War; #108; The Knife Edge of Deterrence

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deterrence was provided by the corporation for public broadcasting. Additional funding was provided by this station and other public television stations, and by the Bullet Foundation, the Rockefeller Family and Associates, and the Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation. There's an uneasy peace in the world today. A nuclear standoff between East and West. We deter each other from starting a war by threatening to retaliate with devastating force. This idea of nuclear deterrence has worked so far, but some believe time may be running out. We've got a situation that resembles the classic scene from a western movie, you know, two men are facing each other down, all offense, and each one looking for the other to make a move for that nuclear sex gun, and both of them knowing perfectly well that the man who gets in the first shot has got the best chance of

survival. The risk of nuclear war today is far greater than I am willing to pass on to my children or grandchildren, and it's incumbent upon both sides, particularly on the U .S. to take the lead, to increase this stability deterrence, and reduce the risk of nuclear war. Ever since World War II, defense plan has a theorized that the next major war could start right here, on the border between East and West Germany, but there has been peace here for more than 40 years. It's a peace enforced by a strategic idea called deterrence. We deter the

Soviets from invading Western Europe by threatening to retaliate if necessary with nuclear weapons. In other words, if the Soviets launched an invasion, they would suffer consequences far beyond anything they could possibly hope to achieve. The same threat is used to keep the Soviets from attacking the United States. That is how deterrence keeps the peace. Strategic thinking in the nuclear age has been guided by deterrence because the prospect of a nuclear war is almost too terrifying to contemplate. Shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a Yale political scientist named Bernard Brody published an essay that foresaw deterrence and helped lay the foundation for it. He said, thus far, the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on, its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.

Back in Brody's time, the United States had a monopoly of nuclear weapons, and it was easy to see how deterrence worked. If the Russians would launch an attack on the United States or its allies, the result would be Hiroshima a thousand times over, and we let them know it. War between the superpowers was easily deterred. Now deterrence has become much more complex and fragile. Each side has tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, all of them more powerful and accurate than the atomic bombs of 40 years ago. Today's nuclear strategist talk easily of such things as selective targeting and planning for victory in a limited nuclear war. And President Reagan's so -called Star Wars plan has fueled concerns that a new generation of weapons could propel the arms race into outer space. In these circumstances, can deterrence still keep the peace? That is the question we will explore in this special program.

The history of nuclear deterrence began to unfold on August 6, 1945. Early that morning an American bomber took off on a historic mission. Its target was the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Its payload was an atomic bomb called Little Boy. We are now prepared to destroy more rapidly and completely. Every productive enterprise the Japanese have in any city. We shall destroy their doubts, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake. We shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war. President Harry Truman was confident that his decision to use the atomic bomb was correct. It seemed the best way to hasten Japan's surrender and bring the war to a close. But Truman also was anxious to see

that the bomb would never be used again. In his memoirs, he wrote, Ever since Hiroshima, I had never stopped thinking about the frightful implications of the atomic bomb. We knew that this revolutionary scientific creation could destroy civilization unless put under control and placed at the service of mankind. In his quest to ensure peaceful development of atomic energy, Truman turned to the United Nations. On June 14, 1946, an American proposal for international control of atomic energy was presented to the UN by Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch. We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. That is our business. The American proposal called for the UN to establish an atomic development authority that would supervise all peacetime development of atomic energy. If the UN accepted the plan, Baruch pledged that the United States would dispose of its

existing atomic bombs and reveal its atomic secrets. Baruch's speech was hailed in the press as thoughtful, imaginative and courageous. The Soviet Union, however, was much less enthusiastic. Moscow emphatically rejected the American plan, dashing any hope of international control. During the coming years, the Soviets began to tighten their grip on Eastern Europe and communism came to be seen as a growing threat to the democracies of the West. The Cold War was heating up. With a cynical

disregard for the hopes of mankind, the leaders of the Soviet Union have topped democracy and have set up dictatorships. They have proclaimed national independence, but imposed national slavery. The Cold War created mounting pressure on Truman to develop a coherent policy on the use of nuclear weapons. That pressure intensified in August 1949 when American planes detected high levels of radiation over the Pacific Ocean. Several days later, government investigators confirmed that the Soviet Union had exploded an atomic device, suddenly communist threat loomed larger than ever before. Truman responded by ordering this substantial increase in atomic weapons research and production. More important, he authorized development of the hydrogen bomb. The weapon with seemingly unlimited destructive capability.

