Cold war or détente? The Soviet viewpoint

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Chapter 3 On Peace and War, the Arms Race and Arms Control

‘For the first time in nearly two decades, war with the Soviet Union has turned from seeming theoretically possible to seeming actually possible - and not just cold war but hot war, a shooting war - even a nuclear war.’ This is a quote from a recent statement by Stephen Rosenfeld, chief editorial writer for the Washington Post.

A statement like this is a very dangerous indication. It points to the fact that we are approaching a stage where the unthinkable is beginning to seem thinkable. It looks like the terms of the debate in the United States on matters of war and peace have changed in a way that sane ideas have been pushed off to the sidelines while the debate is centered on various degrees of insanity. In history, more than one nation has been able to talk itself into a catastrophic war.

In the first days of 1980 the hands of the symbolic clock on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists were moved from nine minutes to twelve to seven minutes to twelve. This is the time that clock showed at very dangerous moments of the Cold War. A year later, the clock showed four minutes to twelve. I am afraid those clock hands may have to be moved even closer to midnight.

Would you explain it primarily as a result of the recent increase in world tensions?

Yes, but not only by that. Concern over a threat of war has been growing among scientists and experts for some time now. The primary reasons are

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the continuing arms race and a standstill at the arms limitation talks, and the failures of most attempts to settle crisis situations and conflicts.

Now that the tension has increased, and military competition has speeded up, the situation is naturally becoming even more alarming.

It follows from what you say that the crucial issue in Soviet-American relations - the prevention of nuclear war - has become even more acute.

Yes, it has. And it is important to remember that prevention of nuclear war is the main issue in Soviet-American relations and the principal theme of détente. This fact has been recognized and officially proclaimed by both powers on the top political level. Among common positions agreed upon by the leaders of the USSR and the United States at the first summit meeting in Moscow in 1972, nothing is more important than the statement that ‘in the nuclear age there is no alternative to conducting their mutual relations on the basis of peaceful coexistence.’ In 1973 the two countries signed a special agreement, ‘On Prevention of Nuclear War,’ which, at least from the Soviet viewpoint, is one of the most important joint Soviet-American documents to date.

I am not at all sure that the U.S. government adheres to this principle now. What is certain is that Washington no longer considers détente as the way to prevent a nuclear war. There is a massive campaign to persuade Americans that the only way to peace is through rearmament and confrontation.

Anyway, the anxiety is growing about the fatal clash to occur someday. Recently, I have come across a very dramatic statement to this effect by one of the world's leading authorities on nuclear weapons, George Kistiakowsky. He emphasized that, given the present military, technological, and political trends, ‘it would be a miracle if no nuclear warheads exploded by the end of this century and only a bit smaller miracle if that did not lead to a nuclear holocaust.’^1. Though I find this pessimism excessive, I fully share in such a great concern.

Yes, we also believe that this danger is increasing. Especially because, as I see it, the danger of war is associated not only with someone deliberately planning it and being ready to push the button at some zero hour, but with a more anonymous yet very real danger. Situations arise that can lead to war; in a world saturated with weapons, their use is quite possible as a result of aggravation of international tensions or flareups of latent conflicts in various regions.

Even accidental war is a possibility. That is why, to create reliable guarantees of peace, it is not enough to realize the futility of starting a war, and not even enough to, undertake appropriate formal commitments. Much remains to be done to remove the very possibility of war. This

1. New York Review of Books, 6 November 1980, p, 24.

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requires continued efforts to improve radically the whole international situation.

What do you mean by ‘radical improvement of the whole international situation’?

Not a worldwide socialist revolution, of course. I am talking of changes that are acceptable to both systems, of the consolidation of peaceful coexistence, of détente, to be more specific, progress toward arms control, toward stopping the arms race, toward negotiated settlement of existing crises and prevention of future international conflicts, toward the development of mutually beneficial cooperation in various spheres.

I am aware that it all may sound like a rather dull catalogue - particularly since everything has long been on the agenda for discussions and talks. But one major point must be kept in mind: success of these efforts requires a serious understanding of the realities of the nuclear age and a proper respect for those realities in practical policies. It is said that generals always prepare for the previous war. One often has the impression that politicians behave similarly as they ignore the new realities and canonize the experiences of yesteryear.

What realities are you referring to?

The nuclear age makes new demands on policy making and requires important policy changes. War has become so destructive that it can no longer be regarded as a rational instrument of policy.

Could you outline some of those new demands and requirements?

One requirement I've already mentioned is the necessity of revising drastically the attitude toward the role of force, particularly military force, in foreign policy. Generally speaking, this necessity has been recognized.

But now we are witnessing attempts to reject this necessity. I mean not only some militant statements, but the dominant American political mood in general. Persistent attempts are being made to get out of the dead end in which the policy of force has found itself.

You mean the impossibility of using force without inviting a destructive retaliatory blow?

Yes. The Pentagon hasn't been able to get over this fact of life. Thus there has emerged a very misguided and extremely dangerous trend - a search for new ways to use force; ways that supposedly would not endanger the United States itself. This trend is multifaceted. One process that merits

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special note is the search for new weapons systems, military doctrines, and methods of application of military force, all designed to make nuclear war thinkable.

Like the neutron bomb?

The neutron bomb, or, in official Pentagonese, the enhanced-radiation weapon, which is supposed to be much less destructive of property than ordinary nuclear weapons, is one of the results of the search for ‘usable’ military force. But there's a lot more. There is the miniaturization of nuclear weapons and the increase in their accuracy, the increase in power of conventional weapons. There is the counterforce doctrine, the idea of ‘selective’ or ‘surgical’ strikes. There are attempts to introduce certain ‘rules of the game’ into military conflicts, so as to make them more thinkable. There are rapid-deployment forces.

All this amounts to a mindless repudiation of the new realities. It is an easier road to take, admittedly - for there is a tremendous impetus, accumulated over the centuries, to continue to believe in war as an instrument of policy and, for some, even as an apex, a crucial test of policy. But this road does not lead away from the Damoclean sword of nuclear suicide. The real issue today is not one of finding ways to improve and refine the methods of using force, but of excluding the use and threat of force from international relations.

You speak of excluding the use and threat of force from international relations. But isn't it a far cry from what the USSR is doing? You pay close attention to your own defense problems. Several times the USSR has not refrained from using military force where it was deemed necessary.

I am talking about the process and its final purpose. In this imperfect world we can't afford to become perfect alone. Imagine a self-disarmed Soviet Union and the kind of policies other great powers would conduct under the pressure from people like Caspar Weinberger, Josef Luns, Richard Pipes, Richard Perle, Jesse Helms, and a number of generals and admirals.

Paul Nitze stressed to me that he is convinced the Soviet Union does not want nuclear war. But he also believes that the USSR reckons with the possibility of nuclear conflict and that you have prepared for winning it too.

Perhaps I should thank Nitze for the statement that we do not want a nuclear war, although made in a private conversation. This sounds like something new coming from him. But the rest sounds like more of the same old song.

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Well, I'm sure you're aware that this position is not held by Nitze alone. There are others who maintain that, since the USSR considers it possible to fight and win a nuclear war, it does not exclude such a war from its political arsenal.

Yes, I'm familiar with this reasoning. You encounter it quite often, but this does not make it truthful.

But the allegations that the Soviet Union believes in fighting and winning a nuclear war are usually supported by quotes from articles, speeches, and books by Soviet military writers.

Yes, but those quotes are ten to twenty years old. And political and military thinking changes, reflecting changes in objective reality, including the development of weapons of mass destruction. Awareness of the consequences of nuclear war has increased in this time span.

As for today, most authoritative expressions of the present Soviet attitude to this problem leave no room for misunderstanding or misinterpretation. President L.I. Brezhnev repeatedly branded the idea of winning a nuclear war as ‘dangerous madness.’ The same attitude has been expressed by Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, Chief of General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces Nikolai Ogarkov, and by other military and political leaders of the USSR.

Having said all this, I'd like to say a few words in defense of the often quoted - and still more often misquoted - Soviet military writers. Those people do discuss in their professional way how to fight a war, and I don't find anything unusual or alarming in that. It is the job of the military to consider what they should do in case a war is started by an adversary of the Soviet Union. It does not follow from this that they consider nuclear war an acceptable instrument of foreign policy.

I was visiting London in the early sixties, during another international crisis, and I saw a poster in a cafe. It read: ‘In case of atomic attack keep calm, pay your bill, and run like hell to the next cemetery.’ I'm afraid if the military in any country confined themselves just to this kind of advice no one would appreciate their sense of humor, and they would have to resign without any hope for a pension.

And again - let those who blame the Soviet Union look at what is being said in the United States, and not by obscure military writers, but by highly placed military leaders. General Curtis LeMay, for instance, who headed the U.S. Strategic Air Command, urged Americans to obtain an ability ‘to fight and win any war - including a general war’ (and by general war he didn't mean simply a war led by generals). Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird wrote that American ‘strategy must aim at fighting, winning, and recovering,’ that the United States must develop ‘the willingness to wage total nuclear war,’ and that it must make it ‘credible to the

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enemy that we will take the initiative and strike first.’ I assure you, you will not find anything of this kind written or said by Soviet military leaders, or by anyone in the Soviet Union.

When they discuss these matters in the West, they refer not only to separate quotations, hut to the overall Soviet military doctrine.

Yes, I know. But in reality, conclusions about the doctrine are made on the basis of the same quotations. Without going into details, I'd like to emphasize the main things. The Soviet military doctrine is strictly defensive in character. It is fully manifested in the Soviet position on the use of nuclear weapons. Let me cite such a source as the late commander-in-chief of the USSR Armed Forces, Marshal Leonid Brezhnev: ‘We are against the use of nuclear weapons; only extraordinary circumstances, an act of aggression against our country or its allies by another nuclear power, could compel us to resort to this extreme means of self-defense.’^2.

Let me quote from the same source on the question of a possible first use of nuclear weapons. Speaking in the city of Tula in early 1977, President Brezhnev said: ‘Our efforts are directed precisely at averting the first strike and the second strike, indeed at averting nuclear war in general.’^3.

‘Preventive expansionist wars of any type and scale and the concepts of preemptive nuclear strikes are alien to the Soviet military doctrine,’ wrote Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov in July 1981.^4.

I could quote other similar statements by Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and other Soviet leaders. The essence of those statements is that we see the mission of our strategic forces as deterring war. The Soviet Union considers it senseless to strive for military superiority. ‘Its very notion,’ as President Brezhnev emphasized, ‘loses any meaning in a situation where tremendous arsenals of nuclear weapons and their delivery means have already been stockpiled.’^5.

The Soviet military doctrine, explained many times over by Soviet leaders, makes it quite clear that we consider nuclear war the most terrible disaster that could happen to mankind; that our strategy has a defensive character; that we oppose first-strike concepts; and that our strategic forces play the role of deterring a possible aggressor and are designed for a retaliatory strike. The Soviet Union has repeatedly proposed to negotiate agreements renouncing the first use of nuclear weapons and of military force in general. This is also part of our military doctrine, and you won't be able to find any other ‘secret’ doctrine behind it, simply because none exists. All these things do contrast with some American official statements.

What American statements do you have in mind?

One example was Mr. Brzezinski's 1980 interview with British journalist Jonathan Power. Brzezinski stated that nuclear war should not be seen as

2. L.I. Brezhnev, speech on 25 April 1978, Leninskim kursom, vol. 7, p. 300.

3. L.I. Brezhnev, speech in city of Tula on 18 January 1977, Moscow 1977.

4. Pravda, 25 July 1981.

5. L.I. Brezhnev, Leninskim kursom, vol, 7, p. 312.

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such a terrible catastrophe, after all, for mankind would lose ‘only’ 10 percent of its lives. ‘Only’ 10 percent, by the way, means four hundred million people.

Having made his soothing assessment, Brzezinski went on to say that ‘in case of need’ he would not hesitate to press the button and send the rockets flying. Another example: George Bush stated in a 1980 interview that he believes nuclear war can be won. When the surprised Los Angeles Times correspondent asked him to explain how it would be possible, he said, ‘You have survivability of command and control, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition than it can inflict upon you. That's the way you can have a winner....’ Then Mr. Bush gave his estimate of the number of survivors. He assured his interviewer that their number would be more than 2 to 5 percent of the population.^6. wonder how big the headlines would be on the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post if a high-ranking spokesman of the Soviet government made such statements.

And these are not just words. The undisputed fact is that all the theoretical and technological innovations designed to make nuclear war thinkable or winnable are originating in the United States.

You do not mean that.

Surely, I do mean it. Carter's PD 59 is only one of the products of a whole school of strategic thought propagating limited nuclear war, ‘surgical strikes’ against military targets, and other means of waging nuclear war ‘flexibly.’ President Reagan readily subscribed to that school, giving it his official blessing by his statement that a nuclear war can be limited to Europe. Far from being a purely intellectual exercise, all this is embodied in certain weapon technologies, in miniaturization and in higher accuracy of nuclear warheads, in increasing their yields, in devising special delivery systems, in placing some of them close to Soviet borders, and so on. Even if it were done only for the purpose of increasing the weight of American political threats, there would remain the dire risk that things would get out of hand and lead directly to a hot war, whatever the original intentions might have been. The continuous attempts to erase the dividing line between conventional and nuclear war are extremely dangerous, because they tend to obliterate what might have served as a main deterrent against a nuclear war, namely the prevailing abhorrence of such war, a view of it as of something loathsome, far too catastrophic to resort to. Once this attitude is lost, a nuclear confrontation becomes much more thinkable and then probable.

