War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Albert Carnesale, 1987

That's just for you. Well there's a there's a long list of many people feel that probably the best way to do it is just get rid of the ICBM's that if they are attractive targets you could abandon them. Just keep the other parts of your strategic forces what's at sea and the bombers. And so one is abandon them. The second one that people talk about is defend them. Those are the proponents of the Strategic Defense Initiative and strategic defenses in general. So one could defend them. Another is hide them. Actually there's a fancy title for that that's called preservation of locational uncertainty pollute but it means hide him. Don't let the other guy know where they are so he can't target them. Another is hard in the silos even more so that they can withstand the blast of a Soviet incoming warhead. Then there's another one is launched them under attack. You do get about 30 minutes notice of a Soviet ICBM coming

toward your ICBMs. You could decide to launch your ICBMs before all of his arrived and then the final proposal Lucian is Arms Control do something an arms control such that you reduce the Soviet threat to our ICBMs. So that's pretty much the list that you. So you came into the situation after what in your heart. Well I thought it was a very technocratic solution technocratic Lee It may well have been you. Yes you're OK. I thought the multiple protect the shelter's idea. And P.S. was a very technocratic solution in the sense that if you just did

strategic calculations on your computer it would result in the most M-x is surviving after a Soviet attack. But it didn't take into account any of the political dimensions of the problem for example. Imagine telling the people of Nevada and Utah and lucky you we have this wonderful way to make the exes survive. We are going to put four thousand six hundred targets in Nevada and Utah for the Soviets to aim at and it will take all 4600 Soviet warheads in order to destroy all of our annexes. Isn't that terrific. That doesn't sound so good to the people of Nevada and Utah. Secondly if you had that number of shelters on our side what would happen if the Soviets had a similar number of shelters. Two things would be true. First of all we'd be convinced that they knew precisely which of our shelters had missiles in them and we'd be convinced that they had a missile in every shelter. This was just not a

good idea. So this is when I use the forty six hundred because you like that number better right. OK. Now when you look closely spaced basing the mode or dense pack as it was sometimes called was simply not mature either technically or politically when it was proposed. People hadn't thought about it a great deal they hadn't analyzed it a great deal and it defied intuition to begin with the idea that you were going to make your ICBMs more survivable by putting them close together rather than by spreading them apart did not seem to fit very well with common sense and probably didn't. Secondly the danger of it was that every time somebody thought of another way to attack that system the analyst would have to run off

and spend three days because they hadn't thought about that before so they really didn't have the answers right away and and sometimes they just didn't have the answer at all. And this was what I mean by the the technical immaturity of the system and that led to some political immaturity people had not discussed this very much it seemed like sort of just another idea to try to put the M-x in the ground somehow and make up a cover story for it. Well I believe the principal purpose of the Scowcroft commission was to found find out how we could get the most M-x as we could get. That was that while it had a much fancier title than that and in principle its scope of activity was supposed to be greater than that. Every member of the Scowcroft commission was pro annexed. It may have been a bipartisan commission. It may have included both Democrats and Republicans in favor of M-x but they were all in favor of M-x and their task it seemed to me

was to make the best argument that could be made for the most annexes we could get. Well it was done. First of all by speaking to a wide range of people some of whom even opposed the M-x although not very many of those but rather others who made different kinds of arguments for the M-x for how it might be made survivable and why it was good for us. Well there were there were a couple of obstacles one of course just being a new weapon system it was visible and so those opposed to nuclear weapons opposed it. But more fundamentally than that was we had become very much in Namur of this idea of survivable weapons. The problem of ICBM vulnerability had been the key argument against even the sole two treaty by the Committee on the Present Danger and Paul Nitze had been pointing out this problem for

years ICBM vulnerability and along comes the AMEX which is a new ICBM to be put in the same vulnerable silos that the Minutemen were in so that those that were concerned about ICBM survivability. So the Amex is no solution to that problem. Indeed to some extent exacerbating that problem because it was putting a more attractive target in those same silos and also those concerned about stability in the sense of threatening Soviet ICBMs and increasing their incentive to strike first. Also didn't like the emic So one group didn't like the front end of the annex that would threaten Soviet ICBMs and another group didn't like the backend namely the vulnerable silos. I really don't think so. I believe they would have liked to get as many m X's as possible. And if a solution could be founded based them some

other way that would have given them more annexes they would have preferred that solution. Now the Air Force. Of course their first choice was just put them in silos they cared about the front. Not about the back and the Air Force was far less concerned about the vulnerability of these weapons than most civilian analysts were. But they wanted the M X's and if they couldn't have them in silos then they'd take them anyway they could get them. It turned out that there just didn't appear to be a much better way to base them than putting them inside of us. So in the end it became an exercise for what's the maximum number we can get in the silos. Here is part of that. Right now the uniform services generally are very conservative. They tend to put

far less credence in these highly imaginative scenarios that require extraordinary technological performance on the basis of their weapons or Soviet weapons. So the Air Force was far less concerned about this theoretical Soviet first strike that somehow magically and through high technology was going to eliminate their ICBM force. They were much more interested in having in their ICBM force something that could threaten Soviet hard targets that had been a long and consistent policy of the Air Force. Along came the civilian analysts who love to do technical calculations and don't think in terms of real wars but think in terms of computers and they were able to do these theoretical calculations that showed that ICBM vulnerability may have been an important problem and the Air Force felt well if that's what we need to get RMX then we'll talk about the vulnerability problem and talk about how AMEX will and somehow help to eliminate that. But it never really made sense.

Once you had the notion that you could not deploy the Amex unless it was survivable. That in reality would have meant no Enix And I think that any congressman who thought about it and understood what he was saying would have realized that that was the same as saying no in X and so it forced all of the analysts and the services who wanted the M X to make convoluted arguments about why somehow putting an M-x missile in the same vulnerable side of that a Minuteman used to be and would somehow deal with the vulnerability problem. Yeah. So I think you should.