Four, three, two, one, two. The hydrogen bomb decision helped to thrust nuclear weapons to the center of defense planning. Our policy was clear. We would intimidate the Soviets by maintaining a large arsenal of the most powerful and sophisticated nuclear weapons. The framework for nuclear deterrence had been created. Throughout the 1950s, the United States came to rely on its growing nuclear arsenal to deter Soviet aggression in the free world. Our allies were unwilling to maintain huge standing armies, so nuclear weapons were seen as the most

cost -effective deterrent. They simply provided more bang for the buck. But the Soviet Union was rapidly challenging America's nuclear superiority. By the 1960s, both sides were able to threaten each other with nuclear devastation. The emerging balance of terror added new dimensions to strategic planning. In 1961, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara traveled to strategic air command headquarters in Omaha. His mission was to review the nation's strategy for using nuclear weapons. He found that the United States planned to launch an all -out first strike if the Soviets threatened to invade Western Europe. The purpose was to try to knock out the Soviet nuclear forces. But McNamara knew that our targeting capabilities were not that sophisticated. At best, we would succeed only in killing hundreds of millions of people and inviting the Soviets to launch a

crushing retaliatory strike in return. Well, my reaction was that the number one, those who thought that even with our tremendous numerical superiority, which at that time was on the order of ten to one vis -a -vis the Soviets, I've forgotten the exact figures, but I think we had in early 61 the time of my visit to SAC about 6 ,000 or 6 ,500 strategic warheads in the Soviets had less than 500. But even with that tremendous numerical superiority, I didn't believe we had what is known as a first strike capability. That is to say, an ability to launch an attack against the Soviet nuclear forces and destroy such a high percentage of that force that the remaining force could not inflict unacceptable damage on us. If one defines a first strike capability in that way, I didn't believe we had it then. There were those at

SAC who believed we did. So that was the first point of shock. I was shocked to learn that there was something we thought we could act in that way. Secondly, I was shocked at the devastation that would accrue to both societies in the event of a nuclear exchange. And I recognized that the strategy which had been adopted in the 1950s and which in effect we had inherited called for just that under certain circumstances. And it seemed to me therefore a strategy that was bankrupt. McNamara thought the United States should stop trying to build a first strike capability. He believed that if we persisted, the Soviets would respond by building more weapons than we could ever hope to destroy. The arms race would have no limits. First strike capability, by the way, is both, I think, unattainable. It was unattainable then and certainly is today. And it is destabilizing. Because if one's opponent believes that we were following a first strike

strategy, there would be a great temptation to preemption, which would endanger us. So for that reason, as well as others, I was opposed to a first strike strategy. After his visit to sack headquarters, McNamara explored a number of new strategic options. None of them proved satisfactory. He finally concluded that the only reasonable strategy was one that stressed deterrence, not the fighting of a nuclear war. He believed the mere threat of devastating retaliation was enough to deter the Soviets. Publicly, he began to speak of a new strategic doctrine called assured destruction. It means that we would build nuclear forces so large that the Soviets would be deterred from ever launching a nuclear attack against the U .S. or its allies. Because our forces would be not only so large,

but sufficiently invulnerable to survive such an attack with the power so great that we could inflict unacceptable damage on the Soviet Union. That is the meaning of assured destruction. That has been the basis of deterring Soviet nuclear attack on NATO for the last 25 years. It is the basis for such deterrence. Today, I believe it will remain the basis for the next 25 years. Assured destruction was designed primarily to strengthen deterrence, but it also was intended to help slow down the arms race. It was a message to the Soviets that we would stop trying to build a first strike capability. We would no longer try to build all the weapons needed to knock out their growing nuclear forces. Instead, we would deploy only enough weapons to target and destroy a number of Soviet cities and industrial centers, if they launched an attack.

