Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  On August 15, 1973, I assembled the Verification Panel to prepare for the resumption of formal SALT talks in Geneva in the second half of September. Bureaucratic positions had not changed. No agency was willing to face the root fact that in the absence of an agreement the Soviets would exceed us in the number of MIRVed missiles in the early part of the Eighties and would have many more warheads than we. In the climate of the times, there was next to no prospect that the Congress would vote to increase strategic forces beyond the already disputed Trident and B-I. Even if we built up our strategic forces beyond what was planned — amidst the foreseeable public outcry — the funds would surely come out of the general purpose forces for strengthening regional defense that were our most urgent military priority.

  Nevertheless, the Joint Chiefs of Staff continued to insist adamantly on equal aggregates (that is, equal overall totals of delivery vehicles); in return, they remained prepared to drop any attempt to limit MIRVs, thus substituting a Soviet edge in warheads for an advantage in delivery vehicles. The Chiefs maintained this position throughout the fall; at one point their representative, Lieutenant General Edward Rowny, on November 23 argued that the Chiefs did not see “anything they would pay for an MLBM [heavy missile] MIRV testing agreement that would be worth it.” In other words, the doctrine of equal aggregates — for which we had no program — had become so sacrosanct that we were willing in its name to permit the Soviets to MIRV their heavy missiles even though that would speed the day of the total vulnerability of our entire Minuteman force and turn the achievement of equal aggregates into a strategic absurdity. And in such a world, what was the significance of numerical ceilings?

  In truth, it was difficult to come up with an intellectually satisfying answer. Equal aggregates would not ease the vulnerability of our land-based missiles. Reductions — passionately advocated by some conservative opponents of SALT — were likely to make things worse, not better, at least in an interim period, until very low levels of MIRVed vehicles were achieved. Otherwise, since each missile by definition carried many weapons, a lower number would not alter the ratio between warheads and launchers; it would reduce the number of targets and thereby simplify a surprise attack.

  So the fall of 1973 went by without major initiatives by either side. We maintained our position of May, proscribing Soviet land-based MIRVs even as a rapid Soviet testing program made it clear that SALT would not be able to achieve that objective. The Soviets formally put forward the proposal suggested to me by Dobrynin, to ban the introduction of new systems for ten years. But since it was based on the eccentric Soviet definition of what was new — including all American and no Soviet missiles — it offered no basis for exploration. Gromyko came and went for his annual fall visit without producing more than the promise to study the problem again. Gromyko had me at a slight disadvantage because we had never responded to the last Soviet offer. The gap between our two positions was so wide it was not worth the bureaucratic bloodletting to modify our existing proposal, however intellectually unsatisfying it might prove to be.

  The Middle East war and its aftermath preoccupied leaders of both sides through the end of the year. It was not until January 1974 that SALT deliberations gained momentum again. At a National Security Council meeting on January 24, I presented the issues to the President in purely strategic terms: “[W]e want essential equivalence. But we have to be careful that we do not accept essential inequivalence in an arms race because we could not get what we thought was equivalence in SALT.” And later in the meeting I made the same point again: “Many people have insisted on absolute equivalence in throw weight. I wish the same vigor were applied to our military programs as is applied to our SALT position.”

  My own view was that limiting Soviet MIRVs was paramount and that there could be no harm in accepting by agreement the ceilings that the Pentagon had established in its own published five-year projections and had no plans to exceed (and indeed, given the Congressional mood, would be lucky to reach). This meant in practice that I favored extending the 1972 Interim Agreement for a few years — with its disparity in numbers of total missile launchers — provided the Soviets accepted a reciprocal inequality in numbers of land-based ICBMs with MIRVs. Depending on how one counted, this inequality would be roughly 300 MIRVed missiles in our favor. Thus, the existing Soviet edge in overall numbers of delivery vehicles would be more than offset by an American advantage in the crucial category of MIRVed ICBMs, which would give us an advantage in warheads and reduce the vulnerability of our launchers. Counterbalancing asymmetries, if you will.

