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Keywords: Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
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- Abstract: From 1969 to 1973, Paul Nitze served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT). In this video segment, Nitze describes the useful role that 'back channel' negotiations can play and discusses the particular problems with national security adviser Henry Kissinger's negotiations in the final days of SALT I. The second part of the segment addresses Watergate's impact on Nitze's participation in SALT II.Nitze's interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'One Step Forward' focuses on SALT I and SALT II. He recounts how he became part of the SALT I delegation, the key issues within the negotiating process, and the initial position statements he drafted for the Soviet delegation. Increasingly critical of U.S. arms policy, Nitze re-formed the Committee on Present Danger, which argued for a massive military buildup of U.S. forces in the post-Vietnam period. He spends considerable time in his interview going over the then-persistent threat of Soviet expansionism. Nitze explains his objection to President Jimmy Carter's nomination of Paul Warnke as his chief arms negotiator. He also explains his opposition to the SALT II Treaty, which he saw as codifying Soviet superiority in missile megatonnage and throw-weight.
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- Abstract: Dr. Randall Forsberg is executive director of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, a think tank she founded in 1980 with the aim of reducing the risk of war and minimizing the burden of U.S. military spending. In this video segment, she describes the reach of grassroots activism at the height of 1982's national Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, which called for a bilateral, verifiable halt to new production of nuclear weapons. In the interview she conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Visions of War and Peace,' Forsberg describes the genesis of the movement, which was born from the failure of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II and from public awareness of the development of a new generation of war-fighting systems. Forsberg traces the town-by-town growth of the anti-nuclear petition, which began in 1980 with the four-page document 'Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race,' and the referendum process that fanned out across the nation but remained largely ignored by the national media. Forsberg details the negative reaction by President Ronald Reagan's administration and the ensuing support on Capitol Hill, which passed a freeze resolution. This was followed just weeks later by congressional approval of the MX missile by an equally large margin-a vote that Forsberg says 'tore up the movement.' Soon afterward, President Reagan suddenly announced the Strategic Defense Initiative-a program that Forsberg critiques at the end of her interview-and he agreed to negotiate with the Soviet Union, which was a key goal of 'Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race.' The lasting impact of the nuclear-freeze movement, says Forsberg, has been a shift away from public protest and toward grassroots, long-term education. She concludes that this new 'institutionalized peace movement' will re-emerge more informed and cohesive than the last, with the determination to change 'the direction of the permanent peacetime policy of the United States.'
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- Abstract: Helmut Schmidt became the head of Germany's Social Democratic Party in 1967 and deputy chairman of the party in 1968. Between 1969 and 1972, he served as defense minister, minister for economics and finance, and minister of finance. From 1974 to 1982, he was the chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. In this video segment, Schmidt describes what he terms 'Euro-strategic' SS-20 missiles, which the Soviet Union began deploying along its western and southeastern borders in 1977. He viewed this deployment as destabilizing the nuclear balance in Europe, and he vigorously but unsuccessfully pressed President Jimmy Carter to include these missiles in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II negotiations. In the interview he conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Carter's New World,' Schmidt recalls his anger and the political damage he suffered in 1978 when President Carter suddenly delayed his decision to produce the neutron bomb. He analyzes why the Soviet-U.S. relations deteriorated as the 1970s wore on, goes over Carter successor Ronald Reagan's initial receptivity to a 'zero-zero' option, relays the subsequent internal dissension and ascendancy of hardliners within the Reagan administration, and sheds light on the shift within the administration toward arms reductions. He recounts his conviction that the threat of deploying U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles in response to the threat of the Soviet SS-20s brought the Soviet Union to the negotiating table. The Guadeloupe meeting that Schmidt helped organize produced the 'double-track decision' that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) council adopted at the end of 1979: to deploy the U.S. intermediate-range missiles while simultaneously bargaining them away in Geneva. Unlike some of his counterparts, Schmidt never feared the 'de-coupling' of the U.S. strategic deterrent from the defense of NATO Europe. He remained, though, keenly sensitive to the concentration of nuclear weapons deployed by other countries in the Federal Republic. In his interview, Schmidt explains the need for European collaboration in building up conventional forces to achieve both nuclear and non-nuclear parity between the Warsaw and NATO blocs.