It was a much more attainable goal, a goal that would require fewer weapons. McNamara hoped the Soviets would adopt a similar strategy and build only enough weapons to threaten our major cities with destruction. They figured that this state of mutual assured destruction would stabilize deterrence. If we could destroy a number of their cities, and they could destroy a number of ours, neither side would dare launch an attack. It all sounded good in theory, but the Soviets refused to cooperate. They began developing missile defense systems to protect their cities. We responded by authorizing new weapons to penetrate their defenses. An endless, expensive arms race seemed inevitable. The United States came to believe there was only one way to break that cycle. Both sides would have to accept mutual assured destruction and agree not to defend their cities against attack. In

1972, the Soviets came around to our way of thinking on defense. In May of that year, a treaty was signed limiting each side to a small token force of anti -ballistic missiles. This was quite a surprise to us because the Soviets had breached the doctrine that defenses were good. They were humane. They were not intended to kill people, but to kill weapons. We heard all of those arguments, but when it came to the negotiation in the very first week, they admitted that they had been wrong. Gerard Smith was the chief United States negotiator of the anti -ballistic missile treaty. We felt that deployment of defenses, strategic defenses, would be a destabilizing move. It would leave both sides to worry about their penetration capability, about the integrity of their deterrent forces. We thought that we would not only

have a race in defensive systems, but an exacerbated race in offensive systems. Both sides would see the need to have more and more effective offensive weapons to penetrate the defenses on the other side. So it looked like a double race that we were facing with nobody and a win and the net result less security for both sides. The anti -ballistic missile treaty did curb the race in defensive weapons, but the offensive arms race continued. The restraint we had hoped for never materialized. Each side continued to build a more powerful and sophisticated nuclear force. Today, the world's nuclear stockpile has grown to roughly 50 ,000 weapons, deployed in such a way that each side fears the other is planning to launch a first strike.

The situation has become dangerously unstable. There is an action reaction phenomenon here. When they move, we react. When we move, they react. All two frequently. Neither side takes proper account of how its actions will influence the other side. And I maintain that today, the stability of deterrents is much less than is required to reduce the risk of nuclear war to acceptable levels. The risk of nuclear war today is far greater than I am willing to pass on to my children or grandchildren. And it's incumbent upon both sides, particularly on the U .S., to take the lead, to increase the stability of deterrents, and reduce the risk of nuclear war. We don't want to radiate, we don't want to radiate, we don't want to radiate. Almost everyone agrees that something must be done to stabilize deterrents and reduce the threat of nuclear war, where they disagree is on

how to do it. Some advocate arms control, disarmament, and various political solutions. Others believe that science and technology hold the answer. Let me share with you a vision of the future which offers hope. It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat, with measures that are defensive. In March 1983, President Reagan unveiled his Strategic Defense Initiative. SDI is a multi -billion dollar program designed to uncover new defense technologies. President's goal is to develop effective defenses against nuclear attacks. His hope is to render nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U .S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?

I know this is a formidable technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet current technology has attained a level of sophistication, where it's reasonable for us to begin this effort. At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory located east of the San Francisco Bay Area. Scientists and engineers in the laboratory's Beam Research Program are studying the utility of intense beams of high energy electrons for defensive weapons. The Strategic Defense Initiative is rapidly becoming the most ambitious research project in history. The administration hopes to see more than $25 billion spent on the program by the end of the decade. The money is being used to explore a broad range of new and for the most part, exotic defense technologies. These include space -based lasers, particle beam weapons, and electromagnetic guns that would launch hard projectiles at incoming warheads.

Almost no idea is off -limits. Scientists are being asked to stretch their imaginations. Well, the goal is, of course, to eliminate the make obsolete, make infinite, so we had nuclear missiles of intermediate and intercontinental range. And what you're trying to do is to destroy them outside the atmosphere before they get near any target. You're not trying to protect missile silos. You are trying to protect continents. You're trying to protect people, of course. And the goal is to have it as thoroughly reliable as possible, and as soon as possible. And I'm convinced we can do it. Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger believes that a reliable defense system would provide a strong deterrent to Soviet nuclear attack. If this could be done, the Soviets then would see very little reason, whatever, to put in such an attack. And many, many reasons not to, because if they knew that we could defend against their missile, leaving