6. The Progressive, April 1980, p. 46.

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You seem to think that the possibility of nuclear war cannot be excluded, and that such a danger is even growing. Doesn't it follow that we should try to reduce its possible effects to the minimum?

Common logic would suggest that it does. But the realities of the nuclear age dictate a different approach. I have said already that the very idea of having a nice, little, clean and tidy nuclear war can undermine resistance to nuclear conflagration. But this is not all. If the price of such a war should seem more or less ‘acceptable,’ it can only foster the adventurism of those in charge of the buttons. One can assume they would be much less prudent in their policies, much more reckless, for they would believe that even if a miscalculation did occur, the war would be limited to an acceptable scale. And in a really acute situation that belief would make it much easier for a hand to grope for the button.

But one could argue that all this is outweighed by the prospect of sharply reduced losses and destruction.

No, there would hardly be any such reduction. As a matter of fact, I doubt very much that one would ever succeed even in creating the appearance that a tidy little nuclear war is possible. Look, every attempt to limit one's own possible losses, be it through antiballistic defense or civil defense, leads to the other side's response - to increased number of warheads, greater penetrating capacity, and greater destructive force.

What was the Soviet reaction to the new U.S. doctrine of limited nuclear war, promulgated by President Carter and then supported by President Reagan?

Actually, it had long been suspected that the United States would adopt the concept of limited nuclear war. Even now, Washington prefers to remain deliberately vague about the specific circumstances in which it would start such a war and about some other key aspects of the problem. The vagueness is probably intended to boost the psychological impact of the new doctrine, to preserve maximum freedom of action for the United States.

You asked about the Soviet opinion of that doctrine. I have already mentioned the most important point concerning limited nuclear war - namely, that it is, in our opinion, simply impossible. Such a war would require that both sides adopt some rules of conduct. But who can hope that the war would be like a courteous aristocratic duel, where all the rules are faithfully honored? If we did reach such a level of civility, not only prevention of nuclear war, but even general and complete disarmament would cease to be a problem.

No, we can't expect any gentlemanly duel. Nor any limited war, nor

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‘surgical strikes.’ A nuclear war, if initiated, would be an all-out massacre. And it can never remain limited. Escalation is virtually inevitable, if only due to a natural reluctance on either side to concede defeat in such a situation.

Besides, who would be able to preserve his cool, registering nuclear strikes and evaluating what response they deserved so as not to violate the ‘rules of the game,’ while nuclear bombs were being dropped all over the place? The urge for escalation would simply be overwhelming.

The USSR has honestly stated that it has no intention to take part in such games. Let me quote from an article by Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov published in Pravda in July 1981. He wrote, ‘Can one seriously talk of any limited nuclear war whatsoever? For it is clear to everybody that the aggressor's action would inevitably and instantly invite a devastating retaliation from the side attacked. None but utterly irresponsible individuals can claim that nuclear war can be fought under some rules established in advance whereby nuclear missiles will have to go off under a “gentleman's agreement”: only over specific targets without hitting the population in the process.’^7.

I think the best description of the concept of limited nuclear war was given by former U.S. Senator John C. Culver. He compared it to ‘limiting the mission of a match thrown into a keg of gunpowder.’^8.

But if such a war is impossible, why do you consider the doctrine dangerous?

Although this so-called ‘countervailing strategy’ is often described by its authors as a mere continuation of the deterrence concept, actually it goes further than that. It sets out to lower the nuclear threshold, to widen the range of situations in which the United States considers it legitimate to use nuclear weapons. It provides a rationale for a new round of the arms race to the extent of virtually justifying an all-out race. Finally, it gives a boost to highly destabilizing trends in weapons technology and strategic thinking. While fanning fears of vulnerability to a first strike, it actually gears U.S. strategic forces to a first-strike posture.

But since the only guarantee for peace seems to be fear, the proverbial ‘balance of terror,’ maybe there isn't that much difference anyway.

Yes, there is a lot of difference. The concept of limited nuclear war is not aimed at reducing the mutual fear on which deterrence is based. Rather, it seeks to intensify the opponent's fear while at the same time emboldening the American side. Nuclear weapons will stay in the stockpile only so long as both sides feel equally threatened, so long as both are equally capable of destroying each other. One should be extremely wary of fooling around with this balance of terror, which so far has played a role in

7. Pravda, 25 July 1981.

8. Nuclear War Conference (Washington, D.C.: Anderson Pub., 1978), p. 163.

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preventing numerous conflicts from escalating into nuclear war.

On the other hand, of course, it must be seen that a peace based on deterrence is far from ideal and, in the final analysis, not too stable or durable. Deterrence, the principle of mutual fear, generates threats by itself. First, for the sake of maintaining your deterrent, you have to keep an arsenal that can inspire awe on the other side, and the arms race continues. What's more, you have to maintain your credibility, which in this case means showing and proving your readiness to stage a holocaust, to burn half a planet down, to commit national suicide. And this means not only threats, saber rattling, and blackmail, but from time to time also practical actions designed to prove one's capacity for irresponsible action (like in a game of chicken), adventure, unpredictable behavior. The inherent dangers are obvious.

Let's put the moral aspect aside, however. We have here an example of that monstrously perverse logic imposed by the balance of terror. One has to constantly reaffirm the capacity for mass supermurder or megamurder, if you will. The dilemma can't be solved within this framework. On the one hand, it has to be admitted that war has become meaningless. On the other hand, you have to prepare for war around the clock and emphasize your readiness to start it. No matter what the original intentions are, this logic, if you cling to it tenaciously, inevitably leads to brinkmanship.

Where's the way out?

Well, when all is said and done, we are still better off with deterrence than we would be under the conditions of preparing for a ‘thinkable nuclear war.’ Deterrence is not too good, but nothing better exists so far, so you can regard it as a lesser evil. Of course, one thing must be understood: you cannot live with deterrence forever; sooner or later it will fail. So we have to move away from deterrence. The problem is - in what direction? To move in the direction of a ‘thinkable nuclear war’ would be a disaster. There is only one reasonable way: to move toward a peace built on arms control and disarmament, on trust and cooperation. It is a difficult way, I admit. It requires tremendous efforts, a lot of wisdom, patience, and political courage. But there's hardly any other road to a durable and stable peace.

Kissinger once said that absolute security for one superpower is unachievable and undesirable, because it would mean absolute insecurity for the other. Is this not another of the new realities of the nuclear age?

It is. And indeed, this was one of Kissinger's bright ideas. I doubt that he or anybody else in U.S. government could rise so high above conventional wisdom as to consider his own absolute security undesirable. But for all practical reasons, it's enough if it is understood that absolute security is unachievable. This alone could have stopped the arms race. The Indepen-

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dent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, an international body chaired by Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme and including in its ranks former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and former British Foreign Secretary David Owen, among others, has developed and advanced this concept. Let me quote from one of the commission's documents: ‘Security cannot be achieved at the expense of a potential adversary, but only jointly with him and with due account of the security interests of both sides.’

This reality of our time is closely tied with another - the existing means of destruction have made it impossible to ‘buy’ national security with more and more arms, no matter how many or how good. Quite the opposite: the more arms, the less security. Some farsighted Americans began to understand it long ago. Jerome Wiesner and Herbert York, for instance, wrote: ‘Both sides in the arms race are thus confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgement that this dilemma has no technical solution.... The clearly predictable course of the arms race is a steady open spiral downward into oblivion.’^9.

When was it written?

In 1964. And I must emphasize that from the point of view of professional expertise, experience, and knowledge, it would be harder to find another two Americans whose opinions would be worth more attention. Mr. Wiesner was scientific adviser to President Kennedy. Mr. York is another well-known scientist who took a direct part in the production of weapons and at one time headed the Pentagon's department of research and development.

I repeat, it was said in 1964. What if these words had been heeded back then! How many billions of dollars and rubles could have been saved! How much safer our world might have been!

I caught a similar thought during a conversation with Lord Chalfont, a former British cabinet minister and military expert: ‘Ever more arms and less security.’

Welcome aboard, Lord Chalfont. Meanwhile, another old principle is no longer valid: ‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’ Preparing for war industriously enough, you will only make war inevitable. And, despite the great difficulty of parting with such notions, a process of the realization of the world's new realities did begin in the 1960s, including the realization that there can be no security without arms control and arms reduction. Of course, the idea itself isn't new. But while in the past it sounded highly idealistic, it has now become the only realistic option, even though, for a number of reasons, its implementation is still hampered by many obstacles.

9. Scientific American, October 1964, p. 35.

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To some extent history is repeated, since all wars are preceded by a mad arms race.

You're right, but in the past the arms were created in order to fight and win a war. The paradox of the present situation is that, even as sane people can no longer regard nuclear war as an acceptable means to reach political ends, the arms race is continuing.

‘End the arms race, not the human race!’ is a sticker frequently seen in America in recent years. Yet, the arms race is gaining momentum.

There isn't a story of greater woe. I think we should take into account yet another important change brought about by the nuclear age. For ages, arms races were produced by bad political relations. Today, an arms race turns more and more into a major source of bad relations, for the buildup and qualitative refining of arms generate fears and suspicions, increasing distrust and poisoning the political atmosphere.

Take Soviet-American relations. If it became possible to remove fears and suspicions connected with the arms race, particularly with arms possessing a monstrous destructive force unequaled in history, we would see a disappearance of the major source of tension.

So the arms race represents the principal headache in Soviet-American relations?

Yes. To put it more precisely, the main problem is the problem of war and peace, with which the arms race is so closely connected.

But today's conventional wisdom is that it is precisely the destructive potential of nuclear weapons that helps prevent war, for otherwise a big war would have already occurred.

Conventional wisdom tends to mislead when we deal with such an unconventional thing as nuclear war. As we have discussed already, at this point we have to rely on the balance of terror inspired by nuclear weapons, but it's not a very durable guarantee of peace. The fact that it's worked for thirty years doesn't allow us to make optimistic conclusions about the future.

Not so long ago you said in a speech: ‘We have been lucky so far, but let us not press our luck beyond reason.’

Indeed. The world has been on the brink of catastrophe several times by now. And statesmanship has hardly been the only thing saving mankind from nuclear holocaust so far. We have been lucky, and in the future we

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will have to base our hope for survival on something more solid than good luck. Especially because the new round of the arms race - and it has already started - will be more dangerous than anything we have seen so far.

What are the main features of this new round?

The latest technological advances in armaments make it possible to produce weapons systems with an increased counterforce capability, meaning more accurate and powerful warheads that would be used to destroy the adversary's strategic weapons. The MX missile and new warheads like the MK-12A are examples. All this in itself is sufficient to increase the worries of the other side, which, it can be assumed, will consider these programs threatening, detrimental to the balance and strategic stability, and will therefore take appropriate measures in response.

If, in addition to the worries over these programs, an impression forms that some breakthroughs are possible in antiballistic defense and/or antisubmarine warfare, this may lead to new anxieties about the adversary achieving a first-strike capability. Even if such anxieties are based on illusions, they are very dangerous because they tend to connect security, survival, with a hair-trigger readiness to strike, or even with the possibility of a preemptive strike, let alone their impact on the political atmosphere.

Other new systems threaten to pull the rug from under the arms-control negotiations, making verification tremendously difficult, if not impossible. Cruise missiles, especially land- and sea-based, can serve as an example.

Finally, continuation of the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union will encourage nuclear proliferation elsewhere.

Do you consider these prospects of doom coming closer?

Yes, at least many of them. You see, I personally may not believe in the technical feasibility of acquiring a first-strike potential, at least in the observable future. Many experts would agree with me on this. But the arms race has been moving into the sphere of creating invulnerable counterforce capabilities, which will inevitably generate illusions and fears about a first-strike capability. This is very dangerous, and it tends to draw the whole arms race even farther away from reality, from the real problems, toward dangerously abstract games and daydream scenarios.

Who is responsible for the arms race?

The initiator of the arms race and its main moving force is the United States.

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That is one side of the story. I am sure you are aware of the existence of quite a different view, of the increasing fears in the United States, in Western Europe, in the West in general, of the Soviet military buildup. Let me quote, for example, the statement made by Henry Kissinger at the conference commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of NATO in Brussels in September 1979:

‘Since the middle 1960's the growth of the Soviet strategic force has been massive. It grew from 220 intercontinental ballistic missiles in 1965 to 1,600 around 1972-1973. Soviet submarine-launched missiles grew from negligible numbers to over 900 in the 1970's. And the amazing phenomenon which historians will ponder is that all of this happened without the United States attempting to make a significant effort to rectify that state of affairs. One reason was the growth of a school of thought to which I myself contributed, and many around this conference table also contributed, which considered that strategic stability was a military asset, and in which the historically amazing theory developed that vulnerability contributed to peace and invulnerability contributed to risks of war.’^10.

Whenever I read such statements, particularly those made by a well-known and authoritative figure like Mr. Kissinger, I feel a little awkward.

I consider it quite normal to have differences of opinion with these people, different interpretations of events, different sympathies, and so on. But I feel really awkward when what they say turns out to be blatant untruth, and one can hardly imagine that they do not know very well, maybe even better than anyone else, what the truth is. And it is not only Kissinger, of course. In the last few years we have witnessed an unprecedentedly massive and well-organized campaign about the nonexistent ‘Soviet strategic superiority,’ which poisons the political atmosphere in the United States. I am sure it fully deserves to be named the hoax of the century.

