Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XI, START I

65. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Clark) to President Reagan¹

Washington, May 7, 1983

SUBJECT

• NSC Meeting on START—Tuesday, May 10, 1983

ISSUE

What are the implications of the Scowcroft Commission report and of related Congressional recommendations for our START position and our arms control policy?

FACTS

At the same time as Interdepartmental work has continued in preparation for the next round of the START negotiations, the Scowcroft Commission has recommended a reassessment of our START negotiation² position focused on raising or deleting the 850 limit on deployed ballistic missiles. (Tab G)³ The Commission urges that instead of a missile limit (to which our position added limitations on missile warheads), the focus should be on “equal levels of warheads of roughly equivalent yield.” The Commission argued further that the current 850 limit was “incompatible with a desirable evolution toward small single-warhead ICBMs.” Subsequent letters to you from Senators Cohen, Percy and Nunn and from Representatives Dicks and Gore endorsed these recommendations of the Scowcroft Commission and added other recommendations favoring the adoption of the Cohen-Nunn two-for-one “Guaranteed Build-Down” concept and for the creation of a major new arms control advisory commission. (Tab F)⁴

BACKGROUND

Congressional Interest: In their letters to you, the Senators and Representatives indicate that their support of the Administration’s MX program will be substantially affected by the extent to which they gain satisfaction on their own recommendations. The scheduled votes on the MX in the House and Senate Appropriations Committees on May 11 and May 12 highlight the importance and urgency of a senior-level review of the issues involved. You will be meeting with the Congressional leadership and with the Congressional authors of the correspondence on the afternoon of May 11,⁵ to discuss these and related issues with them at that time.

DISCUSSION

There are major national security, diplomatic and political implications to the Scowcroft Commission and the Congressional recommendations. The issues involved are complex and require further interdepartmental study. However, in order to meet urgent requirements for highest-level discussion prior to the Congressional votes on MX, the START Interdepartmental Group has prepared a discussion/decision paper on the Scowcroft Commission recommendations relating to the 850 missile limit and to the related question of whether we should keep indirect limits, or should now seek direct limits, on the throw-weight of the missiles involved.⁶ (Tab C). On these subjects we believe that we should retain limits on ballistic missiles as a part of the⁷ US position while we would support moving in the direction of increasing the numerical limit on missiles (to perhaps 1150). We also believe that we should not increase our emphasis on direct limits on throw-weight but that we retain indirect limits on throw-weight at this stage of the negotiations.⁸

Advisory Commission: Concerning the Congressional recommendations for a new and far-reaching Presidential advisory commission on arms control, we do not have a formal interagency paper, but all agencies are agreed that this proposal involves very major pitfalls.⁹ As you know, we already have a General Advisory Committee chartered to advise you, the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the Secretary of State on these matters.¹⁰ Creation of the proposed new bipartisan commission with terms of appointments reaching beyond any given administration and essentially empowered to review all arms control issues, raises substantial problems including Executive/Congressional powers and intelligence sources and methods, and could be quite counterproductive to effective arms control deliberations within the Government as well as for the conduct of negotiations.¹¹ Although we do not have a formal interagency paper on this subject for the NSC meeting, we are prepared to summarize the issues involved, and agency principals are also prepared to discuss the proposal, at the meeting. (Tab D)¹²

Guaranteed Build-Down: On the very complex subject of the “two-for-one” Guaranteed Build-Down proposed by Senators Cohen and Nunn, we do not have a formal interagency paper, but we are prepared to brief this at the NSC meeting with the help of charts to show the importance (as well as the difficulty) for national security of devising proper counting rules if major dangers in this concept are to be avoided as we undertake essential modernization of our deterrent forces. (Tab E)¹³

Procedure: We anticipate that NSC principals, or their representatives, will elaborate their agencies’ positions on each of the items to be addressed and that possible consensus or compromises may emerge at the meeting on several issues. In view of the extensive and complex agenda, we have not provided specific Talking Points for your use, but have attached for your review the Talking Points I propose to use to frame the discussion at the meeting. (Tab B)¹⁴ We believe the NSC discussion should provide a sound basis for the meeting which you will have with Congressional figures on Wednesday.¹⁵ We recommend that you use the NSC meeting to hear all the arguments so as to determine the general direction to be taken for the Wednesday meeting. However, while some initial decisions may be possible concerning elements of our START position, we believe the specific problems of adapting a Guaranteed Build-Down and of possible variants on a new arms control advisory commission will need substantial further evaluation¹⁶ before decisions can be made regarding them. In addition we will need to schedule an NSC meeting on other START issues (including a proposed Treaty text) before the negotiations resume on June 8.

RECOMMENDATIONS

We recommend that you review the following attachments prior to the NSC meeting:

Tab A:	Meeting Agenda17
Tab B:	My Talking Points
Tab C:	IG Summary and Paper on Scowcroft Commission and START position
Tab D:	Informal paper on new Arms Control Advisory Commission
Tab E:	Informal paper on Cohen-Nunn “Guaranteed Build-Down”
Tab F:	Congressional correspondence
Tab G:	Arms Control section of Scowcroft Commission Report

Based on the discussion at the meeting, NSC Staff will prepare a decision memorandum for your consideration.

1. Source: National Security Council, National Security Council Institutional Files, Box SR–103, NSC 00079 16 May 1983 START PROPOSALS + SCOWCROFT COMMISSION. Secret. Sent for action. Prepared by Kramer and Linhard. Reagan initialed the upper right-hand corner of the memorandum. Clark wrote below Reagan’s initials: “directional—no dec/ bipartisan consensus / June hearings on GBD/ Paul I.” No formal minutes of the May 10 NSC meeting were found; see, however, Document 66.
2. Clark underlined “a reassessment of our START negotiation.”
3. Attached but not printed, at Tab G, is Part VI of the April 1983 Report on the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces, “Arms Control.”
4. Attached but not printed, at Tab F, are Cohen, Nunn, and Percy’s letter to Reagan, April 29 (see Document 60) and Dicks and Gore’s letter to Reagan, May 2.
5. According to the President’s Daily Diary, Reagan held several meetings with congressional leaders between 1:05 and 6:20 p.m. on May 11. No minutes of the meeting were found.
6. Attached but not printed, at Tab C, are a May 7 START IG paper and an undated START IG paper.
7. Clark drew two vertical lines in the left-hand margin beside this sentence and the previous sentence, and underlined “we should retain limits on ballistic missiles as a part of the.”
8. Clark underlined “also believe” and “indirect limits.”
9. Clark underlined “pitfalls.”
10. Clark underlined “General Advisory Committee chartered to advise you, the Director of the,” and “on these matters.” He also placed a short vertical line in the left-hand margin beside this sentence.
11. Clark wrote “no” in the left-hand margin beside this sentence.
12. Attached but not printed, at Tab D, is an undated paper prepared in the National Security Council, “Senator Nunn’s Proposal for a Bipartisan Presidential Commission on Arms Control.”
13. Attached but not printed, at Tab E, is an undated paper prepared in the National Security council, “Cohen-Nunn Two for One Build Down Approach.”
14. Attached but not printed, at Tab B, are talking points for Clark to use in the May 10 meeting.
15. May 11.
16. Clark circled “further evaluation.”
17. Attached but not printed.