our own retaliatory capability intact, the chances that they would put in that attack are enormously diminished. And that's why it is so essential that we try to do everything we can to realize this very noble ideal and goal of the President, which is really to eliminate this kind of threat. Now, it wouldn't in war or anything of that kind. It doesn't, it's not a defense against conventional weapon. But if you could get something that would render impotent and useless, the Soviet nuclear missiles, both intercontinental and intermediate range, you would have accomplished more, I think, perhaps than anyone had done for centuries. The heavens are for

wonder, not for war, stop star wars, stop weapons in space. I don't think it's impossible, but the probabilities are so small that it comes as close to impossibility as I can imagine. I can't think of any other time in history, in my memory, when such a campaign for scientific boycotting of a program was launched. Opposition to the Strategic Defense Initiative has been led by scientists, like these at the University of Washington. They are among hundreds of scientists across the country who have signed pledges refusing to participate in the SDI research effort. As scientists, we're very interested in technical aspects of things, we're very interested in will this stuff work, will it not, will some new ideas come out of it, will it be interesting? But there's a much more important question that we have to deal with than we are dealing with, and that is for the last 40 years, we've had a very serious political

problem on our hands that has to be solved somehow politically. It's not just up to scientists to solve it, of course, it's up to everyone, but every emersment in technical developments like SDI serves as a diversion. In fact, not only of scientists, but of many, many other people, it serves as a diversion from what I think is the overriding political, economic, and social and ethical problem of our times. That is the possibility that our world may not survive as we know it. Critics believe the United States can never build an effective defense against nuclear attack. They fail the Soviets will be able to overwhelm the system with space mines, decoys, and greater numbers of offensive weapons. They contend that the money spent on strategic defense will simply by an unprecedented Soviet arms build up and extend the arms race into outer space. If we begin to pursue the goal of a layered

defense, which is presumed to offer some remote possibility of protecting our cities, the Soviet reaction must be a substantial expansion of their offensive forces, which will not increase the security of the United States, indeed, by a worsening of the political relationship between the two superpowers would probably diminish the stability in the world generally. James Schlesinger was Secretary of Defense under President Nixon and President Ford. When the Senate debated the issue of strategic defense this year, Senator Johnston of Louisiana stood up on the floor and said, is there anybody in this body who believes in the President's vision? If there is anybody in this body, would he speak up? And there was no one in the Senate who

responded at that time. The President's position is regarded as a hope, a distant hope, and to a large extent a forelaw and hope. What we can do, of course, is to deploy a lesser strategic defense. But we ought to be very careful before initiating deployment because the likely Soviet response is an expansion of offensive forces that would overwhelm the defense and certainly worsen the political climate. I think the criticism is a cogent criticism because I know that if the Soviets were to deploy defenses, we would react by deploying penetration capability and increasing our offensive forces. And I think we should. Harold Brown served as Defense Secretary under President Jimmy Carter. Given the enormously destructive effects of even one nuclear weapon and the fact that

there are always countermeasures to every measure, a perfect defense or near perfect defense of the kind that would be needed to reduce the damage from an attack by thousands of nuclear weapons or even hundreds of nuclear weapons. To a low level, one or two or three or five exploding on the country, seems to me unlikely. And indeed, very few military and technically informed people would believe or have said that they believe that you can reduce the effects of nuclear weapons through to that extent. Supporters of the strategic defense initiative generally acknowledge that it would be all but impossible to achieve a perfect defense against Soviet missiles. They argue, however, that even a partially effective system

would be better than the situation we find ourselves in today. If today the Soviet leadership had to ask itself, well, if we carry out an attack that's only 50 percent effective, does that make any sense? And the answer is absolutely no sense. Lieutenant General Daniel Graham is a retired Army officer who has also served as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He now heads a lobbying group called High Frontier that has been urging Congress to continue putting up money for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Part of the argument, or one of the ways that this opposition that you just brought up is expressed, is it would be destabilizing. But that assumes we've got a stable situation today. And what we've got is an unstable situation that's getting more and more unstable as these offensive weapons become more and more accurate and deadly. We've got a situation that resembles the classic scene from a

