 1959 along with the two other people we began first providing analyses to General Petraeus showing him that there were other ways in which you could operate these forces and try and show how damage both to the Soviet Union and and the United States would vary as a function of the way you targeted and. And how many weapons you sent and so on and so forth. But we worked on this for approximately a year and this gradually got presented to. Different audiences primarily within the Air Force and in general white

became very interested in it. All of that was a great deal of opposition to it within the Air Force for fear that it would upset a variety of ongoing programs with no guarantee that it would provide an adequate substitute for those programs. And then finally. I think in. December of 1960 I was authorized by General White first to start talking to Paul and that's. Who I. Had known for some years about this and who is about to enter the new administration. And then in February I believe in 1961 I was asked to present this story to Mr. McNamara. Who was at the site. Was this the notes that he's breathing. Yes. If the McNamara Pentagon rejected massive retaliation

what faith did you have that. Reliance on conventional forces say in a war in Europe would be. Sound and feasible. When I first got involved in the Pentagon itself I had no such confidence although I had some feeling along with others that the size of the threat. Had been exaggerated. And. That. In any event it was always the question of the reliability of the. Some of the key members of the Warsaw Pact including Poland and East Germany and Czechoslovakia. But in any event Mr. McNamara who had earlier commissioned studies to see whether we could get a full scale effective conventional capability was not very happy with the

initial results so additional work. Began. I got involved in that I would say in. The early spring. Of 1961 we were very short of information at that time both about the Warsaw Pact and its capabilities and about our own allies. And it was very difficult to get information about either. Now I'm somewhat inhibited here as to what I guess I'm allowed to say. But as you probably know the intelligence picture began to change. In the latter part of the 1960s but as it didn't change the. Resources that we previously had not had came into play they were devoted initially primarily to finding out more about Soviet nuclear capabilities and it became very difficult

to allocate any time to finding out more about their conventional GI Bill days. However gradually we did get. Considerably more information about them and they turned out to be much. Less ferocious than they. Had been. The standard view so that I would say by 19 early 1962 while we still had a way to go in getting more data. Certainly a very long way to go in trying to persuade both the U.S. and allied commanders that this was an interesting option. Nonetheless we had enough datas that. It. Really looked like a. A manageable. Proposition to deal with even a very large scale.

Warsaw Pact attack by conventional means. But before that before you had that kind of data or confidence. In the summer of 61 there was a threat to access and then in Berlin. Now. Did you have confidence at that time when you were just doing your study about conventional capability. Did that make you nervous. At that time. I. Personally felt that the that the. Allied conventional weaknesses were exaggerated again for some reasons that I'm not allowed to talk about. But. I certainly the conventional wisdom was that we didn't have the conventional capabilities to deal with say a new blockade of Berlin or

a Soviet attack. Coming out of say a blockade which we then tried to breach. And that's certainly the case that the Kennedy administration felt very beleaguered in a number of ways. There had been the failure in the Bay of Pigs. There was great concern about. The possible fall of Laos and of. An imminent attack on Viet Nam. That was the very difficult conversation that he had with. Mr. Khrushchev all over. Berlin in the spring and I guess was the spring of 1961 and the threats that Khrushchev was making about a possible. Separate Peace Treaty with East Germany and at least the implication of another blockade of Berlin. And so. People were really searching around very desperately at

that time for. Ways in Which possible Soviet moves could be countered. What role did you play in that. Kind of searching. Did you meet with the Burundian cardcase and to discuss. For. One option. No I did not. I had that. I had this individual conversations which I still regard as. Classified. Whatever other people may have said that I think the first one was with Dean Acheson who might come to know over the years. And then with Henry wrong and I had one conversation that I can recall with Karl Case with along with. Henry Roland and several conversations with senior Air

Staff officers. But beyond that. No I never talk to Mike Lundi about this or that I can recall nor to General Taylor who was in the military. Assistant to the president. What did you when you called upon to to help prepare some options in case there was there were going to be all these and Kimberlin. I don't recall whether I was called upon or volunteered in any event yes I prepared some options. Tell us about that. What options did you see if the access were restricted in Berlin. It depends on what time period you're talking about. But. That. It is in the summer of 61. Was. When. Well actually in the spring the spring of 68 in the spring of 1961 people

were already getting extremely concerned given what were seen to be an awful lot of fires either breaking now who are about to break out. And where again it was felt very much I think it was felt in the late 1970s with President Carter that the United States really had to take firm stands on something that something or other whatever. And. So the were really two phases to this one was in the spring of 1961. I'm referring to that when I'm talking about. The conversations with the. Acheson and. Rolling and Kazan and. Other other people. But not to my recollection with. Mac Bundy or Maxwell Taylor.

And. We were looking at some pretty desperate kinds of possibilities. But I really don't feel that I. Have ever ever been authorized to go beyond them and. Never have discussed those publicly. With anybody you know the. Is there what face to face too. Well as the. As. Events involved. You know President Kennedy not only ordered. Deployments of forces to Europe call up reserve forces and request to Congress for supplemental increases to the defense budget. We then had the. Berlin Wall in August of 1961 and there still remain not only a concern about a.

Renewal of a blockade but also that there might just be a shootout somewhere in the vicinity of Checkpoint Charlie because of that which was. I forget which one of the entry points between East and West Berlin. But I mean tanks were literally lined up there sort of muzzle to muzzle. And. One. That one couldn't quite be sure that the something would not go wrong. And you know Murphy's Law usually works in these conditions as it did in the Cuban missile crisis. And we had all sorts of things that weren't supposed to happen that did happen and they could very easily have. Happened in connection with Berlin. In fact. At that subsequently and I think to this day I thought that was a more dangerous or really confrontation and the Cuban missile crisis. But.

At that point then the question arose in a very operational way how do we respond to various. Contingencies. And that was decided and. I assume by the president that this should be what were known as Quadra partite meetings on the United States Britain France and the United States in Washington to discuss contingencies. And how they should be dealt with. And I was very much involved in that particular array of plans that. Involve initially. A conventional responses and then. Gradually moved up. The ladder if you will to the point where the issue of using nuclear weapons was.

Was. Raised and none of the allies showed. Understandably that the slightest bit of interest in any nuclear option. Well what were the conventional options. Is this the three excessively progressive provers down the autobahn. Right. It was it was geared to the resumption of the blockade. You know that. If there. Were you know if there were if the tanks confronting each other at Checkpoint Charlie. Now what if what if they the tanks have blocked off our access to East Berlin or to the. Autobahn and what that the fear was that they would they did not so much they would block us from East Berlin. They were doing that already despite certain agreements the real fear was that once again they would try and cut us off from from from West Berlin. And also that such a blockade might.