Well they would prefer it in a survivable mode to a vulnerable one but they would much preferred in a vulnerable one to know M-x at all. Nobody really had a good answer to how to make it survivable. The best that people had come up with was the multiple protective shelters and that was simply politically infeasible. It just was not going to happen in the United States and indeed in my view if the Soviets would have done the same thing that we were proposing doing we would have been terribly upset at that being simply an unverifiable basing mode so it wasn't going to happen for a number of reasons. Ha. Just so I don't know if it's a blind spot than the people doing the analysis as so much as it is they were doing technocratic analyses they were not doing political analyses

they're simply doing given the problem. How would you base these missiles such that they would be most survivable for minimum cost what's the most cost of effective way to have surviving warheads after a Soviet first strike. The multiple protective shelter system was indeed the best answer to that problem. What it left out was all the questions about implementation. Well maybe that's the best in theory but could you actually do it. To which the answer to the second question was No. Why. Well this is a hard problem in the sense that an incoming nuclear warhead with explosive power 10 to 100 perhaps even a thousand times the explosive power of what was at Hiroshima and Nagasaki makes one large explosion and one very big hole. So if it lands anyplace close to your missile

it's going to destroy it. One way to put it in a race between concrete poors and accuracy improvers the guy to bet on is the guy that's improving the accuracy of his incoming warhead so it's a hard problem hiding M-x is not easy in the United States making the mobile is that you can't just put these things with 10 nuclear warheads on interstate highways and have them running around all the time that's not acceptably. If you could do that politically that would be an even better solution. But you can't with a combination of political constraints and technical constraints to save a system as fragile as a missile against an incoming nuclear attack. This is an extraordinarily difficult problem. So you're. Well I testified before the Scowcroft commission and tried to make a logical argument for what. Why it made some sense to put some x's in

Minuteman silos but to try and be honest about what you would achieve by that and what you would not. I mean I had a logical sequence that I can go through quickly if if you like the present. OK OK first we should be looking at you were looking at the camera looking at you. Yeah yeah that's what I've been doing yes. The first question is Why do you want survivable ICBMs Why would either side to recognize what the reasons are. Well the most common reason is to try to discourage a Soviet first strike if they know they can't destroy your ICBMs that's going to discourage their attempt to do so. The second reason is that even if they do strike first with your surviving ICBMs you have a reliably prompt weapon with which to attack Soviet targets only takes 30 minutes for one of these weapons to get to the Soviet Union they're easy to communicate. With the silos because it's

on your own territory so it's reliable and it's prompt and you can go after hard targets. And the third reason for wanting survivable ICBMs is just to hedge against the possibility that other parts of our strategic forces might become vulnerable whether it be the submarines or the bombers or the cruise missiles. So that's why you'd like to have survivable ICBMs. Can you make them survivable. Well we looked at a whole bunch of ways to try to do that it turns out that's extraordinarily difficult to do politically economically technically. So then you ask yourself the question well must they be survivable is it essential that they be survivable. Well it's not essential. Well it would be nice. As far as the Soviet first strike is concerned well just having some ICBMs complicates it so we had for a strike. Even if they're not survivable it's hard first of all they have to attack your homeland and trying to attack your ICBMs at the same time you're attacking your bombers turns out is a very

difficult test so it complicates that in terms of having this reliably prompt ability to retaliate. The scenarios in which that's most important are not the scenarios in which the Soviets have destroyed the ICBMs for the Soviets to destroy the ICBMs means at least two thousand nuclear warheads have just gone off in the United States. Unless that's happened we still have ICBMs so we don't have to retaliate promptly. We just have to be able to retaliate in after a scenario like that so that it's not crucial that these things be survivable. What is it better to have vulnerable ICBMs than no ICBMs at all. And why I came to that was yes because it complicates the Soviet first strike because they have to go after all homeland because ICBMs can be useful in limited conflicts because ICBMs would hold at risk Soviet targets that they value highly that even vulnerable ICBMs

are more valuable than no ICBMs at all. Then it has to question what we have vulnerable ICBMs the Minuteman. Why have an axis. Well the Amex is essentially you can think of as a modernization of the Minuteman ICBMs. The answer is not because they would be more survivable if you put them in the same holes they wouldn't be more survivable but they would give you more often civ capability. They would hold more Soviet targets at risk particularly targets that the Soviets valued highly like their leadership bunkers and hardened command and control facilities and even some of their ICBMs. The Annex is a larger missile you could put penetration aids on it to help to penetrate any Soviet defenses. So there were good reasons to have some and access perhaps most of all in my mind. Was that to demonstrate the political resolve that if you set out to deploy this weapon system that you could indeed do it. And it could provide

leverage in arms control. I couldn't imagine that the Soviets would be willing to eliminate their large ICBMs If they thought there was no chance that the United States was going to be modernizing its ICBMs. So for all of those reasons I believe it was a good idea to put say fifty to one hundred and next in Minuteman silos simultaneously to develop a small missile because we didn't have one at the time. That might be based Mobley or in some way that would be more survivable over the longer term and to enter into arms control negotiations to try to eliminate the need for the M-x by constraining this. Some people argue that it wasn't better worth it to hear the crisis this year. Well there were those that were concerned about the stability in the sense that if you have vulnerable ICBMs you do attract a preemptive

attack by the other side and therefore you reduce stability. That argument is correct. I think it's right. And I believe those that argued that putting annexes in Minuteman silos would enhance crisis stability to make things more stable in that sense we're wrong and we're just making arguments for the emic. So I accept that. However I believe we have so many weapons of so many different kinds deployed in so many ways that the notion that the Soviets would launch a first strike because they could get some tiny fraction of them namely these and the axis is silly. We were talking about deploying. Imagine 100 mixes that would be one thousand nuclear warheads. The United States has about 12000 nuclear warheads directed at the Soviet Union. If they could get that 1000 that are in the M-x silos they still have another 11000. They're going to be headed at the Soviet

Union. We only have about 20 percent. Of our nuclear warheads and our land based ICBM force the rest are it on bombers and cruise missiles and it's C and those are the long range weapons that can reach the Soviet Union. So these people had the argument right in that it does undermine stability by putting X's in silos but by very very little in a scenario that's very unrealistic. So you have to compare that cost to the benefits you get from deploying the M-x the political resolve the caution that the Soviets would have to display in the face of this new threat. The arms control leverage and I just concluded that those benefits exceeded that cost. But you don't have to pretend the cost doesn't exist. Oh shit.