Western movie, two men are facing each other down all offense. And each one looking for the other to make a move for that nuclear -six gun. And both of them knowing perfectly well that the man that gets in the first shot has got the best chance of survival. Now that's an unstable situation, in my view. What would be a lot more stable if these two guys were in foxholes with defended glaring at each other. Much more stable. Now some say, well, if a few get through, it's worthless. That flies in the face of all logic in my judgment. It's better to have five or ten or a hundred get through than eight thousand get through. Air Force Lieutenant General James Abramson is head of the SDI program. The reason that a defense is so important is that the Soviets would not go to war in Europe just as in the United States unless they could control every level of escalation. And

if they feel that they are deprived of control of that last most meaningful layer, the nuclear attack layer, then they will be less inclined to even start. I asked my daddy what the Star Wars stuff is all about. He said that right now we can't protect ourselves from nuclear weapons. And that's why the president wants to build the peace shield. It would stop missiles and outer space so they couldn't hit our house. Then nobody could win a war. And if nobody could win a war, there's no reason to start one. My daddy's smart. Support the peace shield. Mr. Chairman, fellow members, I rise to offer an amendment to the fiscal year 86 defense authorization that addresses what is perhaps the central world security issue of our time, banishing the threat of nuclear holocaust from our planet forever. When Congress recently considered funding for the Strategic Defense Initiative, one thing became

clear. The debate over strategic defense is in many ways a fundamental controversy over deterrence and arms control. On one side are those who maintain that deterrence is kept strong by the threat of mutual assured destruction. They believe arms control offers the best hope for someday reducing the risk of nuclear war. Mr. Chairman, I believe strongly that the only effective means to reduce the kind of tension that leads to nuclear confrontation is through negotiation and dialogue, through adherence to our treaty commitments and monitoring of Soviet compliance. Of course we need a deterrent, and I've always supported that. But technology and fear have gotten us into this predicament. Technology and sheer bravado will not get us out. It will only dig us in deeper. On the other side of the debate are those who have become frustrated with arms control and deterrence. They believe the Soviets

are preparing a first strike capability and planning to build defense systems of their own. They say America has no choice other than to move forward with strategic defense. Arms control, as we have known it, has been a dismal failure. Consider that since the Salt One agreements were assigned 13 years ago, the Soviets have deployed 30 new or significantly modified strategic weapons. Unless we act now to make a dramatic shift in our arms and arms control policies, substituting non -nuclear strategic fences for offensive nuclear weapons, we risk plunging over the brink into a dangerous age of growing strategic instability. Now is the time to choose. We can continue down the road we have been since the 1960s, depending upon more and more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction to deter war, or we can choose the high road of mutual assured survival. With all nations and peoples protected from nuclear war by a star shield of purely defensive weapons.

There is one group caught in the middle of the controversy of a strategic defense. It is our NATO allies in Western Europe. Europeans know their homelands could be the site of a future superpower conflict, one that could easily escalate to the nuclear level. So when the United States talks of a change in strategic doctrine, Europeans become nervous. They rely on America to keep the peace. These American troops stationed in West Germany are the front line of deterrence. They are part of an American force in Europe that numbers more than 300 ,000. If the Soviet Union were to invade our NATO allies, the troops here are ready to fight. Their primary function, though, is to

prevent the Soviets from even considering an invasion. But it's not the troops themselves that deter Soviet aggression. It's what they represent. The soldiers here symbolize America's guarantee to defend Europe with nuclear weapons, if necessary. The goal is to leave the Soviets uncertain as to how NATO would respond to an attack. It's a strategy called flexible response. There isn't a calculation that could take place in the Kremlin, which says that they could attack us and win or survive. There isn't a calculation, however you try to work it out. Michael Hesselstein is great Britain's Secretary of State for Defense. The essence of our defense policy is to maintain that certainty that we're not going to attack them, but if they attack us, it is a policy of certain disaster for them. Once you get behind that situation, you see why we have preserved the peace in Western Europe and in the North Atlantic Partnership so successfully for so long. There isn't a calculation upon which that peace can be undermined.

