• U.S.

How Good Was the Deal?

11 minute read
TIME

George

Ball

Under Secretary of State during the Johnson Administration:

“I think a real opportunity was missed in Reykjavik. SDI is not only a fantasy, it is a fraud. If the President persists in his SDI fantasy, there is no possibility of success in arms control. All the President is doing with his fixation on Star Wars is to make arms control more difficult to achieve. He is escalating the arms race, as the Soviets build more weapons to block SDI. The Soviets will not consent to limitations on their strategic missiles without receiving something in return. I’m appalled that the Administration did not understand what was at stake. It is sheer nonsense for the President to be talking about Star Wars. In the talks, he should be concentrating on ICBMs, which are an absolute with regard to arms control.” But Ball agrees that the elimination of nuclear arms cannot be achieved overnight, and would in any case alarm other NATO members. “The Europeans believe that World War III would be inevitable if there were no strategic deterrent protecting them. The idea of relying exclusively on conventional weapons distresses them, especially those who remember World War II. These are matters that should be considered in detail, if negotiations resume in a realistic manner and are not based on a Star Wars fantasy.”

Sidney

Drell

Deputy director, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center:

“It was a terrific deal. If we could have had an agreement to reduce offensive weapons significantly and all the U.S. agreed to do was limit the (SDI) program to research for ten years, that would have been marvelous. There is still so far to go and so many technologies to develop in SDI. In my analysis, the program we have in mind would not have suffered at all under strict interpretation of the ABM treaty.” Drell favors the plan that called for a 50% reduction in nuclear weapons; though he would eventually like to see total disarmament, he believes such a goal must be pursued with great caution. “I wish nuclear weapons had never been invented. But would I like to wake up tomorrow and find that there are no nuclear weapons? No. Nuclear arms have been a stabilizing factor. In the short term, however, we should try to reduce the armories and make the prospects for accidental war smaller.”

Cyrus

Vance

Secretary of State

under Carter:

“The President should have taken the deal because SDI was a bargaining chip, and that’s the way it should have been played. It didn’t have to be signed and delivered in Iceland. The President should have said he needed more time to consider everything. SDI is clearly not the almighty, towering, impregnable shield we hear described. At best, it is a small, leaky, fragile shield. I have grave doubts that it can ever be implemented. SDI should be placed in the proper perspective. But I don’t think everything is lost. The important thing to remember now is that the door is still open. Both sides are saying everything is on the table, and that means that there is time to reconvene.”

Paul

Warnke

Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under Carter:

“We should definitely have accepted the deal. After all, restricting strategic defense was an American idea, pursued actively in the Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter Administrations. If we had reduced Soviet ICBMs by 50%, we would have shut the so-called window of vulnerability. Giving up the chance to get very, very major reductions in the Soviet nuclear threat to pursue pie in the sky just doesn’t make sense. They should have asked Gorbachev to clarify what restrictions he was asking for on SDI. Under the ABM treaty, for example, you can test exotic technologies from ground test sites. It doesn’t seem to me that with that polyglot collection of advisers you could get fully prepared for the summit. You’ve got to sort out the views in advance and not have a town-hall debate in Reykjavik.”

Les

Aspin

Democratic Congressman of Wisconsin:

“I have always thought SDI was a dynamite bargaining chip. There are two things that the summit proved. It proved that SDI is one hell of a bargaining chip, and it proved that Ronald Reagan is indeed a true believer in SDI. I * think the President basically should have traded SDI. But Ronald Reagan has this vision of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. I think the Administration was going to take the p.r. high ground by offering something very radical and dramatic. I don’t know how they got snookered into that notion (of complete disarmament); it scares the bejesus out of the military. Reagan talks as if the decision is between SDI and no SDI, but there are various ranges in there. To say the Soviet proposal is designed to kill SDI is just nuts.”

McGeorge

Bundy

National Security Adviser under Kennedy and Johnson:

“The Reykjavik summit does not represent a lost opportunity. The puzzle is to try to bridge the gap that clearly exists. This means answering the question, What kind of strategic defense requirements do you agree — or not agree — upon? It may not be possible for the Reagan Administration and the Soviet leadership to find a workable agreement, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be found someday. Eventually, both sides will recognize that it is in their own national interests to close the gap. The message of Reykjavik is that, if you really want arms control, it can be done.”

Robert

McNamara

Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson:

“The President made a dramatic proposal in Iceland. It is a major step forward, a courageous and perceptive move toward going back to a non-nuclear world — as far as that is practical.” McNamara points out that the Soviet position on SDI may be more negotiable than is often supposed. “The Soviets did not propose that we sacrifice SDI. They proposed to limit the program to what they understand to be the terms of the ABM treaty. They fear that if the Americans move SDI beyond the limits of the treaty, the U.S. would have a strategic advantage that would give us a first- strike capability. This is not, however, the President’s intention. So we ought to be able to find some formula that would permit us to probe the technological potential of SDI while at the same time removing the Soviet fears that we are moving toward first- strike capability.”