Result from an incident on. The. The. Wall. Or. The beginnings of the wall as they were building it up and there were a lot of funny things going on not only the tanks sort of muzzle to muzzle but they were buzzing our transport aircraft going in and out of West Berlin. And then really causing you know minor but worrisome and kinds of disruptions along the air corridors. They were stopping holding up convoys along the autobahns. So there were a lot of indications that they might indeed move toward another blockade. And it was a pressure point but they could always. Exert pressure on and that is a very worrisome one for us. So it was in that context that these various options were examined. What were the options. Well basically they were.

I'm. Sorry. Just. My moving around you might try asking questions that might fly around your time and again if you're going to be for you go. You know there's been talk about probably want somebody to pick it up. What what what what what what we've done. OK. I really don't remember the details of the options but. They they involved. Successfully probes down that they if there had been a problem if our axes have been cut off we might have we. Yes right. The United States and and the allies we hope that they would engage in successively heavier. Armored probes down the autobahn at the helm instead. I think it was Audubon which was the key route from West Germany and

the West Berlin and that if we were stopped we would send a bigger problem down. And until this reached a point where it was clear they were just going to block us no matter how much force we tried to put down the corridor. And at that point I think we had three successive levels of force. And conventional force that we contemplated using trying to break through into West Berlin and not so much expecting that we could militarily but that by showing this increased determination to breakthrough they would finally decide. That. They'd better let us through or things would really get out of hand and that they would lift the blockade. But if they didn't do that and if they really stood firm and. The forces that were committed were now large

enough so that they were involved in a substantial military engagement then what did you do. And. That. Opened the fourth option would we. Or how would we use nuclear weapons to try and persuade them that we were determined to get through to West Berlin. And so these were really in very broad fashion. The four options that. Were presented accurately to be. The ministerial meetings. In Washington of which Paul was the chairman and it was the ambassadors as I recall from Britain France and Germany who. Who at least did the initial negotiating over these options. What was the nuclear option when you drop a bomb on the Autobahn. Well we've got a great debate over that in which really

starting in the summer of 1961 if we were going to make. What was thought of at least initially as a demonstration the use of nuclear weapons how would you go about doing that. And. One person even suggested that we might drop a weapon. On a Soviet test site. And have it go off only would be one of our weapons being tested on their test site which was a great big island of via's them up off the Soviet Union. That was rejected as not showing sufficient seriousness. Then it was talked about well maybe we could use them in some naval capacity. Where we might destroy a few ships and a lot of fish but would not really do a great deal of. Damage to population. And I'm sure others argue Look if if we keep trying to avoid

the central issue which is that the Soviets are not allowing us to break into West Berlin and if we keep dropping weapons even if they are nuclear weapons often in Novi is unbelief or out at sea. I don't see how they can take that seriously. We've really got to do something at the point of contact which is in the in the corridors leading into. Berlin and we've got to do it against their military forces if that's what we're going to do. And so we finally agreed that that's indeed was. The quote scenario unquote. I can't even remember how many weapons we talked about but we were going to drop. Weapons on nuclear weapons on the Soviet forces blocking our access. And so that was the fourth stage in.

The plans that were presented by Mr. Nitsa to the Allies. They agreed that the first three and then reserved. On the fourth even though the drumbeat always was that you rotten Americans are never going to have the courage to use nuclear weapons and therefore we don't trust the credibility of your determination which in turn led them to some of the statements that subsequently were made by Mr. Macnamara and to the alliance in 1962 and so representatives of our European NATO allies of the three. And what was their reaction and how did you find it ironic given that tale ending Oh I think their reaction was not there.

The. The reaction of the Allies was first of all that they accepted the first three conventional. Responses. As of as valid contingency plans that would then be developed. But all of them without exception the British the French and the Germans said Well we'll cross that bridge when we come to it and we'll have to consult with our governments and we won't sign anything in advance about that one whereas they they were willing to sign an advance on the conventional option. I found it ironic because almost simultaneously. And in fact previously and subsequently led primarily by the French and General de Gaulle. They were saying how unreliable the United States was. Because the United States probably wouldn't be willing to use nuclear weapons in a

crisis. All of this was probably a bluff and we sort of called their bluff in this particular situation. I mean they have hoped and still hope. That somehow or other if we make horrible enough faces and terrible enough threats with nuclear weapons and no crisis will arise and therefore no decisions will have to be made. And here was one of the exceptions where indeed we were asking them to make decisions and be serious and not just bluff about the use of nuclear weapons. And. Then. It turned out that they weren't at all interested. In fact I think it was. About a year later a whole group of us was marching up to Camp David. And you may have heard about this from others and it was the first and as far as I know the only time in which we actually played one of these political military games simulating a blockade of

Berlin in which we had German British French participants along with Americans and Tom shelling was the director of the game and he did just all kinds of horrible things along the homestead Autobahn to try and stir up a major crisis. And nobody was having any of that. I mean they were shooting up our trucks they were shooting up our tanks and so on and yet we never could get. Any any real fight going because no matter who is captain of the blue team whether it was an American or German bred or a Frenchman unanimously they said let's negotiate and see if we can resolve this problem. And I think that is sort of a. Nice. Indicator. Of. The real attitudes that underlay the bluff which simply

reinforced my view that whatever one might think about the efficiency and effectiveness of nuclear weapons forget it we better just get on with the business of building up the conventional capability. When Kennedy appeared on television that it was July 25th 1961 and asked for a call up the reserves said an attack on Berlin is an attack on maid or an attack on all of us. So what did you. What was your reaction to that. It was a bomb. No I think he meant it. I must confess my principal reaction was waiting to see whether he said anything that I had written for he and he didn't so I lost interest in the speech. The ghost writer you feel that way. But. No I don't think it was a bluff in fact to the best of my

knowledge. He was bound and determined even though we were just abysmally prepared to call up reserves or send additional forces to Europe. He was bound and determined to do it even though General nor staed kept telling him Don't do it because the Russians aren't doing anything. Which was I think substantially correct and general nor Dad said and wait. You'll just have one hell of a time getting those forces out. And he was absolutely right because it took us until about 1967 to get any of those forces out that we'd put in as a special augmentation and for the Burland crisis I think we sent over about 40000 people. What was the benefit of repeat what was the effect of this whole Berlin business on your own on your thinking and if you could begin with for me

the lesson of the Berlin Crisis was as far as. I was concerned that the principal lesson of the Berlin crisis was that. While we have to maintain the nuclear deterrent in the main business really had to be to make sure that we had sufficient conventional forces so that we didn't keep running into this problem of what do we do when we run out of these forces. I wanted and I still would like to put that monkey and the other side's back because that is the most impossible. Decision I think anybody could possibly make. It was one thing in 1945 in the middle of a war with a. Monopoly. How ever small it was nuclear weapons for President Truman ordered a weapon to be dropped to

