War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with James Schlesinger, 1987 [1]

For the record when. I was there was there any perception that the ticket is a threat. Oh yes oh yes it was a. Long time problem. You'll recall that when he was secretary of defense Mel Laird emphasized the threat of the SS not mine. Perhaps overstated that somewhat and those were not Merv's multiple independently targeted re-entry bodies but it was plain I think in those. Early years that there was the potentiality out there. When I was director of central intelligence I noted this explosion of R&D activity by the Soviets that came after the signing of the treaty and the agreement in Moscow in May of 1972.

And once that had taken place we had this explosion of R&D activity and the beginning of the deployment of these new large throw weight missiles. And from that point on it was obvious that we were going to be in some trouble as DCI. I briefed the NSC on this subject and I indicated what the consequences were for the United States of the very large throw weight that was invited in the prospective Soviet missile force with the improved targeting and guidance. And then I had a comparison of the red and the blue. Dr. Kissinger was quite restless about that at the time because he felt that the DCI should only examine the red and not engage in a net assessment of the red and the

blue. It was plain that we had the potential for difficulty at that time. You lose all that. Oh I see it's just it's a mechanical problem not an not need electronic one. OK let's just stop a little bit on the occasion. You are briefing the president. Oh yes indeed President Nixon was very interested in the use of subjects in fact. He encouraged me to spread the word around on Capitol Hill of the direction in which the Soviets were going in order to reinforce the American position its at that and some future dates to talk about.

We must love it this time. President Nixon your explanation to that was he says don't you that your message is getting to him about the. Way to go. What time. Well the important thing to recognize is that the Soviets had delayed that spurt of R&D activity until after the signing of the treaty an agreement with. The president. Mr Nixon was not astonished by this development because he always thought that the Soviets would behave in what he described as a cold blooded. Manner. And this seemed to be in their interest. It did not come as a great shock or a disappointment to him

that the effect of detente was not to lead to a diminution in Soviet efforts and arms development. The prospect of a of a Soviet expansion. There counterforce capabilities that was embodied in the throw weight that they had had in the old force with the new technologies that they were introducing into the new new force made it clear that the United States should react so as to balance Soviet capabilities. We did not want to be caught at a disadvantage in counter force since the United States has the responsibility of providing protection not only for ourselves and the Canadians here in North America but for our European allies as well. Volatile was basically it.

Well I think that we had. I had thought at the time that the problem was going to be the follow on to the SS 9 which was a large throw away missile. It turned out as we watched the development of the SS 19 by the Soviets that that had transcended what had previously been referred to as a light or small or medium missile. That this was going to have the throw weight essentially of the of the missile that we later laid down has the M-x for that reason. Limiting the Soviets began to go beyond the problem of the controlling the SS 9 follow on. It meant the virtually the entirety of the Soviet ICBM force which prospectively was going to be substantial throw away missiles by American standards.

I think that from the first. There was a tendency on the part of some to exaggerate the likelihood of that. And of course during the 19 late 1970s that began to develop into almost a theology. It is important for defense analysts and for the defense secretary carefully to examine hypothetical exchanges between the two sides in order to see the degree of vulnerability of his own side relative to the vulnerabilities as it were that he might exploit on the other side. That is all appropriate in terms of examination. But what happened in the latest 70s was that. Many people inclined I think to be alarmists

began to move from those hypothetical examinations of the force structure in order to discover one's own vulnerabilities to the suggestion that there was some substantial probability that the Soviets were going to strike the United States. The Soviets historically have had prudent leadership and that would be a most imprudent act in the first place. The United States of course has gone through Pearl Harbor and one may say that the United States has a Pearl Harbor complex and that was reflected in some of the statements of that period. But the likelihood of a bolt from the blue always struck me as minimal. Oh I think that the most important aspect of their two aspects of it. Most important aspect was the question of perception

to the extent that the Soviet strategic forces appear to be substantially stronger than the American and the Soviets appear to be at least hypothetically in the position to initiate an attack because of their advantages in counter-force and the Americans are perceived not to have that capability that the ability of the United States to provide extended deterrence protection for its allies and perhaps substantially eroded. We do not want to run the risk of the erosion of that confidence in America's ability to protect her us. Now the second point is perhaps even more critical. The United States and her allies since 19 since the 1940s when we had dismantled our. Conventional establishment and explicitly since the Eisenhower years has

depended upon nuclear retaliation as a way of deterring Soviet adventurism against Western Europe including a massive conventional attacks. Therefore the United States must on behalf of the alliance have the force posture that it can initiate initiate a nuclear response in response to Warsaw Pact or Soviet aggression unless we have that capability and are perceived to have that capability. The effectiveness of deterrence is a road. He's going to get into that as he's just about to swing into the blessing of God. Doctor you know here you've got this three acts here you just just finished act one we go on to act to the moment

what. Caused it. Oh I had been the director of strategic. Studies at the RAND Corporation during the 1960s before I came to Washington and at that time I was immensely concerned to the expansion of Soviet nuclear capabilities the development of a Soviet counted deterrent and the implications that that ahead for the NATO alliance for U.S. strategy in relation to protecting Western Europe and the. The Doctrine and the force posture or the hoped for force posture both evolved from that prior concern. You may remember that in the

