Foreign Relations of the United States, 1989–1992, Volume XXXI, START I, 1989–1991

68. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting¹

Washington, February 1, 1990, 2:30–4 p.m.

SUBJECT

• START Issues

PARTICIPANTS

• The President
• The Vice President
• The Secretary of State
• The Secretary of Defense
• The Secretary of Energy
• Chief of Staff to the President
• Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
• Director of Central Intelligence
• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
• Assistant to the President and Deputy for National Security Affairs

The President: The changes that are taking place are providing us with opportunities. I do not want to miss any opportunities. I don’t want to be locked in on positions that may have looked good a year ago. I want to get out in front to capitalize on these changes. Conditions have changed.

General Scowcroft: The focus of the meeting is a review of START issues for the Ministerial, in particular, ALCMs, NDMs and Telemetry Encryption. These issues involve incredible detail. On ALCMs, our primary goal is to preserve our ability to deploy them. We seek provisions that allow us to increase our target coverage by providing more weapons than we have to count. This coverage is more important than limiting Soviet ALCM capabilities. Because conventionally armed ALCMs are excluded, two important considerations are distinguishability measures (between conventional and nuclear armed ALCMs) and the range threshold. At present our position is that any ALCM with a range over 1500 km is assumed to be nuclear; the Soviet position is 600 km.

The President: Why?

Scowcroft: The Soviets want to force us to come in close with our bombers and not have a large number of stand-off weapons. They also want to increase the number of weapons that count. We want to preserve our flexibility and exclude conventionally armed ALCMs such as “Tacit Rainbow” which has a range of about 800 km. We have agreed to come down to 1000 km, and the remaining dispute is whether we can go down to 800 km.

The President: If we don’t have any missiles in that range, why should this be a deal breaker?

Secretary Cheney: We would be giving up capability. If we go to 600 km they have a large number of missiles under that range.

Scowcroft: If distinguishability and range limits work its a little bit like belt and suspenders. We can differentiate except on existing missiles. Tacit Rainbow is an existing missile.

General Powell: This preserves future options for us. We want as much range as possible. We can’t say that it’s a deal breaker but we’d like to get as close as possible. If everything else is solved, we’re just asking that Jim come back so I can go into the tank, get the agreement of the Chiefs, and get back to him in Moscow.

The President: Does the movement of Soviet forces out of Europe affect this? Does this have an impact on the range?

Powell: If so, we might not make the investment. But also we may want a longer reach. They want our number down to capture possible technological breakthroughs.

The President: Where are these launched from?

Powell: From ships and airplanes.

Cheney: We also want to capture the short range cruise missiles on the Backfire bomber. They’re also a threat.

Secretary Baker: We’ve made good progress. This range issue is the only one disagreed among us. There is really very little difference in our positions. The thousand kilometer range was out there two years ago.

Powell: It was never tabled.

Scowcroft: We never negotiated on a thousand.

Baker: You want me to resolve the ALCMs. I want to show up and demonstrate flexibility in each of the three areas—counting rules, distinguishability and range. I have flexibility in distinguishability and counting rules and we can protect the Tacit Rainbow through distinguishability and let the range go to 900 km. Then we can say to the Soviets we moved toward you in all areas (even as we still protect Tacit Rainbow).

Scowcroft: The only question is why we won’t give Jim another 100 km. And the fact is Colin needs to go back into the tank to consult the chiefs.

Baker: I will call. I won’t put it on the table until I come back.

Cheney/Powell: There will be no problem if you come back.

Baker: All right, it’s agreed 900 km but I will call.

Scowcroft: With respect to counting rules, the choices have been the maximum the planes can be equipped with or some notional number. The US position is to count ten cruise missiles on the B–1 and we won’t force the Soviets to count at the same level.

The President: Do they say that the B–2 can carry more?

Scowcroft: The Soviets are afraid to count them as just four and so on because they figure we can cram them on planes and flood them with these ALCMs. We are prepared to count 20 as the maximum on any single plane with a notional count different for each kind of aircraft.

Cheney: We worked this all out in a way that preserves our discount. This is the most important aspect. We’re all agreed on this and we think it solves the Soviets’ problem.

Baker: I’ll come back if I have to go to 12.

Ron Lehman: On this one you can actually go down to the Soviet numbers. The Soviets are more interested in the maximum limits.

Scowcroft: The second broad issue is non-deployed missiles—spares, test-missiles and so forth. We need to get a handle on those and limits have been proposed.

The President: Do we know how many the Soviets have?

Scowcroft: It’s hard to know how to verify. It is a big political issue, especially with respect to mobile missiles that we have a hard time targeting anyway. There’s a concern that the Soviets could circumvent the Treaty. The current notion is that we focus on mobile ICBMs, non-deployed missiles which are the most easily reloaded and refired. For example, we would require 130 non-deployed MX. The question is how important is it?