weapons to be dropped. That changed completely once the number got larger and wants another side. Had those weapons and. The decision is appalling and I just don't. Think. One should. Sort of force the president and the having to face that unless somebody else uses them first. And so that became one of my main purposes and any subsequent involvement is to try and see that he didn't have to face that kind of choice. And let's talk about the no cities counter-force business and the briefing you gave to McNamara. And you know if you find occasion to use the word counter-force it might be useful because it does come up with and around it and sort of explain what it means what

it was February about 61. Did you see Secretary McNamara and what was suggesting to do give to him about about our nuclear war fighting plans or strategy. I did see Mr. McNamara and I think it was February 10th. I subsequently looked it up. 1961 and I was scheduled to talk with him. My thing was for about half an hour he'd originally wanted the document. To read. And he much preferred to read things than to be briefed and only I had all I had was about 54 charts which I had developed to show to a variety of people going through an argument which effectively said. First there are many targets in any country. They're not just cities. There are counter-force targets if you

will i.e. military targets and there are strategic nuclear forces that one can target. There are other types of forces that one can target. There are economic targets and so there's a very large array of targets that can be broken down and classified. And given our improving intelligence that identified very explicitly. That. Secondly that cities. Are. Not targets that you really want to attack them for. At least initially for a number of reasons. First. If you believe in the more traditional. Views of warfare civilians should not be considered as targets that you are trying to limit conflict. Unfortunately we didn't do all that much in World War Two but there are certain laws of

war which say don't attack civilians which we have subscribed to. Second given the difficulty of eliminating the the forces of the other side the nuclear forces on the other side. The attacks especially right off the bat the city is virtually guaranteed that your own cities would be attacked and therefore. You really wanted to. Avoid those cities in order not just to be a nice guy. Nuclear weapons don't sort of go along with being a nice guy but because you wanted to try and limit damage to your own citizens and given that we didn't have very good defenses and we're unlikely to get very good defenses. The best way to limit damage was not to hit Soviet cities.

And third. That. Play it might be possible all of this still work many uncertainties to. Fight and and actually destroy the other side's. Forces. And come to lay a conclusion to even a nuclear conflict that bore some resemblance to a conventional conflict and without. Causing the enormous kind of damage that would inevitably result if cities were directly attacked. Basically that was the initial presentation that I gave to Mr. McNamara and was based on what I'd been working on with others for. At least a year. What how could damage have been limited. I mean if if a war had been fought according to these

guidelines what what was the scope of damage. I'm getting out of bed. You said it quite well when you came to talk to you before that you know we're talking about. Right. 63 in that rather than 70 in this disaster. And but it's it's important to make distinctions between disasters. First of all I should say. Part of our thinking was that. We would always have losses. OK. Go. Yes. All right. Part of our thinking was that. He would always hold a force in reserve and given that we were then beginning to deploy the Polaris submarine. We didn't have to fire those those missiles. And that meant that if we laid off their cities. They would have an incentive we believe that we couldn't guarantee anything

to lay off our cities because they would know that we had still this reserve force which if they didn't start attacking our cities would be available to attack theirs and. Therefore we felt. That while we couldn't give any guarantee at all. Nobody could. That was a non-trivial. Probability that cities just could not be attacked. But we also felt and I felt very strongly on this matter that even if there was a rather low probability that cities would be spared it was worth trying because by every calculation that we were able to make given the imperfections both the data and the calculations while. Any nuclear war is just bad bad news. There are

distinctions among different types of nuclear wars or attacks or exchanges and that while I personally find it very difficult to believe that any nuclear exchange however carefully targets are chosen etc.. Would result in fewer than millions. Of fate maladies. And I mean five 10 million. I think it's extremely difficult to limit the damage from a substantial exchange of nuclear weapons to lower than five or 10 million early fake talent. That's a far cry from a an exchange which results in say a 100 million fatalities on either side or on both sides. And. While.

Those are very difficult distinctions to. Make. Nonetheless I think they. Did them and I still do believe that are very important distinctions that a world which has suffered ten million faith Halliday's is still. A better world than the one that has suffered 200 million fatalities. Did this. Did this depend upon. Well. Is damage limitation it seems to me that it would be more effective if. If we. If we went first if we were to try to knock out the Soviets were making capabilities. That's the best way to limit damage. Is that your feeling. There is no doubt. That. And particularly at that

time when Soviet forces. Let's face it we're both small very vulnerable. And very sluggish in the sense that it would have taken a substantial amount of time just to get ready to do anything. There's no doubt in my mind that at that time. A force. That. Could go second. In retaliation against a range of targets could do even better obviously going first. And I think. That has almost always been true and remains true to this day. I still think then and now hold the view that it's not my job to try and tell the president. What he should do. I would not and I still would not preclude having the

plans. To go first. But I would always try to design the forces. And. Sort of put the weight of the effort toward a second strike because we have no assurance and we haven't had for 25 years if you will that we would have the choice of going first whether tactically or strategically that the notion that somehow or other we can choose to do it. We don't know that. They may choose and they may lead us to the punch. But at that time in 1962 when that when the speech was made if we had chosen to absorb a first strike. What. Was. Left. To counter what military targets other left to counter. How could you limit damage when they've already shut off or continue for us. First of all. We didn't know then and I doubt that

we know now how much of the force they would try to launch in a first strike how much they would try to withhold. Second. There's always. The problem that you figuratively push that button and maybe 80 percent of the missiles take off. And 20 percent go. And so there are a lot of targets. There may be bombers there may be other shorter range missiles that could threaten our lives. That may be conventional forces which are targetable. And that we would want to strike so there are great many second strike targets that. Would still be worth going after. And. That in fact was very much the argument that. I and I'm sure others. Presented.

In 1960 and 1961 in one of these phony wars counter-force where it ended that I think has been one of the the most and not that. That question has been what. How to. Ending ending one of these wars. I think. That has been one of the biggest problems from the outset. And to my mind we did not have very good answers to it then. And to the best of my knowledge we don't have very good answers to it. Now. I would say though that in 1961 and maybe for three or four years thereafter. The Soviet forces really were just so bad. Professionally

