Rusk JJ, Interview with Dean Rusk, circa 1985

RICHARD RUSK: This is an interview with Dean Rusk. Present are Tom Schoenbaum and Dorinda Dallmeyer. The subject of the interview is negotiations with the Russians--arms limitation.

DEAN RUSK: At the beginning of the Kennedy administration, President Kennedy and the Congress established the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency independent of the State Department and the Defense Department, but within the general framework of the State Department. The head of the agency ranked as an Under Secretary of State, but he was given considerable leeway to pursue the possibilities of arms limitations.

Then we established what, to me, was a very important arrangement: the so-called Committee of Principles. That committee was made up of the Secretary of State, 00:01:00the Secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the director of CIA, and the President's National Security Advisor. Now this was not just one of those committees where everybody sent substitutes; we met. We personally attended and we worked away hard on these arms control measures.

Now I'm happy to say that in my own case I never had to sit down and arm wrestle the Joint Chiefs of Staff on arms control measures. Secretary [Robert Strange] McNamara took care of that inside the Pentagon. But, we took it seriously, McNamara and I talked about these matters very frequently on Saturday or Sunday mornings when we could meet, just the two of us without a lot of people to interrupt us. And so we were determined to make a genuine effort to find some way to put some limits on the arms control business. However, at the end of the 00:02:00day, the problem is negotiating such agreements with the Russians; and that is not easy. When two giants sit down at the table to try to work out something that seems to be balanced between the two sides, each one tends to look upon that word balance as a bank balance; each wants a little plus in its favor. And so inherently, there's a kind of jockeying for advantage in such negotiations.

Further, you run into all of the special problems of negotiating with the Russians. For example, they are very persistent and stubborn, unyielding in their positions; they want to be sure that they get every drop out of the turnip before any kind of agreement is made. And it becomes clear in such discussions 00:03:00that we and the Russians are simply not in the same situation with regard to arms control matters. When you talk with the Russians, you have the impression that there's a ghost at the table: that the Russians are looking over their shoulders at China with a billion Chinese armed with nuclear weapons with whom they share a several thousand mile common frontier. So, whatever the Soviets might think would be a reasonable balance as between them and the United States, they have a strong desire to add something to that to take care of the China question. And then there are such problems as the French and British missiles which are becoming quite considerable in impact. From the Russian point of view, 00:04:00they don't, they're not concerned about the nationality of the missiles that might be descending upon them. They've always wanted to cut the French and British missiles into the picture and have us take those into account in our negotiations. We resisted that, but it's not an unreasonable position for the Soviets to take.

When I was a NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] foreign minister, we started what has come to be known as the Mutual Balanced Forced Reductions [MBFR]: that is, to try to find some way to cut down on the size of the conventional forces that are staring at each other across that demarcation line in Germany. We felt that since both sides knew, without any doubt, that any attack in either direction would be World War III, and that was a war which must 00:05:00not occur, that it seemed rather foolish for us to maintain that confrontation at such a high level of forces on both sides. So we thought we ought to be able to reduce those numbers.

But at the time, we realized that these would be difficult negotiations with the Russians because the Russians undoubtedly feel that they need substantial forces in Eastern Europe for their own purposes in Eastern Europe. After all, they used their forces in Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, Poland. And so the scale of forces which the Soviets might figure they need to maintain their position among the countries of Eastern Europe could not help but be a threat to NATO if they were suddenly faced west and started marching. And so we knew this would be a difficult negotiation, and indeed, they have been. During all of these 00:06:00negotiations, there was another procedural matter which was of considerable importance, that is that we kept in touch with the Arms Control Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at all stages: kept them fully briefed. I'm not sure but that once in a while one or another members of that committee would sit in on the negotiations. We did that because, after all, these arms control agreements would need the advice and consent of the Senate, and you're in a much stronger position if the Senate knows that in all stages of the negotiations some of their own people were very closely involved. And we had a good deal of help from people like Hubert [Horatio] Humphrey [Jr.] and others who served during those years as chairmen of that subcommittee. But anyhow, a 00:07:00serious effort was made both through organizational devices and through negotiations during the sixties to put some limit on the arms race. Now can we get into particular questions?

SCHOENBAUM: Okay, I want to start, first of all, with some questions on the Test Ban Treaty. It seems to me in remembering about that era, that this was the first major negotiation that ended in some success, in success with the Russians. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy made his speech at the American University that was widely interpreted as a call for some detente with the Russians. And in the aftermath of that speech, in turn, the Test Ban Treaty came to an agreeable conclusion, was concluded. What was 00:08:00your role in the negotiation, in the initiation and the negotiation of the Test Ban Treaty. And specifically, Warren Cohen, in his book mentions, that you played a very important role in two ways after the treaty or in the crucial days of the negotiations. One: He mentions a yacht ride with [Anatoly] Dobrynin on the Potomac on which you convinced Dobrynin to transmit certain messages to his government. And two: The ratification process in the Senate.

