167. Memorandum of Conversation1
SUBJECT
- Shultz and Nitze Meeting with Joint Chiefs of Staff
PARTICIPANTS
- Secretary Shultz
- Ambassador Nitze
- DepSecDef Taft
- Admiral Crowe, CJCS
- General Wickham, CS Army
- General Welch, Dep CS Air Force
- Admiral Busey, Vice CNO
- General Morgan, Asst Cmdt Marine Corps
- Admiral Carter, Dir Joint Staff
1. Secretary Shultz opened by saying that the law provides that as a member of the NSC, he is entitled to the Chiefs’ military advice. He would like their reaction to the things the President put on the table in Reykjavik. On both INF and START, they were just about our previous proposals. On Defense and Space, nothing was agreed because of disagreement over permitted testing and other things. But the discussion lifted part of the President’s letter2 and changed it to ten years. That idea basically came out of the Pentagon. (Taft interjected that it had come from the other part of OSD—the fourth floor.) Another factor was the President’s desire for a world less reliant on nuclear weapons. The GNP of Europe is about the same as Japan’s and is 60% of the U.S. GNP. Our instinct is that it is nonsense that we cannot stand up to the USSR with conventional forces. He would like to dig in to this question. We must think in terms of bigger increments to the defense budget.
2. Admiral Crowe said that the Chiefs have a review of the proposal under way. They do not know what we would need in a world with zero ballistic missiles or zero nuclear weapons, or what the cost would be. Nitze said there were three alternatives—zero ballistic missiles, zero strategic nuclear weapons, or zero nuclear weapons.
3. Shultz said the Soviets didn’t like three aspects of our offer—the concept of deployment of strategic defenses, the change in the second five years from reducing strategic offensive weapons to elimi[Page 741]nating ballistic missiles only, and SDI research. The President has long said that we should abolish all nuclear weapons. He is uneasy with a defense that relies on nuclear weapons. General Wickham said that the public is uneasy with zero nuclear weapons.
4. DepSecDef Taft said that the problem is that all of this would be done in ten years. This is not a different world we are looking at. The Pentagon had made assumptions out into the future on every defense program, e.g. that MX will be pursued. Secretary Shultz said the ideas discussed in Reykjavik were not new. Taft responded that the timing is new.
5. Admiral Crowe said he strongly supports arms reductions. We should compare the future with today. Our position today is dicey. We have been looking at what reductions by both sides would do to our situation. Now we must look at the elimination of a pillar of our defense. Poindexter told us the proposal was zero ballistic missiles in ten years. Secretary Shultz said this was correct; it was designed to cover strategic and short-range ballistic missiles. But in his discussions, the President has made it clear that in his head he doesn’t like nuclear weapons.
6. Admiral Crowe said that the Chiefs do have some intuitive judgments. We would be back in the bomb business. [16 lines not declassified]
7. General Wickham said that we had moved in the past to have an air defense capability. [2 lines not declassified] If we go to bombers only, it would mean mutual assured destruction. (Crowe interjected that we would be better off than we are now.) Wickham continued that neither side could achieve surprise attack. As for a world with zero nuclear weapons, he had no insight at present.
8. Secretary Shultz said that a zero-nuclear world was where the President was driving. Mr. Taft said that would require conventional balance. Arms reductions can be very costly; the value of reverting to reliance on conventional weapons can be very high, but the cost is also high. General Wickham said that he is not against reducing nuclear weapons as low as possible, but to eliminate them is costly. There is also the coupling issue, both political and military. [5 lines not declassified] On whether we can generate the necessary political will, his guess is that we cannot. We have brilliant munitions coming into our tank battalions, but not in the next ten years. Allied and Congressional support is dubious. START reductions to 6000/1600 make sense, as does 100 INF warheads, but reductions beyond that are dubious. We have the problems of air defense and the fact that it is more costly to destroy targets with conventional weapons. We have 13,000 tanks, and they have 50,000. They lead us 1,000 to 30 in the production rate.