I was offended by how badly they were designing. Their forces. They really just should have done better. But given that. There was a I would say a significant chance that on a second strike you could knock out whatever else they still had and that you could then make it very evident to them. You could just fly bombers over them and show that you were in control of the situation that they would understand that. They'd better. Stop whatever they had left to do anything with. Now I thought that was really quite transient in the sort of situation. By the mid 60s it was already substantially changing but you know in in the MacNamara's interview with Deward

also in the Saturday Evening Post December 1962 after the anniversary he said that the likelihood of a quarter of a counter-force kind of force war was more likely if the Soviet Union also had a secure retaliatory capability knows foreseeing the age of. More of an age of parity both secure a second strike capability that then they would have an incentive to target cities. Now I guess my question to you is is this. Was your confidence in a counterforce to the avoidance strategy depended upon the transit of U.S. superiority of the time or was it something that you could be confident in or would have confidence in. As time passed and there was more of a parody. I think I would. Want to. Phrase the question if I might just a little bit differently in the sense

that. At no time did I believe that the Soviet Union was in a. Position to or are likely to attack the United States directly with with nuclear weapons. And I felt then. As I do now that we had a very powerful deterrent the ice the issue in some sense you could say was hypothetical. That. Then. Supposing that the unimaginable. Did happen. How did you watch your war plans to be set up in order to respond. And. I don't believe and I didn't believe at the time that if that sort of tiny probability that the Soviet Union

might choose to attack. That. They wouldn't. Have any chance whatsoever of succeeding in whatever they were accomplishing. I think what. Mr. McNamara is really trying to say there. Was that if anybody was crazy enough to attack with such a poor force they might as well attack all out and do as much damage as they couldn't because otherwise they were just going to get rolled over in the U.S. retaliation. Whereas. Once they got more secure forces. Of course I would argue first then the probability of anybody attacking goes down even further. But they then would at least have the option of withholding forces and

making. Attacks on the cities by either side. The attractive I suspect but I don't recall talking with him about it. That that was what he was driving at. But I think as both sides develop more secure second strike capability is. That the probability of either using decline very dramatically is if the. Well. Will get to what was. So you gain leverage if you got a half hour briefing briefing scheduled for a half hour with Secretary McNamara. But what was his reaction to it. My recollection is that he asked me to come in and talk for half an hour. I had. As I recall about 54 chars which had been built up over a period

of a year as I commuted back and forth between. Santa Monica California and Washington. And it would take me something on the order if anybody was willing to sit there long enough two hours to go through these charts and I started showing them that Mr. McNamara. And. It was just obvious from the outset he understood these. In a flash and I was just flipping these charts very very rapidly and I would say whereas it might have taken me two hours to go through the briefing with a lot of people I know I can't recall but I went through it and I would guess about an hour. And he was very animated and asking questions as we went along and then he said when we finished he said let's sit down and start thrashing out some of the issues that I still have. And we must

spend another hour or two going over the various issues that he wanted to discuss in more detail. But I frankly don't recall anybody. Ever having to sort of learn this thing so fast that it was just very impressive performance on his part. It was very biased. Did this become policy to the best of my knowledge. Yes it did. I mean he he continued to raise questions with me about various aspects of it. And one of his concerns which was not unique to this area and particularly keen was he always wanted to know whether he was and Kareem's. An area where. It was going to be an endless open ended kind of expenditure

whether one in his terms would ever get into an area of diminishing returns and therefore. Wouldn't make it wouldn't be that much sense in continuing to spend on a particular force or capability. And that was a that was and remained a very great concern of his. And. I think much of what subsequently happened was a result of that concern. But to the best of my knowledge although I was not directly involved. Yes he he accepted the the main argument is not necessarily all of them but from the standpoint of revising the PSI. From the standpoint of changes in the force structure. Yes as far as I know he did. And changes were subsequently made.

But the strategy was announced in June in to the NATO allies and to in that order wasn't that it was discussed in more detail certainly. Than. Before. And I guess it was May or 1962 Yes that that. Happened. At. One of the NATO defense ministers meetings and then that. The speech she gave at Athens became the basis for a graduation speech she gave that it had the University of Michigan I guess it was in June. Of 1962 I'd probably off on a date but was something like that that I never quite understood that. You didn't understand why she would talk about it in public. Right. Why. What's wrong with that.

First of all. There were some. Things said to the Allies which. Were somewhat on the power of the bill. But. There are a lot of things that you can say privately to your friends. Which they will accept but if you say them in public and then. Have a worldwide audience. And particularly audiences for. Those particular countries then the two most sensitive countries were Britain and France at that time and create. A number of political problems with. The the officials in those countries. But was this speech aimed at the NRA speech aimed at the French and the British was telling them that you want to fight a war you got to have one finger on the button.

To this day I don't know why that speech was given. Other than that he had to give a speech at the graduation ceremony. But that's dying and perhaps being frivolous. I thought it was a mistake. I refuse to work on it. And. Said. That. Somebody else should do it. And then. I was asked to review what was finally being produced and recommended the number of changes in the Ann Arbor speech. But. Right cried but just couldn't understand. And I know there was a message in there if McNamara wants to fight a controlled war if you want to fight a controlled war you want to limit damage. Doesn't this have. Consequences for other countries that are developing their own independent forces.

Oh you can't leave three fingers on three different buttons and certainly in line with what we were saying among other things. And what what was allowed in in Athens. On presumably a top secret bases. And. We're trying to explain to you particularly the the British and the French but Paul trenchantly the jihadists who after all in 48 hours can become the third nuclear power in the world. Look. We believe this is the right way to think about. The use of these forces if it ever comes to that and therefore we really have to have agreement among ourselves as to what are the targets with the United States can't have. Its doctrine of say No cities while the British and the French

are off bashing the Soviet cities and therefore we really have to have a centralized command and control over. Both the planning. And the execution of these plans if it ever comes to that. And it was a not very. Subtle suggestion. The independent nuclear forces were no damn good. And you know I think. Some of my friends in the sense said I think they're probably right that you know the speech was too scattershot and that it was sort of expl trying to explain this concept to the allies the same time it was taking a shot at proliferation and. Also indirectly at all the people in the United States who were pushing multilateral nuclear

forces and another sort of cardboard ideas such as that. And it was also arguing for a conventional build up. And it was probably not one of the greatest balancing acts in the world trying simultaneously to talk about all those things although all the more reason not to do it. It did so we did. Briefly what was the reaction of the Germans. I was not present at that. I would scribble drafts of these things and then somebody else would cart them off. I don't know whether McNamara knows to this day that I was drafting these things for him. But anyway. In private while there were a lot of arguments about the details. The.

Reports I was given which may have been quite inaccurate. Were that. Uniformly there was a rather enthusiastic reception of the Athens speech. In part. Because it was seen as the first time that the United States had really spoken in a moderately detailed way about all of these issues particularly the nuclear issue. I may have mentioned before that I think in an early in the spring of 1961 chance where Adenauer was due to come over to the United States from one of his periodic visits and. I was asked to prepare a briefing for him. Which was then going to be translated into German and I decided in my usual irresponsible

way. Well this might be a good time to start spilling some of the beans about what we were up to and that giving him some sort of a preview. So I wrote something out that. Would have taken about 45 minutes to deliver. And a friend of mine in the state department Roger helmsman's said you can't do that. And told McNamara that. He'll go to sleep after 15 minutes. And you've got to shorten it. McNamara refused and was a lot of argument back and forth that McNamara won and the the talk with charts was was given an hour and he stayed awake the entire 45 minutes and. Not only by some major effort of will but because again. He had never heard anything. That. That.

