173. Memorandum From Robert Einhorn of the Policy Planning Staff to the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Arms Control Matters (Nitze)1
SUBJECT
- Your Meeting with Al Mense, SDIO Chief Scientist
During your meeting a few weeks ago with Dick Solomon,2 we recognized that State didn’t have enough information at its disposal to evaluate alternative solutions to the permitted ABM activities issue, and we agreed that it would be worthwhile to have direct contacts with SDIO on this matter. I have therefore set up a meeting with Al Mense, SDIO’s Chief Scientist, which will take place in your office on Wednesday3 at 10:30 a.m. Jim Timbie and I plan to attend.
Before becoming Chief Scientist, Mense was an engineer at one of the aerospace companies. When I met him in mid-October (at an SDI conference in Talloires), he was brand new in his job and quite open with me. He struck me as gung-ho about SDI’s technological prospects, but concerned about its political future. (SDI, he told me, has few friends in the USG, especially in the White House and JCS.)
When I asked about SDI’s current schedule, he remarked that the “early 1990’s” target date for a decision on whether to proceed with full-scale engineering development was politically driven and essentially arbitrary. Meeting that schedule with reduced funding required the SDIO to reduce the number of technological paths explored. From a strictly scientific point of view, he said, the program might benefit from a more relaxed pace. At the same time, he argued that, as long as funding was limited and the research schedule was compressed, SDIO would want the maximum flexibility (i.e., broad interpretation) to structure the program as cost-effectively as possible.
When setting up the appointment, I told Mense we were interested in an informal discussion about where we stood in the negotiations. I’m sure he’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on NST’s current status.
It would be good to try to draw Mense into a discussion of how the SDI program might be served by an arms control regime. Institutionally, SDIO is no doubt very skeptical about such a proposition. But I think the case is strong that, given the political landscape and budgetary [Page 589] realities, SDI would be healthier in 10 years with an agreement than without one.
- —
- Much (but by no means all) of the Congressional opposition to SDI is based on the perception that it is incompatible with arms control (i.e., destroys the ABM Treaty, blocks offensive reductions). Agreement would remove this source of opposition and could even have the effect of “legitimizing” the program, insulating it to some extent from political pressures.
- —
- Agreement on precisely what activities would be permitted for 10 years would allow program managers to plan more confidently. Without agreement, the political/legal environment those managers would have to operate in could be quite volatile.
- —
- A clear boundary between permitted and prohibited activities could be beneficial to us. It would enable us, with confidence, to design experiments right up to that boundary. Without agreement, we might be barred by Congress from exploiting gray areas. Also, today we are not very worried about the Soviets taking advantage of ambiguities. In 10 years, we might want the Soviets to be constrained by clearer limits.
I don’t have a feel for whether Mense would see merit in these arguments. You may or may not want to lead the conversation in this direction. One way of doing so would be to solicit his views on prospects for SDI funding on the Hill—and to ask him whether he believes an agreement could help.
Whether or not you decide to cover this ground with Mense, you probably should seek his informal personal reactions to various ideas for drawing the boundary for ABM activities. In particular, you might mention the approach Sagdeev discussed with Rand recently (allowing the testing of sensors in space, but banning the testing of kill mechanisms that exceed agreed performance thresholds). Is the approach practical? Is the distinction between sensors and kill mechanisms workable? Could quantitative thresholds be devised that would be credible constraints without undercutting our research objectives? Could they be verified?
In helping to understand what numerical thresholds might make sense, it would be interesting to know whether there are internal quantitative guidelines that SDIO follows in determining that certain experiments (e.g.. Delta 180) are treaty compliant.
In addition, you might want to ask him to provide his assessment of where the program currently stands.
Finally, it might be useful to suggest some sort of ongoing, informal contacts with SDIO, perhaps at the working level.
If you have some time before the meeting with Mense, perhaps it would be useful for some of us to discuss what we’d like to accomplish with him.