Well they seemed quite pleased with that I'm not about to fool myself since since this sounded like a logic that supported a conclusion they would like to have. They were pleased with the logic of the argument and indeed if you read the Scowcroft commission's report the logic is in essence the logic that I outlined but it certainly fell upon sympathetic ears there wasn't anybody I had to persuade that it would be a good idea to put 100 100 annexes. I said 50 to 100 annexes in Minuteman silos. All I had to do to persuade them of was this was be the best argument you could come up with now. What did you hear.

Well there were several. The window of vulnerability argument arose largely through the efforts of Paul NITSA and the Committee on the Present Danger and the scenario that Paul Nitsa described and which concerned him at the time was one in which the Soviets launch a rather selective surgical nuclear strike against the United States land based missiles the ICBMs and then essentially say to us all right United States either get out of Europe or we're going to destroy your cities. And so the fear was that because our ICBMs were vulnerable we would not be able to respond in kind against the Soviet Union we would not then be able to counterattack in a way that destroyed their ICBMs. Now I consider that to be a faulty scenario not because it would be impossible but because it was extraordinarily unrealistic. First of all it may have been impossible. The Soviets did not then have the capability to destroy our

ICBMs and do not really have even now with any degree of confidence the ability to destroy our ICBMs. So it's questionable technically. Secondly if they destroyed all of our ICBMs we still have about ten thousand nuclear weapons on our submarines and in our bombers and cruise missiles with which we could retaliate against the Soviet Union. So why the Soviet Union would feel this great urge to destroy a small fraction of our nuclear weapons. Always mystified me unless you believed that the only thing in the Soviet Union that the Soviets consider important is their ICBMs. The fact that we could destroy all of their cities all of their military bases all of their radars all of their air defenses all of their industry. Most of their population their defenses on the Chinese border. All of that somehow you have to believe would be relatively unimportant to them that all that mattered is could we destroy their ICBMs. And finally if you were really worried about this scenario

why did you decide we had to invade our ICBMs If you thought it shouldn't attack our ICBMs. OK if you are really worried about this scenario. Why do you think it would be important for the Soviets to attack our ICBMs If it really is a matter simply of showing that they are ready for a nuclear war. Why don't they attack a playground in Atlanta or Fort Leavenworth in Kansas Why do they have to go after ICBMs and then say all right you guys get out of Europe if it worried us if they attacked their ICBMs when we still had 10000 warheads left. Why would it worry us less if we had 12000 warheads less. So I just never thought the scenario made sense. Well I think it's accurate were we not you know city target destruction.

If they destroyed our ICBMs If the Soviets destroyed our ICBMs and only our ICBMs in a first strike we would not be able to respond and attack their ICBMs because that requires highly accurate warheads which we have really only on our ICBMs to be able to do that promptly. But there are lots of other targets we could destroy. It's only the ICBMs and the hardened targets that we wouldn't be able to destroy. Now why is it that the only thing that the Soviets would worry about is our ability to destroy their hardened targets their cities are soft. We could destroy those. It's true they could destroy our cities in return but because they could destroy our cities anyway. I mean it's independent of whether we attack their cities or not their ability to destroy our cities. We could destroy their military forces we could destroy their air bases we could destroy lots of things that

don't require a capability to destroy hardened targets this was a fixation on one small portion of the Strategic Forces of the United States 20 percent. And the great fear that if those would be destroyed somehow it made an enormous difference. While I think it was first of all it was largely technocratic. It was a nice little calculator ball problem. Secondly you always tend to focus on your weaknesses. And that was the weak leg of the triad in terms of its survivability. Third I think people were really concerned and that this sort of exaggerated the need for finding some way to make the ICBMs survivable but it exaggerated it in a way that implied we didn't have time to solder we have plenty of time as long as the submarine launch missiles and the bombers were survivable we could take our time and try to figure out how to make the ICBM leg

survivable. So yeah yeah that's true. A scenario in which this idea. That an attack upon our ICBMs is somehow a surgical first strike that we might not respond against unless we could attack Soviet ICBMs is worth examining a little bit. First of all for the Soviets to attack our ICBMs requires them to use about 2000 nuclear warheads each of these nuclear warheads would have an explosive power at least 10 times the explosive power of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Put together. That is a major nuclear war that is not a surgical first strike. In addition it is extraordinarily unlikely the Soviets would only do that because they would have a very angry adversary on the

other side who still had about ten thousand nuclear weapons so they would probably try to go after our command and control centers. They would try and get the bombers that they could get on the ground. They would try to get the submarines in port. This is a major all out nuclear attack against the United States. This is not some little cutesy technocratic surgical strike that's played out on your personal computer. And yet. The political analysis of the scenario that was done of the time treated this is some cute little surgical first strike that the Soviets did to which we had no cute little surgical response. Well maybe we didn't have a cute little surgical response but this was no little cute little surgical attack to which we were responding well. Yeah. And now the. Well the argument that the danger of this scenario is that the

Soviets attack our ICBMs and even though we have all these warheads left we don't have a particular kind the highly accurate one. But most importantly they've demonstrated their resolve to go to nuclear war and they could next attack our cities unless we're compliant to their wishes. I would argue suppose they didn't attack the ICBMs. I suppose you just believe that they didn't have the resolve to attack our nation and asked the store told us to get out of Europe or they were attacked our cities. Well the question is whether they're going to call when you're going to call their bluff or not. They can attack our cities what ever they want to. Our cities are vulnerable. It is up to them whether or not our cities survive. It takes a tiny fraction of their strategic force to attack our cities. They have more than 10000 weapons directed at us. They want to get our hundred largest cities with 5 weapons apiece that's 500 out of ten thousand. It's a lot left over. We cannot defend the cities they're not

defended now. The Strategic Defense Initiative if it ever would work will be a long time before it can defend our cities. That's the root of the problem. And their cities are equally vulnerable to attack by us. What if we have asked Why didn't you. Well primarily actually and in my view to make more credible why we need a yes. Even though we have thousands of weapons without the Amex I believe it made sense to deploy 50 to 100 m x's because of the capabilities that those missiles provided. Also I believe they provide political utility but the let's talk about the military capability first. These are hard target weapons that are quite reliable and only have a