Was this detail. It wasn't all that detail but I mean we had persistently told our allies up until 1961. Don't worry about any of these things we're taking care of them. And. You know. We'll we'll do all that's necessary. But with the undermining of their confidence and our willingness to. Live up to these alleged commitments and I say alleged advisedly we've never formally said we do any of these things. It seems essential that we tell them more and really that was the genesis of what subsequently became the nuclear plant group and much more candid discussions. With the allies about our nuclear policy which I think was perfectly appropriate.

Was the. Communication of. This whole package including the conventional build up and the counter-force options. Is this what we mean by flexible response or do you think a flexible response is just the mainly relying on the various options for war in Europe. I never cared much about the terminology. I just. At one point in I'm always looking for the jazz the phrase I called it for options. McNamara said that's really overdoing it. Let's call it multiple options. And we were talking about nuclear. Not clear. That we wanted options all along the line as well. But obviously as a function of how much the president was willing to pay

for them which. Meant how large a defense budget these options were out to. Our NATO allies in. Athens and to the world in. Ann Arbor. Was this. Does what was the motive in part to. Try to overcome the the. Credibility gap that had grown up with massive retaliation. That. Was certainly a major motive if you have somebody to say I didn't. Yeah. What about the whole credibility problem the credibility problem was certainly a major factor in not only the the Athens Ann Arbor speech to the extent that I understand the latter but in the whole approach I would say of the early early 60s. It's worth recalling I think that it's not

just the massive retaliation strategy by itself but also that starting in August of 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and then shortly thereafter we began demonstrating a genuine ICBM capability. And Mr. Khrushchev not long after that began talking about producing ballistic missiles like sausages and. Owing to deficiencies in our intelligence capabilities it was very hard to say that. They were not developing this very powerful force. And this led first to the Gaither committee I think 57 or 58 and then gradually to increasing the stories in the United States about the vulnerability of the Strategic Air Command and

about the. Possibility that. Any. Nuclear attack on our part would result in mutual destruction and that in turn would begin to lead our allies let as usual by General to go to say what makes anybody think that. The United States is going to sacrifice New York for Paris or. Los Angeles for. All these trades. And so there is this growing concern in Europe and among get that. These the U.S. strategic nuclear force was no longer the kind of deterrent to any kind of an attack on our allies and it had thought to have been in the 40s and then through

most of the 50s. And at that point the issue arose and this was how I got involved and ran the 19th and early 1956. The issue arose well if we no longer can depend on the U.S. strategic force maybe the solution is to share somehow or other these capabilities with our allies either by providing them with the technology and letting them develop it themselves or by arranging in some other form. Sharing then which was what led to these. Multilateral farce force or whatever you want to call it. Debbie Reynolds an act that is that. Was the it looked like the unsinkable. How many. You know. The weird weird things. I mean it's weirdness has only been exceeded by the weirdness of

putting Pershing crews in and ground launch cruise missiles in Europe. Supposedly they just like to pass these things. But if you factor in massive retaliation it wasn't credible in light of the Soviet ICM capability ICBM capability what. Was the the offer of relying more on conventional weapons and some graduated nuclear options designed to reassure our allies. That was the intent yes. Whether it was intention in fact succeeded is another question. But. What we were trying to argue although this argument had to be muted somewhat as a result of Kennedy's seeming. Acceptance of the left proposal. But what. We were trying to argue to the Allies was look. Any any

nuclear use is just bad bad news. And don't forget that. So your best bet. Is still to have a good conventional capability. And don't put all your eggs in a nuclear basket that they have to have have a good strong nuclear capability a non athlete capability so that you don't have to get tested. As to your willingness to use nuclear weapons but if it comes to that. With the United States going to these large diversified and flexible forces that will be able to exercise options such that it will not be paralyzed. If. There is no choice but to use nuclear weapons or surrender. So. We want options all along the line. Because these are terrible decisions. But.

We want flexibility in even the nuclear forces. Now let's talk about the Air Force's reaction to counter-force the Shortly after Ann Arbor. McNamara you know downplayed the terminology anyway of the rhetoric of counter-force and he began to. Talk about a certain destruction and that was. What was the problem domestically we're talking about counter-force. What was the Air Force's reaction. There were a number of problems with talking publicly about counter-force because among other things one of the. Sort of. Major components of it at least as it was originally presented was a. Substantial civil defense

program which indeed was started and then dropped because of so much opposition to it. But beyond that. There was always a question as far as I know and Mr. McNamara is mind about how open ended thing this was and how much would he really have to buy in and whether there was any end in sight to the amount of capability he would have to acquire. Wouldn't the target system keep expanding. Would the number of missiles or bombers that he needed to cover the individual targets keep going up or would it stabilize somewhere. It was hard to answer that question as it is in most military affairs where if there is a competition things do change and forces can grow. But. Unfortunately the Air Force in my view began making very large scale

demands once they. Realized that. This had become. A national policy and that the target list expanded the number of weapons that they felt they needed in order to cover the targets. We went up very dramatically and and. While. I've never talked with Mr. McNamara about this I assume not only did he begin to have reservations on other grounds at least about publicly. Talking about all of this and particularly he's seen the demands not only for civil defense but for anti ballistic missile defenses and so on. You know the costs. And these sort of endless competition became a very great concern to him. Did you have any personal experiences of the Air Force's interest in.

Acquiring new. Weaponry to counter all these new targets. I mean stories were always going to go before the Air Force interest was really three fold. One. Bombers. They had bought. I think as many of the B-52 bombers as they really wanted. And we had over 600 of the B-52s at their peak. They had. Agreements they thought for at least twelve hundred one minute man or they ended up with a thousand but they wanted many more Minuteman missiles and they wanted the new bomber. And they also wanted an air launched ballistic missile in the sky. So they had a very. Rich main issue. Of. Weapons that they hope to

acquire replace the B-52 with the be 70. Continue the Minuteman force and expand it. I've heard various stories but I can't vouch for any of them about how many they really wanted. And. But they wanted to go well beyond a thousand and they wanted to put the Skibo missile on the B-52 bomber. It was sort of a ballistic missile precursor of the air launched cruise missiles. And so the costs were obviously if they. Were allowed to have their own way going to be enormous. And it became increasingly clear to me. In 1960 to I think. That if they kept pressing these very large demands on Mr. McNamara he might decide just to scuttle the whole

business of options. Now that he's counter-force etc. so in conjunction with a friend of mine in the air force we arranged to have me talk to a group of senior Air Force generals saying essentially look fellows. We've got a good thing going here. Don't spoil it by making these excessive demands because you're just going to drive the secretary into serious resistance. And they say listen to me. And as far as I know nothing nothing's changed. And that in turn not that long but I mean. That. That you then got the switch to what I would call the planning. Device of assured destruction.