But how about the figures?

Remember the famous saying of Disraeli that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. That's also true for the numbers cited by Kissinger.

Look at the figure of 220 for the number of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles in 1965. How many missiles did the Americans have at that time? According to official American sources, 901 - four times more. Why did Kissinger not mention that?

Take the SLBMs. Kissinger says the USSR had very few of them in 1965. Well, the United States had as many as 464 at that point.

But what about the trend?

The American numbers I've cited were the result of the massive buildup the Kennedy administration started in 1962 under the false pretext of a ‘missile

10. Washington Quarterly, Autumn 1979, pp. 5-6.

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gap.’ It brought the United States very substantial superiority and put us in a position where we had no other way to respond in order to obtain parity with America, Here is the reason for the ‘massive growth’ of which we are accused by Kissinger. And the numbers we had reached in the seventies - sixteen hundred ICBMs and over seven hundred SLBMs - were regarded by Americans as meaning parity. These numbers were codified by the SALT I agreement, whose main architect on the American side, by the way, was Mr. Kissinger. According to the SALT II treaty, the number of our missiles was to be reduced, and the total number of launchers made equal for both sides. It was not our fault that the treaty did not become law.

Even more misleading is his statement that this ‘massive’ Soviet buildup ‘happened without the United States attempting to make a significant effort to rectify that state of affairs.’ Quite to the contrary, the United States undertook some very strong efforts. It started MIRVing its missiles, that is, putting several independently targetable warheads on each missile, thus doubling the number of American warheads every two years and securing at the moment of SALT I a fourfold American superiority in the number of warheads.

In other words, the new American buildup, in the form of the MIRVing of their missiles, was already recognized by SALT I?

Of course it was. The United States was by no means sitting on its hands in the face of the Soviet attempt to catch up. It is hard to believe that Kissinger has forgotten that in the early seventies, when he was President Nixon's national security advisor, the United States was starting a new Big Leap Forward in the arms race. The result was that the number of warheads on American ICBMs grew from 1,054 in the late sixties to 2,154 in the late seventies, and the number of SLBM warheads increased during the same period from 656 to about 7000.

In the early seventies the United States also began work on the cruise missile, the new Trident submarine, the B-1 bomber, and a number of other things.

By the way, just a few years ago, Kissinger's memory worked a little better. In 1978, for example, he said: ‘We speeded up our programs after the SALT agreement in 1972. I think if you look at the record, you will find that the White House always chose the highest defense option that came over from the Pentagon. There was no illusion, on our part, that we could deal with the Soviet Union from a position of weakness.’^11.

But all those American programs were explained as ‘bargaining chips’ to make the U.S. position at the talks stronger.

If they were bargaining chips, why was not a single program stopped, despite progress at the SALT talks? Take for instance MIRVs, which were

11. Public Opinion, May-June 1978, pp. 58-59.

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at the time justified as bargaining chips. The United States took special care not to let them be banned or even delayed by the SALT I talks. I recollect that later even Kissinger deplored it.

But let us go back to the Kissinger statement that you asked me to comment on. It turns out to be a very misleading assessment, if one looks at it in light of the facts pertinent to the U.S.-Soviet military balance.

What is particularly sinister is his questioning of the idea that ‘strategic stability is a military asset,’ and of those views of mutual vulnerability that allowed both sides at least to begin some progress in arms control. If such thinking is gaining ground in Washington, if these ideas develop and reach their logical conclusion, their implementation can only mean a very grim and dangerous period for international relations.

Do you think the Reagan administration is seriously committed to the goal of achieving military superiority over the USSR?

This massive U.S. rearmament program is not aimed at making the United States equal to the USSR in military power. The goal is military superiority. I think they seriously believe in it and are trying to achieve it. The GOP 1980 election platform proclaimed a's one of its chief goals the restoration of the United States to a position of number one in the world militarily. Administration spokesmen have talked of it openly. For instance, Defense Secretary Weinberger, when interviewed by the New York Times in the fall of 1981, referred to the 1950s as ‘a very safe era,’ when the United States had ‘a degree of superiority.’ ‘Now we've got to regain it,’ he said.^12. Other members of the administration, though, usually avoid the use of the word superiority, and the surrogate term margin of safety has been coined.

In the real world, of course, military superiority is meaningless, and what is more, it just can't be achieved. It is simply a blank check for an endless arms race devoid of any strategic or political sense whatsoever. And yet they still proclaim it.

The central idea behind all this talk of superiority is to give the United States greater ability to intimidate those countries whose foreign policies Washington may object to. That intimidation capacity has certainly declined since the 1950s, which may have been ‘a very safe era’ for people like Mr. Weinberger, but a highly dangerous time for many countries that became victims of U.S. intervention or pressure. At that time the United States had what some Americans referred to as an ‘unbroken chain of deterrence,’ stretching from the individual marine wading ashore in some faraway land all the way to the nuclear arsenal. The American leaders felt that if they escalated a conflict, they could control the escalation process. Many times they threatened to use nuclear weapons. And, having many more of these weapons than their adversary had, they felt more secure and free to start dangerous capers overseas. Now the ‘margin of safety’ is

12. New York Times Magazine, 1 November 1981, p. 79.

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gone, and American hawks consider that to be the major reason for the U.S. decline of power.

One can understand the U.S. nostalgia for better times, but nostalgia is too deceptive to be used as a policy guide. If you go into a library and read what American hawks said in the fifties and early sixties, you won't get the impression that that was ‘a very safe era.’ Ironically, the same right-wing movement that was Mr. Reagan's home base in his long quest for the White House started out in the late fifties to a large extent in protest against the Eisenhower foreign policy, which the Right bitterly castigated as too soft, defeatist, and so forth. The rightists were in a panic over the scope and direction of the changes that were taking place in the world at the time. The United States could do nothing about those changes. The ‘margin of safety’ gave only marginal benefits. The limits to the use of military power as a tool of foreign policy were perfectly clear.

In other words, you think that even if the United States did gain a superiority over the USSR, it would not bring substantial benefits to American foreign policy?

It should be clear that the United States will not be able to get any substantial military advantage over us. We shall never let the United States gain superiority, because it would endanger our security, our vital interests.

I would say more, The United States should not expect to achieve even the marginal benefits it was able to enjoy in the past. We are living in a world that will not let any one nation play the role of a controlling force, a guardian of world order.

A most important motive of this drive for military superiority is the push of the U.S. military-industrial complex for profits, political power, and influence. I would also mention such a motive as an attempt to impose on the Soviet Union and other socialist countries such defense expenditures that would undermine their economies.

Some American analysts are pointing to some other, less tangible motives behind the arms race. Indeed, the current U.S. remilitarization effort may have to do not so much with reality as with certain shifts in the American national mood and the leadership's attempts to manipulate those shifts. James Fallows, a former White House staffer, wrote recently that when the Reagan administration was making its decision to produce and deploy the MX missiles, ‘the missiles themselves never mattered as much as the “will” of the country to replace the Minuteman with the MX. ...We have again entered a period in which words like “will” and “nerve” are used to define our policy - rather than words like “national interest.”’^13.

Whatever the motives, the dangers emanating from the new American military buildup are difficult to overestimate.

13. The New York Review of Books, 17 December 1981, p. 31.

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But there are a lot of charges that the USSR compels the West to arm and prepare for war. Surely not all these charges are false?

Why not? There is a saying that people never lie so much as during wars and elections, and I would add, during and because of the arms race. How can you make citizens, year in year out, pay billions for arms unless you have a ‘mortal threat’ to point to? This is the true function of the ‘Soviet threat.’ It's been carrying out this function for a long time, ever since the 1917 Revolution. We were used as a bugaboo even when we were very weak. What can be expected now that we are really strong? I'm certainly not going to deny that we are strong today, that we have a firm defense to which we have been paying good attention.

Isn't it precisely this strength that arouses fears?

Well, first, it is strength but not superiority, i.e., the other side is just as strong. Second, the fears were blown out of all proportion even when there was no such strength. Let us recall the situation just after World War II, for example. Here we were, the Soviet Union that had suffered terrible losses in the war. America had become stronger, acquired nuclear weapons, and was trying to retain a monopoly on them, so as to dictate her will to the world.

Granted, that as a result of Hitler's scorched-earth policy, the Soviet Union had more urgent priorities in 1945 than to start building nuclear bombs.

Of course we would have preferred to spend our resources on different and very urgent projects. But there was no other way because the United States made use of its position of strength. We have discussed this in our talk about the history of the Cold War. Challenged by the United States as we were after World War II, we had to regard defense as our highest priority. Here lies the true origin of the arms race. It was, and still is, imposed on us.

The Americans say exactly the opposite.

Those who say it seem to forget that all those years we actually were constantly running behind the United States. The United States had nuclear weapons; we had to acquire them. They had the means to deliver nuclear weapons. We did not possess such means; we had to develop them.

The same is true of practically all major strategic weapons systems - SLBMs, MIRVs, cruise missiles, etc. The Americans were the first to introduce them, involving us in another competition, forcing us to follow suit

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- and at the same time making loud noises about the terrible military dangers emanating from the USSR, about alleged Soviet military superiority. In fact, we were five to ten years behind the United States with each of those weapons systems.

How would you account for the remarkable durability of the ‘Soviet threat’ issue?

Fear is a very strong emotion. Politicians know it, particularly American politicians. It would suffice to recollect the famous advice of Senator Vandenberg to President Truman: ‘to scare the hell out of the country’ in order to push the Truman Doctrine through the Congress. And you really have to produce such an emotion if you intend to impose a dangerous and costly arms race on your nation. Only when you scare people to death will you get your hundreds of billions of dollars for ‘defense.’ And nothing will scare the public more effectively than ‘the Russians are coming!’

Grouped around this fear are powerful vested interests: the defense industries and the Pentagon, the groups serving them within the government bureaucracy, the academic community, and the media.

For all of them, militarism has become a way of life. They are ready to defend it by all means available. They thrive and prosper on the phantom of the ‘Soviet threat.’ They always take good care to nurture it when it gets too worn out through heavy use.

But don't the Americans, as well as the Western Europeans, have grounds to be scared? Hasn't the Soviet Union amassed enough weapons to turn their cities into piles of radioactive rubble and ashes?

I can fully agree with you that awesome means of destruction have been created and that they inspire fear. But not just among Americans and Western Europeans. We in the Soviet Union have been living with this fear for an even longer time. Look at the perverted world we all, people in the West and in the East, are finding ourselves in: our cities, landmarks of culture and the arts, all that the human civilization prides itself on, all that we hold as dear to us as life itself - tens of millions of people, ourselves, our children - all have been reduced to just targets. And we've been living with it; we're becoming used to it to the extent that we've begun to forget just what the situation is. It is this situation that must inspire real fear, and not the Soviet Union. Our cities, too, can be turned into piles of radioactive rubble.

Still, loud shouts are heard all the time that it isn't enough, that more arms and more military spending are necessary. What is really astonishing is that these methods continue to work - although it cannot be so difficult to understand the absurdity of this situation and to see that such shouting has been heard many times over and amounted to nothing, to see that there exist

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influential circles and groups that profit by deceiving and scaring the public over and over again in total disregard of the dangers that have arisen.

The defense establishment is now the biggest conglomerate in the United States, with over $200 billion a year in sales, employing millions of people, dominating whole areas of the country, well represented in the administration and the Congress. Of course, Americans know it all very well; they've been told the story many times.

But the military business still enjoys the reputation of being a patriotic business. Its commodity is American security; its profit is American honor and dignity. As to the pecuniary interest involved in the arms race, it's not considered good manners to discuss it. This side is hidden, passed over in silence. For, as John K. Galbraith put it, people ‘do not like to think that, as a nation, we risk potential suicide for present economic advantage.’^14. Thus, the song stays largely unsung, despite all the proverbial American love for investigations.

What makes you think there is something to investigate here?

There's too much money at stake. Besides, there's been enough direct evidence, like the Lockheed scandals. They involved foreign countries, but why should those people operate differently at home? Look how the armaments prices are growing; according to Time magazine, even the prices of old weapons outstrip inflation several times.

And we know how unscrupulous the military business is about the means. Using the cloak of ‘national security’ and its connections in the government and the media, it can cook up a ‘threat’ out of nothing. Remember how ‘the missile gap’ was born?

What's the story?

In 1957, after the first Soviet Sputnik scared America so much, a special group of experts called the Gaither Panel reported that in a few years the threat created by Soviet missiles would ‘become critical’ and proposed a huge increase in military expenditures and programs. President Eisenhower did not fully agree with the recommendation. But the Democrats took up the issue, and in the 1960 election campaign Senator John F. Kennedy did not miss a chance to accuse the Republicans of neglecting national defense. He made so many promises to correct the situation that even when he learned the truth on his arrival at the White House, he still went ahead with a rapid buildup of the American missile forces.

You mean there was no missile gap at all?

There was a gap, all right, but of a different kind. George Kistiakowsky, who was President Eisenhower's adviser on science and technology at the

14. Common Sense in U.S.-Soviet Relations (Washington, D.C.: American Committee on East-West Accord, 1978), p. 46.

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time, later testified: ‘The real missile gap, in point of fact, had been in our favor.’^15.

Could the missile gap story be an exception to the rule?