30 minute flight time. When would these be most useable. This is going to sound like a nutty scenario but it's really the limited war scenarios in which these weapons are usable. It's where the Soviets might use 3 or 5 or 10 weapons against the United States and we wanted to respond with 3 or 5 or 10. There was a certain attractiveness for the Soviets to know that you could choose to hit their leadership bunkers if they if we chose to do so. That means the people on the other side were making the decision to start this war. Know that among the first people to be killed if we choose to do so them that we can get them so highly accurate. Weapon with an enormous explosive power is valuable for that purpose. Also I believe it would make the Soviets more cautious about starting any such you know they were so its deterrent value to even inhibit the very start of Soviet aggression I

think would be useful. And I believe it would be valuable for arms control negotiations to give the Soviets incentive to reduce their own ICBM forces because they would fear US deployment especially continuing deployment possibly eventually larger numbers of M-x missiles which ultimately in large enough numbers could threaten their strategic forces. What. Well the political perception of the mix was and the reason I felt it was important is first of all to demonstrate resolve this have been a weapon system that the United States been playing around with for a long time and wasn't going to deploy it or not. We had modernized our ICBMs for some time. I would prefer not to modernize them if I could have an arms control agreement under which the Soviets didn't modernize theirs either. But I saw no way to get the Soviet acquiescence to such a deal unless they thought there was a threat that the U.S. would modernize its

weapons. I think for our allies our demonstrated ability to be able to go ahead and deploy a new weapon system about which they had some doubts. Those are the principal political reasons why I thought it was important. A hard target kill capability which is something about which this which the Saudis have a great deal is something that in the past we have not had a great deal. Largely because we've chosen to build smaller missiles with many warheads on them and therefore the warheads have less explosive power and are less capable of destroying these hardened targets on the Soviet side. The value of these weapons is in destroying the other fellow's ICBMs his ICBMs in their in their silos and other hard targets like

leadership bunkers a like a command control centers. In point of fact when you try to think about the scenarios where you play these scenarios out and actually use these things we blow up the world. There's no advantage to anybody everybody loses. It is only in the make believe world of the calculations that this is important and it's important because it helps to deter the other side as he's doing the calculations too. You always want to be clear to the other side that he'd be worse off with a nuclear war than without one. And so the notion that you can get his leadership that you can get is command of control that the Communist Party leaders are going to be gone that the symbols of their power the ICBMs are going to be gone. That makes him all the more cautious and all the more reticent to begin a nuclear war which by the way I believe now whether we had our target heel capability or not would be the decision that any rational leader would make that he's better off without a nuclear war than with one.

Yes I think so. OK I believe that the strongest reason for having a survivable ICBM force is to hedge against the possibility that the other legs of our strategic triad might become vulnerable either to attack by the Soviet Union or to defenses within the Soviet Union and by the other legs I mean our submarine launched ballistic missiles and our air breathing like the bomber and cruise missiles. If I could be confident that for ever the submarine launch missiles and the air breathers would be invulnerable and could penetrate Soviet defenses I'd worry very little about whether our ICBMs were vulnerable or not. It be a little better for them to be invulnerable but it wouldn't matter much. But I can't be positive that for ever.

Those other legs of the triad will be able to survive and penetrate. And so for that reason I feel more comfortable knowing that my ICBMs are invulnerable as well. And so for that reason I'm in favor of trying to find an invulnerable basing mode. But I do not panic because those are the legs. Now can survive and can penetrate Soviet defenses. Well the other the other piece of it is not only the legs of the triad being zero but sheer numbers I want. A Soviet leader when ever he even thinks about or has a clever general briefing him about why this might be a good day to attack the United States because you disarm them. I wanted to be so obvious that the U.S. would have so many weapons survive with which to retaliate against the Soviet Union that that clever briefer should be thrown out of the

room. That it's a silly idea. And the way we accomplish that is by having lots of weapons deployed in many different ways with large numbers of them being survivable and capable of penetrating Soviet defenses. The fundamental paradox of the nuclear age. The fundamental paradox is the way that we tried to avoid nuclear war is by assuring that it would be so horrible that no one in their right minds would start one. The danger is that if one starts it's likely to be as horrible as we've designed it in our attempts to avoid it. I don't believe it fulfills it in any significant way does M-x fulfill the goals of a limited nuclear wars

in some small. Time does M-x keep helping to keep a limited or nuclear had little does M-x the argument is made that the next missile would help to keep a limited nuclear war limited I think is a pretty weak argument. It is true that ICBMs help that but it doesn't have to be the Amex. In other words to the extent that you believe in this fantasy of a limited nuclear war which I guess is possible although I wouldn't want to bet my planet on a limited war remaining limited. To the extent that you believe in it. There are no better weapons than ICBMs. The they are highly accurate which means you can minimize the amount of so-called collateral damage that's done by the weapon. And I would get very close to the target you're trying to destroy the command and control is very secure so that you the president could say I want only these three targets. Attack those and no more.