Most Europeans credit the United States nuclear guarantee with keeping the peace here. So it's easy to see why many would be apprehensive about the Strategic Defense Initiative and its goal of making nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. They are reluctant to abandon a strategy that has worked so well for so long. Britain's Lord Carrington is the Secretary General of NATO. I don't believe it's worked. I know it's worked. There hasn't been a war for 40 years. If anybody can explain to me why there hasn't been a war for 40 years other than because there is a tolerance. And we keep up our capacity and our credibility and masses of defense. I'm prepared to listen to anybody who's got another explanation. But to me there isn't another explanation and we would be mad to give it away. And mad to pretend that there is any other way at the present time of keeping the peace of the world. And however distasteful it may

be to people. However, worried people may be about nuclear weapons and war. Very much better that we should be in the condition we are now not having a war with the nuclear weapons and having a war. American officials have tried to gain support over here by claiming that strategic defenses would ultimately protect Europe as well as the United States. Many European defense analysts, however, remain skeptical. They do not believe Europe could ever be fully protected from nuclear attack. After all, there are low -flying Soviet missiles and bombers stationed just a few hundred miles away. As they see it, Europe will always be vulnerable. But some analysts think European should support the strategic defense initiative anyway, even if it will not protect them directly. They believe Europe will be more secure if America can protect itself from nuclear attack. That is because an American president

will be more likely to honor the U .S. nuclear guarantee if his own cities are safe from Soviet retaliation. That is the view of Gerald Frost, Director of the Institute for European Defense and Strategic Studies. Well, the present strategy, as you know, is one of flexible response. But the final rung and the latter of escalation is an exchange of nuclear missiles between the United States and the Soviet Union. And we depend on the readiness of America to press the button. Now, many people have doubted whether America would press the button, knowing that the response from the Soviets would be catastrophic in the damage that it would cause to the American homelands. Now, I think that the effect of an effective defensive system, if we get one, will be to diminish those risks, because it would save American lives and it would protect American military installations. So the guarantees would be more

viable because the potential costs of giving those guarantees would be fewer. Well, I think the assession is all right so far as it goes. I mean, yes, it would be true, I think, that Europe would feel safer if the United States were itself wholly protected by some kind of defense. But the assumption we have to make is that the Soviet Union will also move in the same direction. The Soviet Union will also begin to protect itself and may succeed in large measure in protecting itself. Then what happens? Colonel Jonathan Alford is Deputy Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He thinks the pursuit of strategic defense would actually increase the danger of war in Europe, especially if the United States and Soviet Union both deploy systems to protect themselves. The danger is the Europeans will see it as that you've made the world safe again for conventional war, because what is it that would deter the Soviet Union then from attacking Western

Europe? What I think deters them now is the possibility, indeed the probability that any war in Europe would escalate to the nuclear level from which there would be no winners, both the Soviet Union and the United States would be wholly destroyed. Now, if you remove that danger and risk, then I think you could get the Soviet Union more adventurous and be prepared to think about the kind of military aggressive moves in Europe which they have for swan for so long. And in my nightmares, I never dream about a nuclear war. I don't believe it. What I worry about is a good old massive conventional war because that's a general, that's what the general know how to fight. You know, they know how to fight with tanks and airplanes. They don't know how to fight with nuclear weapons and that's why they don't fight. Kerala Lush is Associate Director of the French Institute of International Relations. He believes deterrence is best

served if the United States and the Soviet Union maintain the threat of assured destruction. I don't know any other system, any other weapon in the history of humanity that has scared people so much that they haven't gone to war for political purposes. They have gone to war without war, without physical war. They fought with ideologically, they fought with proxies in Angola or in the Middle East, they fought through communist parties, whatever, but they haven't gone to war. And every time the US and Soviet came close to it, they never did it. It's just too dangerous. It is important to understand that the strategic defense controversy is really nothing new. The same issues were raised before the anti -ballistic missile treaty was signed in the early 1970s. And in fact, the United States and the Soviet Union have both been conducting research into strategic defense ever since.