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- Abstract: Caspar Weinberger served as U.S. president Ronald Reagan's secretary of defense from 1981 to 1987. In this video segment, Weinberger explains how deployment of the MX missile stopped the Soviet Union from believing it could successfully launch a first strike, which he feels is 'the essence of deterrence.' A better alternative to 'mutual assured destruction,' he argues, is the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Reagan administration's hotly contested proposal to design space-based weapons that could shoot down attacking missiles. In the interview he conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Reagan's Shield,' Weinberger recalls coming into office only to discover that all three legs of the strategic triad-land, sea, and air systems-were obsolete. He argued for a dramatic increase in the U.S. nuclear-weapons arsenal, 'almost as if we had started from scratch,' and during his tenure he presided over trillion in military spending. Weinberger strongly advocated for the MX missile to replace the Minuteman missile, which had been the backbone of the U.S. land-based deterrent since the 1960s. Although the idea that existing Minutemen silos were vulnerable to a Soviet attack was a cornerstone of his and President Reagan's strategic policies, Weinberger explains that the decision to house the MX in those silos was a temporary measure to meet a 'critical deficiency.' Immediate MX deployment, Weinberger believed, would provide some insurance against the Soviet Union delivering a first strike with impunity. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration could persuade Congress to adopt a more survivable basing mode, such as the rail-based system. Reacting to the recommendations of the Scowcroft Commission, Weinberger was satisfied that it endorsed the president's modernization plan to close the 'window of vulnerability,' but he objected to the Midgetman mobile missile, proposed to placate MX opponents. He describes the compromise as an expensive missile that was only partially designed, added little deterrent value, and was popular principally because 'it was a missile we didn't have.'
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- Abstract: Denis Healey was the British secretary of state for defense from 1964 to 1970 and chancellor of the exchequer from 1974 to 1979. In this video segment, Healey reflects on the period in which he was defense secretary under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He recalls the opposing interests of Germany and the United States with regard to nuclear strategy, explains his 'Healey theorem' of deterrence, and clarifies France's position that alliances can't coexist with nuclear weapons. Healey also assesses U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara's quest for tidy solutions to 'insoluble' nuclear problems. In his interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'The Education of Robert McNamara,' Healey begins with a comparison between Soviet and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conventional military strength. He elaborates on France's opposition to the notion of 'extended deterrence' and on his own role in persuading NATO to adopt 'flexible response' strategy. He traces the evolution of his military analysis of massive retaliation, describes his collaboration with McNamara in developing flexible-response doctrine, reiterates the expectation that SALT III would follow shortly after a ratified SALT II Treaty, and shares how he ultimately lost faith in flexible response. He also discusses the extraordinary growth of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, Britain's response to the proposal for a Multilateral Force in the early 1960s, German chancellor Helmut Schmidt's distrust of U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and his own opposition to U.S. Euro-strategic missiles. As a fellow defense intellectual, Healey was encouraged by national security adviser Henry Kissinger's appointment: he was sure that detente could move forward. He admired Kissinger's boldness in dodging 'all official channels which he doesn't like anybody else doing,' but he was disappointed by Kissinger's failure to consult with allies. For the future, Healey believes that there should be fifty-percent reductions in strategic and conventional weapons, particularly when 'one side or the other has superiority.' He also advocates a 'nuclear-free corridor' to avoid accidental war.
- Subject:
Humanities, Social Sciences, Science and Technology, Business
- Collection:
WGBH Open Vault
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- Abstract: Edward L. Rowny was the Joint Chiefs of Staff representative to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) from 1972 to 1979. From 1981 to 1984, during U.S. president Ronald Reagan's administration, he was chief negotiator for the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). In this video segment, Rowny explores Soviet and American negotiating tactics and proposals. He also shares his frustration with U.S. concessions, process, and misconceptions of Soviet thinking, all of which ultimately led to his resignation after the SALT II Treaty was signed. In his interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'One Step Forward,' Rowny describes why the Joint Chiefs of Staff selected him to join the SALT II delegation. He also discusses his misgivings about Paul Warnke, chief negotiator during President Jimmy Carter's administration. Rowny supported the initial proposal that the United States presented in Moscow in March 1977, which would have reduced Soviet heavy missiles by half. Had the U.S. team persevered, he maintains, it would have secured the agreement and successfully closed the 'window of vulnerability' facing U.S. land-based missiles. Although he was not alone in his objections to the SALT II Treaty, others endorsed it as a modest but useful step to a further agreement. The tipping point for Rowny came in the 1978 Christmas negotiations, during which the Soviets retained the right to encrypt signals for their missile tests. In the end, Rowny viewed the treaty as a 'chasm' and an 'impediment' for three reasons. First, it granted the Soviets the unilateral right to heavy missiles. Second, it discounted the intercontinental capabilities of the Soviet Backfire bomber, which was the focus of a hotly contested arms-control debate that Rowny explores in his interview. Third, permitting the missile-test encryption created a loophole in U.S. verification of Soviet compliance. Rowny also criticizes the timing of opening relations with China, and he maintains the inevitability of some degree of linkage between arms control and other areas of U.S.-Soviet relations. He concludes his interview with his take on how to conduct successful negotiations with the Soviet Union.