So you can be quite selective and you can coordinate the attack very well. It doesn't require an annex for that. You can do that with Minuteman ICBM The one advantage of the Amex has is not in your ability to keep it limited but rather in our ability to destroy some targets which are so strongly hardened that a Minuteman nuclear weapon simply does not have enough explosive power to destroy it. No. First. Very often a distinction is made between first strike weapons and retaliatory weapons or second strike weapons. And people point to the technical characteristics of the of the weapons to try to distinguish between them. I don't think that really works very well let me give you a few examples. If you ask what is this Soviet

SS 18 missile we're going to ask Americans these questions which is a large ICBM with 10 warheads on it. They will all say that is a first strike weapon if you ask what is the M-x which has 10 warheads on it a large missile. They will say oh well that's a retaliatory weapon if you ask what about Soviet submarine launch missiles all those are to use in a first strike against all bombers. If you say what about American submarine launch missiles all those of for assured retaliation after a Soviet first strike. I think you can see the pattern by and large the way you can tell the difference between first strike weapons and second strike weapons is by looking at the flag on the weapon. Soviet weapons are first strike weapons in the eyes of Americans. American weapons are second strike weapons in the eyes of Americans and the situation is reversed on the other. On the other side I have a theory. There's a corner seals they are. Is that weapons are dangerous and destabilizing

if and only if they are the adversaries weapons. And this theorem applies no matter what language it's stated in. I'll let you know. Without the pattern's stuff. Well OK I don't want to I mean just. OK. There are those who try to distinguish between first strike weapons and second strike weapons. It's not all that simple. For example if you ask Americans what about the Soviet SS 18 ICBM which is a large missile that carries 10 warheads capable of destroying hard targets. We have always referred to that as a first strike weapon. Our weapon the M-x also a large missile with 10 weapons capable of destroying hard targets is referred to as a stabilizing weapon a retaliatory weapon. Indeed even the names of the weapons

what do we call the M-x it's the peacekeeper. And what is the NATO's name for the SS 18 Satan. Now is this a technical difference between those weapons. No it's whose flag is on it. By and large what you want in your weapons if you're doing military planning you want weapons that will survive and be capable of destroying the adversaries weapons in a retaliatory attack anything that's capable of destroying his weapons in a retaliatory attack is also capable of destroying his weapons in a first strike. So whether it's a first strike weapon or a second strike weapon depends on when you use it not on its technical characteristics. We assume the worst of their intentions and therefore we look at their weapons and call them first strike weapons. We assume the best of our intentions. We look at our weapons and call them retaliatory weapons. It's the flag that determines it not the technical characteristics.

The perception here. You threaten that you could weaken and that bolsters deception. Yeah yeah. If there are competing notions of stability here that are unfortunately are at odds with each other. One argument and the traditional technocratic kind of way of looking at this question of stability or crisis debility it sometimes called us. If we find ourselves in a crisis with the Soviet Union where the assessment of the likelihood of nuclear war has increased on both sides then what we worry about is the vulnerability of our strategic forces that they might be tempted to launch a first strike for fear that otherwise will strike them first and vice versa. That that we might be long tempted to launch first for fear that they might launch a first strike. This is the problem of crisis and once you're in a crisis you really

want those weapons to be as survivable as possible. But if the weapons are quite survivable then you might feel more comfortable and be more willing to get into crises. The Soviets have a rather different view of this notion of stability or a different focus they tend to focus on what they call political stability namely if you have these enormous weapons that might be rather trigger happy to use for fear that the other fellow might go first then you will avoid crises you won't be so adventurous you'll stay out of those situations to avoid crises. You want weapons that might be vulnerable and therefore dangerous if you got into a crises. But suppose the crisis isn't avoided. You certainly don't want vulnerable weapons that might you might then be tempted to use. Well sort of. So that actually you know what.

You know the argument was made that we needed the M-x missiles in order to match the Soviet missiles of comparable capability because this was important for not only Soviet perceptions but our own perceptions and the rest of the world's perceptions of our relative strength. Actually I don't believe that I believe it to the extent that those in favor of the M-x might have been making this argument so much that they may have come to believe it themselves and perhaps even convince the rest of the world that if we didn't deploy the M-x there was something terribly weak about us but that could have been turned around if we didn't deploy the M-x then we could have argued about how important something else was like our Trident submarines and simply shifted the the focus for the coin of the realm of superpower dumb from land based missiles to sea based missiles which we should have been trying to do anyway since we had superiority there.

So right now I don't believe it I mean I just think it's a crazy argument. I'm in. I mean I've never understood what it is that the M-x does that the Minutemen don't do I mean that's you know me I try hard to make opposing arguments to my own point of view and think of the best logic form and I think what's wrong in this one I just never. Get it the only reason this is true is if you keep announcing to the world over and over again that this is terribly important till they come to believe it. This is like the big problem now the person to say we kept telling the Europeans over and over that how important they were and everything it was an important militarily they don't matter. But they became very hard to take them out because we kept saying how important it was how could you suddenly say they're not important. The argument was used to try to get the Amex was it's terribly important in this scenario. It will make us look weak if we don't have it. Well it will be hard to convince people if you don't have it that it doesn't show you weak. But I don't think there's any logic to the I mean it's it's got to have an internal logic. But

I never saw any external object to it that if we had 12000 weapons it somehow didn't bother them. This next 500 was going to make the difference because they were on an axis and the others were on other thing I just never really understood it. Right. Well the main thing that's right I mean I had several reasons for being in favor of putting 50 to 100 m XS in Minuteman silos at that time of the Scowcroft commission hearings why I thought it was a good idea. One is I thought the only real choices for the M-x were either to put it in Minuteman silos or no end nexus. I did not think there was any other viable basing mode that would be realistically achievable politically and technically you were either going to put them in silos

or nothing. Number one so the question I faced was are we better off putting some in silos or not having any at all. I believe it was better to proceed to put them in silos First of all to get this issue behind us. So it would be done. Secondly because I believed it was useful politically to have the threat of the program of deploying these things to induce the Soviets to agree to arms control limitations on ICBMs which I fear they would otherwise have little incentive to do. Because of the phone. It's part time. Yeah I know it's true and you have been trying to get that strongly. OK. OK ready. Yeah. I believe that at the time of the Scowcroft commission hearings that it was important

for political reasons if nothing else to deploy 50 to 100 of the m x missiles in Minuteman silos. The principal reason was that our nation internally had been wrestling with this problem of the M-x for alone time trying to find a way to base it getting people in the country unhappy. I thought the most important thing to do was get this issue behind us. The only real choices available the time were either know when X or some x is in silos. I thought we should put them in silos and move on. Now people say well that's just yeah once again. This is the argument. Well let me start over. Are you at home at the time probably the bombers and.

