89. Memorandum From the Special Advisor to the President and the Secretary of State on Arms Control Matters (Nitze) to Secretary of State Shultz1
SUBJECT
- Meeting with Richard Perle
Perle met with me for 1–1/2 hours Monday2 morning. Max Kampelman joined us during the latter portion of the discussion.
I began by raising with Perle the question of how the Pentagon proposed to take the cuts in the defense budget which were implied by probable Congressional action on the deficit. I said I raised this issue first because I thought it important that our arms control policy be coordinated with our military acquisition and deployment policy. I suggested that the importance of maintaining our strategic deterrent justified giving it a certain priority over our conventional forces which represented some 85% of the defense budget.
Perle said he thought reductions were possible in the strategic budget. I asked him for details. He said he thought the acquisition of the advanced technology bomber could be stretched out and that the Midgetman program, which could cost some fifty billion, could be cancelled. He argued that the MX could be carried in a hardened canister and moved amongst a large number of cheap silos and that this would [Page 299] be more cost effective than the Midgetman. I expressed my doubts as to the reliability of that solution.
We then turned to the issue of “appropriate and proportionate response” to the Soviet SALT violations. He described the discussion that he and Weinberger had had with the JCS on the issue.3 Weinberger had proposed a package including recoring the two Poseidon submarines which otherwise will have to be deactivated and dismantled this coming year and eventually using them as SLBM submarines, deploying 50 of our excess Midgetman IIIs in place of Midgetman IIs and releasing Midgetman IIs for use as needed operational test vehicles, a start of a needed chemical weapons program, and a supplemental budget request of one billion dollars. The budget request had originally been thought of as a three billion dollar request but Weinberger thought that it was unlikely the Congress would restore funds that they had previously cut; the one billion dollar request is what remained after that portion of the request representing restoration of previous cuts had been eliminated.
Perle said that Admiral Watkins did not wish to decide now what will eventually be done with the two recored Poseidon submarines; the options were eventually to restore them for use as SLBMs, to use them for purposes that Abrahamson had in mind in connection with SDI the program, or to fit them out as SLCM carriers.
I said that I thought one should pay careful attention to the political aspects of the decision, including the probable impact on the Congress, with our allies, and vis a vis the Soviet Union. Perle agreed. I said I proposed to discuss these matters with Allen Holmes.
We then turned to certain of the NST issues.
I asked him whether he had talked to Abrahamson about a solution to the “offensive weapons in space” problem. He said he had and that Abrahamson thought there were solutions to the problem. I asked whether I could speak to Abrahamson about that during his (Perle’s) absence from Washington. Perle agreed. We then had an extended discussion about the problem of the transition after which I gave him a copy of the paper that I had given to McFarlane last June. At that point we ran out of time. We agreed to meet when he returns from Europe for the entire morning of December 23rd.