only rely on currently available information resources, but must indeed strengthen our intelligence capability to insure that the restraints incorporated into international agreements are being observed and to monitor the dangers from nuclear technology. In this dangerous era we cannot afford to destroy or weaken our legitimate means of gathering intelligence. On the contrary, we must strengthen our capability to know what goes on in an era when the most destructive. technology man has ever known is spreading through the world. For example, we do not now have good data on stocks of nuclear material usable for weapons, or even where such stocks are located. National technical means of verification are not sufficient to meet the problem of nuclear proliferation. Since Congress has become so deeply involved in the organization and role of our national intelligence capabilities, Congress has now assumed a heavy responsibility in preserving and strengthening those capabilities. They are essential instruments for protecting our Nation against the dangers of widespread nuclear technology. We in the Executive branch have an obligation fully to explain these emerging dangers to Congress to the best of our knowledge. Let the record show that Congress has been informed of this compelling reed. This completes my prepared testimony. I will be pleased to respond to any questions you may have. Executive Order 11902 on Exports of Nuclear Materials and Equipment, February 2, 19761 PROCEDURES FOR AN EXPORT LICENSING POLICY AS TO The Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 transferred to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission the licensing and related regulatory functions previously exercised by the Atomic Energy Commission under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended. The exercise of discretion and control over nuclear exports within the limits of law concerns the authority and responsibility of the President with respect to the conduct of foreign policy and the ensuring of the common defense and security. It is essential that the Executive branch inform the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its views before the Commission issues or denies a license, or grants an exemption. Now, THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and statutes of the United States of America, including the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.), 1 Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Feb. 9, 1976, pp. 118-119. These are facts which we did not create, which no American policy can remove. It is an uncomfortable experience for Americans to deal with a country of roughly the same strength. We have never had to do this in our history. Secondly, we face the fact that nuclear weapons are destructive in a way that is absolutely unprecedented in history. A war fought with nuclear weapons would kill hundreds of millions in a matter of days. If you think of the impact that the two World Wars have had on Europe, in which the casualties would be minor, really minor to what would occur in a nuclear war, you can see the responsibility that any American leader concerned with the future of this country must have. Therefore we have two problems. The first problem is to prevent the Soviet Union from using this growing power to achieve political gains. The second problem is to manage these relationships in a way that is different from the way it used to be, traditionally. Traditionally, when two countries of roughly equal magnitude competed with each other, a war was inevitable. Now a war must not happen; and therefore we must contain Soviet power and at the same time we must look for new international arrangements that go beyond power politics to a more cooperative international structure. This is what we mean by the policy of détente. And therefore, when you ask what is America getting out of it, what we intend to get out of it is an option for a more peaceful and saner and safer world. This cannot be measured every day. Many of the things that people complain about are the inevitable result of the growth of Soviet power that I described. This newest of them could have been avoided by American action. When the Soviet Union makes a move toward expansion, we resist, as we are trying to do in Angola-against public and congressional opposition as we did in Jordan in 1970 and as we did in Cuba in 1970 and as we did in 1973 during the Middle East crisis. But at the same time we are trying to build a more constructive relationship. I do not see any unilateral advantage that the Soviet Union has gained from this. This is not a favor we do for the Soviet Union, and I do not know what the alternative is. I don't know whether the people want to go back to the confrontations of the Berlin crisis, whether a country that has just gone through Vietnam, Watergate, the intelligence investigations, and endless domestic turmoil wants to contrive. crises in which its domestic structure will be tested. If the Soviet Union behaves aggressively, we will resist. But I must say that whether this Administration brings it to a completion or not, some Administration must deal with the problem of peace. Because in a nuclear age, tough rhetoric unsupported with a vision of the future is just too dangerous. Mr. Day: Mr. Secretary, after the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Schlesinger, left office one of his supporters very strongly argued that the Ford Administration was not providing enough money in its budget for defense and not as much as Schlesinger and the Joint Chiefs wanted, and there was a whole argument raging on this. What-in your view of the responsibility for meeting the Soviet Union-what is your view of the general level of the American defense budget? Secretary Kissinger: Well, of course we have one massive handicap in our defense budget. This is that we have to spend nearly 60 percent of our budget on personnel. The Soviet Union spends only about 30 percent, less than 30 percent, of their budget on personnel. So at comparable levels of expenditure, the Soviet Union can translate it much more effectively into useful military hardware. The second problem is to determine what kinds of weapons are most useful for the purposes of foreign policy. Or to put it another way-what sorts of threats are they most likely to face? Now, it is my view that from the point of view of foreign policy, the threats we are most likely to face are in so-called "peripheral areas"-well, I don't want to list them, but certainly in the Middle East-and that America's capacity to intervene locally is of decisive or potentially decisive importance. Therefore, over the next 10 years, in my view, we have to strengthen our conventional forces. I do not believe that in the field of strategic forces it is so easy to calculate what a decisive advantage is, and at the level of casualties that I have described earlier it is very complicated to believe that any responsible national leader would easily resort to strategic nuclear weapons. So this is why I believe that that area should be constrained by arms limitations negotiations. Now, on the whole, our defense budgets, though large in absolute numbers, have been on the skimpy side in terms of our needs. I have generally agreed with Secretary Schlesinger about the order of magnitude of what was required. I might quibble about the distribution within this. And I support a substantial military establishment, especially in the field of conventional forces. Address by Secretary of State Kissinger: Strategic Arms Limitation Talks [Extract], February 3, 1976 1 1 There is one central fact that distinguishes our era from all previous historical periods: the existence of enormously destructive weapons that can span unlimited distances almost instantaneously. No part of the globe is beyond reach. No part of the globe would be spared the effects of a general nuclear exchange. 