Yeah yeah. I think you know well who's watching the launch under attack. Let me turn the one of the stronger arguments for maintaining ICBMs vulnerable or invulnerable. Is that it is currently impossible for the Soviets to attack and destroy simultaneously the land based missiles and the bombers. And the reason is that in order to attack a land based missiles they need highly accurate weapons of the kind that are only on their ICBMs. Those weapons take 30 minutes to get to the United States. We get 30 minutes warning because our satellites see them launched and in that time. Ah bombers could be off the ground. So for 30 minutes they could get the ICBMs we could get the bombers up in the air and we can always recall them if we made a mistake. We can always get the bombers back so it's relatively safe

this is not a launch on warning in the usual sense because the bombers can be called back on like missiles. The way the Soviets could attack the bombers is with submarine launch missiles if they could get relatively close to our shores they could get submarine launch missiles to the bomber bases in 15 minutes or perhaps even less. That might not be enough time for the bombers to get off. But if they do that and the bombers don't get off it will be because all these nuclear explosions have just gone off and bomber bases all over the United States. And even if they launch their ICBMs simultaneously with the submarine launch missiles it's still going to be 15 minutes after that before their ICBMs arrive at to destroy our ICBMs that gives us 15 minutes after there have been massive nuclear explosions in the United States at the bomber bases in which to launch our ICBMs before their ICBMs arrive. So therefore this timing problem makes it valuable to have ICBMs

even if they are vulnerable because in a way they are sure that the Soviets can't destroy the bombers. Well the real of course this is always been true this notion that you cannot simultaneously destroy the bombers and the submarines and so the window of vulnerability argument that had been raised earlier only looked at the ICBM leg of the triad focused solely on that and ignored the fact that the bombers would survive and that the submarine launched ballistic missiles would survive and realize that 80 percent of all nuclear weapons are on the bombers and submarine launched ballistic missiles. So the scenarios the window of vulnerability referring only to the ICBMs is sort of a silly argument and in essence the Scowcroft commission just in pointing this out. Close the window of vulnerability without doing anything about the vulnerability of ICBM. First

we want to use Gorbachev the Soviet leader because if you're going to have that threat may not be there. Imagine for the moment that you were the Soviet adviser going in to speak to the Soviet leader and that you're recommending this so-called surgical first strike against the American ICBMs his this is the story you're going to tell him that Mr. General Secretary. Well I have a brilliant idea. We can essentially disarm the Americans by attacking their land based missiles. So what are you going to do. Well they have about 1000 ICBM silos that we're going to try to destroy by launching our ICBMs from here to destroy those silos. And then a leader might ask well how many times have you taken one of your nuclear warheads detonated in the atmosphere to see if it actually can destroy a silo. Oh we've never done that. How many times have you taken a nuclear warhead put it on one of your missiles and flown it

5000 miles to see if the nuclear warhead works at the other end. Well we've never done that. How many times have you detonated several warheads in the atmosphere at roughly the same time to be sure that they don't interfere with each other. Well we've never done that. How many times have you taken an ICBM and flown over the North Pole rather then just east west within the Soviet Union to see if it's just as accurate when you fly it that way. We've never done that. And you're going to tell me what you're going to launch two thousand of these warheads simultaneously they're all going to arrive exactly where they're supposed to be and you're going to destroy all of the American ICBMs and I can count on that. Doesn't sound very credible Mr Advisor. But let's assume for the moment that this wonderful science fiction feat of high technology can be carried off. Can I then be assured that these angry Americans in whose territory 2000 warheads have just gone off will have nothing with which they can express their anger against the Soviet Union and attack us with nuclear weapons in

response to which the advisors that well it isn't exactly like that you see. The Americans only have a little more than 2000 of their 12000 nuclear weapons in these ICBMs they just destroyed. They will still have about ten thousand with which to attack us more than 5000 of those at sea and the rest on bombers and cruise missiles. I don't think I'd want to be that advisor trying to recommend this action to the Soviet leader. I'm pretty sure I'd be thrown out of the office. Now you know. I think you need help. Right. What do you want me to pick up from where and even if we pull this off and destroy their ICBA. Yeah I thought so. Well that comes a little later. Yeah OK. Well let me do it and then you can correct me if you want.

And even if this feat of science fiction was successful and we were able to destroy all the American ICBMs and the warheads on it everyone would the Americans have anything left any nuclear weapons left with which they could attack the Soviet Union to which the adviser would then tell them roughly what the Americans would have which would include more than 5000 nuclear weapons at sea and close to the same number on bombers and cruise missiles all of which could reach the Soviet Union. Is it credible that in the future the Soviets would do such. Yeah yeah yeah. Peering into the future to see if it would ever be possible for the Soviets to launch a successful disarming first strike against the United States and literally be able to

destroy not only our ICBMs but our submarine base missiles and our bombers and cruise missiles as well. It's a difficult task to say the least. But there's no indication that they're getting close to such a capability. The submarines at sea are at least as survivable as they've ever been. They operate in more ocean areas because the range of the missiles is longer so they can stay further away from the Soviet Union bombers there's the new stealth bombers the advanced technology bombers which are more difficult for Soviet air defenses to deal with. It is true however that in one respect Soviet capabilities will continue to improve and that's the ability to destroy our ICBMs in fixed silos. And so we ought to be working on that problem as a hedge against eventual deterioration in the survivability of the other legs.

Why. The defense do use many people propose that the way to enhance the survivability of ICBMs is to defend them. In other words to withdraw from the ABM Treaty and to deploy active defenses of our silos literally missiles with nuclear warheads on them that would intercept and destroy Soviet incoming warheads before they reached our silos. This by the way is a technically feasible notion. We can hit a bullet with a bullet in space. The question is can you do it against the magnitude of an attack that the Soviets could throw against our ICBMs and every indication is no it's simply not cost and cost effective. Now furthermore there is the political consideration I've often thought that when people suggested using active defenses ballistic missile defenses as the way to save the M-x that that was

a very much throwing the M-x alleged life preserver that politically the notion of getting out of the ABM Treaty to deploy defenses to defend our missiles was even less attractive than deploying the M-x itself. You know. And you know I don't think these two pieces were closely related namely the Scowcroft commissions of evaluation of Amex and the president's announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative. I think they were quite independent because the president's vision of the SDI had nothing to do with defending missiles. It was purely a matter of defending the population

and rendering nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete whereas the Scowcroft commission was looking at the march now or a question of an ex deployment. They're related however philosophically I think every president at some point comes to realize that. All of the people of the United States our entire society are told no one is vulnerable to attack by the Soviet Union and there's nothing he can do about it. Nothing and he says change that and different presidents have tried different ways to change that. Maybe it's detente and build a web of common interests maybe it's arms control. Well as President Nixon tried this president went for the idea one has about we build a magic shield over the eyes it but I don't think that was related to that to the M-x decision. Well yeah.