  The problem was how to translate the theory into operational terms, which meant that before we could negotiate it with the Soviets we had to make it palatable to our bureaucracy. By then our agencies had learned from the Soviets; they were not to be bested in putting forward one-sided propositions. Ambassador U. Alexis Johnson, the head of our SALT delegation, advanced an aggregate ceiling of 2,350 launchers (some 150 above our unilateral program and 200 below the Soviets’) plus equal ceilings on aggregate throwweight and on MIRVed throwweight. On January 11, 1974, the Pentagon at last spelled out the precise throwweight level it preferred. A joint memorandum from the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ingeniously permitted us to fulfill all possible American programs while curtailing every Soviet one. It would allow us to increase our planned MIRV program by 450 to reach 1,000 Minuteman IIIs as well as to carry out the entire submarine-launched missile program (including 240 Trident missiles). The Soviets were given several options; under each of them they would have to abandon MIRVing their 308 heavy missiles as well as at least one of the new medium-range missiles, the SS-17 or SS-19. If the Soviets chose to deploy the heavier throwweight SS-19, they could MIRV only a hundred of them and would have to give up all other land-based MIRV programs.

  How such a bargain was to be consummated was left to the negotiator. Since ultimately this was assumed to be me, no agency ran a great risk in putting forward a one-sided proposal. If I failed to achieve it, it could be ascribed to lack of negotiating skill or lack of firmness, as Jackson’s aides constantly implied to the media. It was the bureaucracy’s revenge for my freewheeling diplomacy in Nixon’s first term.

  There was, of course, no possibility of persuading the Soviets that they should reduce in every category while we would be free to build up in each. At the NSC meeting there was some desultory talk about increases in our defenses if SALT failed. Schlesinger suggested that for $2 billion a year more, we could undertake “significant new programs.” Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, with understandable service bias, translated this into two more submarines — or forty-eight missiles — a year (never mind that at that point the Navy was in fact reducing the program). At that rate, it would take us nearly ten years to achieve equal aggregates by unilateral efforts, assuming the Soviets would do nothing to counteract what we did — an unlikely proposition.

  No one was ready for the internal disputes involved in generating a more realistic approach. Nixon was wrapped up in Watergate. I was just back from the Sinai shuttle and was getting ready for the Washington Energy Conference. The Pentagon did not mind a deadlock. And I, too, judged that my preferred approach could issue only from a stalemate. We first had to prove that what had become conventional wisdom would not work, and that it was not really in our interest.

  So we came up with a position that gave everybody what he wanted — usually the best proof that consensus was replacing a coherent strategy. The Chiefs’ prize was equal aggregates; Ambassador Johnson got his ceiling of 2,350; Schlesinger prevailed with his theory of equal MIRV throwweight. No specific figure was agreed to, though Johnson was told that we were unlikely to accept a level for land-based MIRVs larger than the throwweight of our entire Minuteman force. Reducing the Soviets to our throwweight level meant limiting their MIRVs to about 200. In the meantime Senator Jackson had weighed in with a letter to the President indicating that his communication lines to the Joint Chi
efs were in good working order. He put himself squarely behind the concepts in the Defense Department paper and took them a step further by linking them to reductions of launchers to 1,760 and commensurate reductions in MIRVs (based on a throwweight equivalence). He saw the “preoccupation” with MIRV limits as a “diversion.” Having seen what Jackson could accomplish in blocking legislation that did not have to go through any of the Congressional committees of which he was a member, I had no doubt about what he could do to a SALT agreement from his senior position on the Armed Services Committee.

  Quick deadlock was inevitable when American and Soviet SALT delegations resumed their deliberations in Geneva on February 19, 1974. The only new wrinkle was a hint from the Soviet delegation that it might drop its insistence on counting American forward-based systems, at the very end of the process after all other issues were resolved. In practice this meant that the next opportunity to break the deadlock would occur when I visited Moscow at the end of March to prepare the summit scheduled for June.