As far as I can see, it is the rule. To deceive and scare the Americans by the fake ‘Soviet threat’ there is a fine-tuned machine at work capable of manipulating any government body. Take the recent book by Richard Helms in which he describes how the CIA, under insistent prodding by the Pentagon, committed a direct forgery, producing the estimate according to which, in the late sixties, the Soviet missiles identified in the United States as SS-9 were equipped with MIRVs. The estimate soon turned out to be completely wrong. There have been lots of leaks aimed at frustrating progress toward agreements in SALT talks, and many other episodes that show how integral a part of the military appropriations process the phantom of the ‘Soviet threat’ has become.

And all of it is compounded by vested interests and political calculations.

Yes, of course. Plus outright deception. For some reason or other, none of those who deceived Americans about the events abroad, who made them spend billions of dollars on arms, who needlessly drew the country into crises and conflicts with other nations - none of them has been called to account. What's more, some of those very people who regularly misled the public in the critical situations when important long-term decisions were made on military matters - in the late fifties, in the sixties, and the seventies - are still very much in circulation, regarded as top authorities, as ‘those who know’ and whose opinions ought to be heeded both by the public and by the policy makers. And many of them got high posts in the government under President Reagan.

Now, I don't believe in the conspiracy theory of history. I am not one of those who see conspiracies as the ultimate sources of all large-scale disasters. But in this particular case, in this mythology about the ‘Soviet threat’ and the arms race, I am deeply convinced that we are dealing with a conspiracy or even a whole network of conspiracies.

From living some thirty years in the United States, I came to realize that the interests involved in the American war machine are certainly colossal. But isn't there the Soviet military-industrial complex, too, which also plays a decisive role in the arms race?

You should not try to create a symmetry where the situation is very different. Besides, to have a good arms race, you really need just one military-industrial complex. And it was the American one that started every round of the arms race since the end of World War II.

15. Ibid., p. 59.

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Why is it not right to search for parallels between the American military-industrial complex and the arms industry in the Soviet Union?

Of course, we have generals and a defense industry. But our defense industry does not operate for profit and thus lacks the expansionist drive that characterizes the arms industry in the West. Besides, our economy does not need the booster of military spending that has been turned on more than once in the West to tackle the problem of insufficient demand in the economy.

Then who makes money when a Soviet tank or missile is produced?

Workers, engineers, plant managers, designers, and so on; all those who have designed and produced a tank or a missile will undoubtedly get their salaries. If they work well, they may even get a bonus. But the thing is, they would get the same if they produced a tractor or a harvester or a combine, or any sophisticated hardware for energy production or peaceful exploration of outer space. And we have no unemployment. On the contrary, we constantly experience labor shortages. There is no idle production capacity at our plants - we experience shortages here as well. That is why we have to build more and more in order to satisfy the country's needs. Hence, if we undertake a conversion and turn to civil production, not only could our country as a whole benefit, but in principle no one would sustain damage. As a matter of fact, even today our defense branches of industry produce a fair amount of civilian goods. In 1971, L.I. Brezhnev stated that 42 percent of the entire defense-industry output went for civilian purposes. In the fall of 1980, he called on the managers of the defense industry to increase production of consumer goods and devote a greater portion of their research and development facilities to the development of new technology for the civilian sectors of the economy.

Do you have any comparative figures for the current military expenditures of East and West?

Of course. The official U.S. figures for American military expenditures have risen from $127.8 billion in fiscal year 1978/79 to $200 billion for 1981/82. The Reagan administration has requested $260 billion for fiscal year 1982/83. The Soviet military expenditures were 17.2 billion rubles ($24.6 billion) in 1978, and the budget allocation for 1982 is 17.05 billion rubles ($24.3 billion).

This difference looks absolutely improbable. You must be aware that far different figures on the Soviet military budget circulate in the West.

Details of our budget are not made public, so I can give only a rather general explanation for the difference. The United States has a profes-

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sional army, whereas ours is based on conscription. To attract qualified personnel to the army, the U.S. government has to pay rather substantial salaries to the GIs. About half of the American military budget goes for salaries and rents. A GI gets something like $300 to $500 a month. A Soviet soldier can only buy cigarettes with the money he gets. The life style in a conscript army where citizens serve out of duty rather than for material considerations is far more modest than in a professional army.

I could mention another factor having to do with our defense industry. Our price system does not allow that industry to arbitrarily raise the prices on its products.

The CIA estimates current Soviet military spending to be in the range of $180 billion.

All right, let's take, for instance, the data on military spending published by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. According to the 1981/82 edition of their biannual Military Balance, which uses data based on vastly overrated estimates of Soviet defense spending, NATO spent $241 billion on military purposes in 1980, while the Warsaw Pact spent $164.7 billion. Thus, the spending ratio is nearly 1.5 to 1 in favor of NATO. And we have many fewer people in the armed forces than our potential adversaries. According to official Soviet figures, NATO, including the United States, has 4,933,000 in regular armed forces, while the Warsaw Pact, including the USSR, has 4,788,000.^16. If we take the nuclear balance, according to the London institute's statistics, NATO has 2.2 times as many nuclear warheads as the Warsaw Pact.

There is a striking difference between the two sides in policy postures, as well. The United States and NATO plan a steady and massive increase in military preparations for years to come. The Soviet Union has so far not followed that example.

This is what the balance is really like, even if you use Western figures, which are extremely biased against us in many cases. We think we have a rough parity, despite the disadvantages to us made evident by the figures I have cited. By the way, the fact of parity is officially recognized by the Pentagon, even though the Pentagon does not advertise it. According to the U.S. Defense Department Annual Report to Congress concerning the 1981/82 military budget, ‘...While the era of U.S. superiority is long past, parity - not U.S. inferiority - has replaced it, and the United States and the Soviet Union are roughly equal in strategic nuclear power.’^17.

You have said that the capitalist economy needs military spending to keep going. How does that square with the view that there should be a mutual interest in cutting the military expenditures?

I have said that military spending is used as a way to generate additional

16. Whence the Threat to Peace, Moscow, 1961, p. 7.

17. Department of Defense Annual Report FY 1982, p. 43.

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demand in the economy, but the fact that it is used does not necessarily mean it's good for the economy. A military boom is ‘helpful’ in the sense that it can increase activity for a time in one sector of the economy, namely the military industry. A short-term ‘ripple’ effect for the whole economy may also result. If there is a real benefit in all this, it goes to the arms manufacturers. But the economy as a whole has suffered as a result of this quick fix. Its basic problems have been exacerbated; its long-term prospects have dimmed further.

Our specialists think that the recognition of the evils of a militarized economy began in the United States during the war in Southeast Asia. Public debates in the late sixties helped to clarify the fact that the huge appropriations for armaments were becoming ruinous for the American economy. The war budget drove up inflation. It undermined the competitive posture of the United States in world markets. Many American businessmen concluded that one of the reasons the Japanese and West German industries were so successful in competing with the United States was the abnormal budgetary appropriations for the war in Vietnam. Soviet specialists note that some Americans have become aware of other adverse effects of big military spending as well.

Which effects in particular?

In recent years Americans have complained that the United States is beginning to lag behind some other countries in the numbers of inventions and scientific innovations. Some see one of the reasons for it in the fact that America's very best brains are being tapped and used up for the military economy. One-third to 40 percent of American engineers work in the arms industry, which is quite a brain drain. More and more people in the United States are beginning to understand that inflation is connected with arms spending and that the arms race plays a significant role there.

Economic analyses of the Reagan remilitarization program have only strengthened the view that the arms buildup could further aggravate American economic problems. For instance, George F. Brown, Jr., vice president of Data Resources, Inc., testifying before the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress in October 1981, pointed out that, according to his firm's estimates, the Reagan military buildup would put a severe strain not only on the U.S. financial system, but on the productive capacity of American industries as well. According to M. Kathryn Eickhoff, president of the National Association of Business Economists, the American economy will be able to cope with the growing foreign competition only if there is a huge investment in the expansion and modernization of the civilian sector of the economy - a task that the military buildup effectively frustrates.^18.

The attitudes toward military-generated jobs are also changing in the American labor movement. Growing numbers in the labor circles are real-

18. Washington Post, 18 October 1981.

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izing that money spent on civilian production opens up more jobs than the same money going into military production, because the arms industry is getting less labor-intensive.

Which reminds me that when, in Amsterdam, a gigantic rally was taking place against the production of neutron weapons, in Livermore, California, kids were buying T-shirts with slogans supporting the production of these horrors because their fathers owed their jobs to these factories.

I think it's tragic when people are faced with the dilemma of making death or going hungry. Yes, whole areas in the United States are dependent on the Pentagon orders to provide them with jobs. But the fact that military spending creates fewer jobs than the same money would if it were spent in civilian sectors of the economy has become better known. This is one of the reasons why some labor unions representing the workers employed by the arms industry are now actively working together with church and business groups on practical plans for converting the military economy to peaceful needs.

I think there exist substantial grass-roots sentiments for an alternative to militarism. In the early 1980s, those sentiments became less visible. Talking of peaceful conversion of the war economy can be portrayed as unpatriotic when the nation is back on a warpath. But more recently, there has been a new resurgence of antimilitarism.

Nobody would argue that U.S. military expenditures are not enormous. But I'm sure you're aware that they amount to a smaller share of the gross national product (GNP) and of the budget than, say, fifteen years ago. Nonmilitary spending now takes a bigger share than military spending, while in the late sixties it was the other way around. Even with the current sharp rise in military expenditures, the 1981 military budget commits the same amount of real resources to the Pentagon as prior to the war in Indochina.

Yes, I'm familiar with this line of argument.

Then please comment.

All right, let's start with the share of the GNP. Of course, 5 or 6 percent of the GNP, which has been the level of U.S. military spending in recent years, is less than 9 or 13 percent, as it was at times in the past. But it does not mean that 6 percent is peanuts. When you assess the growth of the GNP, each single percentage point makes a tremendous difference, to say nothing of 6 percent. And each year this percent is simply cut out and thrown away.

The budget picture is even starker. The budget - and not even the whole

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of it - reflects the amount of resources the society allocates to the solution of national problems. Those problems include not only military security but also social security, health, education, urban problems, environmental protection, energy, basic research. If almost a third of those resources goes for military purposes, it is a great damage to the society and its ability to solve its most pressing problems.

But is not a long-term change of priorities in the budget a fact?

Well, right now we are witnessing the change of priorities back in favor of greater military spending. But even if the correlation established in the 1970s were preserved, that still wouldn't mean that social spending is big, while the military goes hungry. To say nothing of the fact that comparison of the current level with the pre-Indochina war level can be very misleading. The pre-Indochina war period in this respect was certainly not a period of ‘normalcy.’ We have to remember that at that time, which was at the peak of the Cold War, the United States was carrying out a massive program of strategic buildup adopted in the atmosphere of the ‘missile-gap’ hysteria, as well as a rapid increase in its conventional forces in accordance with the doctrine of ‘flexible response,’ that is, preparedness for waging simultaneously two and a half wars - two big ones plus a small war.

It is also very important when making such comparisons to take note of the fact that the level of military spending is under constant downward pressure from the growing societal demands, which the government can't ignore if it wants any stability at all. I mean development of energy resources, environmental protection, and social spending to compensate for growing economic difficulties faced by a majority of citizens. You have to take all these factors and pressures into account when you try to answer the question of whether the current share of the GNP eaten up by military appropriations is big or small. If you look at America's domestic problems, you won't get the impression that they are swimming in money to solve them.

But social spending did increase.

Yes, it did. A very significant role was played here by the serious domestic disturbances in the United States during the 1960s. People went into the streets. There were riots. The entire decade was full of social unrest. People refused to put up with what they had to endure. The rise in social spending was initiated by President Johnson. Certainly, there was a lot of rhetoric in the concept of the Great Society. No doubt, L.B.J. also had his personal and political interests in mind when he called for this major effort to ameliorate pressing social problems in America. But there was also a deeper motive involved here, I think.

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As a keen politician, Johnson must have realized that much greater attention ought to be paid to social problems, or domestic instability would reach explosive proportions.

But the same Johnson sent hundreds of thousands of young men into the quagmire of Vietnam.

Yes, and the Vietnam war torpedoed the Great Society and the Johnson reign resulted in a complete mess.

All of this has to be remembered if we want to have an accurate assessment of changing priorities. When the seventies arrived, the Vietnam war and militarism in general were running into stiff and often violent opposition throughout America, while demands for social spending were steadily growing.

Nixon did not have much of a choice. The whole situation required an increase of domestic spending and a decrease of military spending.

But now the whole mood in the country seems to have changed.

Yes, we observe active attempts to reverse the proportion between military and social spending once more. And the government has succeeded - at least for a few years - in weakening the popular resistance to massive increases in military expenditures. But, as the Carter-Reagan rearmament program began to unfold, public opinion began to tum against the ‘guns instead of butter’ policy. There are growing worries that the exorbitant military buildup may seriously undermine the American economy. Pressures for more serious governmental attention to domestic problems have not abated because the old problems have not been solved. Many of these have grown even more urgent, and new problems have appeared. The United States government cannot close its eyes to the domestic scene. It cannot run away from it. After all, the United States remains one of the most backward among Western nations in terms of social policy.

But the current theme in Washington is that people don't trust the government to solve their problems. Isn't this one of the reasons Reagan was elected president?

I think American conservatives really commit a serious mistake if they assume that an anti-inflationary mood among the public presents a firm basis for an about-face in social policy; that their mandate calls for a return to nineteenth-century capitalism, or pre-New Deal capitalism. Americans are angry indeed about inflation and taxes, but at the same time support for most specific social programs initiated by the government has grown throughout the seventies.