Cheney: There is theology behind it. The Soviets do practice reloading, although the idea of reloading silos is remote.

Baker: The extremists say you should count them all and then have to verify them all. I agree with the Powell approach, “It don’t mean a shit.” I think we are agreed on how to handle it except for the precise number.

Scowcroft: On the substantive issue, it’s really mostly for the mobiles.

Baker: I think you tackle the political problem by limits.

Scowcroft: It’s no one issue that’s going to offend the conservatives but you need to get some kind of a tally because the cumulative effect of a number of these could prove to be a concern.

Sununu: Do you simply count them if they are assembled and not count them if not?

Judge Webster: We can’t find them.

Powell: It’s like ALCMs. We need to count platforms, count by type.

Baker: So what is the number of non-deployed missiles?

Cheney: There is no rational basis for deciding.

Lehman: There is really no difference on the numbers. There is a consensus around 300 or so missiles and about 1650 on RVs.

The Vice President: You may have some concerns on the left on verification.

Webster: The best bet on getting a handle on non-deployed missiles is keeping track of how many missiles they produce.

Scowcroft: We’re okay on that. Now let’s turn to data denial. The Soviets seem finally ready to resolve this. They’ve wanted no telemetry encryption on cruise missiles and now they’ve fallen off that position.

The President: We want no telemetry encryption on ballistic missiles, they want none on cruise missiles.

Scowcroft: Now that the Soviets are on board, we have some cruise missiles where we want to keep the telemetry encrypted.

Baker: We’re really wrapped around the axle.

Powell: I think this has been resolved.

Lehman: There’s one last issue on encapsulation. The PCC is meeting on that today.²

Powell: The Soviets are having trouble reading the data stream that’s available.

Scowcroft: Why help them?

Powell: We offered information so they could tell what we are testing.

Scowcroft: I think this has been worked out.

Baker: Let’s let Lehman and company solve this one.

Scowcroft: On chemical weapons the Soviets have not yet come back on our UN initiative. We have a memorandum of understanding ready to sign at the Ministerial that would reduce stocks to 5,000 tons. I don’t think there are any differences here.

The President: Can chemical weapons be disposed of in an environmentally safe way?

Baker: We can but they can’t. The ball is in their court.

Scowcroft: On nuclear testing everything seems on track. Once we agree on PNET and the TTBT, the Soviets will want to go to the next step.

Sununu: This is a real issue on the Hill.

Cheney: The Hill is split on the issue.

The President: Why do the Soviets not need testing and we do?

Scowcroft: Let us get you a briefing on that.

Baker: Dubinin has provided a letter from Primakov to the Hill leadership discussing CTB. Bob Michel called to tell me about it.

Scowcroft: The next steps on CTB—we’ll just see how it goes. Defense and Space is not on the agenda. There was delinkage in Wyoming. They seek agreement that SDI testing by their definition would be grounds for withdrawal. We don’t agree to that.

Baker: We ought to just stonewall on that problem. Tell them that we don’t agree with them that this would constitute grounds to walk away. We heard you delink in Wyoming and this is our interpretation of it. It will come up in the meeting.

The Vice President: Has there been any discussion of the broad versus the narrow interpretation. Any movement on that?

Baker: We should just tell them that we heard them delink in Wyoming.

Scowcroft: Complicating the issue is that the Soviets agree Krasnoyarsk is a violation and that they should dismantle it. We’ve agreed earlier, however, not to sign a START Treaty until Krasnoyarsk is destroyed. Should we simply require that they start to dismantle and show good faith in getting agreement on the phasing of a tear-down? With respect to SLCMs, if they insist we should reiterate our present position in favor of declaring SLCMs and be willing to explain why we won’t accept a binding limit which cannot be verified. We would be prepared to table our declarations.

Baker: What about Backfire? Should we drop it from START? It has to be captured somewhere.

Lehman: The problem is CFE doesn’t get them all, particularly those in the Far East. Maybe you could somehow package it with SLCMs.

Scowcroft: The major role of the Backfire is to attack carriers. The nuclear SLCM mission is to attack Backfire bases. We should insist that they are fully captured somewhere so that they don’t fall somehow between START and CFE.

Baker: You want it in START?

Powell: Let me consult with the Chiefs.

Scowcroft: I don’t think you want to count them in START II.

Baker: Can I get a decision?

Scowcroft: There has been some talk of a limit on mobile missile RVs. I think we should not raise it at this meeting.

1. Source: George H.W. Bush Library, Bush Presidential Records, National Security Council, H-Files, NSC Meetings Files, OA/ID 90001–035, NSC0038—February 01, 1990—Arms Control Issues, Moscow Ministerial. Secret. The meeting took place in the Oval Office.
2. The Record of Decision for the February 1 meeting of the Arms Control Policy Coordinating Committee is in the George H.W. Bush Library, Bush Presidential Records, National Security Council, Richard A. Davis Files, Subject Files, Arms Control PCC [1].