DEAN RUSK: During the very difficult Berlin Crisis of '61-'62, and the all-dangerous Cuban Missile Crisis, May '62, President Kennedy and his senior colleagues felt that it was just too late in history for the two nuclear 00:09:00superpowers to pursue a policy of total hostility across the board. And so, despite the atmospherics of those two crises, we set in chain a series of things which produced a number of agreements, principal of which was the Test Ban Treaty. Now, our negotiations on that treaty started in the direction of a comprehensive test ban, including underground testing, but we ran into some considerable difficulty in achieving an agreement with the Soviet Union on methods of verification of underground shots. You see, from our point of view, verification is very important. It will be a long time before we and the Russians trust each other. But that means, even so, you can have agreements between the two if you can ascertain performance on those agreements, in 00:10:00addition to which, verification is extraordinarily important in trying to get any support from the Senate in getting advice and consent to such agreements. But, as far as the underground shots were concerned, we could not get agreement with the Russians on adequate verification agreements. We wanted, for example, to have a number of little seismic black boxes located in different points of the Soviet Union to help distinguish between underground shots and ordinary seismic events. I think we were asking for seven; I think Khrushchev asked or three. We sort of locked up on that difference for a while. But, it was Mr. Khrushchev, perhaps through some suggestions from our side, it was Mr. 00:11:00Khrushchev who broke the deadlock by suggesting that we go ahead with the test ban in the atmosphere, in outer space and underwater, because there, national means of verification could be entirely adequate. And so, we referred to that as the Partial Test Ban Treaty because it was not a comprehensive treaty.

SCHOENBAUM: Were you present at the--did Khrushchev state this to you face to face?

DEAN RUSK: No, I followed these negotiations very closely, but we had Bill [William Chapman] Foster and [William] Averell Harriman conduct the actual negotiations with the Russians. And I might have talked--I'm sure I talked to [Andrei Andreevich] Gromyko about this problem when we met for our usual two sessions at the opening round of the U.N. [United Nations] General Assembly every year. But, at the time we looked upon the Partial Test Ban Treaty as a 00:12:00step in disarmament and limiting the arms race, but it hasn't had that effect. But it did have a very important effect on the environment. It was much more of an environmental game than anything else because since that treaty went into effect, for example, man-made strontium ninety has practically disappeared from the atmosphere; whereas, during all that period of heavy testing, there was a lot of that around, and milk was being contaminated all over the place, and all sorts of negative things were happening. But, when we completed the Partial Test Ban Treaty, we did not abandon any prospect of a comprehensive treaty. Later on, during the seventies, a threshold was set on the size of underground tests.

SCHOENBAUM: The 1974 Treaty?

DEAN RUSK: That's right. But there still is the possibility of a comprehensive test ban that would take care of underground shots as well.

SCHOENBAUM: Then, may I ask if then is it at that time in the sixties, in negotiating the Test Ban Treaty, it was really the issue of verification? One got the impression at the time that perhaps the American position was--There was an element of not wanting to stop the underground testing because we wanted to be free to continue. Was it really verification that you were worried about?

DEAN RUSK: Well, the underground testing was a more difficult issue for us because had we had a ban on underground testing. That might have led to the dismantling of our laboratories and research teams that were working on nuclear weapons. And then the people in the business were very loath to give up spot 00:14:00testing of existing missiles: take them out of inventory and go out and fire them to be sure that they weren't deteriorating in storage, and to be sure, to have some reasonable assurance, that the missiles that you had on line would, in effect, work if they were called upon to do so. So there was more resistance to the underground side of things than in the atmosphere, under water, and outer space, because they wanted to keep the machinery alive just in case. And that was an important point and we had to think about it. But both President Kennedy and President Johnson wanted to find some way to put a limit on this arms race. And I think that had we been able to work out something that was reasonable with the Russians on underground shots in terms of verification, partly to take care 00:15:00of any problems we might have had in the Senate, I think we might have gone for a comprehensive test ban at that time. But it wasn't easy to include underground.

SCHOENBAUM: On the yacht ride in the Potomac with Dobrynin, was that in fact a significant conversation that you had with Dobrynin over the Test Ban Treaty? And what was the occasion of that yacht ride?

DEAN RUSK: Well, if you'll forgive me, I would think that any extended conversation between the Secretary of State and Ambassador Dobrynin would be a significant conversation--(laughter)

SCHOENBAUM: Oh, I--Well, with relation to the Test Ban Treaty?

DEAN RUSK: I'm sure we talked about it, but I don't remember the details of the discussion we had on that particular trip. I saw him frequently, not just to talk about existing points between the two sides but just to talk about things in general, what I would call sometimes, pointless talks: just exchange views, 00:16:00trying to understand the other side's attitude on a variety of questions. I think he appreciated that. I have no way of knowing just how he reported these talks back to Moscow, but I think those talks, such talks, were useful. And I did take him on more than one occasion on that boat ride down the Potomac. But, I think he played a helpful role in achieving the nuclear test ban.