I do not see a contradiction here. People are simply saying, ‘Yes, the

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government can be helpful in alleviating difficulties and injustices created by the market, but at the same time, the government should bring order to its own finances and spread the tax burden more fairly.’ This sums it up, in my opinion. Americans are now expecting more rather than less from their government. And then, if you have already given something to the people, it is tremendously difficult simply to take it away.

You have said that the arms race undermines rather than strengthens national security.

Yes. We have already discussed the purely military side of the problem. The same goes for the economic impact of the arms race. Siphoning off increasingly large sums from the economy - the social and cultural spheres - the arms race is gnawing at the nation's welfare. The emerging dilemma is whether it's worth strengthening the protection of a household if the cost of such strengthening completely ruins it. As I have said, increases in the numbers of weapons and the creation of new weapons can upset military and political stability and thus create additional threats to national security.

Can you give an example?

Well, I guess the MIRV story is as good as any. We have talked already about the problem of counterforce capabilities. If a nation acquires a capability for knocking out all or a significant part of her adversary's strategic forces by means of a preemptive strike, this increases fears and insecurity on the other side, encourages it to create similar capabilities to threaten the adversary, to create new systems that would be safe from such a strike, and to put its own rockets on the hair trigger. So, the result, as you see, is more instability. Such a counterforce capability might become possible, however, only given a large increase in the numbers of warheads, since to knock out one of your adversary's rockets you need more than one warhead of your own, because you can't guarantee 100 percent accuracy and reliability. This fact had stabilized the situation before the appearance of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. It was so easy to outstrip any attempt to gain counterforce capability just by adding as many or even a bit fewer missiles than the adversary.

The United States changed the situation by introducing MIRVs. Since we didn't have any at that time, Americans were not concerned about the consequences. Then the Soviet MIRVs appeared, and the United States became very much concerned, and then even hysterical about the ‘vulnerability’ of its Minuteman force. It became the main theme of the anti-SALT campaign. It was this ‘vulnerability’ that became the pretext - if not the reason - for introducing a new, very dangerous and destabilizing strategic system, the MX, with all its exotic modes of deployment, and also the

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pretext for a new attitude toward the limitation of ABMs. In other words, the MIRV served as the fuse that lit up a whole chain of events that undermined stability.

Indeed, many U.S. experts seem to be greatly worried about the vulnerability of their ICBMs, citing the fact that, having a greater throw weight, the Russian missiles will be able to carry more warheads if the USSR continues MIRVing them in the 1980s. This, they say, gives you a substantial superiority - at least until the MX is deployed.

As I mentioned, the vulnerability of land-based missiles has become the subject of a heated discussion touching upon the problems of the ‘Soviet threat,’ the strategic balance, and the SALT II treaty. Whether this question deserves such emotions is open to doubt. I don't think it does - but this is the opinion of a layman, not of a professional.

Why do you downplay the problems of ICBM vulnerability?

Let us look at the substance of the problem. Are the ICBMs becoming technically more vulnerable with the appearance of MIRVs and the increased accuracy and power of warheads? Of course they are. If the Americans are concerned about it, let them remember that it was the United States that initiated the MIRV race, the counterforce concept, and the programs to increase the accuracy of warheads.

But I would not agree with the proposition that the growing ICBM vulnerability gives advantages to the Soviet Union. This proposition is false. The American Minuteman III missile equipped with the new Mark 12A warhead is a powerful counterforce weapon making the Soviet strategic forces now - not in the future - more vulnerable than the American forces. As to the future, we know that the early eighties is considered in the United States as an especially dangerous period. At the SALT II hearings in the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate, estimates were made concerning comparative vulnerability of American and Soviet missiles. According to these estimates, the United States would be able to destroy 60 percent of our ICBMs, while we would be able to knock out 90 percent of theirs. But it was emphasized in the same testimony that the ICBMs are only one ‘leg’ of the triad, and that this leg is of far less significance for the United States because it accounts for only 24 percent of the total number of American warheads, while the Soviet Union has 70 percent of its warheads on ICBMs. Accordingly, the comparative capabilities for a disarming strike were estimated this way: the USSR in the early eighties will be able to destroy 22 percent of the American strategic potential by such a strike while the United States will be able to destroy 42 percent of ours.^19.

This is how the situation looks with present weapons. The introduction

19. ‘The SALT II Treaty.’ Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, part 3 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979), p. 75.

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of the MX will hardly reduce the vulnerability of U.S. ICBMs, but - and you don't hear this very often from this system's supporters - increase the vulnerability of Soviet ICBMs. Other weapons systems scheduled by the United States, like Trident II or Pershing II (the latter, by the way, cuts the warning time to five or six minutes with regard to targets in the European part of the USSR), will also have significant counterforce capabilities.

In other words, you consider the talk about the ‘Soviet threat’ to American ICBMs groundless?

There is no doubt that, in case of an attack on the USSR or its allies, the Soviet strategic forces will be able to inflict what is called ‘unacceptable damage’ on the United States. It is just as certain that the USSR possesses the physical capability to destroy a certain number of American ICBMs. But the United States has at least the same capabilities. In this sense the threats are mutual. And with regard to ICBM kill capability, the American plans are aimed at gaining a substantial superiority here. It will be only logical to assume that the Soviet Union will try to prevent this from happening, which, in turn, will not be liked by Americans and will cause a new fit of paranoia about the ‘Soviet threat.’

But you have put in doubt the crucial importance of the very problem of ICBM vulnerability.

Yes, with a qualifier that I'm not a professional expert in the field. I have noted, however, that quite a few experts have also pointed to the flaws of the idea of vulnerability and think that this should hardly be regarded as a crucial problem. For instance, there is the extreme technical complexity of firing a salvo aimed at hitting well over a thousand targets simultaneously. And this is something no one has ever, or is ever likely to, experiment with. There is then the problem of ‘fratricide effect’ - after the first warheads hit the targets, the impact of their explosions would inevitably create great difficulties for the flight of the rest of the warheads to their targets, damaging or deflecting them.

What is even more important, experts point out that even if it were possible to destroy all the adversary ICBMs on the ground, this would not be a really disarming strike. There are the SLBMs - the ballistic missiles on submarines, which are for all practical purposes invulnerable to modern weapons - and the strategic bombers, which can very quickly take off and strike back. These two ‘legs’ of the U.S. strategic triad - the SLBMs and the bombers - account for almost 70 percent of the American strategic potential. If one is worried about a Soviet first strike, one should keep in mind that those two legs would remain almost intact for a response. I could add to all this a couple of other thoughts.

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Please.

All the scare stories, all the scenarios of a disarming strike against ICBMs, are based on an assumption that the adversary will wait for this strike to happen, and only after it will he be immersed in a Hamlesian situation - torn by the question of what to do, if anything, and to be or not to be, of course.

But I can't imagine that the government and the military command of a country receiving the news that several thousand warheads are flying in its direction would sit idly by and wait for them to explode, so that they can determine whether it's a counterforce or a countervalue strike, and then start to indulge in these painful reflections and intellectual exercises.

By the way, what is the difference between a counterforce strike and a countervalue one?

A counterforce strike aims at military targets, primarily at strategic forces, while a countervalue strike is aimed at the cities and the economic potential. Well, instead of waiting to see just what kind of strike it is, the country under attack would, I think, promptly launch a retaliatory strike. Naturally, its targets would not be limited to the enemy's ICBM silos, empty, or at least half empty, by that time, but would certainly include the cities. Thus, instead of a limited exchange of ‘counterforce strikes,’ we'd have an all-out thermonuclear war that would bring an end to human history. So anyone planning for a preemptive strike on the other side's ICBMs must consider such a prospect not only possible, but highly probable.

This goes to the heart of the miscalculations by the authors of such scenarios. Making a decision to strike at the adversary's ICBMs is, in my opinion, absolutely tantamount to a decision to start an all-out nuclear war. If deterrence works and you count on your adversary's common sense, he won't start such a war, and the concern about ICBM vulnerability loses ground. If, however, you expect the adversary to be capable of easily starting a general nuclear war - of committing national suicide - then it means that deterrence has failed, and in this case the problem of ICBM vulnerability becomes even less relevant. In the latter case, one should pray to his own God and be quick to push his own button.

Having come to this conclusion, I don't have the slightest doubt that it will produce skeptical smiles among many experts, at least in the United States. But I, for my part, would like to say that these armchair strategists themselves are becoming a real threat. Drawing the most incredible scenarios, they only manage to find new excuses for pushing on the arms race and for increasing fears, uncertainties, and tensions in the world. They don't understand a damn thing about real policy. And by this I mean not only Realpolitik; they also disregard elementary human psychology. Most of them have never seen action and do not know what real war is all about.

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You seem rather annoyed by them. But if what you said is correct, their version of vulnerability is wrong and therefore harmless.

You know, when baptism almost became a state religion in the United States I started to study the Bible. Remember the line from Ecclesiastes? ‘Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroyeth much good’ (Eccles. 9:18). These scenarios are begetting new fears, undermining mutual trust, and giving additional impulses to the new thrust in the arms race.

But I've interrupted your discussion of strategy.

You see, I think in general that deterrence looks quite different to politicians and sensible military leaders than to these armchair strategists. From the leaders' viewpoint, the very prospect of the destruction of the capital city is already a very serious deterrence. I think it was McGeorge Bundy who once pointed to this fact. And what about the prospect of losing ten of the biggest cities? What would the United States be like without New York and Washington, Boston and Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, New Orleans and Houston, Minneapolis and St. Louis? Or, for that matter, the Soviet Union without Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Sverdlovsk, Baku, Tashkent, Minsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Gorki, and Riga? What war aims could possibly justify such monstrous losses?

Now imagine our two countries without a hundred of their biggest cities each. Theoretically, just one submarine can inflict such damage to our respective countries, and the number of nuclear warheads accumulated today amounts to thousands. But it turns out that some people still want many more and are thinking up even more fantastic scenarios for Armageddon.

But the Soviet programs and arsenals also grew, following predesigned goals and scenarios.

Yes, I've already discussed this interaction. The United States makes a push ahead, and we move to catch up with it. It is the mad inertia of the arms race. The accumulation of weapons goes far beyond any rational requirements. If we don't put an end to it, this will go on and on. And the threat of war will grow. It is all most deplorable, but the U.S. approach does not leave us any options.

Some strange things happen nowadays indeed: new weapons are being developed and accumulated, new wars are being prepared for and made even more probable under quite different pretexts and often with quite different purposes in mind.

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What do you have in mind?

You know, I often have a feeling that these periodic attempts by the United States to get a military edge over the USSR have become for her a kind of Freudian compensation for... well, the lack of omnipotence that that country has been feeling in her dealings with the world in recent years.

Professor Edward Teller, the so-called father of the H-bomb, told me in 1980 that the Soviet Union would be the absolute victor if a nuclear war were to erupt. ‘With what does Mr. Carter intend to stop the Soviets?’ he asked. The same goes for Ronald Reagan, I suppose.

I can understand Dr. Teller's parental feelings. He seems upset that his baby hasn't been used. He seems upset about so many facts of life in this world - like the existence of a Soviet Union that will not be bullied, or the fact that a nuclear war cannot be won. I'm afraid his case is hopeless. There is just one sane attitude toward such a war - prevent it at all costs. I think the American physicians who are concerned about nuclear war put it very well, stating that it is beyond medicine's capacity to cope with the consequences of nuclear war. They stress that, as with incurable diseases, the only possible solution is preventive medicine - prevention of the war itself. The United States, which introduced the nuclear weapon as a tool of foreign policy, has periodically tried to get around this maxim of the nuclear age. Right now it is in another such period.

According to the U.S. government, Soviet military preparations go beyond the requirements of defense. This is what bothers Americans.

I just wonder how the Americans would have estimated their defense requirements had they been in our position, having to consider at least three potential adversaries - the United States, with both its strategic and conventional arms; the NATO allies of the United States in Europe, and Japan, another American ally.

On the other hand, we can respond with our own assessment of American military preparations, and it would be a much better-founded calculation. We in the Soviet Union do have a strong impression that the size and direction of the American military programs cannot be explained by defensive considerations. The United States outnumbers the Soviet Union in nuclear warheads and now develops its strategic forces with a great stress on counterforce capabilities. It has many strike aircraft carriers and large amphibious forces in the proximity of Soviet borders. Generally speaking, about half of America's troops are stationed overseas, and with the special Rapid Deployment Force being organized, the U.S. military doctrine openly presumes that it can intervene abroad, even with a first use of nuclear

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weapons. That does not look very defensive, particularly if you consider the relatively safe geographical position of the United States - with oceans to the east and the west, with friendly and militarily weak neighbors to the north and the south.

Thus, one's defense requirements always look different from the outside. After all, each of us can be strongly convinced of being a good guy and not wishing to do harm to anyone. I'd add that, in a broader sense, if you don't single out any particular power, there is really too much military hardware accumulated in the world in recent decades. It goes far beyond requirements of defense and security. That's why we have been advocating disarmament. And there's tremendous overkill capability, which the biggest powers could easily part with, provided there is the political will on all sides. At the very least, there is a full possibility not to build more.

But the Soviet Union does have more troops, tanks, guns, and God knows what.

Wait a minute. We have fewer troops than our potential adversaries in NATO. We may have, let us say, more tanks than NATO, but, then, NATO has more advanced antitank weapons. If you assume we have more guns, there's even by the Western assessment a NATO superiority in self-propelled guns and in tactical nuclear weapons. Of course there are asymmetries, but if you take them all together, there's an overall rough balance, parity, equality - whatever you may wish to call it. This has been confirmed time and again not only by us, but by many Western analysts and political leaders as well.