Well we're talking about when we talk about solving the vulnerability problem people have two very different problems in mind. One group of people are largely the technocrats. If you talk about the vulnerability problem they think you're talking about the vulnerability of the ICBM's most Americans and political leaders and others if you talk about the vulnerability problem what comes to their mind is the fact that we our cities our society are all vulnerable to attack by the Soviet Union. If we wanted to spend enough money we could probably solve the first vulnerability problem. That is the vulnerability of ICBMs. If we were willing to do everything that needed to be done we could come up with some scheme that would make the ICBM survivable. What we do not now know how to do. We simply have no inkling of how to do it is to solve the second vulnerability problem. The more important one the vulnerability of our society.

Are you. I do. Well I am disappointed that we haven't been able to achieve a strategic arms control agreement in the wake of even the limited deployment of the AmEx but of course the game's not over yet Well first let's say a robot was back in a year and a half from now there may well be I mean God only knows some he says. So I am disappointed that the M-x did not lead rapidly to an arms control agreement that curtailed Soviet forces but I do believe that it did increase Soviet incentives to limit long range strategic weapons and has made it more possible to achieve control agreements dealing with those weapons than would otherwise have been the case.

Why. No not in the I mean yes and no. I mean I was not part of the the deal making on it. Yes I know both of them and I met with them and discussed this issue with the time but I was not part of the deal making. Do you think so. I believe that the principal objective of the Scowcroft commission as it saw its role was to make the best argument possible for as many and Nexus as could be obtained. Some members of the commission were concerned about the ICBM vulnerability problem and felt that you probably should not simply stop with M-x

is in silos but you should have some vision for resolution or solution of the ICBM vulnerability problem. Those people were very strongly in favor of a small missile that might be mobile and so in a way the compromise that was meant but in the sense nobody gave up anything was to move ahead with the M-x in the near term namely immediate deployment of 100 m x's in Minuteman silos was their recommendation. And at the same time indorse an extensive research and development program for a small mobile missile. Do you think that. Oh yeah. Oh I expect that some members of the commission did not think that the small missile was a good idea. See the small missile. Primarily what its attractiveness is in an arms control

environment. If you believe that both sides would be willing to move to smaller mobile missiles that really doesn't hence debility. But if only one side is moving to small missiles and the other side is just deploying more and more cost effective SS 18 that's not very attractive to the side that's building the small missile. Some members of the commission were not great believers in arms control so I don't think they would have been nearly as a Namor of the small missile solution to this problem now. Oh. What do you think of the idea of deploying the MX in the rail Garrison mode namely on railroad trains that would be stationed in Garrison's ordinarily not traveling around the countryside. Strikes me as a

means of. Why are you shaking your head no. Oh yeah you're OK. Oh I see what you did mean to shake your head no Rather the idea of deploying the M X in the rail Garrison mode strikes me as the air force's second best choice in a sense what they would like what the Air Force would like is many M-x is as it can get deployed as cheaply as possible. Their first choice would be to put them in Minuteman silos if those civilians and members of Congress who are so concerned about vulnerability will not permit them to do that. The air force is essentially saying well how will you let me deploy them you want them on hay wagons I'll put them on hay wagons. You want him in trains I'll put them on trains if they have to be on trains I prefer they be on trains that don't move because that would be cheaper. And it seems that some people think they might be able to get. More Amex is on trains then don't

move. Then they would be able to get in silos so they'll support that. Personally I think it's a fairly silly idea because those trains aren't going to be moving around the countryside and therefore would be no more survivable than M-x is in silos. I doubt it strongly First of all it might be pursued. I doubt strongly that the president in time of crisis would order the trains carrying the air maxes to move out of the garrisons and move around the countryside. First of all he'd scare the population of the United States probably at a time when he'd be trying to calm them. Secondly the Soviets would probably assume that we're getting ready to strike first because it would certainly improve our ability to strike first. We'd like to have those forces out there so they could be part of our reserve force. We would attack first with the vulnerable forces and then keep the survivable forces in reserve.

There's just no difference in the characteristics of the weapons that enables you to tell whether it's a first strike weapon or a second strike weapons if we were getting ready to go first. One of the most important things we do is move those trains out of the garrisons so. I believe we should move ahead with the research and development on the midget man program to have the option of having a small missile that could be deployed either in a fixed mode in Minuteman silos or mobile. I'd like to be able to deploy them inside those if I could get both sides to demur that would be a very stable world we could then deploy these ICBMs with a single warhead on them in a silo knowing that it would take the other side more than one warhead to destroy one more head of ours. If we couldn't achieve that kind of agreement then you might have to move to mobility to enhance the survivability of the smaller missile and a small missile is a lot easier to move around than a big missile is so I would like to see us have an active R&D program but not.