SCHOENBAUM: Was it in the sense of transmitting accurately the American position because he knew it so well and he had so much access to you, or was he a substantive figure in the negotiations?

DEAN RUSK: Oh, I would think that the central channel for communication would be, would have been through our actual negotiators. But talks between me and 00:17:00Dobrynin were, I think, a helpful reinforcement of the position of the negotiators. And then Dobrynin and I would sometimes explore alternatives without any commitment to either side. But we spent a lot of time on negotiating the Test Ban Treaty.

SCHOENBAUM: Did you give--you were in charge of Foster and Harriman, were you not? Did you have frequent meetings with them to develop the American position? What was your relationship with Foster and Harriman during the negotiations?

DEAN RUSK: I had overall supervision of the negotiations, both with Foster and with Harriman. But, one of my jobs was to be sure that the instructions that were sent to them were an administration position, with the Secretary of Defense on board and with the President on board so that we could be sure that our 00:18:00negotiators were speaking for the government of the United States. See, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was located in the building, in the State Department building, and Bill Foster, its head, came to our morning staff meetings every day. And then we had those very profitable meetings of the Committee of Principles that I mentioned earlier. So, this was something that we spent a lot of personal time on and got ourselves very deeply into.

SCHOENBAUM: During that time--this is a related question--during that time you, in 1963, were widely quoted on several occasions in connection with China, and at that time there was the incursion that China made over the Indian border which you condemned very forcibly. One has the impression, looking back over 00:19:00that-- I'll ask a question: Is this, is it a fair impression that perhaps your statements on China, very severe and condemnatory at that time, had to do something with the arms negotiations with the Soviets? Did you have any motives other than the obvious one of condemning China for its conduct in respect to India? Were you placing China in the overall context of this ghost at the table that the Soviets were worried about?

DEAN RUSK: I think that particular boundary problem between India and China was rather separate from the test ban negotiations. We didn't like it because China was, Communist China was doing, committing this action up there. But we also--One of our strongest motivations was to give India a sense of support. 00:20:00India is, after all, a very large country and important in that part of the world. And see, the fighting allegedly was about the details of an actual boundary, the McMahon line. And one can always quarrel about that kind of a boundary in that kind of country where there weren't even good maps of the area. But what we hoped to prevent was a, was the Chinese with their initial successes along the boundary, to develop an appetite for moving strongly into India itself to maybe to try to cut off Assam from India, or to move deeply into Bengal, or anything of that sort. And so we made it very clear that we were in strong support of India. We sent them a good many emergency arms. Our ambassador, John Kenneth Galbraith, was out at the airport welcoming in our planes, and he 00:21:00visited the front where the troops were, and so forth. So we tried to give strong support to India in that situation. But that was not strictly related to the arms control matter.

SCHOENBAUM: There were reports of some different positions with respect to the Test Ban Treaty. Specifically, Adlai [Ewing] Stevenson [III] is quoted, was quoted as advocating a kind of softer American position than Kennedy was willing to accept. Did you mediate or discuss this with Stevenson, or what was your position with respect to Stevenson?

DEAN RUSK: We kept in touch with him because these disarmament matters came up regularly at the United Nations for debate. But Adlai Stevenson was not a very good negotiator. He could make brilliant speeches, but he was so anxious to get an agreement that he, if you gave him a fall-back position, he'd be at the 00:22:00fall-back position in five minutes. And so we had to listen to him, but we didn't go along with him on his, in effect, his attempt to get a comprehensive treaty without adequate verification. And so we had to, in effect, overrule him on that. But he didn't cause us much trouble on it. He didn't go down to the Senate and start complaining or anything of that sort, didn't wage a public campaign on the matter.

SCHOENBAUM: Well maybe we can move to the, another treaty, another negotiation: the non-proliferation negotiation.

DEAN RUSK: Yes, there was a matter on which we and the Soviet Union were in broad agreement. Because, we and they recognized that the more governments that 00:23:00developed a nuclear capability, the greater the chances were that these weapons would, at some point, fall into irresponsible hands. Also, I think that we and the Soviet Union were somewhat sobered by the responsibilities which this kind of power imposes upon oneself. There are some people in the world who seem to think that having nuclear weapons is a great instrument of prestige and power. But it--Nuclear weapons enslave you. They put limits on all sorts of things that you don't want to do simply because of these weapons. And so we felt that it would be very important to try to limit the possession of nuclear weapons as vigorously as possible. So, we and the Soviets worked together pretty closely on that. And we and they produced the draft of what came to be the 00:24:00Non-proliferation Treaty. And the working relations between us and the Soviets on that were good and quite effective.