Are you speaking of an overall military balance or of a balance in Europe?

I'm speaking of both. Of course, there are different assessments of both balances in the West, but I refer to the more authoritative ones made by former U.S. Defense Secretary Brown, former Bundeskanzler of the Federal Republic of Germany Helmut Schmidt, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, etc.

Do they include the SS-20 and other nuclear weapons deployed in Europe?

Yes, of course. For instance, the International Institute for Strategic Studies has confirmed the existence of a nuclear balance in Europe.^20. Such well-known American specialists as Paul Doty and Robert Metzger speak of a rough parity in ‘Eurostrategic’ weapons systems with a six-hundred-kilometer-plus range.

20. ‘Air Force,’ December 1979; also ‘The Military Balance, 1979-80,’ International Institute of Strategic Studies, London.

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You must be aware of the uproar caused by the deployment of the SS-20 missiles in the Western part of the USSR. Why did the Soviet Union insist on doing this, especially during an era of blossoming détente?

Yes, we are very much aware of the uproar you're talking about, and we think the reasons for it are very similar to the other uproars over this or that variety of ‘Soviet threat.’ Namely, such an uproar is usually caused by the desire to justify new NATO military programs, in this particular case the Pershing II and the land-based cruise missiles.

As for the SS-20, it is a rocket that replaces old Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles referred to in the West as SS-4 and SS-5, which were introduced twenty years ago and have become obsolete. Mind you, as Leonid Brezhnev stated with all seriousness, the overall number of Soviet MRBMs in Europe, far from increasing, became somewhat smaller. For each deployed SS-20 we remove one or two older missiles.

But NATO experts maintain, and many in the West are convinced, that the introduction of the SS-20 cannot be seen as a simple modernization. These are supposed to be new missiles of a superior class.

Well, what would the West think of the USSR if we replaced twenty-year-old missiles with something other than new and better missiles? The crux of the matter is that the mission of these rockets hasn't changed. Just like the SS-4 and the SS-5, the SS-20 doesn't reach the United States; it remains really a theater weapon, not a strategic weapon. It is our response to the forward-based systems the United States has in Western Europe - about sixteen hundred delivery systems along with U.S. submarines carrying long-range missiles, nuclear-armed planes on aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea and the northern Atlantic, which are capable of striking Soviet territory, as well as the numerous missiles and planes of America's nuclear allies in Europe: Britain and France. The Soviet MRBMs are called upon to perform the role of our deterrent against all these weapons.

The NATO version of the reasons for their deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles is similar: they also talk of modernization and of restoring a balance.

It looks similar only until you take a closer look. The new NATO missiles will perform new roles, new functions, for they'll be able to reach deep into Soviet territory. It means, according to the existing criteria, that these American weapons are not just theater weapons, ones used in the theaters of war outside the territories of either the USSR or the United States, but strategic weapons as well. At the same time, they are not covered by the SALT agreements. Doesn't this alone create new problems?

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You mean that the NATO modernization program affects the SALT-process?

Yes, it does. According to the SALT II treaty, we are to cut our strategic weapons by 250 launchers and have an equal number of launchers as the United States has. The Americans have strongly insisted on such equality ever since 1972, and the two sides have been arguing over every dozen missiles, if not over every single one. We finally agreed, although we had earlier insisted on including the American forward-based systems. Well, now the United States is planning to add to their strategic force about six hundred new launchers not covered by the SALT II treaty. Why should we care where a missile aimed at our territory takes off from, be it Montana or North Dakota, West Germany or Holland? Actually, the latter situation would be worse because of the forbiddingly short warning time of Pershing II.

And how about the next agreement on strategic arms? As already agreed, we would be talking of further cuts, even significant cuts, in strategic weapons. But how should we approach these talks, if the USSR is to decrease the numbers of weapons, but the United States, while agreeing to limit its Minutemen, SLBMs, and cruise missiles on strategic bombers, goes ahead with deploying Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe?

So these are the primary Soviet objections against production and deployment of new American missiles in Europe?

Yes. And I would add a few more. The deployment of these missiles will mean a new round of the nuclear arms race. They also can play a very destabilizing role, creating an illusion that the United States can acquire the capability to wage a nuclear war against USSR on a regional level, leaving safe U.S. territory. All in all, it weakens the nuclear deterrence in Europe. And, this is not a kind of a weapon capable of strengthening West European security. Just the opposite - it undermines it. The true rationale for this weapon, as Marshal D.F. Ustinov pointed out, ‘is not the concern for Europe but the reduction of the strength of the retaliatory blow at the U.S. territory in case of an aggression against the USSR.’

It is obvious that a new round in the arms race is hardly likely to create greater stability either in Europe or in the world at large. But what can be done about it? What does the USSR do to prevent this round?

We have done a lot not only to prevent this new round, but to achieve real disarmament in Europe. Our readiness to solve the INF problem through negotiations was repeatedly stated before and after NATO's December 1979 decision. The Soviet position was specified at the Twenty-sixth Party

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Congress of the CPSU, in a number of President Brezhnev's subsequent statements, and in the Soviet Union's official proposals at the INF talks in Geneva in 1982.

Most of all, we would like to see a nuclear-free Europe, and therefore we have proposed to get rid of not only medium-range but also tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. In case the West is not ready for such a radical solution, we have made other far-reaching proposals. According to them, both sides would agree to reduce their numbers of intermediate-range nuclear weapons from the current level of about one thousand to three hundred by 1990. Most of the weapons would be destroyed, and those not destroyed on our side would be put far enough behind the Urals not to be able to reach Western Europe. Adequate verification procedures would be worked out.

To facilitate progress at the INF talks, we have stopped the deployment of SS-20 missiles and begun to remove some of our IRBMs in advance of the limits to be agreed upon. Unfortunately, the United States insists on the so-called ‘zero option’ proposal put forth by President Reagan in November 1981. It is a curious kind of proposal - we get zero, while NATO gets new options. According to the Reagan plan, the Soviet Union would dismantle both the new and the old intermediate-range ballistic missiles in its forces, while NATO would only refrain from deploying its new missiles, keeping all the forces it already has, including the quite substantial number of British and French nuclear forces - both planes and missiles. And it is far from clear whether the United States will be ready to refrain from deploying its sea-based cruise missiles, particularly in the vicinity of Europe. What's more, the Reagan plan stipulates that such unilateral reductions be imposed on the Soviet Union not only in Europe, but in the Far East as well.

Meanwhile, time is running out. The deadline for the deployment of U.S. missiles is getting nearer every day. The Geneva talks are clearly being used by Washington to defuse the growing political power of the antinuclear movement in Western Europe, rather than to work out an agreement that would stop the impending dangerous round in the arms race.

NATO didn't make any sense, either, when it rejected our moratorium proposal of early 1981. NATO said it was afraid of the new SS-20 missiles the Soviet Union was already deploying, so they decided to deploy new American missiles in response, starting in 1983. In early 1981 we suggested that both sides refrain from any new deployment while we negotiated the problem. We virtually proposed a measure of unilateral restraint, affecting only ourselves. Why then did NATO reject the moratorium idea? I have only one explanation: the United States viewed, and still views, the moratorium as an obstacle, fearing that its introduction would reduce tensions in Europe and thus impede the NATO rearmament.

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So, you are blaming the Americans.

Yes, but not only them. Those Europeans who belong to the so-called ‘NATO community’ were very active. Fred Kaplan, an expert on military and political issues on the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives, traced the origins of the Euromissile decision to a small group of influential experts called the European-American Workshop, chaired by a well-known American hawk, Albert Wohlstetter, and tied in with the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. It included consultants and analysts from Germany, Britain, Norway, and other NATO countries. This group first persuaded Helmut Schmidt, who raised the issue in October 1977. Carter was not slow to pick it up.^21.

What was the rationale for that? An important argument in favor of the Euromissile decision was the open or hidden doubt about the credibility of the American nuclear ‘umbrella’ over Western Europe - the doubt that in the case of a war in Europe the United States would use its strategic forces against the Soviet Union in the light of Soviet-American strategic parity. Was this doubt wholly unfounded?

First, the deployment of new American medium-range missiles won't have any impact on the situation regarding the U.S. umbrella. If these missiles - I repeat, American missiles - hit the Soviet territory, the retaliatory strike would be aimed not only at the countries where they took off, but at the United States, too, just as it would be if the rockets came from Wyoming.

Second, these doubts are based on a totally preposterous idea that one can wage a war in Europe, even a nuclear one, which would not grow into a general holocaust. Here again we run into the sphere of American armchair strategists” creative thinking, of this strategic hairsplitting divorced from reality and devoid of common sense. The trouble is that this hairsplitting is not just a mental exercise. It serves to justify the enormous expenditures and efforts to build up nuclear and conventional arms in Europe.

Meanwhile, it's quite evident that anyone who decides to start a war in Europe will have to accept that it will be a world war with the use of modern weapons of mass destruction. Probably the most absurd notion in this regard is that it will be possible to limit the use of nuclear weapons in such a war to medium-range or tactical weapons, keeping the war in the framework of a ‘local conflict.’

Most Europeans are well aware that such expectations are nonsense.

Certainly, because for them such a conflict would be total, absolutely strategic, if I may say so. Even if the war were limited to the use of tactical weapons. As early as in the 1960s, it was calculated that even ‘a very

21. New York Times Magazine, 9 December 1979, pp. 46, 47, 55.

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limited’ use of such weapons in Europe would cost up to twenty million lives. If, as is much more likely, the war transcended such limits, the number of casualties would reach, according to some experts, at least a hundred million.^22.

Neutron weapons have been a subject of heated discussion in Europe in recent years. What effect would they have on the overall situation?

Aside from the moral aspect of a weapon designed to kill people but save property, the ERW - enhanced radiation weapon - encountered opposition on two major grounds. For one thing, a new type of weapon means a new round in the arms race. For another, there appears the threat of lowering the nuclear threshold. After all, the whole idea behind the ERW was to convince Europeans that, in case of war, nuclear weapons could be used in the European theater without excessive danger to the countries and peoples of Europe.

One argument in favor of the neutron bomb is that it's only effective for defensive purposes.

In my view, this notion should have become too shameful to repeat after all the discussions held on the subject. By the very nature of its major functions the neutron weapon is more offensive than any other nuclear weapon. Behind President Reagan's decision to start its mass production there is a clear design to make nuclear war more thinkable and more feasible, even in the tightly built and overcrowded conditions of Europe - and, more than that, to demonstrate to the Soviet Union and the whole world that Washington would not hesitate to start such a war.

Aside from this political aspect, in a narrower, technical sense, the neutron weapon is still far from being defensive in character. It is effective against tanks, but it is no less usable against defensive fortifications. It can annihilate the defenders of a town, as well as its residents, while keeping its streets free of debris. It can preserve bridges, highways, or airfields, while killing all their defenders. Finally, since this weapon produces only half the radioactive fallout that an ordinary atomic bomb does, it can be a very tempting weapon for an attacking side to use when it wants to occupy an area.

Let's go back to what the USSR calls the ‘alleged Soviet threat. ‘Recently, much has been written and spoken in the United States about Soviet civil-defense programs. It is asserted that those programs are so massive and elaborate that they will enable the Soviet Union to wage a nuclear war and yet avoid ‘unacceptable damage.’

Yes, we have the civil-defense service in the Soviet Union, just like the

22. Alain Enthoven and Kenneth Smith, How Much Is Enough? (New York: 1971), p. 123.

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Americans, the Dutch, or any other nation. Yet nobody in the USSR believes that civil defense could make nuclear war painless or acceptable, or could lower the inevitable casualties and losses to some tolerable level. Do you think we would have agreed to limiting ABMs if we had hoped for civil defense? All this, by the way, was carefully explained by a deputy chief of our general staff to the American senators who visited Moscow in 1979. I took part in those discussions and remember very well that the senators were told the Soviet Union spends on its civil defense about the same share of its military expenditures as the United States does - about one-tenth of one percent. As a matter of fact, it is the United States that from time to time becomes overenthusiastic about civil defense. It happened in the early sixties, and it is happening again now. When I travel in the United States, I often encounter the sign ‘Fallout Shelter.’ I have never come across one in the Soviet Union. It's conceivable that another civil-defense hysteria in the United States might not be so bad from the Soviet military point of view: these programs would siphon off a lot of Pentagon money for useless things.

In the meantime, scare stories of the Soviet civil defense continue to spread. Major General George Keegan is among the most active in this field. Before retirement, he was chief of intelligence of the U.S. Air Force, using that post to dress up his fantasies and concoctions as intelligence data.

General Keegan told me that you were the most dangerous propagandist the Kremlin ever let loose on Americans.

Since Keegan is one of the main mouthpieces of an anti-Soviet campaign as deceitful as it is dangerous, I would consider such an assessment flattering.

We have finally arrived at the subject of American generals. What is your opinion about the role they play in American politics?