Gerard C.

Smith

Chief negotiator of the 1972 ABM treaty and director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under Nixon:

“I have a difficult time believing that the President, without any consultation with Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the allies, would propose something that would end extended deterrence. Nonetheless, there was useful work done in Iceland. I look on it as an intelligence operation. We come away with a clearer vision of the alternatives. We can either have arms control or we can have a crash program to deploy defense. We can’t have both. The President has always said SDI is just a research program, and the Soviets say let’s limit it to research. It shouldn’t be beyond the ingenuity of man to reach some sort of accommodation between those two positions.”

Dean

Rusk

Secretary of State

under Kennedy and

Johnson:

“At present, SDI is a theoretical dream.” Rusk is concerned that the Soviets may not realize just how theoretical SDI is, and that they are basing their bottom-line position on fears of a system that, he believes, could not exist within the next decade. “The Soviets are afraid of SDI because they agree with us that if the ABM treaty is abrogated, each side will have to multiply its offensive weapons to smother the other side’s defensive systems. We must admit that we too would be uncomfortable about spaceships firing lasers, and particle beams circling over our heads. Still, the Russians should have gambled that SDI is just a theory, and if it does become a reality, they could then take it up again in ten years. Iceland was not a Soviet trap. It is part of a continuing process. We should not have expected more.”

Gerold

Yonas

Former chief scientist, SDI Organization, Defense Department:

“I do not think it is in the interest of national security to shut down SDI. What we have offered is eminently sensible and in keeping with the ABM treaty. It allows us to do (space defense) work that the Soviets have been doing for many years.” Yonas believes that limiting SDI to laboratory research for ten years would cripple the program. “There are major experiments planned for SDI that are necessary to evaluate its capabilities, and some of them cannot be done in the lab.”

Sam

Nunn

Democratic Senator of Georgia:

“It is obvious that this proposal has not been thought through adequately. Prior to the Reykjavik summit, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were not asked to study the implications of the President’s proposal for a total elimination within ten years of all ballistic missiles, let alone to consider the elimination of all strategic arms. I am relieved that the superpowers did not reach an agreement along these lines. I think we must act immediately to pull our zero-ballistic-missile proposal off the table before the Soviets accept it. A fundamental review of the Administration’s position on these matters is imperative.”

Sir Michael

Palliser

Chairman of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies:

“I don’t think it was politically possible for the President to have given up SDI and accepted the Soviet package, though I am skeptical about whether SDI can be the ultimate defense screen. What America’s allies need to know is exactly what the Administration’s intentions are about SDI. What is it supposed to be? If it is a bargaining chip, then at some stage it can and should be used. If it is a crucial part of our defense, then I think we really need to know more about how it’s going to do that and what the implications are for the future of nuclear weapons. In any case, progress on other aspects of the arms-control arena that were discussed can be made.”

Richard

Pipes

Harvard Sovietologist and former member of the National Security Council under Reagan:

“It’s not a good proposal for us. The Soviet offer to allow SDI research in the laboratory is meaningless. You must test to assemble and retain a top staff. But they thought they had Reagan in a vulnerable position with the elections coming up. They figured him badly. But Reagan never should have put himself in this position. Putting together a deal on intermediate-range forces, followed by a summit, is one thing. But to confront major changes at Reykjavik was a mistake. Still, the idea that we’ve lost a golden opportunity is nonsense. There’s no reason why this can’t all be raised again.”

Jack

Kemp

Republican Congressman of New York:

“The President went more than halfway to meet the Soviets at Reykjavik. The U.S. was prepared to take substantial risks to reach an agreement — and still the Soviets insisted on their terms. In the final analysis, the Soviets proved that they’re not interested in fair and equitable reductions. They’re interested only in killing SDI. But SDI is not a bargaining chip. It shouldn’t be. I don’t believe the Soviets are serious about reducing their nuclear arsenal. We ought to get as heavy a cut in offensive forces as possible. That doesn’t preclude us from defending ourselves.”

Alexander

Haig

Former Secretary of State under Reagan:

“The summit was ill prepared, and the U.S. side did not have an opportunity + to weigh the proposals that were being offered. Both sides were contemplating in effect a nuclear-free world after a ten-year transition period. That would mean an abandonment of a deterrent that, in practical terms, has preserved the peace between the superpowers since World War II. Though the thought of eliminating nuclear war has overwhelming appeal, ill-conceived proposals may have the practical consequence of making the world less safe in the long run.”

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