I do not believe it is necessary in the very near future to move forward with production and deployment of the measurement system. In my view there is no current strategic problem to which 500 midshipmen missiles is a solution. To this. If deterrence should fail the Amex missile won't help us. The value of the Amex is to reduce even more the likelihood that deterrence will fail. Oh excuse me the redo. Well to reduce the likely let me say that if deterrence should fail the M-x missile will not have served its purpose and will not be particularly useful because certainly it would be one of the first items on a Soviet target list. So unless we're prepared to launch it on warning it will be

destroyed. The principal value of the M-x missile is to enhance deterrence to make it all the less likely that the terrorists will fail. I believe it makes a marginal contribution to that very small but positive genes. Right now. Why so. Well the the M X is useful for deterrence and it is useful for a first strike for first use. Now the fact of the matter is that U.S. strategy permits to some extent first use of nuclear weapons by the United States and perhaps even long range weapons. In other words the understanding we have with our NATO allies is if there's a conventional war in Europe

and the West is losing it we're prepared to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. An initially one would expect that would be nuclear weapons in Europe. Battlefield weapons. But if that doesn't turn the tide we might well be prepared to use long range weapons if you're going to use long range weapons against the Soviet Union in a limited way. You would like to have the option of being able to destroy hardened targets that the Soviets value very highly. You can hardly think of anything they would value more highly than leadership bunkers and command and control centers and the M-x is capable of destroying those targets. So you have to sort of work back through the whole scenario that one of the reasons why you want the M-x is to help to deter Soviet conventional aggression in Europe because they would fear that ultimately it might escalate to the use of M IX missiles

against their command and control bunkers. I think that's a pretty weak argument. It's roughly correct but it's certainly not very important. Oh right that's right. Oh yeah. There are those. There are those that argue that we should not target Soviet leadership bunkers because so one thing we want to be sure of that those people survive for at least two reasons either to orders I always want the Soviet leadership to be able to communicate. One is a cease fire. I want to be able to tell their troops I would stop. Don't fire anything more at the United States. The other message I want to be able to communicate is if we give up. So for those reasons the idea of

destroying Soviet leadership is a bad idea. That's not the same as saying we shouldn't target the Soviet leadership bunkers so that they know that it's up to us whether they survive or not. That is an argument for not destroying the Soviet leadership. I agree with that. I think it would be a mistake to destroy Soviet leadership. I think it's a good idea for them to know that their survival is up to us in. The world. Yeah. You know one of another paradox you might say of Western strategy is on the one hand we want to be confident that there is no advantage to striking first to initiating a nuclear war. On the other hand we want to be to all read vantage to escalate a conventional war in Europe

to a nuclear war. Well we used to have we used to be able to satisfy the latter objective namely it was in our interest to escalate a nuclear war. That was before the Soviets had nuclear weapons and it was probably even true after the Soviets had nuclear weapons but none that could reach us. Those days are gone. The NATO's strategy that relies upon escalation to nuclear weapons relies upon the irrationality of American leaders them doing things that it's clearly not in their nation's interest. That's hard getting harder and harder to be seen as a credible threat. And the way we deal with that is to try to. Not so much make our leaders appear irrational but try and make it appear that things might get out of control. But they don't have complete control over this. We have thousands of weapons in Europe. If there was a war there would you be confident would a Soviet leader be confident that

none of them I could use even if the president didn't want to be used. We've got thousands around the world in submarines we've got them on bombers we've got them on surface ships we've got them in shorter range fighter bombers all over the place and it's sort of like a fuses to the doomsday machine and one has to feel that maybe the president couldn't prevent nuclear war from happening even if he wanted to. If there was a major war going on so we try to maintain the credibility of first use by making it seem like it might happen accidentally or inadvertently not under his control because we know we cannot make it look as if starting a nuclear war would be beneficial to us. It was too long and complicated I should have. Yeah maybe. Maybe I should start out with a paradox. But we asked what was that. Give me your question again and maybe I can do a short version of that.

The I mean you did start with the problem of gee if we have the stable world how are you going to use nuclear weapons first. You know the world it's your side we know we're not there to hurt you and that we actually you. Yeah right. First you're right there is a contradiction between trying to establish a world in which nuclear weapons are not usable to either side's advantage and a world in which the United States relies upon the use of nuclear weapons to deter Soviet conventional aggression in Europe. That contradiction contradiction exists whether you're talking about eliminating nuclear weapons through arms control and disarmament or whether you're talking about keeping nuclear weapons but enhancing

stability by assuring that the Nuclear Weapons of both sides are survivable and would be available for retaliation in either of those cases. Either there were no nuclear weapons to be used or there was no advantage to using them. Well our current strategy in Europe calls for the use of nuclear weapons in the event that the Soviets are winning a conventional war. We cannot have it both ways. I and I think most other people are prepared to pay the price of increased conventional forces to deter the Soviet Union in order to diminish the likelihood of a nuclear war that might destroy us all on both sides racing technology to continue to hurt the other sides. We're not Mars. What is driving this racing counterforce.

Often the argument is made about the importance of survivable forces for stability. You know it's entirely in our power if we want Soviet forces to be survivable. That's quite easy. All we have to do is not have accurate weapons capable of destroying them. Similarly it's in their power if they thought that it was important for our weapons to be survivable that's entirely in their power. They could be sure that they're not threatened. The fact is that each side wants its own weapons to be survivable and it really wants the other side's weapons to be vulnerable. And it's not because they're evil necessarily if the other side strikes you first. You want as many of your weapons as possible to be able to survive. And then what you want to do with them when they survive you want to be able to destroy those weapons of his that still remain if you're a military man. The first thing you want to do in war is destroy the adversaries capability to inflict damage

upon your homeland and your forces. So you want weapons capable of destroying his forces. Well those are called counter force weapons and they're perfectly good for use in a first strike as well as in a second strike. So it's driven not only by technology this thirst for counter force capability but also by the felt need to be able to destroy those forces that the other side has left over after he launches his first strike. What will the role of the scoundrel force capability in instability and brinksmanship is that if one side did indeed feel that the other side was capable of launching a successful for a strike they would then face tool turnitin either to exceed to the other side's demands or to launch an unsuccessful first strike themselves.

So therefore you'd like to have the other side feeling that they could be the victim of a successful first strike but do not have the ability themselves to inflict a successful for a strike. As things stand now or for the forseeable future neither side is in that position a matter of fact the reverse is true. Neither side has anything close to the capability to disarm the other side in a first strike. Well you. Know all of the discussions about the numbers of weapons and the technical characteristic weapons and why there are is so important deal really with hypothetical futures in which things might get worse. Right now the situation is very stable because both sides have many survivable weapons. But we shouldn't become overly complacent. That's good and we ought to keep it that way. Let's

keep it so that neither side could ever imagine that it might be able to launch a successful first strike.