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- Abstract: Henry Kissinger, U.S. national security adviser from 1969 to 1973 and then secretary of state until 1977, was the dominant figure in creating the foreign policy of the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations. This video segment deals with the concept of "linkage": interlocking U.S. arms-control negotiations with leveraging Soviet behavior and policy.
Kissinger's interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: "One Step Forward" touches on points contained in his blueprint for de: a relaxing of tensions between the superpowers. Detente was designed to "contain" Soviet influence and power, based on a combination of pressures and inducements. Kissinger speaks to issues of nuclear parity, its influence on negotiations, and the breakthrough in Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) once the Soviet Union agreed to link offensive and defensive weapons. He also addresses the significance of opening relations with China; his "back channel" diplomacy with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin independent of the SALT delegation; the controversy surrounding multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs); and the significance of the SALT I Treaty as a frame of reference for future negotiations. What followed, Kissinger recalls, was a general antagonism toward SALT II, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to link trade with improving human rights within the Soviet Union, and the problems for arms control created by MIRVs-all of which coincided with the fall of Nixon.
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- Abstract: Andrei Gromyko served as Soviet foreign minister from 1957 to 1985. Beginning in 1943, when Soviet premier Joseph Stalin appointed the 34-year-old ambassador to Washington, Gromyko was an indispensable formulator of Kremlin policy toward the United States. Ultimately, he dealt with nine U.S. presidents. In this video segment, Gromyko chronicles the arms race, beginning in the 1950s under General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. At the time, each superpower had the ability to inflict "unacceptable damage" on the other. Still, neither side acted to stop the arms race until General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev opened the new era in the mid eighties. Under the leadership of Gorbachev, Gromyko concludes, Soviets have embraced the "principle of rational sufficiency" and initiated unilateral steps to stop the arms race. The interview Gromyko conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age is a wide-ranging reflection on nuclear strategy, foreign policy, and superpower diplomacy during the four-and-a-half decades since the dawn of the nuclear age. Gromyko begins the interview with a look at the Potsdam Conference, at which U.S. president Harry S. Truman informed Soviet premier Joseph Stalin that an atomic bomb had successfully detonated. Truman was perplexed by the non-reaction of the Soviet leader, who then submitted a private order to accelerate the Russian bomb project. Gromyko remembers how, following the war, it felt, at age 37, to challenge the experienced architects of the Cold War and the policies they conceived: the Baruch Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and the Marshall Plan. He recalls that Soviet proposals to ban all nuclear weapons and to place strict controls on facilities pursuing nuclear energy were "categorically rejected." Western powers, Gromyko asserts, missed the opportunity to stop the arms race before it began. He points to "a drastic hardening" of foreign policy, citing former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill's 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech as an "open declaration of the Cold War." Gromyko reserves his strongest criticism for the "doctrine of intimidation," the United States' classified National Security Memorandum 68, which marked a dramatic shift in U.S.-Soviet relations. His description of the 1962 Caribbean crisis stands in stark contrast to U.S. officials' accounts of the same episode, known as the Cuban missile crisis. He provides detailed recollections of his conversation with President John F. Kennedy during this period, concluding that it was "probably the most difficult meeting I experienced in all my 48 years of meeting presidents of the United States." Gromyko moves ahead to the period of detente. His retelling of last-minute changes prior to the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I differs from that of national security adviser Henry Kissinger. Gromyko discusses the key Soviet objection to U.S. proposals during SALT II negotiations: the United States, which targeted the Soviet Union with forward bases around the world, demanded drastic reductions in the Soviet Union's principal deterrent-the heavy intercontinental ballistic missile. At Vladivostok in 1974, the two sides agreed on a basic framework for the SALT II Treaty, which was signed five years later. Reflecting on the trends he has observed during his long career as Soviet foreign minister, Gromyko sees more continuity than difference: each administration has tried to achieve military superiority, and the Soviet Union, always one step behind, has pressed to maintain "virtual parity" to safeguard its national interests. Much was achieved during detente, he recalls. While that term is no longer used, Gromyko sees parallels with-and holds out hope for-the current process of "deepening mutual understand and trust."