American generals are, undoubtedly, a separate matter. To begin with, you may find different personalities among them. Some of them are still remembered by us since the times we were allies. Even after the war quite a few American generals and admirals were putting forward sane political ideas. All through the seventies I had a chance to participate in discussions and seminars with such American officers as Generals James Gavin, Brent Scowcroft, and Royal Allison; Admirals George Miller, Gene LaRoque, and Noel Gayler. I have nothing but deep respect for these people, although, naturally, we disagree on a lot of things. I have come across, for instance, this statement by General Richard M. Ellis (commander-in-chief of Strategic Air Command); ‘I suggest to you that the best hope for the future is through SALT negotiated arms limitation agreement and a subsequent

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mutual reduction of forces. The alternatives to a SALT agreement are unacceptable...,’^23. I can only applaud such a statement. Worthy of attention in my view are some ideas of Generals Maxwell Taylor and Mathew Ridgway, and of some others. But if we are to talk about American generals as a group and to evaluate the political role of the entire ‘top brass,’ then we have to state that they comprise an important component of the American military-industrial complex. To my mind, there is hardly another country in the world, aside from military dictatorships, where the generals, and the admirals for that matter, play as important a role as they do in the United States and bear such a considerable influence over the public opinion, the Congress, and the administration. This tradition is even more amazing if we recall that the United States has not really fought too many major wars in its history.

One of the reasons for such a situation is to be found, in my view, in the overwhelming militarization of U.S. foreign policy so typical of the period of the Cold War. No wonder that, with the Cold War subsiding since the late sixties, confidence in the Pentagon and the generals has been decreasing. It seems that Vietnam in particular made the public increasingly doubtful of the generals' judgment on matters of war, peace, and national security. Americans came to recollect the popular wisdom that war is too serious a matter to be entrusted to the generals. But, of course, the United States has recently entered a new period of militarization, and the situation may change again.

What about Soviet generals?

I have a great respect for them. They do know what a really bad war means.

It looks as if, in your opinion, a dangerous role is being played not only by the American generals, but by the civilian specialists on military matters, by those whom you call the ‘armchair strategists.’

I am not alone in such an opinion. They have undoubtedly made a considerable contribution to the arms race, to the fact that U.S. military thought has been developing in such a dangerous direction. That contribution was quite vividly characterized by one such strategist, Herman Kahn, who said, ‘We want to make... nuclear war more rational....”^24.

Could you name the most prominent of these specialists?

I could, but I would not. Many of them are now in government. What if they repent, change their minds, and would like to make up for it by good deeds? Such things have happened in the past. Besides, I don't want to give them publicity.

23. Arms Control Today, vol. 8, no. 9 (October 1978), p. 5.

24. P. Dickson, Think Tanks (New York: 1971), p. 106.

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But this would be criticism, not publicity.

Never mind. In America, I heard, any publicity is considered positive, with the single exception of an obituary. And if it comes to the military experts, I would like to mention another group. Some time after the end of the sixties there appeared in the United States an influential group of specialists on military affairs and armaments that began to speak publicly in favor of curtailing the arms race and preventing the war threat. Mind you, they did so in their capacity as professionals. That was particularly important, since previously a similar standpoint had been supported by the people who, although quite often respected, had practically no credentials in the spheres of military technology, strategy, or policy and who were opposed by those who had the most reliable credentials in these matters. It is only natural that the arguments of common sense assumed additional credibility when put forward by the people whom you could not suspect of ignorance: former presidential advisors on science and technology George Kistiakowsky and Jerome Wiesner, the Pentagon's Herbert York and Jan Lodal, the CIA's Herbert Scoville and Arthur Cox, ACDA's George Rathjens, as well as such prominent scientists as Wolfgang Panofsky, Richard Garwin, Bernard Feld, Paul Doty, et al.

One of the most prominent American naval officers, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., chief of naval operations during the Nixon years, impressed upon me that Admiral Gorshkov built up your naval forces in a miraculously short time. Take submarines. Gorshkov built so many of them that the Soviet navy has three times more submarines than the U.S. Navy.

Recently I read an assessment of this asymmetry made by a well-known American specialist, William W. Kaufmann. He points out that these submarines, many of them old and diesel powered, are divided between four fleets, two of them - the Black Sea and the Baltic fleets - due to their geographical location, are unable to threaten the American lines of communications. And the two other fleets, in order to reach those lines, would have to pass through narrow and dangerous waters where they could be expected by the enemy. And he comes to the conclusion that to make a comparison on the basis of numbers alone means not only ‘a high probability of error, it would not even have provided an adequate data base for any such calculations.’^25. would add that I know for sure that, even if we do not take into account the naval forces of American allies, the U.S. Navy has been and remains the strongest navy in the world.

But many in the West are convinced that the USSR has exerted a strenuous effort to build up its navy.

Unquestionably, our navy has been strengthened. But is there any particu-

25. Joseph A. Pechman, ed., Setting National Priorities: Agenda for the 1980s (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1980), p. 286.

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lar reason why it should have remained unchanged since, let us say, the end of the last war? Besides, I would not look for any evil, let alone aggressive designs, behind the strengthening of our navy. We have extensive sea borders that have to be guarded. It is even more imperative to do so since the naval forces confronting us, the American forces in the first place, are clearly offensive in nature, comprising large aircraft-carrier formations, numerous marine units, landing craft, etc. In all of these categories, the United States has considerable superiority over the Soviet Union, while in some of them this superiority is overwhelming. And the bulk of these forces is deployed close to our shores.

But the Soviet navy and its submarines have offensive capabilities as well. In particular, the Soviet navy can cut off communication lines that are of vital importance to the West.

As to the capability of cutting off communication lines, that is not always connected with offensive intentions. It may also be part of defense. As far as I understand, NATO considers the Atlantic a route for American supplies to Europe in case of war. Is it not logical for the USSR, for the Warsaw Pact, to foresee a counteraction to such plans? Such a reaction, in our view, is purely defensive, since the war may be unleashed only by the West.

And what about the Indian Ocean?

You have to understand that, in terms of communications, this ocean is as important for us as the Panama Canal is for the United States, since it provides the only reliable route connecting the western and eastern parts of our country. It is our vital communication line and we are naturally keen on ensuring its security.

But does that not create dangers for the vital communication line of the West, since the larger part of the Persian Gulf oil imported to Western Europe, the United States, and Japan goes through the Indian Ocean?

I have heard concern expressed in this regard more than once, but I still fail to visualize what they are afraid of in real terms. If they are worried about this communication line in case of an all-out nuclear war, then such worries are purely academic. A war of this kind will make this problem irrelevant, like an uncomfortable shoe on an amputated foot. And I cannot understand their concerns if we discuss a situation of peace. Are they afraid that we will start sinking Western tankers? Once you have decided to start the Big War, you can also do it in this way. But then again, what are the reasons for the West to be concerned about these communication lines in such a case?

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Why don't you accept that a beefing up of the American navy will improve the security of Western communication lines, while insisting that it is necessary to provide for a Soviet naval presence in the Indian Ocean, since the Soviet Union too has important routes there?

As far as the first part of your question is concerned, I do not think, in general, that the problem of oil supply can be resolved by military means. Something, undeniably, can be done with the help of military force - oil fields and pipelines may be bombed, set on fire, and destroyed. The recent war between Iran and Iraq has proven it. But will this produce oil? No, the task of ensuring a continuous supply of oil from the Middle East, from the Persian Gulf countries, can be accomplished only through establishing peace in the region, through rejecting interference in the internal affairs of these countries, and by building up just and equal relations with them.

As far as the second part of your question goes, I would not like you to construe the aforesaid as a justification for any foreign (including Soviet) military presence in the Indian Ocean. The USSR is for the strictest restraints on any such presence. We conducted appropriate negotiations with the United States on this subject, negotiations that were subsequently frozen on the initiative of the American side. In December 1980, Leonid Brezhnev put forward new specific proposals for a demilitarization of the area around the Persian Gulf, including the abolition of foreign military bases, nondeployment of nuclear weapons, and noninterference in the normal operation of trade and other communications routes in the area. Had the security of oil supply and sea communications really been at the heart of the Western concept, it would have been more responsive to these proposals.

The Soviet Union has been putting forward more general proposals on restricting the arms race at sea. Among them was a proposal to do away with the permanent presence of foreign navies outside their own territorial waters. If the West doubts that the Soviet Union will be a reliable partner in any such efforts, as in any efforts to stop the arms race, let it test the Soviet intentions instead of whipping up the campaign about the ‘Soviet threat.’

What is your evaluation of the various arms control negotiations at this point?

Almost all of the bilateral Soviet-American talks started before 1979 were practically frozen, which is an unavoidable consequence and even a constituent part of the recent shift in policy effectuated by the United States.

Again you seem to blame the United States. Without trying to exonerate Washington, why does the Soviet Union not share in the blame? There

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might be certain difficulties inherent in the complex nature of the problems discussed.

No doubt such difficulties do exist. At times they hamper negotiations and may even lead to additional friction. I have in mind the difficulties emanating from the complexity of modern technology, the difficulties of verification and so on, as well as of the asymmetries in geographical and political situations, and last but not least, suspicion, caused by a long period of tensions. To this I should add that in negotiations no one is immune from making certain mistakes in evaluating the other side's position. Here I am ready to allow that we might have done better and more effectively in some instances. All these difficulties should not be underestimated, but they are not the main point. The main point is that the United States and NATO, as far as we can see, are still after military superiority, and, seeking such superiority, have recently accelerated the arms race. This kind of policy does not leave much room for successful negotiations and agreements on arms limitation. Is the Soviet Union to blame for all this? Certainly it is to blame. It is blamed for the sheer fact of its existence, and for its desire to go on living as an independent nation. It is blamed for not putting up with American superiority and for insisting on a parity, on an equality with the United States. It is blamed for being unwilling to be left at the mercy of the superior military might of the United States and other Western powers, and for an unwillingness to make unilateral concessions. In Western opinion these attitudes may be serious faults, but I doubt that we could be persuaded to change them.

Such a view seems excessively categorical and self-righteous. Perhaps we should analyze in specific terms at least the most important negotiations.

Why not? Let us start with the SALT negotiations. The last agreement was signed in June 1979 but has not been ratified so far by the United States. Some may certainly put the blame on Moscow, in particular on the events in Afghanistan. But let us recollect that, according to the predominant opinion in the United States, the ratification had to be completed in 1979, before the election campaign came into full swing. But it didn't happen, and the blame lies squarely on the U.S. government. First the United States started the Cuban pseudocrisis with the so-called Soviet brigade; then it simply forgot about SALT because of the crisis in U.S.-Iranian relations. So I have grave doubts that the treaty would have been ratified in 1980 even if nothing had happened in Afghanistan. But this is only part of the story. The United States is responsible for seven years of delays in the SALT II negotiations. Had it not been for those delays, we might have been discussing SALT III now, or even SALT IV.

It is my firm belief that, had the Carter administration's policy not been so inconsistent and ambiguous, the ratification in the Congress would not

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have been accompanied by so many complications. As late as 1777 no one would have foreseen them.

And now you have to deal with a pew administration, which during the election campaign promised to scrap SALT II, or at least to return it for renegotiations.

Yes, we are again in a new situation, which raises the problem of continuity in U.S. policy. As far as the Soviet Union is concerned, we negotiated this agreement in good faith with two Republican and one Democratic administration, and we consider it a good document even now. But, of course, time has passed and some new negotiations are needed. The protocol has expired and there must be a new decision on the issues covered by it. So far, both sides have stuck to the SALT I and SALT II treaties, although the first has expired and the second has not been ratified. But such a situation cannot last forever, and there should be valid formal agreements.

It is a widespread opinion in the United States that they have made more concessions in SALT II than the Soviet Union.

It is widespread only among opponents of SALT II.

How would you describe the actual situation?

We think that the treaty is based on a balance of concessions from both sides. We could imagine a better treaty from the point of view of our own interests. The same is true of the United States. This is only natural, since the principle of mutual concessions is the basis of such a treaty. Security is better insured with the treaty than without it. It's true for us, it's true for the United States - even the Pentagon has agreed with that - and it's true for the whole world. It is often forgotten what the SALT process is all about. A possibility of cutting and limiting strategic forces and programs without endangering one's own security is essentially not a concession, but a gain - a win, not a loss.

In April 1982, the Reagan administration proposed to resume the talks on strategic armaments, this time aiming at their reduction and not simply limitation. The Soviet side sharply criticized the content of the U.S. position, but nevertheless agreed to enter the negotiations. How are the United States and the Soviet Union now approaching this problem?

The U.S. decision to resume the talks was in itself a healthy shift in administration policy. The Soviet Union had been urging the American government to do that for a long time. President Reagan offered to rename

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the talks START, or strategic arms reduction talks. Well, it hardly makes sense to argue about the name, especially since we have always welcomed the idea of reduction. Had the SALT II treaty been ratified, we would already have had 254 fewer missiles than now, and the United States would have had 34 fewer. Both sides would have been well into the SALT III phase, dealing precisely with those significant reductions of strategic armaments, in accordance with the mutual commitment reached at the signing of the SALT II treaty Instead, we are now facing a more acute question about the positions of both sides at the ongoing talks, whatever their name. Here, the actual U.S. proposal runs against its declared intention to reach a substantive agreement. This proposal is so one-sided that former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie described it as a ‘secret agenda for sidetracking disarmament while the United States gets on with rearmament - in a hopeless quest for superiority.’^26.

To be specific, the American side, exploiting the structural differences between the strategic forces of both countries, offered the kind of reductions that would seriously undermine the main component of Soviet forces - ICBMs - while leaving the U.S. strategic potential almost intact. If we accepted the American terms, we would have to agree to an almost 50 percent cut in the number of our strategic warheads, while the United States would have to renounce only the outdated portion of its nuclear submarine fleet, and would still be allowed to increase the number of its ICBMs. The U.S. strategic bombers, in which Americans have significant quantitative superiority, would not be touched at all. The American proposal would give the United States a free hand to develop and deploy all its most advanced first-strike systems - the Trident II, the MX, the new strategic bomber, and strategic cruise missiles. In other words, this proposal seems to be designed for a unilateral disarmament of the Soviet Union and a devaluation of our previous defense expenditures. At the same time it puts practically no limit on the further American buildup.