SCHOENBAUM: Can you describe your personal role, or was this handled primarily by the arms limitation agency?

DEAN RUSK: By and large it was William Foster, and I forget now who else might have participated there before we concluded that treaty. Perhaps Averell Harriman did again, I'm not sure. But there was one interesting thing about that Non-proliferation Treaty: by its very nature it seemed to be discriminatory on behalf of the nuclear powers, against all of the non-nuclear powers. That's in the very nature of trying to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. But in the draft treaty, which we and the Soviets produced, we had an item in the preamble which said that the nuclear powers should make a maximum effort to limit and 00:25:00reduce the number of nuclear weapons. Well, the rest of the world insisted that we take that out of the preamble and make it an operational part of the treaty, an actual binding part of the treaty. And so under that kind of pressure, we and the Soviets agreed to let that become Article 6 of the Non-proliferation Treaty. Under that, we and the Soviets have a treaty obligation to make a serious effort to limit and reduce nuclear weapons. Now there are some nations which did not ratify that Non-proliferation Treaty and it's a very interesting list of countries which did not. I think Brazil is not, for example; and Israel and Egypt I believe have not; and since Brazil did not, Argentina did not. But on 00:26:00the whole, this Non-proliferation Treaty was well-received and has received a large number of ratifications now from the governments of the world.

SCHOENBAUM: I take it you were in, you had a supervisory role and also acted as the go-between between the President and William Foster and the agency?

DEAN RUSK: Well, the channel in which these matters usually were discussed would be the Committee of Principles meeting with the President.

SCHOENBAUM: I see: The Committee of Principles.

DEAN RUSK: Now William Foster, although he was under my roof and under my wing in most respects, did have direct access to the President if he wanted it, if he needed it. Very rarely did he do that. But, you see, both President Kennedy and President Johnson were very much interested in these arms control matters, and they would occasionally send for him because they wanted to hear directly from him as to how the situation looked and how the agency was doing.

SCHOENBAUM: You were responsible, weren't you sir, for taking the treaty to the NATO meeting and for--you were in charge of relationships with the NATO allies and selling the treaty, in effect, to the NATO allies?

DEAN RUSK: Yes. But I had no difficulty in that except with regard to France. President [Charles Andre Joseph Mario] de Gaulle did not want to participate in conferences where lesser inconsequential countries were represented. For example, he never took his seat at the Geneva Committee on Disarmament, because there were twenty-five or thirty other countries around the table. He wanted these things to be dealt with strictly on a great-power basis: United States, France, Britain, Russia. And so we did not get any help from France in these discussions in NATO.

SCHOENBAUM: Was there any discussion, at that time, of things like nuclear-free 00:28:00zones in connection with non-proliferation? Were there some positions that we were advocating that were not, were too far out in front at that time?

DEAN RUSK: Well, during the sixties, late sixties, Mexico took the initiative to establish a nuclear-free zone in Latin America: the Treaty of Tlateloco. We encouraged that because we thought that it might give the Latin Americans a little more repose and sense of ease, and we did not see them being involved directly in any nuclear conflict, as such. There was a little bit of a complication because they wanted to include American territories, in the Caribbean for example, in such a treaty. But they had two protocols to the treaty, both of which we have now ratified, which, in effect, excludes the 00:29:00Panama Canal area from nuclear weapons, maybe the Virgin Islands. I'm not sure; I'd have to check on that. But we tried to go along with that. I've always hoped that Africa would establish itself as a nuclear-free zone. I do not brush aside the possibility that at some time in the future, perhaps some distance in the future, all of Northern, Eastern, Western, Southern Europe would somehow constitute themselves into a nuclear free zone. So, I think that that spatial limitation on arms has merit, and it's one way to begin to move on to the central problems of arms limitation, although they themselves, standing alone, would not be decisive. Another area of interesting development in these arms 00:30:00control matters during the sixties was the ABM [Antiballistic Missile] problem. When we had done a good deal of homework in Washington in the year before President Johnson met with Prime Minister [Aleksei Nikolaevich] Kosygin at Glassboro, and we had come to the conclusion, through our own analysis, that if we and the Soviet Union began to build the antiballistic missile systems, the inevitable result would be that both sides would multiply their offensive weapons in order to be able to saturate the ABMs before a main strike was delivered. And so, when President Johnson met Kosygin at Glassboro, he put this point to Kosygin very strongly. It was clear that Kosygin had no briefing on this, the Soviets had not done their staff work, that he had no authority to get 00:31:00into it at all, and so he simply would not respond to the--