1 1 Department of State Bulletin, Feb. 23, 1976, pp. 206–209. For centuries it was axiomatic that increases in military power could be translated into almost immediate political advantage. It is now clear that new increments of strategic weaponry do not automatically lead to either political or military gains. Yet, in the nature of things, if one side expands its strategic arsenal, the other side will inevitably match it. The race is maintained partly because a perceived inequality is considered by each side as politically unacceptable even though it has become difficult to define precisely what purely military purpose is served. We thus face a paradox: At current and foreseeable levels of nuclear arms, it becomes increasingly dangerous to invoke them. In no crisis since 1962 have the strategic weapons of the two sides determined the outcome. Today these arsenals increasingly find their purpose primarily in matching and deterring the forces of the opponent. For under virtually no foreseeable circumstance could the United States or the Soviet Union-avoid 100 million dead in a nuclear exchange. Yet the race goes on because of the difficulty of finding a way to get off the treadmill. This condition imposes a unique and heavy responsibility on the leaders of the two nuclear superpowers. Sustaining the nuclear competition requires endless invocation of theoretical scenarios of imminent or eventual nuclear attack. The attempt to hedge against all conceivable contingencies, no matter how fanciful, fuels political tensions and could well lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fixation on potential strategic arms imbalances that is inherent in an unrestrained arms race diverts resources into strategically unproductive areas-particularly away from forces for local defense, where shortfalls and imbalances could indeed be turned rapidly to our disadvantage. If no restraint is developed, the competition in strategic arms can have profound consequences for the future of international relations and indeed of civilization. The United States therefore has sought and achieved since 1963 a series of arms control agreements which build some restraint into nuclear rivalry. There was a significant breakthrough to limit strategic weapons in 1972.2 If the 1974 Vladivostok accord leads to a new agreement, an even more important advance will have been made.3 Yet, at this critical juncture, the American people are subjected to an avalanche of charges that SALT is a surrender of American interests. There are assertions that the United States is falling behind in the strategic competition and that SALT has contributed to it. There are unsupportable charges that the Soviets have systematically violated the SALT agreements. None of this is accurate. What are the facts? First of all, American policy decisions in the 1960's set the level of our strategic forces for the 1970's. We then had the choice between For the 1972 SALT agreements, see Documents on Disarmament, 1972, pp. 197 ff. 3 Ibid., 1974, pp. 746–747. continuing the deployment of large, heavy-throwweight missiles like the Titan or Atlas or undertaking development and deployment of large numbers of smaller, more flexible ICBM's or combinations of both types. The Administration then in office chose to rely on an arsenal of 1,000 small, sophisticated, and highly accurate ICBM's and 656 submarine-launched missiles on 41 boats, along with heavy bombers; we deployed them rapidly and then stopped our buildup of launchers unilaterally in the 1960's when the programs were complete. Only 54 of the heavy Titans were retained and still remain in the force. The Soviets made the opposite decision; they chose larger, heavier missiles; they continued to build up their forces through the 1960's and 1970's; they passed our numerical levels by 1969-70 and continued to add an average of 200 missiles a year until stopped by the first SALT agreement. Thus, as a consequence of decisions made a decade ago by both sides, Soviet missiles are superior in throwweight while ours are su perior in reliability, accuracy, diversity, and sophistication and we possess larger numbers of warheads. In 1972 when the SALT agreement was signed, the Soviet Union was still building at the rate of 90 land-based and 120 sea-based launchers a year-while we were building none, as a result of our own repeatedly reaffirmed unilateral decisions of a decade previously. Since new American programs to redress the balance had only recently been ordered, there was no way to reduce the numerical gap before the late seventies when more modern sea-based missiles and bombers were scheduled to become operational. The interim SALT agreement of 1972 froze overall numbers of launchers on both sides for five years, thereby limiting the momentum of Soviet programs without affecting any of ours. It stopped the Soviet buildup of heavy missile launchers. It forced the Soviets to agree to dismantle 210 older land-based missiles to reach permitted ceilings on missile-carrying submarines. The agreed-upon silo limitations permitted us to increase, the throw weight of our own missiles, if we decided on this avenue of improving our strategic forces. We have so far chosen not to do so, although, through research and development, we retain the option. By any measure, the SALT agreements prevented the then-evolving gap in numbers from widening while enabling us to retain our advantage in other categories and easing the problem of redressing the balance when new programs became operational. What no negotiation could do is reverse by diplomacy the results of our own longstanding decisions with respect to weapons design and deployment. Moreover, the SALT agreements ended for an indefinite period the prospect of a dangerous and uncertain competition in antiballistic missile defense-a competition that promised no strategic advantage, but potentially serious instabilities and the expenditure of vast sums of money. 253-754 O-78-4 |