The debate today, however, has taken on a new intensity because of President Reagan's desire to move beyond the research phase. A number of administration officials have said publicly that if strategic defense proves to be workable and cost effective, the United States wants to go ahead with deployment. But there's a problem with that. Deployment would be a clear violation of the anti -ballistic missile treaty. So the administration has been talking about negotiating new arms agreements, agreements that would allow both sides to build defense systems. The idea is to have the Soviets join us in a transition from a world that relies on mutual assured destruction to one that relies on defense. We wish to discuss that now with the Russians. We wish to discuss with them now how one might manage a joint project toward the introduction of the forces of both sides of such systems if they're developed by us or developed by the Soviets. Ambassador Paul

Knitzer, the president's chief advisor on arms control, says that a transition to defense should be the ultimate goal of arms control talks in Geneva. He thinks we can reach such an accord without stimulating the arms race. My practical view of it is the prime and first thing to do is to get the Russians to agree with us that there ought to be meaningful reductions and radical reductions, great reductions in the offensive forces of both sides. But they really have to be greater on the Soviet side because the Soviets have expanded their forces and have much more powerful and dangerous offensive forces than do we, particularly in the land -based, prompt, hard -target -kill capability. But still, that's where the main effort ought to go is to getting a radical reduction and not just the number and not just the number of launchers and not just the number of warheads, but in the destructive capability of the offensive forces of both sides.

Now, beyond that, the president is very much of the view that in the long run, we really should take seriously what has been the declared policy of both the Soviet Union and the end of the United States that you'd like to get rid of nuclear weapons in their entirety. You'd like to get rid of these terrible beasts. And he thinks that I believe that the chance of doing that would be much greater if one could move from the current kind of a situation where we rely primarily on the offense to a situation where we rely increasingly upon an offense, a defense which would deny the enemy. A chance of gaining, really, from an initial strike and then progress from that point to a point where the defense could be more and more important and eventually you could get to a point where both sides would agree to eliminate all their nuclear weapons. My personal view is that an

arms race is inevitable because I cannot see that the United States will be able to manage this transition and it will be a transition cooperatively with the Soviet Union. But how do we do it? These are the sorts of steps, the gradual processes which are involved, fine. I just don't think that's in the cards at the moment because the Soviet Union is viewing the hell thing of the greatest suspicion. Therefore, you have to live with the probability, not just possibility, but the probability that the Soviet Union will do what they can to prevent that defense working. One of the ways of doing that is simply to have a lot more missiles than they have at the moment, so is to be able to saturate whatever defense the Americans might be able to create. Now that's the kind of uncertainty that I think you will find in Europe

and whereas it is a transition which could be managed in an ideal world, we don't live in an ideal world, we live in a world in which there's a good deal of hostility between the two superpowers in particular. And given that hostility, managing transition is going to be extraordinarily difficult. So far, there are no signs that the Soviet Union is interested in even talking about a transition to defense. Here in Geneva, Soviet arms negotiators have flatly rejected the idea. They've gone so far as to say there can be no progress at all on arms control if the United States continues to move forward with SDI. That is the basic reason the arms talks in Geneva remain deadlocked. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. A number of arms control experts have suggested that President

Reagan could break the impasse of Geneva by using the Strategic Defense Initiative as a bargaining chip. They say he should trade testing and development of SDI for deep cuts in the Soviet nuclear arsenal. When the question of a deal on strategic defense was raised at a recent press conference, the President showed no interest. You're known as a pretty good negotiator and some people think that even if you were willing to negotiate on SDI, you wouldn't tell us now you'd wait for Geneva. Are you telling the American people tonight you're ruling out a deal on testing or development? I think that's a legitimate part of research and yes, I would rule that out. I don't think any – I don't mind saying here and normally I don't talk about, as you said, what's going to be your strategy and negotiations. But in this, this is too important to the world to have us be willing to trade that off for a different number of nuclear missiles when they're already more than enough to blow both countries out of the world. Rather than that

kind of negotiation, I think at this summit meeting what we should take up is the matter of turning toward defensive weapons as an alternative to this just plain naked, nuclear threat of each side saying we can blow up the other. And this, I would hope that if such a weapon proves practical, that then we can realistically eliminate these horrible offensive weapons, nuclear weapons entirely. The United States and the Soviet Union seem hopelessly deadlocked over the issue of strategic defense. The Soviets want SDI to remain in the lab, while President Reagan appears determined to forge a hit. While the superpowers decide their next move, the world watches nervously from the sidelines. There is tremendous pressure