We talked to them about this. You know when you see this as a procurement criterion mainly a way to determine how much is enough. Is that accurate. Yes. That's how I saw it because. This. Was it's a procurement criteria. I saw it as a problem of procurement criterion yes because the first no change in the Psyop occurred. I see the same options if you will that hadn't been introduced in 1962 remained in the Psyop. Second if you look carefully at the size of the force that. The secretary was. Trying to acquire under the assured destruction rubric the very simple calculations demonstrated that it was going to be

large enough to cover all the targets that you wanted to cover in the sky anyway. But it had the advantage from his standpoint of putting a lid on the size of the forces because the services were told very flatly. What we believe. Or the secretary believes that we. Should not need to cause more than 32 percent prompt. Fatalities in the Soviet Union. And that's the sort of upper 30 to 34 percent I forget which That's the upper limit. And the forces are to be bought so as to be able to achieve that level of damage. Now if you look carefully you saw that he was also saying that each leg of the triad i.e. the bombers the ICBMs and

submarine launched ballistic missiles each should have the capability to deliver 400 equivalent megatons. Against these targets in the Soviet Union. And if you look at what that actually meant that meant that you could cover the Psyop target system. So it was kind of a planning device and maybe a somewhat of a deception in some people but. It did serve its purpose and it was used until Jim Slesinger threw it out in 1973 the assured destruction criterion did tell us again what that was. I'm not sure if we got it in enough detail right the end of an event that was 50 percent of the aviation. Industry and 25 percent of the population. But. Even. The. Secretary came up with this notion of Assured Destruction

the capability of inflicting unacceptable damage on the Soviet Union. Well what did that mean in terms of population and industry. What was done first of all and I don't know whether Alan and Hoven did it or who did it was to rank order Soviet cities by a combination of population and industry in Moscow always was number one Leningrad number two Kiev three etc. etc.. And it was calculated that if use started with Moscow at the top of your list. And went down this list and by rank order of population and industry by the time you got to about 34 percent of the population you are starting to hit cities that were not only relatively small in

population but didn't have all that much industry. And that you were getting down to cities on the size of 25000. Secondly it turned out that while there was no nice knee in the curve it sort of rolls over like that and gradually flattens out. That. By the time you get up to about 400 megatons which covers 200 cities or it then you would get about if I remember the numbers correctly 34 percent of the population very properly. Which meant. That it would be much worse than that. But by just last year alone you would very promptly kill 34 percent of the Soviet population and would probably destroy a

About 50 percent. Very promptly of their industry. So that was the basis for saying. All right. That's that's enough only. There was this little footnote that most people didn't notice which is you know each leg of the triad should be able to deliver 400 and made it and so is that the planning was done that was arguing very conservatively so that even the two legs of the tri had failed one leg would still be able to deliver the 400 equivalent megatons. But in fact that was simply a way of putting a lid on the size of the force and simultaneously enabling you to cover the targets and sign up and this listing all the Soviet cities and maintaining a capability for the destroying the Soviet cities

was that that leaves the question that this was was our plan rather assured destruction as a term means something other than a procurement criteria that it is it is a policy of rather than a capability of hitting all the cities well was that the policy. Assured Destruction to the best of my knowledge never was the policy at all times. The president had the option in football as it came to be known the brief cold case with the codes and the options in it which are carried around by. An officer or wherever the president goes. He he could choose as an option to blow up Soviet cities anytime he wanted to. And that dies as far as I know is true to this day.

But. The the option not to do that. And to attack a range of other targets. Was put into effect in 1962 and remained in effect despite this criterion of assured destruction as far as I'm able to tell. And was able to tell at the time and I won five hundred dollars on this that never got paid me on a bet. First the Psyop did not change. And. Second we were able. Despite the assured destruction. Name to keep covering the necessary targets in the site. So. I saw it first as a procurement device to put a lid on. What

were seen. As excessive demands for forces. And second my impression is that by 1963. Mr. McNamara very understandably was fed up. With this. It's not a. Very charming subject. And. People were beginning to think much more especially with the success of the. Limited atmosphere test ban to think much more seriously about arms control. And I I don't know this for a fact but I think he perhaps felt that by talking about the assured destruction as the policy was all he kept exploring these various damage limitation possibilities that that might help the atmosphere in which it

would be feasible to go forward with some further agreements beyond the easy test ban agreement and he took the best of my knowledge was really at. The forefront. Of the efforts to. Develop what then became the solid. Agreement. And so I think all of these things were wrapped up in his attitude. But that is my speculation I can't. You'd have to talk to him about it. I was very sympathetic to that day in the. In the in the later part of his term he did become interested in arms control and he bargained away and a ballistic missile defenses and so what. Does this mean that you give up on. Does this mean you're turning to a.

An interest in deterrence only or you're avoiding the question doesn't necessarily mean that you're avoiding the question of what to do if deterrence fails. No. You always have choices. Are very difficult choices in this business. You couldn't say look I will depend on my offense on the day to do whatever damage limitation I can and hope that by a combination of suppressing his enemies may get tonnage and by mutual avoidance of cities we can limit damage and then hope and pray somehow or other to stop this. You can go a step further and the next most effective step in terms of limiting damage has been to the best of my knowledge still is a major civil defense program in terms of

its cost and its effectiveness assuming you can persuade people to use the civil defense system. And it's remarkable as we did discovered during the Cuban missile crisis how interested people suddenly become in civil defense even though they may have been great critics of it before. Third you can try to develop a very comprehensive. Missile anti-ballistic missile and Bomber fence you don't do one without doing the other. Which is why it's talking about. Things such as the Strategic Defense Initiative as though it could do everything he still would have to worry now adays about both bombers and cruise missiles similar to them. Now all of those get increasingly expensive.

There's a limit to how much especially once the enemy's offense gets well protected he gets a better and better second strike force. There's a limit to how much you can do with your office. There's quite a bit he can do with civil defense but at some point if an enemy is really determined to slaughter people he can kill people no matter how good your civil defense is although Herman Kahn believed that somehow or other if you create a new cities underneath old cities you might be able to see very large numbers of people. But it was kind of a. Fantasy. But. There's a limit to how much I think he can really do with civil defense. However effective it may be then you can start going to the very very expensive. Anti-ballistic

missile and anti bomber defenses. And those were the things that McNamara was looking at and having studies conducted in starting in the early going through the mid 1960s when he asked General company to do I don't know that he ever directly asked General Ken but I'm sure that he asked Carol Browner whoever that was the director of. Research and Engineering to look into this and look into it very carefully because the army had been pressing for the deployment of a ballistic missile defense since the late 1950s. I don't want to pursue this too much. We got we went into a baby I'm right like with Jack Ruby right I talked to General Kent and Harold Brown right. But let me just ask you do you think that in. Well.