But the Americans justify their concentration on the heavy Soviet ICBMs by the fact that they pose a most serious threat to strategic stability.

This argument does not hold. It is based on the old American concept that ICBMs, by virtue of their high accuracy, are well suited for counterforce or even preemptive first strikes, while the main mission of SLBMs, strategic bombers, and cruise missiles is to deal a second, or retaliatory, strike.

This concept, born back in the 1960s, was not so much the result of precise calculations as it was a rationalization for the strategic potential that had been built in the United States by that time. In its details this concept also reflected the specifics of the U.S. geostrategic position and also the outcome of the intense competition between the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force.

But in any case, we cannot take this American model for the ultimate

26. International Herald Tribune, 14 May 1982.

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truth. The Soviet Union has a different history, a different geostrategic situation, different weapons systems, and a different structure in its armed forces. These natural differences do not at all mean that the USSR is relying on counterforce, or that it is planning preemptive strikes. Besides, it can easily be proven that ICBMs as deterrents are not inferior to SLBMs. The communication with ICBMs is more reliable, A strike against them hits the enemy's territory, and as such would be tantamount to beginning an all-out nuclear war. This cannot escape the attention of those pondering preventive strikes.

In case the ICBMs become vulnerable there is always a launch-on-warning option for the other side - that is, to launch its own missiles while the enemy's missiles are already on their way. The side planning a preventive strike can never exclude the possibility of the enemy's launch-on-warning, and this too strengthens deterrence.

The capabilities of SLBMs and strategic bombers can be estimated in other ways than the ones we have just mentioned. For instance, if a conflict begins as a conventional, nonnuclear war, it would seem safer to concentrate on sinking the enemy's nuclear submarines than on attacking his ICBMs, especially since it can be done without engaging the enemy's territory. There is another question: what would prevent the alerting of strategic bombers to set an enemy guessing about whether they are hiding from a possible attack on their bases, or already approaching the initial lines to launch their accurate cruise missiles? There are such plans in the United States, by the way.

Speaking of these scenarios I have in mind the American strategic concepts, not ours. We reject the concepts of a first strike and a limited nuclear war, considering them not only immoral, but utterly utopian.

There is another factor that I personally find the most important - a factor of time. President Reagan himself, in his Eureka speech, admitted that negotiating an agreement on the basis of his proposal would take a number of years. But what would be going on in the meantime - an unrestrained arms race?

Mr. Reagan said the United States world stick to the SALT II provisions.

It sounds good, but the question then is, why not ratify the treaty itself? It should still not be forgotten that a number of crucial and extremely dangerous military programs are not covered by the SALT II treaty. The United States proceeds to work on them very intensely, and if the situation continues to develop in this way, we will have to take some countermeasures.

That is exactly why President Leonid Brezhnev, in his message to the U.N. second special session on disarmament, proposed that both the United States and the USSR agree to freeze their strategic arsenals for the time of the negotiations, and called on all the nuclear powers to follow the Soviet Union's example in renouncing the first use of nuclear weapons. A realiza-

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tion of this proposal would solve the problem in question, provide a possibility for deliberate negotiations, and would also help contribute to a relaxation of tensions and an improvement of the talks” atmosphere. Unfortunately, the United States responded to this proposal in a very negative way.

But in so doing the United States referred to the existing Soviet superiority.

They referred to a myth, and as I have said in our previous conversations, the real American motive is quite different - the United States wants to achieve superiority first, and only then come to serious negotiations with us. They want to ‘negotiate from a position of strength.’ Many Americans freely admit this. But who will concede to negotiate from weakness? It means that we would again have to strive for parity, and to incur again the displeasure of the Pentagon. And so it may go on forever, or more probably until an unrestrained arms race makes a military confrontation inevitable.

Regarding the other talks in Geneva - on the medium-range nuclear weapons - the positions of both sides are still far apart. President Reagan proposed a ‘zero option’ providing for both the United States and the Soviet Union to refrain from the deployment of all medium-range missiles. The USSR rejected this proposal as absolutely unacceptable.

And this is only natural, because in this case, just as in the strategic armaments field, we are being asked to undergo a unilateral disarmament. As I already mentioned, according to the ‘zero option’ proposal, the Soviet Union is to liquidate all its medium-range missiles - both the new SS-20s and the old SS-4s and SS-5s. As for NATO, it is only to abstain from the deployment of the new American missiles in Western Europe, while preserving intact its existing forward-based systems, as well as the British and French nuclear forces.

In Europe today we have a rough parity in the medium-range forces. The ‘zero option’ would drastically change this balance in favor of NATO. Besides, there is a possibility of deployment of the American sea-based cruise missiles in the vicinity of Europe, which would give NATO an additional advantage. Last but not least, we find totally unacceptable Mr. Reagan's proposal to extend a unilateral reduction of Soviet nuclear forces to the Far East area. An arms reduction in this area is a subject apart, which should be discussed, but it is not related to the strategic balance in Europe.

After all, Europe is bristling with nuclear weapons.

Of course. We are for turning all of Europe into a nuclear free zone. All the nuclear weapons - both medium-range and tactical - should be

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removed from this continent on the basis of reciprocity. But since the West is not yet ready for an immediate realization of this true zero option, we propose to reduce the medium-range systems in two stages, one-third by 1985, and another third by 1990. The bulk of the systems removed from Europe are to be dismantled, while the rest of the Soviet systems are to be placed behind the Urals, from whence they cannot reach Western Europe. Our proposal also provides for an agreement on the adequate verification of its observance.

What about the MBFR negotiations in Vienna?

These have been stalemated for a long time now. In order to overcome the impasse, the Soviet Union introduced, as early as June 1978, proposals going a better part of the way toward the Western position. The Soviet proposals were praised by Western representatives themselves as highly constructive. Later we undertook a unilateral reduction of our armed forces in Europe by one thousand tanks and twenty thousand troops. In the summer of 1980, socialist states came up with a new initiative, suggesting that the Soviet Union cut its forces by another twenty thousand, provided the United States reduced the number of its troops by thirteen thousand. Then there were some new steps forward made by Warsaw Pact countries in the fall of 1980. Yet NATO would not respond.

There are various assessments of the numbers of Warsaw Pact troops. NATO estimates that you have 150,000 more than you say you have. How can any agreement be reached if there are such differences in figures?

First, there's no other way but to accept each other's figures. NATO has been demanding our figures since 1973 as a sine qua non of an agreement. As for us, we accept the figures given by NATO. Generally speaking, this numbers game is nothing but a pretext for delaying the talks. Estimates of military balance have always been political weapons. In 1977 and 1978, when NATO was lobbying for its long-term buildup program, there was a lot of noise about the alleged Soviet conventional superiority in Europe. Now that the program has been adopted, the lobbying is concentrated on Eurostrategic missiles. To make a long story short, I am absolutely sure that if NATO, and the United States in particular, really wanted an agreement, we would have had it already. The same is true for the comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and some others.

The comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is directly related to the problem of proliferation, and Soviet and American interests are especially close in this matter. Some time ago I ran into John A. Phillips, the Princeton Uni-

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versity student who was able to devise plans for a workable nuclear bomb.

This particular episode gives powerful evidence of how real the threat of nuclear proliferation has become. It would grow faster in a renewed cold-war climate. You are absolutely correct to observe that nuclear nonproliferation corresponds to both American and Soviet interests, and, I might add, to the interests of all other countries, too.

You mentioned earlier the problem of verification. It was passionately discussed in the United States in connection with the SALT II treaty. Obviously, some senators objected to the treaty because of the unreliability of verification procedures. Why did the Soviet Union not agree to more reliable methods, including on-site inspections?

It seems to me that by the time the SALT II treaty had been truly and seriously discussed in the United States, doubts about verification had largely dissipated. It was proven that the treaty obligations were easily verifiable. One of the problems was rooted in the fact that the administration failed to fully and exhaustively explain to the senators just what the United States would know about our armed forces with the help of the existing surveillance and intelligence means. It failed because such matters are regarded in the United States as some of the most closely guarded secrets. But I think that due to these discussions senators at least realized a truth that had nothing to do with secrets: that without the SALT agreement, verification would be more difficult, rather than easier. The agreement provides for a whole system of verification measures: special counting rules, a ban on interference with each other's technical means, a pledge not to conceal telemetry data, and so forth. The treaty also provides for a special commission to deal with questions in dispute and grievances. Without all this the situation would have been much worse.

As for the question of verification in general, we base our view on the idea that the means and the scale of verification must correspond to the character and scope of arms limitations introduced by this or that agreement. It is the observance of an agreement that should be the object of verification, not the satisfaction of someone's curiosity. After all, we deal with the verification of an agreement, not with facilitating the other side's intelligence activities.

Another important point: the further arms control goes, the more complicated are the questions raised, the more complex the limits - the broader the task of the verification. In estimating whether verification is sufficient, one must always have in mind not just the physical possibilities of violating a treaty, but whether such a violation would be beneficial for the side trying to cheat. One can try to deceive on trifles, but it will hardly result in anything but a great risk of getting caught and the prospect of an interna-

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tional scandal. A violation big enough to have an impact on the military balance would be impossible to conceal. The limitations introduced by SALT II are such that they can be verified by national technical means. It can be different with other treaties. For instance, in the case of the Test Ban Treaty, it was agreed that there was a need to supplement national means by the so-called black boxes placed in the other country. This can already be regarded as a form of on-site inspection. If we have an agreement on general and complete disarmament, then, as the Soviet government declared, we will agree to any forms and methods of control, including, undoubtedly, on-site inspection. I should add that, according to specialists, on-site inspection is far from ideal as a verification method, although in principle we do not exclude it. In many cases, especially where the time factor is of paramount importance, technical means do a better job. And then there are certain things that cannot be verified even with the help of on-site inspection.

But why so much arguing and debating about on-site inspection?

Because this issue can be so easily manipulated by those who are intent on frustrating the progress of arms control. The name of the game is to make demands that you are sure will be unacceptable to the other side. This allows you to kill two birds with one stone: cast suspicions on your partner and cover up your own unwillingness to reach an agreement. And, of course, on-site inspection is probably unique among the issues of arms control as something that got stuck very firmly in the minds of the gullible part of the public. One might call it the Philistine side of arms control.

It is common knowledge that the Soviet Union is painstakingly guarding its secrets and is believed in the West to be overly secretive in general. This lends credence not only to stories about paranoid Soviet attitudes toward the outside world, but also to suspicions as to Soviet intentions, aims, and so forth.

Once again I have to stress that to a great extent such assumptions are the result of political speculations and insidious propaganda. This propaganda created and keeps alive the myth about Western ‘open’ society in contrast to our ‘closed’ society. In reality we are more open, while the West, including the United States, is more closed than is commonly alleged. Many things are kept secret in the United States, not only from us, but from its people, and sometimes even from its own Congress. Attempts at penetrating these secrets or at disclosing them are punished, and the punishment has been getting much more severe of late. On the other hand, there really are differences between the Soviet and the American practices in this sphere. I will not conceal that ours, in many instances, are stricter. There are historical reasons for it. In a country that has been the target of

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numerous military invasions, and that has lived in a virtual state of hostile siege for a long time, people will naturally be much more cautious about what may be revealed and what should rather be kept secret. Traditional patterns of behavior are not eternal; they are susceptible to change. The same goes fully for the question we are discussing. Détente, growth in trust, the broadening of contacts and of the scope of problems put to negotiations - all of these lead to changes in traditions. Future events will be very important in this regard.

We don't expect Americans to trust us just for our words, even though many Western experts have testified that our record of fulfilling our treaty obligations has been very good indeed. Nothing that has been done so far in Soviet-American relations has been based on blind trust. All agreements have been thoroughly verifiable. The relations have been developing in front of everyone's eyes.

On the other hand, there must be a sense of measure here. No one should expect us to agree to play the role of some kind of international suspect, always ready to respond to every charge and submit to any investigation. It is clear why the United States is interested in portraying us in such a light, as it makes the hoariest accusations against the Soviet Union without any real evidence: mud sticks, and the charge usually rings louder than the disclaimer. But in civilized international politics there should be a rule similar to that in civilized societies - that the burden of proof rests with the accuser.

In concluding our discussion of the arms race and arms control, what should we expect in this area in the future?

I am sure that arms control, aside from its financial and political benefits, is necessary to ensure reliable guarantees against nuclear war. And I would prefer that arms control and disarmament go forward as a result of foresight and rational choice exercised by policy makers. When both sides realize the dangers of the arms race and the benefits of disarmament, that opens the shortest and safest way to a more peaceful world. Another way would be to move back from the brink. From history we can remember times when reason could prevail only after unreason had been able to reign for a while and expose itself fully. Obviously, this type of situation is infinitely more dangerous, and in the nuclear age is even unacceptable.

At this point I would not dare to make a definite forecast. I hope we shall go along the way of arms control and disarmament. However, it looks just now as if arms control is in for hard times - in our judgment as a result of the shift in U.S. foreign and military policies. Everything must be done to overcome these negative trends, for in the final analysis the question boils down to this: either we destroy these armaments, or they destroy us.