END OF SIDE 1

BEGINNING OF SIDE 2

DEAN RUSK: And at one point I remember Mr. Kosygin made the, made a remark which is, which represents what I would call the naivete of the first look. He said, "Well, how can one object to defensive weapons of that sort?" But then--well, as I say, LBJ really gave him the LBJ treatment on this subject at Glassboro. I remember at one point he said, "I'll have Robert McNamara in Moscow nest Wednesday morning at nine o'clock. Will you see him?" Kosygin, of course, could not accept. But then the Russians apparently went home and did their homework, and they came to the same conclusion that we had reached: that ABMs would simply greatly accelerate the arms race in offensive weapons. And so they indicated that they were ready to talk about it, and talks were resumed. And 00:32:00then, during the early Nixon administration we concluded the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. Now, looking forward to the Star Wars problem, the problem is not just the existence of a treaty which would ban antiballistic weapons in space, because, after all, that treaty has a withdrawal clause, and at the end of the day you can always denounce the treaty. It's the underlying rationale of the treaty which is compelling, in my judgment, when you look at things like other kinds of weapons in space aimed at missiles: that is, that such things would simply stimulate the acceleration of the competition in offensive weapons.

SCHOENBAUM: Was the Glassboro meeting, then, the real origin of the ABM Treaty 00:33:00discussions with the Russians?

DEAN RUSK: First point of contact between high officials of both sides on that subject. Yes.

SCHOENBAUM: And was it the principal subject of Glassboro or were there other subjects?

DEAN RUSK: No, that was the--the Glassboro meeting was a kind of tour de raison. Mr. Kosygin and President Johnson went off in a room by themselves and concocted a message to Hanoi about the Vietnam struggle which Mr. Kosygin agreed to relay to Hanoi. Nothing came of it, but there were other subjects there. It was a sort of a get-acquainted meeting.

SCHOENBAUM: That was the main accomplishment of Glassboro, was to get the, this impetus to the ABM?

DEAN RUSK: Yes, President Johnson was ready to see Kosygin, but he was not willing to go to the United Nations in New York to meet with Kosygin. And Kosygin was not willing to come to Washington to meet with President Johnson. Well, at one point we suggested that the two of them meet at a military base not 00:34:00too far away from the United Nations, but Kosygin wouldn't come to a military base to meet. That was, would be undignified for him. So, President Johnson called the then Governor of New Jersey and asked him to suggest a place which would be between New York and Washington where the two could meet. And the Governor came back with the President's house at Glassboro College, at the college in Glassboro. It was a state college there. And Kosygin accepted. Well then, the Secret Service moved in to get the President's house ready for this meeting. They took out all the furniture, completely refurnished it, put in air- conditioning units because this was summertime. The thing that broke the heart 00:35:00of the wife of the President of that college was that they also took out of her deep freeze all of her canned goods. She just broke down and cried over that.

SCHOENBAUM: Didn't they replace them?

DEAN RUSK: But they lived through it. I don't know whether they put them in a freezer somewhere else in the meantime. But as part compensation, we left the air-conditioning units in the house when we got through. But Kosygin was very well received by the people around Glassboro, they turned out and waved and cheered and so forth. It was a useful meeting.

SCHOENBAUM: Let me ask a question, since we're talking about the ABM and Star Wars. You point out that this Star Wars system is a threat to the underlying rationale of the ABM treaty. There are those that say that there is something different about Star Wars, that the ABM Treaty does focus on defense and does 00:36:00prevent the proliferation of offensive weapons in so doing. But the Star Wars system, they say, has perhaps another purpose, and that is to provide a leaky shield that would not protect population, but would protect, would provide some assurance against a first strike which--And they justify it as being different from the ABM Treaty--

DEAN RUSK: I don't see that. As a matter of fact, I heard Secretary [Caspar Willard] Weinberger not long ago say that these devices in space--lasers, and particle beams, and things like that--are not arms, and therefore are not subject to arms control agreements. I think that's pretty ridiculous, myself. 00:37:00But, you see, at the present time, the Soviets--We are now talking in February of 1985. The Soviets appear to be basing themselves solidly on the rationale of the ABM Treaty. Mr. Gromyko has indicated that unless there can be some agreement on these space developments, that there won't be agreements on other kinds of missiles. There is certain logic to that, because if we began to deploy these devices in space, one of the first things the Soviets will do will be to multiply certain of their offensive weapons which could penetrate or avoid such defenses. For example, I would suspect that they would multiply the number of nuclear firing submarines in the Atlantic which could fire low-level, short-range, high-velocity missiles. And I just cannot conceive that this space 00:38:00gadgetry will be able to pick up such things within the very short time that's involved before those missiles land where they're aimed.

By the way, one element which has complicated this business has been the exaggeration of the accuracy of these missiles, in my judgment. We call a missile accurate if it has a fifty percent chance of coming within X hundreds of yards of its target. I heard a Congressman say, "Well that means you have to fire two missiles at each of your targets." Well if he's ever rolled dice, he would know that that won't work, because the second missile has only a fifty percent chance of coming within the desired range. If you want to go to certainty in that situation, you have to reach to infinity; and that's a heck of 00:39:00a lot of missiles. But we tend to think--these people in the Pentagon tend to think of the worst case as far as the other fellow's missiles are concerned. And they attribute to them an accuracy which I think is greatly exaggerated.