9. Secretary Shultz said he believes democracies do have the necessary will power. If a nuclear war starts, we are finished. If a non-[Page 742]nuclear war is fought, we can eventually win. Admiral Crowe said that if we get rid of nuclear weapons we can win. General Welch said that if the Soviets take Europe it would be very tough. Admiral Busey said if ballistic missiles are eliminated, the sides would go to cruise missile forces. We could build a cruise missile capability, but defenses would be costly. SLCMs are a concern. In a conventional balance our Navy can win. General Morgan said that our modernization efforts have made gigantic advances. But we would have large requirements in forward forces, and would have to expand the forces in question. In this case, the number of obligations we could support would be called into question. We have not seen the will in the Central Region to increase the force structure; the problem is in total end strength. We have the same problem in Northeast Asia. We could do a lot in 5–10 years. The Marine Corps structure would raise a question.
10. General Wickham said that elimination of ballistic missiles raises the question of the draft. Also, we do not have chemical weapons; binaries are essential. History does not give us a comfortable feeling about Congressional support. Mr. Taft said in the past we have been forced to save on conventional forces by relying on nuclear weapons. We are spending 80% of the defense budget on conventional forces now. Secretary Shultz said that it is nonsense to assume we cannot afford to spend more than 6% of our GNP on defense.
11. Admiral Crowe said when you get to zero nuclear weapons, everything becomes more important. Verification is critical. The risks are higher in regional conflicts, such as Korea. And General Wickham is right about the draft.
12. Secretary Shultz said the idea of getting rid of ballistic missiles came from the Pentagon, from Weinberger, not from him. He asked if the Pentagon had approved the President’s letter. Mr. Taft said they had, but there was nothing in there about getting rid of ballistic missiles in ten years, merely that the sides would agree on a plan in less than seven years. The Chiefs strongly support 50% reductions; OSD probably will.
13. Secretary Shultz said we want to detach INF and testing from the package and that is what will probably emerge in 6 months. The Soviets will keep START hooked to SDI. We have seen the whites of their eyes on START. Gorbachev rejected sharing of defenses; he said, “How can we believe that? Let’s get down to business.” That does not eliminate the two year period. We might exercise our minds on defense and space if there is a START deal.
14. Admiral Crowe asked if we could walk away from the ten-year deal. Secretary Shultz said, in the case of INF, an agreement would remain in effect indefinitely, unless replaced. The Soviets bought this. In the case of START, the ten-year aspect grew out of his talk with [Page 743] Shevardnadze on Sunday afternoon.3 We proposed the commitment to non-withdrawal from the ABM Treaty be consistent with the commitment to offensive reductions. That was when the 10 years and elimination were brought in. Reykjavik brought out many things which would be difficult to take back, we must think about linkages. General Wickham said he likes the 6000/1600 ceilings very much.
16. In response to Admiral Crowe’s questions, Secretary Shultz said the mix of remaining LRINF missiles was not discussed. Amb. Nitze said that excess missiles would be destroyed. Mr. Taft inquired about INF verification. Amb. Nitze explained that there was agreement on the three major types of verification measures we thought to be required. General Wickham said verification would not be cheap. Mr. Taft added that he was surprised at how uncertain we are as to what the Soviets have.
17. Secretary Shultz said the concept of SDI as an insurance policy should stay in our minds. We should broaden the application of that concept. Admiral Crowe said we should think about what SDI could do for air defense. Our current budget requests are for $5B for SDI and $50M for air defense. General Wickham added that the Army is doing a lot of work, but the funding is low.
18. Secretary Shultz expressed his appreciation for the Chiefs’ views. He said that we need to dig into these questions more. He would like to know more about what the Chiefs think before he makes up his mind. He asked if another meeting could be scheduled to go through these questions in a more systematic way and to give him time to be educated. He said he is willing to meet the Chiefs en masse or one-by-one. Admiral Crowe said they should do the same thing for the President. Secretary Shultz said we should pick up on more military-to-military discussions with the Soviets.
- Source: Department of State, Lot 90D397, Ambassador Nitze’s Personal Files 1953, 1972–1989, Background Book for Vienna Meeting. Secret.↩
- See Document 138.↩
- October 12. See Document 163.↩