96. Editorial Note
On July 6, 1984, Deputy Secretary of State Kenneth Dam dictated a personal note describing a meeting that afternoon on “our approach to the talks that appear to be shaping up for September in Vienna with the Soviets on ASAT. Our approach is to include the subject matter of START and INF in those talks, whereas the Soviets are claiming that our desire to talk about ballistic missiles means that we are imposing preconditions to any negotiation on what they call the ‘militarization of outer space.’ This is a rather delicate war of words, because we are saying that we have accepted the Soviet proposal to talk about the militarization of outer space and that all we want to do is to talk about the whole picture, which includes ballistic missiles passing through space, and in any event the overall subject matter cannot be limited simply to weapons originating in space or used against space objects. The full richness of the possibilities from a definitional and rhetorical point of view became obvious, and a good number of papers are going to be written as a result of this meeting. Our first step will be to get a sound approach. The second will be to get it through the interagency process, and the third will be to sell it to the Soviets, assuming that the Soviets do not try to back out of what they have already offered.” (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. 1983–Sept. 1984)
On July 9, Dam dictated a personal note in which he recounted a meeting “in the White House with Bud McFarlane and John Poindexter to discuss next steps on the meeting that the Soviets have proposed for September in Vienna on ‘the militarization of space.’ The meeting went on for an hour and half, and so we covered many topics, but we came down to the conclusion that the President should, in a week or so, respond to a letter received on Saturday from Chernenko attacking [Page 346] the U.S. position that we must discuss not only space but also associated offensive systems. The general situation is that the Soviets are most interested in talking about our strategic defense initiative, whereas we, partly for internal reasons within the Administration, have no interest in negotiating away the SDI in any way at this time, but we do want to talk about offensive systems. Actually, Dam continued, “there are several aspects of the current situation. First, we would obviously like to have a series of meetings in Vienna in September, both because it would provide a substantive opportunity and because the President and his closest campaign aides would like to see some arms control negotiations restarted before the election. On the other hand, the Soviets understand this and are using that fact to put the negotiations on the basis which is best for them substantively. Second, we have the problem of knowing what it is that we are prepared to negotiate about. On the one hand, we have been going through an exercise in the interagency process which no doubt dictates being cautious about being able to negotiate about very much at all at this point. On the other hand, the President is very interested in having a heart-to-heart broad discussion with the Soviets about how to get into a posture where how we can negotiate very broadly about all kinds of offensive and defensive weapons.” (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. 1983–Sept. 1984) Chernenko’s July 7 letter to Reagan is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, volume IV, Soviet Union, January 1983–March 1985, Document 240.
On July 10, Dam dictated a personal note that read in part: “I attended a Senior Arms Control Policy Group meeting this afternoon in the Situation Room. Bud McFarlane chaired the meeting, which was on space arms control, and kept it well off the procedural question of how we tie the Soviets down to a broad-based discussion in Vienna and well onto the substance, with heavy emphasis on the procedures for getting the substantive work done. It became clear that the major problem is going to be how to protect the strategic defense initiative. This is important primarily from the standpoint of preventing DOD from vetoing participation in the Vienna talks in September, because Cap Weinberger is prepared to go to any lengths to protect that initative from being limited in arms control negotiations at this time and will probably be able to count on the President to back him up in view of the fact that the President views the strategic defense initiative as a path to a future free from the threat of nuclear weapons (an expectation that I find groundless). The upshot was that the SACPG meeting was usefully boring. We will be able to handle in a smaller group the preparation for agreement with the Soviet Union on an agenda.” (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. 1983–Sept. 1984)
On July 26, Dam dictated a personal note in which he noted: “The Soviet Charge Sokolov came in today to deliver a letter from Chernenko to President Reagan. The subject was the proposed Vienna space negotiations. The Soviets took a pretty hard line. It is clear that they are trying to back away from negotiations. Tonight at 7:00 we met in the Secretary’s office to consider our reply. We came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to prepare a letter or other document in response that could be released to the public if the Soviets chose to release their letter. The Soviets in the letter seem to be making a record for justifying their refusal to go to the Vienna talks. We settled on an approach which would allow us to go back and show that we really were accepting their proposal without preconditions, although we would not accept all of their exact language and we would make clear that from our standpoint, their phrase ‘militarization of outer space’ included the use of offensive nuclear arms that passed through space, such as ICBMs.” (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. 1983–Sept. 1984) Chernenko’s letter to Reagan is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. IV, Soviet Union, January 1983–March 1985, Document 252.
On July 31, Dam dictated a personal note that read in part: “The most important meeting of the day was one with Soviet Charge Sokolov, who came in to deliver a further letter from Chernenko to Reagan. Here again, the Soviets are saying that we are failing to accept their offer, and therefore, they won’t talk in Vienna on space. This is getting to be a kind of cat-and-mouse game with the Soviets, but it is very apparent the Soviets do not want to go forward with the talks. We now have a major choice to make. Do we on the one hand cut off the possibility of space talks in Vienna, or do we try to find some way to begin discussion of the issues in diplomatic channels? This is a decision that will have to be made over the next day or so, and it is difficult because the Administration is strung out across the country, with the President, the National Security Adviser, and the Secretary of State being on the West Coast but not even in the same place.” Dam continued: “We had an interesting meeting this afternoon as part of our ‘forward look’ exercise, which is a way of defining policy issues and positions for a second four-year term. The discussion today was on the Soviet Union. The general conclusion that we should look more for continuity than for change was one that I challenged in the sense that I thought we also had to see what might be happening if there [Page 348] were a generational change in Soviet leadership in the near future. There was also a vigorous debate about whether arms control had to be the centerpiece of our policy toward the Soviet Union. Bill Schneider made the point that it might very well be the case that there was no overlap between what kind of arms control agreement might be in the U.S. national interest and what kind of arms control agreement the Soviets might be prepared to agree to. If that were the case, he argued, we had to look at some other form of negotiation with the Soviet Union, rather than a nuclear arms control negotiation, as being the centerpiece of our interaction with the Soviet Union. This is a highly complex subject involving internal U.S. politics and attitudes of our allies, and no resolution was obviously possible in the space of a meeting that lasted about an hour and a half.” (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. 1983–Sept. 1984) Chernenko’s letter to Reagan is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, volume IV, Soviet Union, January 1983–March 1985, Document 257.