1960s that the. Secretary McNamara. Took the view. That the Strategic Forces of the United States existed for the protection of North America and that his defense reports each year before they went final would always say that we can deter attack on North America. This would have went over to the Department of State and it came back with a little asterisk and the protect the United States and its allies. But the purpose it seems to me of U.S. strategic forces since we provide the deterrent for the alliance must be to protect all of the territories of the NATO allies. And therefore it was necessary to really link in a logical fashion U.S. strategic forces with Western Europe.

That basically is the purpose of and the origins of the so-called Sless in the doctrine. Now what we see is that because of the weaknesses of the alliance in relation to the Soviets and and Warsaw Pact forces on the conventional ground. And a weakness that probably has historically been exaggerated but certainly was there in quantitative terms that we have always depended in the alliance ultimately upon the sanction of initiating the use of nuclear weapons. If one is to do so one must have a doctrine that it logically leads to such linkage. The prior doctrine introduced by Mr McNamara. Of massive. Of a successor to massive retaliation mutual exterior destruction

did not accomplish their purpose what that advertised was that there would be destruction of both sides and quite logically as well as in the eyes of our Europeans the United States was not likely to. To follow a strategy that would inevitably result in the destruction of the United States therefore we had to be able to employ nuclear weapons against hypothetical Soviet attack in such a way that would not lead logically to the destruction of American cities and therefore it must avoid logically the destruction of Soviet cities which would it have had a bully set off such as Soviet response. Well there are two aspects of the of the.

The two possible developments of the doctrine. One of them was counterforce but only one count of force provided you with the opportunity of going after a range of targets in the Soviet Union. And indeed we might if we wished. We might if we wish to go after them. But that might indeed have the kind of reaction on the Soviet part. But you specified. We were not in a position to do that the Soviets were tearing ahead developing their own counterforce kit capabilities with the SS 18 and the SS 19 and we were lagging far behind because we had these small throw weight missiles that had been introduced into the force by Secretary McNamara. Precisely because they did not threaten the Soviets with American counter force capabilities

so we were more limited. That was the reason that we introduced the M-x into the deliberations to tell the Soviet Union that we were prepared to match them in counter force. The thing to understand is that the flaws in the doctrine does not depend upon the. Use of nuclear capabilities for counterforce purposes it depended upon selection of targets in the Soviet Union whether they were counter force or not such that the Soviets would believe that the United States would be prepared to initiate such an attack. This was so called selective targeting and that was much closer to the heart of the doctrine than was a counterforce decision made just because it was a weapon.

Or as a way to put it away different. I was both. Indeed at the time that I made the announcement. I think that it was in late 1973 I stated we are going to have go ahead with the M x. We err we didn't have the name at the time Needless to say we are going to go ahead with the development of a larger throwaway missile and that the purpose of this will be to match Soviet counter force capabilities if need be. That there are advantages to both sides in avoiding the development of counterforce capabilities and if the Soviets in their transition from the SS 9 generation SS 13 generation to the follow on generation were prepared to pull down the throw weight that the United States would not

deploy the Amex and other words the hope was that it was a sufficiently powerful bargaining element that it would persuade the Soviets not to forge ahead with counter force capabilities. On the other hand if they did so the United States ought not to be in a position in which it failed to match the Soviets. Expressed was it the light in your eyes. Well I believe I'm sure that the Air Force as a service will and should had plans hopes for the development of larger throw weight missiles put secularly as the intelligence began to reveal that the

Soviets themselves were moving rapidly in that direction. And thus the Air Force would want additional capability for counterforce purposes going after the Soviet military targets was something that the Air Force wished to do and had included in its. It wasn't the air force that made these decisions but it was really an arm of the Air Force as it was as a strategic air command but it would wish to go after those targets. And as the Soviets had more silos and they were hardened they would leave that in on it effectively to destroy them so if they meet needed more yield and they needed greater accuracy in other words they needed great account of force but the Air Force was not at that time at least particularly interested in the

restraints on targeting that were embodied in the doctrine. Later as they say. This is how well that was anticipated. I think said so in the summer of 73 that if the Soviets proceeded in the direction which they seem to be going in as one looks at this pattern of tests and the initial deployments of these new missiles that it might ultimately require us to go to a different basing mode you do so that for that reason the both sides would benefit from avoiding substantial expansion of counterforce capabilities. So your original goal was always what you thought it was always it just which I don't like.

