217. Memorandum From the Counselor to the Department of State (Kampelman) to Secretary of State Shultz1
This afternoon, I met with General Herres. John Howe joined us toward the end of the session. Their interest was to follow up on yesterday’s session with you2 and my interest was to stimulate them [Page 930] toward some constructive thinking about the Defense and Space problem. I believe we both succeeded.
In effect, their preference would be a provision in the START Treaty under which both parties agree not to deploy for a period of X years (Herres says they would have no problem with the number 10 but believes this would be difficult for Cap to swallow). It would be necessary to define “deploy” so that it does not encompass testing and they agreed to try their hand at that task. They are wary of a formula which ties START compliance to the ABM Treaty since the latter is pregnant with continued argument and accusations making the START reductions too uncertain.
We discussed the idea of kicking the can on the important issue of “permitted-prohibited”, both because of the difficulty of arriving at an administration decision on the issue and also because of a concern that we do not know enough about the new technology to tie our hands. The idea developed, therefore, was for the parties to agree (a treaty is not necessary for this) to enter into a negotiation within a year after the START Treaty goes into effect. The agenda for the negotiations would include: the impact of new technologies on our respective force structures, problems involved in a transition from offense dominant force structures to defense dominant force structures, and ways of interpreting or strengthening the ABM Treaty so as to reflect the national security interests of both parties at this time in light of the new technologies. This would, of course, push that new negotiation into the next administration, but it would dignify a Gorbachev objective and relate it to one of ours.
I suggested that since the above may be inadequate, the Chiefs should consider additional steps we might take that would not hurt SDI. It is clear to me that the Chiefs are prepared to go far in order to obtain a START agreement. One thought that General Herres did discuss and said he was exploring related to the selection of a specifically defined orbit in space which would be looked upon as a permitted test range in space. A limited number of test vehicles could function within that specifically delineated orbit and they could be observed by both parties. Devices outside of the orbit would be prohibited. Herres thinks this might be doable and would be a simpler approach than the quantitative lists which have political and verification problems.