When Mack when McNamara gave up on defense. And. Thought that the ABM was something that we shouldn't believe that for whatever reason. Does this mean that. I guess what was he turning to a thinking about nuclear weapons it's good for deterrence only. Or was he you know all this interest in options and flexibility and so was that gone by the time he left the Pentagon on his part. I don't believe that he ever. Fully Renay if you will on his original. Interest although I think from the outset it was an interest of the

head rather than the heart. I think a very understandable. Reaction I would say though that he he did a number of things. Which led to substantial developments and in the 70s and even in the 1980s in connection with options. I mean it was with Robert McNamara however much he may subsequently regret it who agreed to fund. Multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles. That was Robert McNamara who commissioned the study that led to the max of missile. With Robert McNamara who continued to put money into research and development and the anti-ballistic missile defenses and

so on I was Robert McNamara who paved the way for the development of the Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft which was to be the heart of a new anti bomber defense system and so on. Bob may no longer want to be reminded that some of these things but if you look carefully at the record. Not only did he feel that. Personally in these so-called damage and limited measures would be simply conducive to a further escalation of the competition with the Soviet Union. He also felt a. They were going to be very expensive as indeed they turned out to be and B that they weren't going to be very effective. And I think most of the technical people at the time were not at all prepared to.

Certify that. These things were going to work very well. So. I don't think that his attitude at the time demonstrated anything more than a rather cold realism about. What was feasible and what might or might not contribute to this crazy competition. People like Bill Wolff and Henry Rogan really think that because McNamara didn't put enough effort into the development refinements of weapons that that the mutually assured destruction the whatever that this is more than capabilities that really became a possibility so that as the years went on we didn't have any. We're fighting options of a decent ones. Other than to do this is a city busting.

I do believe in that you know. I really don't accept that. Furthermore. You know I think it's very important to be careful about defining what we're talking about when we're talking about these options. I don't want to get into disputes with old. Friends. I owe a great deal but. There's always that. But. I think people really delude themselves about just how fancy and how surgical you can get with these capabilities. I repeat what I said earlier I think there are very important distinctions between 10 million deaths and 100 million deaths. And I think they're worth trying to preserve but I think that's the sort of thing we were talking about. These are very very blunt instruments just as one example. The problem I think that one

faces in trying to develop options and why it's so difficult to be very surgical with these. Terrible weapons. We keep an eye on it day to day basis. Thirty percent of our bombers on and on on ground based alert. They're supposed to be. And I believe. Can't get off the ground in 15 minutes with bombs on board and ready to go up north. So their so called positive control lines I would say right now we would have something on the order of 90. Of those our bombers on that. Kind of ground alert so that if they were ordered to take off. You would have not on a 90 bombers and their tankers going north you would have on the average. About. Seven hundred and twenty

weapons up there. And if if then the question arises do we order them across their positive control line. I doubt very much that the president or any commander is going to say Well I think I'll send three of them over and I'll call the other seven hundred seventeen or whatever. Back. It's going no go. And that means seven hundred and twenty pretty high yield weapons. By any standard are going to go. Or they're going to get called back. But I mean 720 weapons at a minimum each say on the average around 200 killed. That's not a very surgical option even if you're trying to be very careful about what they attack. And how they

attack some of them. Today or is this what would have happened in the 60s it would have happened in the 60s. You know I mean people have said oh well they had those options but they were the big blunderbuss options whereas we'll do all these fancy options that people talked about in. The 70s. The switches in the air and. Then again with Carter. Now in the 80s I think people are just kidding themselves. About how much flexibility you can really introduce into these forces. They're not flexible forces. They're very rigid forces in the way introduce any degree of flexibility and that is primarily by buying so many of them that you can withhold some and send others. It is as though these forces can dance around and. Do lovely little

minuets with nuclear weapons. Now that's not the way these things. Work at all. Every always saying you're going to have you know get such accuracy or we could if we devoted ourselves to it that you could even put non nuclear warheads in and you know. Just knock out the refinery leave the city. And you know it was the wrong. Place for certain types of targets. I wouldn't say. The technology is just about in hand. So yeah I would agree that. You know if if we get the reliability and that's the big problem. And. It has been the big problem all along. As we have demonstrated with the tragedy of the Challenger. That yeah you can get accuracy's good enough with a lot of special and expensive equipment. To do that

sort of thing to knock out certain types of targets with a. High yield explosive. I mean. Conventional explosives. There's always an argument at what point it's worth making the trade from these. Look they're very efficient. Nuclear weapons are very efficient. They're just awful weapons but they're they really do. A job much more efficiently than a high explosive nuclear. And there's a question at what point is it worth trading from a nuclear weapon to a 9 year weapon unless you believe somehow or other you can do this whole job with with nine nuclear warhead. I know to my knowledge there are certain types of targets that. We just couldn't destroy with. High explosive weapons as we know them. Now that doesn't mean we can't in the future.

Some people like it some people detest that. Some people say it doesn't exist. When one is mad. And. And but what does that mean to you. What does man mean to you. I'm mad to begin with as I'm sure you know means mutual assured destruction. That's the acronym for those three words. It is. The notion of mutual assured destruction is is based I think on the view that in fact in the 60s Mr. McNamara shifted into assured destruction and that meant that our Since our strategy was going to be counter city inevitably the Soviet strategy would be counter city and therefore he would have this situation of. Mutually assured destruction.

I do not know what the Soviet targeting was at that time. Just as I don't know what it is now. So I can't say that they might not do that. And the attacks that he's right off the bat. But McNamara didn't change to a strategy of attacking cities. That is correct. And in fact the United States never in any formal sense has had. A strategy if you can even call it a strategy of. Hitting cities only. It is true that in the late 1950s and into the first version of the Psyop before McNamara came in that. The that was something that God called the optimum mix to put it in one of those charming terms whereby you were going to target.

Because you had very high yield weapons 15 20 megaton weapons you could simultaneously target that airfield there that city there that command center there and get all three for one weapon. So that. Was a tendency just a bunch all these targets so it was that it was as the name implies an optimal mix of military and urban. And economic targets. Now what really happened in the early 60s was nothing all that original and conceptually at least it was sort of separating the targets which one could do partly as a matter of choosing what you didn't want to hit. And partly because you were getting improving accuracy and you could have low yield weapons as a result and the higher accuracy. And so we

really were pulling apart from the target system. It wasn't that the target system as a whole underwent such a dramatic transformation that rather that we said all right. There are targets on this list and we're going to cut them up and say here are these military or counter-force targets here are these are economic targets here are these logistic targets. And here are these urban industrial targets. We're going to treat them separately and have options as to whether we do or do not attack one or or more of these types of targets. And that's continued up. As far as I know at the present time whether you're the Soviets have a similar policy. I really can't say so. I don't think in any formal sense. Mutual Assured Destruction and whatever one may think of it

ever has existed. But I think the debate is somewhat academic the academic because you know both sides I would say since the mid 1960s have had an increasingly good and second strike. Capability so that. You know. The Each side has a very strong determinant and. Wow. You know I'd be the first to wish we knew how to get rid of all of these things. It would also mean getting rid of a lot of my friends who would know how to build these things. Otherwise we'd be right back in the business again. And I think therefore keeping this kind of stability minimizing the competition