A friend of mine who's knowledgeable about these matters once remarked that in the event of a nuclear war, we could hit Eniwetok with great accuracy, because our test ranges have been running out to Eniwetok, California, you see. And so we've been able to make the adjustments for all sorts of things. We've never fired a missile in the trajectory which would have to be traveled if we were firing at the Soviet Union. And so we'd have to take into account the wobbling of the Earth, the variations in magnetic and gravitational fields, weather 00:40:00conditions on the firing end, and weather conditions at the point of impact.

So if I were to be, somebody were to tell me, call me on the phone right now, and tell me that a missile is headed for Athens, Georgia, I'd just sit here at the desk because it would be a heck of a coincidence if it landed on Athens, Georgia. But some of the--this accuracy of missiles, to me, is an exaggeration. And there's a lot of nonsense around in these fields of complicated disarmament talks: such things as limited nuclear war, a protracted nuclear war out of which we could come with some advantage; counter-force strikes, as a way to send signals to the other side that would cause them to leave our cities alone. All that is just plain nonsense, in my judgment.

SCHOENBAUM: What kind of agreement, just thinking out loud, could we come to about Star Wars that--isn't it hard to--Obviously the decision to deploy is, perhaps, fifteen years in the future under even Reagan's scenario. And for the Russians to say that unless there is an agreement on Star Wars there will be no agreement on missiles, well, what kind of agreement can you come to except to cut down or do away with the research? And you've said that you don't want to cut down on research.

DEAN RUSK: Well it seems to me that there is a very simple solution, if the two sides would accept it. It would require the Russians to agree that research is not prohibited by existing agreement. I think it's important for us to have research going on in this field as a hedge against some sudden breakthrough in 00:42:00the state-of-the-art by the Soviets or anybody else. And research is not prohibited by the ABM Treaty. But I would then hope that the United States would make what some would call a concession, but which is not because of the existing state of treaty law, that the United States would agree not to deploy: Have the cut-off point between research and deployment. And that's already the state of the supreme law of the land with respect to antiballistic weapons in space. So, I would hope that they could get some agreement that would, in effect, reaffirm the ABM Treaty.

SCHOENBAUM: Which would, could embody the withdrawal clause so that twenty years from now if there were some new circumstances--

DEAN RUSK: Let our children deal with that problem later on. They'll be at least as wise as we are: wiser.

DALLMEMER: What about, in the ABM Treaty where, currently, research is permitted, but testing is--

DEAN RUSK: Let's say it is not prohibited.

DALLMEMER: It's not prohibited, but the testing and the deployment are prohibited, which is the language of the treaty. The United States seems to be taking some rather tortured approaches toward defining what these terms mean since they were not defined when the treaty was being negotiated. Would you recommend that they return to the standing contemplative commission in order to resolve these matters rather than--

DEAN RUSK: Well, I suspect these issues will be taken up in the actual negotiations that will begin in March of 1985 with regard to outer space. After all, Mr. [George Pratt] Shultz and Mr. Gromyko issued a joint statement saying 00:44:00that these agreed-to talks [are] aiming at "the prevention of an arms race in space and the termination of an arms race on Earth." Now, that joint statement was made with the personal approval of President Reagan. Now, when we have agreed to do our best to prevent an arms race in space, that's just not an empty statement unless it was intended to be an empty statement. But some of the talk out of the administration since then suggests that somehow we are not going to accept limitations on what might be done in space, in which case I would be very gloomy about getting agreements with the Soviet Union on other kinds of missiles, or on conventional forces in Europe.

SCHOENBAUM: It's [a] fair trade-off then, our decision not to apply, not to deploy versus concessions on the other side, perhaps in the area of withdrawal of their missiles, or--

DEAN RUSK: Well, you see, research on lasers, and particle beams, and things like that would be extraordinarily difficult to verify. You just don't know what's going on in laboratories all over the place. And the Soviets will never accept the kind of intimate penetration of their system that would be required to have any kind of check at all on such research. And so in any event, the Soviets, we know, have been conducting research in these fields themselves. So, I think we ought to have research, realizing that the research itself will waste a good deal of money because you'll never know in advance which ideas are going 00:46:00to pan out and which will not pan out. So, it'll be, research alone will be costly enough, without the hundreds of billions required to deploy these weapons.

DALLMEMER: What about some reported dissatisfaction among non-nuclear countries that are signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, that the United States and the Soviet Union have not done enough in maintaining their treaty commitment under the article in the treaty?