Well it would be. Well let me make this let me make that very clear and invulnerable. Or a basing mode of low vulnerability is always desirable. It was not essential. It seemed to me in the 1980s during the arguments over the acts that the emphasis was placed upon the wrong issue and notably by the administration the administration put all of its emphasis in the 1980 campaign on achieving silo invulnerability or closing the window of vulnerability as the catch word was during the campaign. The purpose of the M-x was not to inch of invulnerability embracing that was desirable but the purpose was

to provide for the Soviet Union an indication that the United States if it initiated if it initiated could. Go after the Soviet forces and that the United States continued to be interested in arms control and was prepared to cap or reduce any count of force capabilities so that both sides would avoid having these kinds of capabilities but that the United States itself was not going to allow the Soviet Union unilaterally to develop those capabilities. Now when one puts one's emphasis upon silo in vulnerability one is asking for trouble because those are the basic modes that we then had could not guarantee could not come close to guaranteeing invulnerability and therefore as a quote Congress might be anticipated to

question whether it wanted to invest the phones this year probably wouldn't call it. Well it certainly was a misperception from my standpoint the important thing was to create uncertainties on the part of the Soviets about what America could do. In the later 1970s the administration the Carter administration imposed an apparent requirement of an invulnerable basing mode that led to a race track and so forth all of which was desirable because less vulnerability is more desirable than greater vulnerability but it was not essential to in

my judgment to bring about the deployment of the M-x the M-x was there to match the Soviets or to persuade them seriously to bargain. Believe what you wish you know that all things go well I think that they went along quite well. In fact surprisingly well as you may remember Jimmy Carter. Spent a fair amount of time during the campaign in 1960 76 criticizing the doctrine. He did not criticize it by name or really was he well versed in the doctrine. But during. His period in office he gradually came to see

that the United States had to maintain a deterrent that was sufficiently sophisticated to provide extended deterrence for Western Europe and indeed when I left office. He gave me the national security medal and said that I had been right about defense matters. That was a gradual evolution for Mr. Curtis. I think that. There may have been too much Triumph as it were in the way we were going because you may remember the if that was the phrase that was used during the Carter years that was adopted with regard to strategic matters that is talked about targeting command control of the Soviet Union.

My view is that that is not only not an objective of U.S. targeting doctrine it undermines the very purposes for which we have these doctrines and for which we provide the capabilities in the war plans in the event that they are needed. The reason for that is that the Soviet Union can destroy the United States. The United States can destroy the Soviet Union in order to. Preserve restraint on both sides. In a hypothetical engagement we must maintain communications with the Soviet leaders and to target Soviet leadership to target Soviet command and control is to my mind ill advised and undermines the purposes of the doctrine which is to impose restraint and to achieve one's objectives of preserving the Western world with a

minimum of destruction if one targets the leadership one forfeits the possibility of communication and once the leadership is gone. The war plans on the other side are likely to be automated and result in a much higher level vastly higher level of destruction in the West. Well I don't I don't want to talk about specific examples. The reason that the United States and United States and her allies maintain an array of forces is to impose upon the Soviet leaders military and civilian a degree of uncertainty as to what the United States or what the Western response would be

in the event that they launched a massive attack against Western Europe. And in this respect in this regard we want to have a variety of potential responses. So some of them would be involve. Only only very limited use of weapons close to the forward edge of the battle area. Another set of responses might involve. Plucking out of targets in eastern Europe another set of responses might be to remove selective targets in the Soviet Union such as early warning systems putting out Soviet eyes as it were. But those are very limited and discreet targets. And finally there is the possibility of going after a large segment of their counterforce capabilities of their ICBM capabilities. It was the role of the M-x in

effect to. Provide the embodiment of the capacity to fulfill that last assignment. But we do not want the Soviets to know or think that they know what we might do under those circumstances we should have a variety of alternatives and what the M-x did was to enrich the alternatives that we had. At the same time as improving the perception of the balance between the two. It was just oh it was a very serious I think political mistake. It's a it's a tendency of. Oh. Yes I think that it was a serious political

mistake of the administration a new administration can have its own judgments with regard to the deficiencies of the plans of their predecessors. But if the administration the new administration had thought it through it would have realized that the effect of of canceling and pouring as it were boiling water over the plans of its predecessor resulted in an endangering of the M-x production and production line itself. And that seemed to me to be ill advised. What it should have done was to say we have our reservations about the card a deployment scheme. However at this time we prefer are prepared to go ahead with it. We may make modifications later on and call upon the Congress to support that modification scheme it would have been very hurried under those circumstances. With the