  What we really needed was concept, not new arithmetic. SALT might have many uses but it could not reduce Soviet capabilities while increasing ours unless we had a massive building program. Therefore I came up with a scheme for an extension of the Interim Agreement for up to three years provided the Soviets accepted an inferiority in MIRVed land-based ICBMs comparable to its advantage in the overall number of launchers. The Soviets would therefore have 280 fewer land-based MIRVed missiles — the numerical advantage they enjoyed in delivery vehicles. The 550 Minuteman IIIs of our program were to be the baseline. I thought the agencies that were insistent on equal overall aggregates for a permanent agreement might go along with an interim arrangement. It offered us, even in the immediate trade, a gain of over 1,400 warheads.V We would also deprive the Soviets of several thousand warheads on missiles that could not be MIRVed under the agreement.

  I did not really expect the Soviets to accept the numbers we would be proposing. There was no realistic prospect that they would confine themselves to 270 land-based MIRVed ICBMs. But if the principle of unequal aggregates for MIRVs was accepted, I hoped to shape an outcome that would delay the Soviets’ achievement of a first-strike capability.

  An NSC meeting on the subject took place on the afternoon of March 21. I summed up the case for extending the Interim Agreement coupled with MIRV limitation. (To make my point I assumed that we would MIRV all 1,000 of our Minuteman missiles though no such program existed, only a reference in a January 11 Defense Department memorandum that SALT limits on throwweight should permit us to MIRV them all.)

  We have to decide whether we want a MIRV agreement in the Interim Agreement or to push forward to a permanent agreement; if we do the latter, we have to decide how much time we will take and set a deadline for ourselves. We can either slow down their rate or increase ours. To do nothing will produce a bigger gap, given the state of their deployments.

  If the Soviet proposition is unacceptable, our practical choice will be to set an internal time limit and kick off development of Jim’s program. But I must note our disparity — with Minuteman III we could have 3,000 weapons, or maybe 7,000 if we put seven MIRVs on it. They’ve got 1,500 weapons, with six to eight MIRVs each. The disparity will increase. With SALT II, we may be able to slow down the rate, and use Jim’s new systems for leverage; or we can set a cutoff point and hold out for a permanent agreement. The worst possible situation is to continue negotiating a permanent agreement and continue with our present programs. [Emphasis added.]

  Which, it must be said, is exactly what our domestic debate imposed on us.

  Schlesinger gave a qualified approval to this approach:

  I think it would be tragic if we cannot get a SALT agreement that ultimately leads to comprehensive equality. But we endorse a MIRV agreement, but more as a way-station on the road to permanent agreement providing essential equivalence. Adding a MIRV agreement to an interim agreement may be beneficial. In the long run, throwweight is important, but in the short run, it’s not so important since they cannot exploit it. There is no risk before 1980 that the Soviet Union could obtain a measurable advantage.

  The Joint Chiefs would not oppose the Secretary of Defense; our SALT negotiator was relieved to have something to negotiate. So Nixon approved the proposal at the end of the meeting. I put it into an oral note that Dobrynin could send ahead of my scheduled arrival on March 24 to permit time for the Soviets to study our approach. Nixon in a personal letter to Brezhnev indicated that I had latitude to respond to Soviet counterproposals.

  There is always the danger of confusing bureaucratic progress with substantive achievement. And so it was in this instance, as I set off for Moscow with more optimism than the situation warranted.

  Another Visit to Moscow

  ANYONE appointed to a senior position should engrave into his consciousness these fundamental principles of Washington public relations: One, never predict a result you are not 100 percent certain of achieving. And two, even then you are better off understating the probable outcome. The media never let you forget a failed forecast. They deal in deadlines and certitudes; they have little scope for nuance or probabilities. If the policymaker fails to call attention to imponderables, the media will rarely discover them on their own; even if he mentions them, they may be slighted because reporting lends itself better to simplifications than to qualifications. In the best of circumstances the promise of an achievement can never live up to its reality; the prediction will always be challenged when it is made and the achievement will be taken for granted afterward precisely because it has been foreshadowed.