DEAN RUSK: Yes, well that dissatisfaction is expressed frequently. Almost always in the opening three weeks of general debate at the U.N. General Assembly each year, there will be those that will be speaking out, calling upon the Soviet Union and the United States to get busy on arms control, and with some justification. However, there's a little balance to that. At the opening of the 00:47:00Geneva Conference on Disarmament, I, myself went; and in my opening statement, among other things, called upon the other countries of the world to give thought to arms limitations in their own regions and their own areas: India and Pakistan, continent of Africa, Latin America, places like that, and not just to concentrate on the highly-important arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Well that appeal of mine fell on deaf ears: colossal indifference on the part of the non-aligned world, Third World, others to do anything about it as it affects themselves. And, as a matter of fact, the Prime Minister of Nigeria, at that conference, came to me in the corridor and in a rather chesty 00:48:00fashion said, "Well Mr. Secretary, if we can get you and the Soviets to begin to disarm, then my country can buy arms cheaply, can't we?" So except for the Mexican initiative for the non-nuclear area in Latin America, there's been a very--we tried for years to get India and Pakistan to come to some understanding behind the scenes as to the level of their respective armed forces: made no headway on it at all. Now there are special reasons for this indifference. There are about fifty military dictatorships in the Third World, and these military establishments, in many countries, are the principal organized power in the society. And those military establishments simply won't let their governments cut back on allocations of resources for military purposes. And so it's a complex thing. But actually there have been times when I have felt that the only 00:49:00two nations in the world that had any interest in limitations of arms measures as it applied to themselves were the United States and the Soviet Union.

SCHOENBAUM: Let's--we're getting down to the tape. Do you have another?

DALLMEMER: I was just wanted to ask you about something you brought up: your support for the nuclear free zones in Latin America, and Africa, and Asia. How can you reconcile that with recent flap about New Zealand refusing to permit nuclear-armed American ships to use their port facilities?

DEAN RUSK: Well, I've been pained by this little dispute between the United States and New Zealand. I was one of the originators of the ANZUS Treaty and was present for its signing in San Francisco at the time of the signing of the 00:50:00Japanese Peace Treaty in 1952. But, I don't like to see our allies treat the United States like a call girl who is available if desired but who is snubbed in between times. If the New Zealand government does not want American warships to call in there, then it ought to suspend or withdraw from ANZUS. They shouldn't ask to have it both ways: that they will exclude us, but that they expect us to be there if they need us. I don't like these half-ally arrangements. Now, whether or not this is just a temporary and special period in New Zealand because they have this particular party and Prime Minister in power, and whether 00:51:00another government would take another view, I don't know. But I think it's undignified for New Zealand to say to us, "Now we'll keep the ANZUS Treaty going, but we won't let your warships call in our ports." I would tell them to state publicly that they are suspending the obligations of the ANZUS Treaty. Matter of fact, that treaty had a special qualification to it. President Truman had asked John Foster Dulles to negotiate a treaty of reconciliation with Japan, make it short, non-punitive in character. Well, there were some who didn't like that approach: Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines among them. And in any event, Australia and New Zealand were nervous about the possibility of a revival of Japanese military power in the Pacific. And so the ANZUS Treaty was aimed at as much at the possible revival of Japanese military power as it was 00:52:00any idea of China. It was a quid pro quo to the Australians and New Zealanders, for a treaty of reconciliation with Japan. But New Zealand has no need to worry about nuclear weapons falling on them. I can't imagine anyone spending nuclear missiles by aiming at that little spot way off down there in the South Pacific. You know it's further from New Zealand to Saigon than it is from Saigon to Paris. Yet we tend to think of that region as a somehow integrated region.

SCHOENBAUM: Well, I wanted to start a little of the discussion about the strategic arms limitations areas. I know the historical record tells us that in 1968, that seems to have been the origin of the, of talks on strategic arms and 00:53:00nuclear strategic arms, if I'm not wrong. And history tells us that, in fact, agreement was reached with the Russians on August 19, 1968, the day before the Czechoslovakian invasion, that you worked very hard, that others worked very hard in working with the Russians to try to get negotiations started on strategic arms limitation on SALT [Strategic Arms Limitations Talks]--

DEAN RUSK: This illustration shows the problem of inevitable linkage. I myself am generally opposed to linking arms control measures to other problems, but sometimes you simply cannot separate them. On a certain Wednesday morning in August 1968, we and the Soviets were all set to make a simultaneous identical announcement that President Johnson would soon go to Leningrad to open what later became known as the SALT talks. The trouble is that on the Tuesday night before that Wednesday morning, Soviet forces marched into Czechoslovakia. And I 00:54:00had to telephone Ambassador Dobrynin in Washington that night and insist that he telephone Moscow immediately to tell them not to make that joint announcement the next morning. Because had they, on the morning after the march into Czechoslovakia, had we made that joint announcement with them, that would have been taken, right around the world, as our condoning their march into Czechoslovakia, which we were not prepared to do. It's ironic to remember that any chance of getting Senate approval of the SALT II treaty was destroyed when Soviet forces marched into Afghanistan. So, some linkages are inescapable, because politics is politics. But on the whole I would prefer to see us try to work on these arms control matters without dragging in every problem we have between ourselves and the Soviet Union into the same basket, to try to negotiate the whole thing.