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- Abstract: For nearly half a century, Paul Nitze was one of the chief architects of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Nitze assistant secretary of defense for International Security Affairs. In this video segment, Nitze describes key issues confronting the incoming Kennedy administration. This transition period focused on the goals of the country's nuclear-strategic policy; how to approach crises in every region, from the Middle East to Vietnam; and whether to unify the armed services. Included are Nitze's recommendations regarding a conventional military buildup and a 'no-cities' policy, which would target military forces instead of civilian populations. Nitze's interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'At the Brink' moves the viewer through his work with the World War II Strategic Bombing Survey, which placed him in Hiroshima and Nagasaki soon after the atomic bombs were dropped. From 1950 to 1953, Nitze served as director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff, and from 1961 to 1963 he was assistant defense secretary. As his interview reveals, Nitze held key positions during the period after World War II when the United States emerged as a superpower and Cold War strategic policies were being debated and defined. His classified 1950 report, National Security Memorandum 68, remains a seminal document: it was initially designed to persuade President Harry S. Truman that an increasingly menacing world required major increases in spending on defense and foreign military assistance. Nitze was also a major contributor to the Gaither Report, which stressed the need for a survivable nuclear deterrent by citing the vulnerability of the U.S. bomber force. Nitze opposed the doctrine of massive retaliation from the moment John Foster Dulles announced it at a dinner party in 1954. He was involved in crisis contingency planning, including the Berlin blockade and airlift in 1948, construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. During the missile crisis, Nitze recalls, he worked out the scenarios of increasing military escalation to pressure the Soviets to withdraw the missiles. Finally, he describes his disappointment that, although Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara initially embraced his no-cities strategy, following the Cuban missile crisis McNamara entirely abandoned the notion of winnable nuclear war.
- Subject:
Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Science and Technology
- Collection:
WGBH Open Vault
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- Abstract: Dr. Randall Forsberg is executive director of the think tank she founded in 1980, the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies. In this video segment, she recalls the moment during arms negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union when she determined that the arms race is not driven by basic deterrence but by the imperative to gain superiority in threatening to win-without actually waging-nuclear war.In her wide-ranging interview for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Visions of War and Peace,' Forsberg explores war-and-peace issues, military doctrine, the history and economics of nuclear-weapons development and policy, war-fighting capability and force structure, scenarios and resistance to arms reduction, the history of relations between the superpowers, and their interactions with developing nations. Seven countries, she asserts, account for 99 percent of nuclear weapons. The dispersal of weapons-in the form of the Rapid Deployment Force, tactical weapons, and missiles fitted with multiple warheads-heightens the risk of war in a world moving toward becoming what she calls 'a global nuclear porcupine.' Forsberg asserts that 'threatening to commit genocide as a way of conducting politics' is one of the most 'deeply immoral and subversive acts of government in the modern world.' Moreover, she maintains, a conventional military crisis could easily cross that nuclear threshold. Forsberg advocates the three Rs: 'reduce, restructure, and restrain' conventional forces-the other side of the military coin-that consume 75 percent of the U.S. military budget. She compares disarmament with abolitionism: most people understood that slavery was evil and didn't know when it would end, but they realized that they had to work until it was eliminated. Forsberg's analysis of the country's 'defense dependency' and of the shortcomings of the nuclear-freeze movement she spearheaded is laced with her optimism about Soviet Union general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. She has never abandoned her vision of an educated public that will prevail in 'demilitarizing international relations" to achieve a "secure, stable permanent peace.'
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