  I violated all these principles in a press conference on March 21 just prior to my departure for Moscow. Carried away by having brought our internal SALT position into the realm of intellectual respectability, I permitted myself to speculate that a similar achievement might await me in Moscow. In response to a question I gave a little lecture on the history of SALT that, while true enough, lacked a sure psychological touch:

  All the SALT negotiations and, indeed, all the disarmament negotiations have gone through three phases. There is an initial phase of an exchange of technical information which usually takes place during a stalemate in the negotiating process; that is to say, the negotiating positions do not approach each other, but the technical comprehension of the issues is clarified.

  Then — this is essentially what has been going on in Geneva up to now — then a point is reached where there has to be a conceptual breakthrough; that is to say, where the two sides have to agree on what it is they are trying to accomplish. And after that there has to be the hard negotiation on giving concrete content to this conceptual breakthrough.

  As political theory for a seminar in international relations, this was great material. Unfortunately, the media looked for phrases that lent themselves to encapsuling an outcome, not understanding a process. They focused on the slogan “conceptual breakthrough,” not on the explanation underlying it. And in predicting a “breakthrough,” conceptual or otherwise, I created a yardstick against which my trip three days hence could be measured. I overlooked that no negotiating position prevails this rapidly with the Soviets; there was no precedent for achieving a breakthrough in SALT with a single message to Brezhnev. And in this case, the Soviets had no particular reason to be accommodating on SALT in order to maintain the momentum of other relationships which were in fact atrophying. So the “conceptual breakthrough” took its place with my “peace is at hand” press conference eighteen months earlier. One final rule for aspirants to high office: If you cannot resist the urge to make a prediction, use turgid and impenetrable prose; you will never escape your mistakes if you have a talent for aphorisms.

  I was not in Moscow for long before I realized that things were not destined to go swimmingly. A faint chill became evident when the venue was shifted from the informality of the Politburo hunting preserve in Zavidovo (where Gromyko had told me in February the meetings were scheduled) to the more protocol-conscious Mosc
ow. Not that Soviet hospitality lacked anything in exuberance. The reception was cordial. Brezhnev was buoyant and cheerful. He had some new toys. Before him there was a dome-shaped brass object. When the top was lifted, it revealed six brass cartridgelike objects pointing skyward. I asked whether it was a model of a Soviet MIRV, and whether I could report that each Soviet MIRV had six warheads (I had seen estimates based on less concrete evidence). Brezhnev, hugely amused, removed the cover from one of the cartridges, revealing six cigarettes. Two other new toys were a French-made wristwatch, all of whose works were visible, and a mariner’s clock that Brezhnev set to chime on occasions he considered significant, such as when he slightly modified his original SALT proposal.

  Brezhnev began the session by stressing that despite “complications” (he rejected my use of the word “disappointments”), his commitment to detente remained unimpaired. He said that without going into the “various details” of what was taking place in the United States — and he was hearing and reading a lot about it — President Nixon seemed to be displaying firmness and resolve to move ahead toward the further “deepening” of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. He felt obliged to point out that in order to move further ahead we had to overcome a few “difficulties and obstacles” that were integrally linked to improving not only US–Soviet relations but also the atmosphere in the world. He felt sure, nevertheless, that the experience of the past would help us find correct solutions without violating the principles we had agreed upon.

  I replied in kind, but protestations of goodwill cannot sustain relations among superpowers that are ideological adversaries. And the fact was that each of the subjects on the agenda bred controversy. On MFN, as I have already described, I brought additional demands rather than progress. I had the unenviable task of telling the General Secretary of a totalitarian state not only that we insisted on increased emigration but that we proposed to dictate the geographic areas within his country from which these emigrants should be drawn. We avoided a blowup on that issue and indeed obtained some Soviet concessions later in the month. But there are no free lunches in international relations. What we might gain on Jewish emigration was bound to reduce Soviet responsiveness in other areas.