SCHOENBAUM: Can you tell me something, can you tell us something about the negotiations with the Russians leading up to that announcement? Was it easy to get?

DEAN RUSK: Well, one thing that was very much on our mind was that if we could have gotten these talks started in September, say, of 1968, the state of the art of the multiple warheads was such that we thought it might be possible to get those under control. But there was the delay over the move into Czechoslovakia. But then, before the end of his term, President Johnson tried to come back to these discussions with the Soviet Union. But by that time, Nixon had been elected, although he had not been inaugurated, and the Russians, quite 00:56:00understandably, decided they would prefer to wait for the new administration, not enter such talks with an outgoing administration. Then when the Nixon administration came in, they had to take time to study all these things afresh for themselves so that they would know what they were talking about when they talked to the Russians, so that caused another year's delay. So all of these delays meant, in effect, that the multiple warhead horses got out of the stable and has made arms negotiations that much more complex and difficult.

SCHOENBAUM: There was a--it's fair to describe it, then, as a major lost opportunity that--

DEAN RUSK: It was a lost opportunity. It was a lost opportunity.

SCHOENBAUM: Was it difficult to get the Russians to agree to come to the negotiating table back in '68? In retrospect, who conducted that? Did Foster?

DEAN RUSK: No, I think at the time we were prepared to make that simultaneous 00:57:00joint announcement, they were ready to come to the table. It wasn't all that difficult, because they too, in their quieter moments, cannot help but have some interest in putting some limits on this arms race because of the pressures which the arms race puts on the allocation of resources within their own system. However, there's another factor, I think, entering the picture now which will make things less easy. And that is the rise in the influence of the military within the Soviet Union. You see, in the later years of Mr. [Leonid Ilich] Brezhnev, and then the years of Andropov, and now Chernenko, their leadership has been old and ill and anyone in the Politbureau who thinks that he might succeed to the leadership knows that he cannot do so without the support of the armed forces. And so it's less likely during such a period that anyone at the 00:58:00Politbureau table is going to raise his hand and say, "Well now, come on comrades, let's tell our military they've got to accept some arms limitations." Well as a little outward sign of this rising position of the military, in recent years we've even seen Soviet generals holding press conferences. That was unheard of in my day. No one would ever think that a Soviet general would hold a press conference, and they've been doing that. So, and for quite different reasons, I think one would have to say that in 1985 the influence of our own military within the American political system has gained considerable ground.

SCHOENBAUM: What was specifically on the table in the SALT talks, the aborted SALT talks of '68, besides the MRVs [Multiple Reentry Vehicles]? Do you remember?

DEAN RUSK: Well, we were hoping as a minimum to get some limit on further 00:59:00expansion of the missiles. Further, we hoped that we could find a formula under which we could halt the arms race where it was. But then, if that worked well for a few years, then you might use something like that same formula for purposes of reduction. See, I personally--and this was my view during the sixties when I was in office--I personally will go just as far in eliminating nuclear weapons as the possibilities of verification would permit. If someone could show me how to verify against hiding these nuclear warheads in salt mines in Utah, and Siberia, and the Yunan province of China, I would go for zero nuclear weapons tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. Because in terms of the safety of the American people, which is a central object of policy, it seems clear that 01:00:00we are less safe today than we were before these weapons arrived on Earth.

But I can't conceive of any method of verification that would permit you to eliminate warheads. You could put a hundred of them in this office. And so we have been concentrating on delivery systems: missiles in silos, submarines, aircraft, things that can be counted with a high degree of accuracy. There were two agreements we made that throw an interesting slant on verification. We agreed with the Soviets that nuclear weapons would not be orbited in outer space. Well, now, if they were to orbit one in outer space, they probably could get away with it, we wouldn't pick it up. But if they began deploying a missile system in outer space, we, by tracking the orbits of those satellites, could 01:01:00very quickly conclude whether or not they were orbiting a weapons system. After all we have the capability of, as we do, of monitoring every little piece of junk up there in space, thousands of them, and predicting when they're going to descend and be burned up in the atmosphere. Maybe in a few cases some fragments would reach the surface of the earth. Now there's a case where we've had an agreement which, in minute detail, was not verifiable, but which, from a strategic point of view, was easily verifiable. We had another agreement on biological warfare which was not monitored. After all, you can't monitor test tubes and laboratories of both countries. But we did so because there nature itself could take the play away from us. You see, nature could come along and cause a mutation in one of these agents against which no one had any defenses, 01:02:00including those who started using them. And so, we thought that under those circumstances we'd better go ahead with the agreement. Now I did feel that it would have been useful--

END OF SIDE 2