75. Editorial Note
On July 19, 1983, Deputy Secretary of State Kenneth Dam dictated a personal note that read in part: “I attended a meeting of an arms control group in the White House at 5 o’clock today. The purpose was to set up a new group chaired by Judge Clark with the same people who have been in my arms control discussion group. We will be meeting primarily on the political aspects of arms control, including the timing for INF negotiations this fall. It will be interesting to see how this group evolves. It is essentially my arms control working group with decision-making responsibility.” (Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S–I Records: Deputy Secretary Dam’s Official Files, Lot 85D308, Personal Notes of Deputy Secretary—Kenneth W. Dam—Oct. 1982—Sept. 1983)
On July 22, Dam dictated a personal note in which he noted: “I attended the first substantive meeting of the new senior arms control group chaired by Judge Clark. We discussed the calendar for the rest of the year and our priorities for the difficult August period when the President will be on vacation for two weeks and many other people are planning vacations. We also discussed the build-down, and a consensus was reached that the build-down was not a good idea and that what we needed to do was to come up with a very anodyne version of it that corresponded as closely as possible with our present START position—that we have in fact been building down both in Europe and in the United States for a long period of time, and we would continue to reduce to the 5000-warhead level now in our START position as we continue to modernize, provided, of course, that the Soviets agree to our START position. In short, the consensus that arose, though it may turn out to be a shaky consensus as further meetings are held, is that our START position is a build-down position.” (Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S–I Records: Deputy Secretary Dam’s Official Files, Lot 85D308, Personal Notes of Deputy Secretary—Kenneth W. Dam—Oct. 1982—Sept. 1983)
[Page 267]On August 1, Dam dictated a personal note that read in part: “We had a long and interesting meeting with the Secretary this afternoon on START. Some new studies have been done which tend to show that negotiations on throw-weight don’t make much difference at all so long as we get the 5000-warhead limit. Of course, we then discussed how hard it would be to get the 5000-warhead limit, which may mean that throw-weight is extremely important. Nevertheless, Jon Howe came up with some suggestions as to how we could change the way in which we present our basic position in order to make it possible to negotiate more effectively with the Soviets. The basic idea was to move more toward the SALT framework of negotiating on missiles, MIRVed and non-MIRVed, and then requiring a translation of that approach into a set of warhead figures. This will, of course, not set too well with those who want a distinctively Reagan approach to our START position. Rick Burt argued strenuously that our present position was so one-sided that we would not be able to come even close to an agreement with the Soviets without some major changes. He pointed out, for example, that in the area where the Soviets have an advantage—namely, land-based ballistic missiles, we are seeking major decreases, whereas in the area where we have the technological advantage—air-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles—we are proposing major increases.” (Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S–I Records: Deputy Secretary Dam’s Official Files, Lot 85D308, Personal Notes of Deputy Secretary—Kenneth W. Dam—Oct. 1982—Sept. 1983)