Democrats on Capitol Hill to repudiate the program that had been put forth by. President Carter. Instead they pushed it aside demanded as I'm mentioned earlier. We have essentially an invulnerable basing mode and put forward a dense pack with quite an adequate preparation of the Congress really dense pack may have its technical virtues but it is counter intuitive. The belief that you provide lower vulnerability by bringing all of your missiles together when in the past the notion had been that you provided reduce vulnerability by dispersing them was a difficult transition. And that is the kind of things that one must brief the appropriate people on Capitol Hill. Indeed. They should

be careful press briefings and all. And the like before it is exploded on the public and on the Congress. This thing was announced one day without printing prior proper preparation and as a result it elicited a great deal of ridicule for to put it mildly. These things have to be thought out very carefully in advance. The way that the administration proceeded by destroying the purdah plan was to burn the. House down before there was an alternative. That does not seem to be wise in terms of getting things done on the other hand. All new administrations tend to do something of this sort. Brant asked a number of us myself. Mel Laird I think I can't remember precisely.

Who was involved to serve as a senior councilors. Now since this was a subject close and dear to my heart I worked industriously with General Scowcroft and his and particularly with those members of the Scowcroft commission who were. Industriously engaged in the production of the document. Do you feel that it was. I thought it was an enormously useful exercise and I wish that its its utility had been longer preserved only when it was produced. Almost everybody in doest at the administration in Boston and what we saw later on was they a breaking up of the various groups into. The prison into the positions that they had held before the Scowcroft report with the Scowcroft report did quite simply was to try and bind together

all parties in a compromise based upon pursuit of arms control on the Hill. Obtaining of Democratic support by pursuing the midshipmen and the production of the AMEX for the standard reasons and what happened was that this was embraced initially but after a while. Some of the Democrats asserted that the administration was not pursuing control vigorously and backed away from its support of the M-x. Various conservatives on Capitol Hill who never enamelled of the midshipman backed away from its thought and as a result the compromise that could have provided us with an indication of where we should be going with regard to the development of strategic forces ultimately fell apart. But it was went in the right direction and it should have been longer preserved.

Yes indeed it was. Yes and No. I think that is it was important to get that production line started up because of its impact on Soviet perceptions particularly after a whole range of U.S. presidents had called for production of the emacs on the other hand if the Congress rebelled very quickly and imposed a cap of 50 m axis to be deployed. And I think that in light of the billions of dollars of research and development funding a billion dollars of start up costs start production. That if we wind up with the deployment of only 50 missiles

that the augmentation of our capability is far less than the resources that will have been expended so I have mixed feelings about that. I should note that I read. I found it odd that the Reagan administration reduced the kurta goal from 200 m axis to 100 m axis in the name of strengthening our nuclear deterrent. And I was of within the Scowcroft commission I long advocated that we should go back to the original goal of 200 m axis and I think the final phrase was something along the lines of to avoid at least 100 m axis you prize it. It's too strong to say that it's the price we had to pay there

was a large element of it and in my judgment they should not have been the stress in the report on the deployment of midshipmen. I thought that we needed a vigorous R&D program in the midget man area but it was too soon to say that that was something on which we should spend the funds to deploy. I think that subsequently. Events have justified the need for R&D expenditure as for the major demand but I wanted a vigorous R&D program. I did not want to go to a promise of deployment. That last part I think was the price that we had to pay to bring in some of the. Liberals on Capitol Hill who were would only vote for the M-x under those circumstances. Well let me let me add something to the question of the

midshipman. And the reason is that there was such a premium placed upon large throw weight missiles. Was that the 1972 agreement limited the number of silos and when one limits the number of silos one establishes a premium to put as many are a viz a missile with maximum throw weight in each one of those silos. We are now heading down the road to some things that probably we should have done earlier which is to limit the number of our of these arms weapons that can be deployed irrespective of the basing mode that switches the emphasis from maximizing the number of our of ease in a limited number of silos to protecting aim points. And in that role there is a much greater premium