on the United States and Soviet Union to reach some kind of arms control agreement, but none seems forthcoming. So we're left with a number of unanswered questions. Can the United States ever persuade the Soviets to accept the idea of a transition to defense? Should the Reagan administration simply drop its commitment to SDI and take the Soviets up on their recent offers to negotiate significant arms reductions? Is there any hope for an agreement that will someday reduce the risk of nuclear war? My own judgment is that nuclear weapons can't be uninvented. They're going to continue to exist and there will probably continue to exist, almost certainly continue to exist in large numbers for many decades. It's also the case that the U .S. and Soviet Union are adversaries. Under those circumstances, the proper course for the United States is to retain its

strategy of deterrence by the threat of retaliation, which is not just a strategy, it's a fact of life. It is an auditing, by the way, that much of the early commentary from the administration on strategic defense constituted an attack on deterrence. I said deterrence was immoral and they said deterrence was flawed. They used expressions about the evils of nuclear deterrence that seemed to have been stolen from the Catholic bishops. There isn't oddity, it seems to me, about concluding that we can move beyond deterrence that deterrence is obsolete because of a strategic defense that is nothing more than a gleam in the eye of some of our developers. The West is going to remain dependent upon deterrence for a half century or more and we ought not to be undermining the

authority of deterrence. Well, we could make the case that offense only deterrence has worked right up to the day those missiles began to fly. And he said, oh shoot, we had the wrong strategy, well that's not going to be very satisfactory. What has actually happened is that since we adopted the all offense deterrence, which we did back in the mid -1960s, deterrence has steadily weakened. Now it sure, it has worked thus far, thank God. But it is steadily weakened and if we want to reverse that trend from a weakening deterrent to a strengthened deterrent, then we should use our superior technology to say, no, we're tired of building more offense to keep up in this game. We want a non -nuclear defense that changes the nature of the game. And again, we're talking about not weapons. We're not talking about anything that would destroy life on earth. We're talking about something that would destroy missiles before

they got into the earth's atmosphere, before they could destroy life on earth. And as I say, it's a very noble concept that offers the world, I think, more hope than anything that's been proposed yet. The objective is not to build weapons. The objective is to make a more secure world. And the way to do that is to use every possible motivation to show that missiles and continuing to proliferate missiles is the wrong course of action. I've had many conversations like this with some of even your former secretaries of defense who would really like to disinvent the nuclear bomb. They would really prefer the pre -1945 world. But let me ask you something. Do you have any example of deterrent that has successfully prevented war before 1945? Can one rely safely on what some people call

quote conventional deterrents, which was read to a mass tanks and airplanes that has never worked? I think the right solution is to recognize several points. First, as I said, we can't get rid of nuclear weapons. We're going to live in a world where our head is I can see with nuclear weapons. Secondly, I've used the wrong term. I shouldn't call it weapons. They aren't weapons. They're warheads. We're going to live in a world where nuclear warheads. But they're not weapons. No human being knows how to initiate the use of these warheads with advantage to the initiator. So they're not weapons. But our strategy today, and our force structure today, is based on treating them as weapons. If we thought of only as warheads with no military utility whatsoever, no role whatsoever, other than to deter one's opponent from initiating use of whatever of these warheads he had, then we could get by with much lower forces. I would suggest that we could get rid of all of the

tactical forces, and we could reduce the strategic forces to perhaps 10 % of their present levels. And that means that we could look ultimately to a nuclear force level of roughly 1 ,000 warheads in the US and 1 ,000 in the hands of the Soviets, a total of 2 ,000 compared to our 50 ,000 today. Now, that's the end. It'll take us a long time to get there. But we can use Geneva as the first step toward that end. The knife edge of deterrence was produced by KCTS Seattle, which is

solely responsible for its content. Major funding for the knife edge of deterrence was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding was provided by this station and other public television stations, and by the Bullitt Foundation, the Rockefeller Family and Associates, and the Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation. For a transcript of this program, send $4 to PTV Publications, post office box 701, Kent, Ohio, 44240. Please list the title of this program, the knife edge of deterrence. You can get Dwin Dyer's 354 -page book, War for 1795 plus handling by calling toll -free 1 -800 -453 -4000 with your visa or mastercard. For your copy of this book with over 100 photographs, maps, and charts, call now toll -free 1 -800 -453 -4000. For

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