Office of the Historian

31. Memorandum From John Douglass of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (McFarlane)1

Washington, April 25, 1985

SUBJECT

  • Update to NSDD–91, Strategic Forces Modernization

As I mentioned to you at Staff meeting the NSDD I prepared (Tab A)2 has run into serious problems at DOD from the JCS. Despite the extensive coordination and the several drafts which preceded the formal coordination, the Navy led a JCS fight to stop the NSDD. The OSD staff, on the other hand, have supported the NSDD with some minor changes and one significant change in the Bomber portion.

JCS arguments against the NSDD range from worries about too much funding for strategic programs during the lean years we expect ahead to not-invented-here feelings about aggressive NSC staffers like me taking what some consider too aggressive a role in pushing for the modernization program (this latter feeling is compounded by perceptions in the Navy that I am following a parochial Air Force view of modernization).

My judgment of all of this is that SECDEF will agree with his staff in the end because he has personally endorsed all the new portions of the NSDD at various times in the past.

It is also important to remember that Secretary Shultz has concurred with the NSDD as written.

Finally, I believe we must bear in mind that one of the original reasons for updating NSDD–913 now was to ensure that the Strategic Modernization Program is not undercut during the FY 87 POM process. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening in all three Services this spring.

It might be helpful for you to mention the subject next Monday4 in your breakfast meeting with the SECDEF and SECSTATE.5

Bob Linhard concurs.

[Page 93]

RECOMMENDATION

That you mention to the SECDEF the need to get on with the update of NSDD–91 in the near future.6

  1. Source: National Security Council, National Security Council Institutional Files, Box SR–090, NSDD 178. Top Secret. Sent for action. A stamped notation indicates McFarlane saw the memorandum.↩
  2. Attached but not printed. See footnote 2, Document 25.↩
  3. See footnote 3, Document 19.↩
  4. April 29.↩
  5. On the NSC routing slip for the memorandum, Poindexter wrote: “Put in breakfast folder.” (Ibid.) No minutes of the breakfast meeting were found.↩
  6. McFarlane neither approved nor disapproved the recommendation.↩