on something like the midget man. In the next five years we. Fade away. Well I think that is premature to make a final judgment it depends upon the evolution of the start discussions which have proceeded to a point but as yet we do not know whether there will be a culmination of these discussions if indeed there is a limitation and perhaps a severe limitation placed upon the number of ballistic missile R vs warheads. Then the case for the MX for the midshipmen will have been strengthened. The irony is that the support for the

midshipmen seems to be diminishing at the moment that the logical case for it has been strengthened and the. The downward pressure on the defense budget means that there will be a reluctance to expend the very heavy guns involved in R and further R and D midget man of the start up costs of production. The very high Owen m costs operations operational costs that will be associated with that kind of weapon system and the budgetary pressures may lead us to neglect the image of man and to deploy more axes. With all of the vulnerabilities associated with a. Minimum number of aim points for the Soviets to attack.

Now you talk about this in the doctrine issue versus the doctrine. The point that you have flowing no where was the a point that must be borne in mind is that although the acts and the augmentation of our strategic forces came at the same time as the change in doctrine that they are independent of the doctrine we wanted the change in doctrine as a way of real linking US strategic forces to the security of Western Europe irrespective of what happened with regard to the augmentation of those forces.

In other words the sizing of the forces and the targeting doctrine was to a large extent independent. Some have thought of the M X as synonymous with the change in doctrine. One should bear in mind that it is not and that we needed the change of doctrine even if we did little to augment our forces. We certainly we certainly did not have the hardware at the time of the change of doctrine seriously to contemplate a major counterforce strike against Soviet ICBM's. We had the hardware around to make selective strikes against the Soviet Union and thereby to make credible. The American threat to respond to a massive Soviet attack

against Western Europe we had immediately the capacity to strike selectively. But we did not have the capacity to strike in a counterforce manner. But the former. Was sufficient to bring about a change of doctrine. Here or. There reality. Well in the first place I think that on the philosophical level we

should understand that there is no advantage in pursuing counterforce for its own sake that if we can avoid it we should. But we cannot allow the Soviets unilaterally to have an asymmetrical advantage over the United States particularly because we are more dependent upon nuclear deterrence than they are and they. Must see that the United States has matching forces in my judgment with regard to Bill Colby. It is not the function of the director of central intelligence to prescribe the U.S. force posture. Bill attended even in office to be a proponent of minimal deterrence. And since leaving office he has become.

A critic of what he missed just three actually. Well I think that you have if you look at this in historical terms or in philosophical terms that you see you have. The fears of the left and the fears of the right sort of matching each other on the part of the. American conservatives they fear the Soviet bolt from the blue that some bright morning that the Soviets and a wave of imprudence are going to decide to launch an attack against the United States without any. Strategic crisis occurring in

advance I think that that is most unlikely. On the other hand and perhaps at least in my judgment even more serious consequences flow from the belief on the part. Of the. Of those on the left who argue that deploying our forces will result in a degree of instability likely to lead to war. The fact of the matter is that the balance between the two powers has been and will continue to be very stable. The stability between the two powers is I think one of the reasons that we should continue to be optimistic about the future. Now if you look at the force structure just as the right ignored the existence of the submarine forces of the Barmah forces of the complexity of attack and hypothesized as Soviet bolt from the

blue against our ICBMs. So the left when it talks about the instabilities of these multi headed missiles ignores the fact of the sophistication of the forces on both sides which provide the stability. To the arms balance and you have exaggerations. That I think lead to a misinterpretation of the problem. One of the most happy aspects about the Scowcroft commission report is that it underscored the complexity of an attack against elements of the US to terrorists and how the various elements of the U.S. deterrent the submarines the bombers the ICBMs and so on tended to reinforce each other increase the difficulty of the Soviet planning process. If you do as some do

as some former high level officials do and look simply at the ICBM exchange you are exaggerating the risks. Either of a Soviet attack for the one party or alternatively of mutual instability for those on the other side of the political spectrum. Oh of course the Soviets understand. That the United States can initiate under great provocation resume provocation of an all out assault against Western Europe in such a way that it avoids Soviet cities avoids destroying Soviet population and it places upon the Soviet

leadership the burden of responding to that in a way that precludes the destruction of Soviet cities so they must respond with restraint if they see that we have that capability. The Soviets will continue to be deterred in the future as they have been. We believe for the last 40 years. One must understand that since the late 40s and early 50s the United States has discouraged its allies from acquiring nuclear weapons and has urged upon them the belief that the sophisticated nuclear deterrent provided by the United States can provide greater deterrence for its allies in Western Europe and in Japan than can

the proliferation of small nuclear capabilities. And we are today pledged through the NATO's alliance and in our agreements with the Japanese to hold an umbrella over our principal allies.