as much as we can and. Trying to limit our dependence on these capabilities is what makes the sensible objectives for us. So that there's an assured destruction capability on both sides. Correct. There is but this doesn't necessarily lead to an assured destruction strategy. That is correct. And. Again I have to say I don't know and I doubt that anybody really knows what the Soviets strategy would be in terms of both the targets that they would attack. And the sequencing of the targets they might. Attack. But what I do feel very confident of is that the president has a range of choices available to him as I believe he should have. The military machine should not

make these decisions for the president. And that one of those choices is not to attack cities. And one of those choices is two attacks that he's been given this sort of restrictive framework of the surge destruction capabilities on both sides. Do you think that this should lead. I mean that one shouldn't. Ask any longer the question of what happens if deterrence fails and should give up on options. Interesting in. Refinements so that if there were had to be fought back. We would lose our capacity for discriminating or should we try to maintain options. But what does Mad mean in terms of of. Of from your point of view of an interest in retaining we trying to. Refine warfighting options.

I I would have to answer first of all I think these are all. Matters of degree. It's it's very hard for me personally to imagine a. A. Highly credible deterrent. That will will. Really work under the most intense stress. Unless it's also something you're prepared to execute if if somehow or other it doesn't it fails as a deterrent. So I in my own mind find it hard to make a distinction between what you want for deterrence and what you want. For. War fighting. But I do think there is a very strong distinction between how much you want to pay. And how much confidence you think you can achieve with these payments

in war fighting which I think has rather limited application in this area. It's it's sort of damage one limitation really. How much you want to pay. And given the great uncertainty is about how effective you can be in limiting damage and conducting something like a traditional campaign. Furthermore if I could just add one thing. These forces quite apart from the weapons it involves nuclear weapons there air missile space systems. And all they can do is blow things up whether they're military targets or urban industrial areas or bridge or or whatever. They don't maneuver really. They don't occupy anything.

And therefore. They are not in my view. Anything more than an adjunct to a really serious war fighting capability. However the weapons themselves are so damaging. That. It's hard to imagine say the United States and its allies and the Warsaw Pact conducting anything like a traditional conventional campaign at the same time that lots of nuclear weapons are going off. So. You know I I'm not even sure war fighting is the way I. Would want to think about it. I mean if if we could get rid of the nuclear weapons what we'd be using this these forces these strategic forces for is just the way we use them in say World War 2. Although I would hope with

more discrimination and restraint namely for attacking. And this is where the word strategic originally came from the types of targets such as war production and so on that have a long term effect on the campaign. That say is taking place on the ground somewhere and that the tactical targets are the targets that have an immediate impact on that battle and campaigns such as reinforcements. Lines of communications and the forces themselves. Now that isn't the way we think about the strategic nuclear forces anymore. We started off thinking about them that way back in the 19th 40s when they first came into being that they'd become a sort of independent kind of catus strict traffic forces just this enormous accident waiting to happen. You can

I think control the degree of the accident. But I think warfighting is not quite the right way to describe what these forces can do with it. Did it suggest that. There are fewer limits on them. And their ability to do things. And in my view is is the actuality. So I think we always have to ask ourselves not do we want a credible deterrent which means that deterrence or capability that. We're prepared if necessary to you. But how far down this road do we want to go in terms of both cost. And in all the other byproducts of going down the road. And I don't know myself

at this juncture. I see that there's a very persuasive case for going very far down that road. It's very very expensive. I mean if we look at right now what we're having to pay to explore is simply to explore the potentiality of newer technologies. And strategic defense. And over five six years it's going to cost us nearly 40 billion dollars to spend the rest of the cars that are going back to the 60s when you were. Put on a car. Can we imagine a. A. Controlled escalation scenario in Europe. I mean hypothetical putting aside what we've talked about about brewing where

we move from where I want to show you what somebody did in the 60s on this but it was essentially that they showed a progression from conventional forces that they didn't hold to the tactical nuclear weapon exchange. And then to hitting each other theater projection is something that we have here is in Poland in Rotterdam or something like some porter rail center isn't like that. And I think they stopped short of a of a general war Whoopee. But OK here we are on the. Big interesting conventional build up something happens. The conventional beefed up conventional forces don't. Hold what what what what are options B and what might happen. We're we're really in the soup. I mean again I believe. That the even with these so-called tactical nuclear

capabilities which are really a miscellaneous bunch of. Rather. Poorly protected poorly designed weapons. That we should have options there. But there are some there's some terrible dilemmas that I think anybody talking about controlled escalation. Once you decide to. Use these things. Are just tremendous. And the pressures on the commanders on both sides. Are going to be enormous to start demanding not only for more of these weapons use. Less and less discriminately but also on going deeper and deeper into enemy territory in order to get other weapons that. Threaten them not just as two examples on the NATO side. There's a

whole array of Soviet weapons that are based in the Soviet Union that if they have any function at all are to attack targets in Western Europe not in the United States. Now does the. Supreme Allied Commander in Europe say well I'll take out these forces neatly in East Germany and. Poland. Being careful not to kill all those good people who are basically friends. But all the more you know the 400 SS 20s the 500 badgers blinders and backfires and so on and so forth. Even though at any moment they could just come whizzing over and could destroy all my forces and most of Western Europe if the Soviets were so inclined. On the

other side the Soviet Union cannot preclude a decision by the United States to take a bunch of B-52s and suddenly even though they've knocked out our capabilities in Western Europe started flying them over and attacking targets in eastern Europe they cannot preclude our taking say some Poseidon missiles which we can commit at least formally to. NATO. And using those against targets in eastern Europe. Furthermore one final point neither side is going to be under these conditions. Is very good at telling where these things came from. But. I don't want to have the present. But in the interest of all these options were sort of developed in the 60s too. As horrible as they are the idea was to heaven an alternative other than

to unleashing everything against the Soviet Union. So can you. Outline what how we might what happens if the conventional. We can't meet the Warsaw Pact what might we have done in terms of. What was once the first. Next up the next option. Would be the first option would be either to make what's known as a demonstration use of nuclear weapons just to show how serious we are about it. And that has a lot of problems associated with it. So I would say the first really serious option would be to use enough nuclear weapons to destroy whatever force was in the process of penetrating Allied lines making a breakthrough is a tactical Yes that would be the tactical use against forward elements of Soviet

or Warsaw Pact and ground forces. And then what can you expect in exchange. Oh I think they. Blow a big hole in the NATO line with that the one with the nuclear weapon. Yes. And you know again I can't second guess them but I would think they would immediately try to take out all our airfields. And get as many of the missiles that they could in order to minimize another strike on our part in Europe or in this country in Europe.