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8
Summary Remarks
Marvin L. Goldberger
~ am deeply disappointed in this panel
because I had assumed that they would all talk so Tong that I would not
have to say anything.
There are a lot of problems associated with trying to give a summary of
these meetings. In the first place Here is a kind of presumption Rat you
all have a loss of short-term memory and that it is impaired to such an
extent that a summary is necessary.
The second problem I had was to prepare my remarks in advance of
having any serious knowledge of what some of the speakers were going to
say, because I did not have their papers. In the course of trying to
anticipate what they might say, I made various kinds of profound observa-
tions, most of which have now been said by these speakers.
A great deal has happened in the international security arena since we
began this series of seminars in 1984. Among those things that have
happened are Star Wars, Reykjavik, START, the INF Treaty, a new U.S.
president, the flamboyant Mr. Gorbachev, with his perestroika, glasnost,
and new thinking.
It is natural to ask the following kinds of questions: Are we moving
into an entirely new era of arms control? Is the time ripe for dramatic cuts
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SUMMARY REMARKS
in armaments, both nuclear and conventional? Is there real momentum
provided by the unilateral steps taken by General Secretary Gorbachev?
Is it possible that there has been a serious outbreak of rationality in the
United States and the Soviet Union and Western Europe? If that is true, is
there a way to make this disease spread to the Middle East, Asia, Africa,
Latin America? Or will we wake up in a few months or years to find out it
was all a beautiful dream and that little, if anything, has changed?
There is an inescapable sense in which one must say that we hare not
come closer to the core problem. There are over 50,000 nuclear weapons
in the world, and the threat of a catastrophic war, with hundreds of
millions of casualties, remains as the central issue of our time. We must
not lose sight of that as we sort of painfully inch forward from the INF
Treaty to START and to other steps of that variety.
Of course, the steps that we are talking about START, conventions
force reductions, and so onare vitally important and highly desirable.
But the implied threat of this obscene number of nuclear weapons remains
terrifying, as long as there is even a tiny chance of their being used. It
should hardly be necessary to tell this audience that the expected value
in this case the likely consequences of nuclear war is the product of the
destructive power of the weapons and the probability of their use. When
you are talking about the explosive equivalent of about 10 billion tons of
TNT, the probability of their being used had better be pretty damned
smalD.
The fundamental issue is that we must stop thinking of nuclear weap-
ons as anything other than things nations possess only to ensure that they
never be used. They have no other rational value, and surely deterrence
could be assured witch a tenth or less of present arsenals. I think the point
made last night by Mr. Woolsey that we must look forward to a time when
nuclear weapons become boring, and consequently less preoccupying, is
an objective that will help in trying to put them into proper perspective.
I want to recall briefly a few of the points made this morning by
Professor Panofsky on the strategic alms problem. START is just a start,
albeit a very important one. There are some serious issues, as he pointed
out, that are holding up an agreement, primarily those related to decisions
about mobile missiles, sea-launched cruise missiles, and, to some extent,
the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
The United States is objecting to the Soviet insistence on adherence to
the ABM Treaty as signed for a period of 10 years, even though a sensible
u
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defense research program would scarcely feel any restrictions. Logicality,
the Russians should not be concemed because the forces that remain after
a START agreement could render any conceivable defense impotent and
obsolete (to quote from a famous saying). There is even some hope now
that SDI might relax into a long-range research program, without the hype
that has accompanied it up until now. At any rate, with hard work, it
would seem that worries on both sides about START should be resolv-
able. Then we can address ourselves to the problem of radical strategic
force reductions to a level that would require fundamental revisions of
strategic doctrine and force structure.
CISAC, in studies to which Professor Panofsky referred this morning,
has concluded that cuts by more than a factor of four would probably
begin to trigger such reconsiderations and necessitate the inclusion of
other nuclear powers in arms control discussions. When and if we reach
such a regime, verification issues will grow in importance, and the experi-
ence that we are gaining in connection with the INF Treaty, which we
heard about from General Lajoie, win be immensely helpful. ~ was very
impressed by General Lajoie's presentation, and the thoroughness, effec-
tiveness, and speed with which those steps have been put into practice.
I want to reemphasize another issue that came up briefly today, to
which Roald SagUeev, and also Spurgeon Keeny, referred. Mr. Gor-
bachev recently announced that the Soviet Union was going to stop the
production of enriched uranium and was shutting down two plutonium
weapons production reactors. The United States and Great Britain pooh-
poohed this, for reasons which I simply cannot understand. We have
discussed, in others of this CISAC series of seminars, the idea of a
complete halt in the production of fissionable materials for military pur-
poses. This idea, incidentally, is quite old. It goes back to correspon-
dence between Eisenhower and Bulganin in 1956. But it would seem the
very opportunity to revive He idea in light of the Gorbachev initiatives.
Professor SagUeev said a number of very important things this mom-
ing, raising the question of how we move away from this regime of
overarming that has been dominant in the United States and the Soviet
Union for so long. He also raised the issue that we do not seem to have an
integrated overarching approach to arms control and disarmament, that
we have tended to do things in a rather piecemeal fashion. First we have
an INF Treaty, and then we have a strategic weapons treaty. We do
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SUMMARY REMARKS
various kinds of individual bean-counting operations. It is important to
try to figure out where it is that we are going in a broader sense.
I was also very impressed by his comment that the Soviet Union has
recognized now that it has made some errors in judgment in the past, that
there have been some failures in Weir policy. We, too, have made some
profound errors, which some people are a little reluctant to admit. For
example, our decision to go ahead with multiple independently targetable
reentry vehicles was clearly a mistake of the past. We, too, should
emulate the Soviet Union, perhaps in recognition of mistakes of the past
or just ah initio to consider what unilateral acts we could take that would
stabilize the international scene.
The thrust of our afternoon discussion has been on things related to
what you might term "good old war" and, to some extent, on old thinking.
Modem technology has made even nonnuclear conflict potentially much
more lethal and more impersonal than it was in World War II. Long-
range ballistic missiles, small quiet submarines, chemical weapons pro-
duction facilities, Stinger-like antiaircraft missiles, high-performance air-
craft, and so on are being made by the industrial nations for each other and
for their less well-developed friends who like to posture before real or
imagined enemies. There is also a continuing effort in parts of the lesser
developed countries to acquire that most macho of possessions, nuclear
weapons. The little wars that are made possible by modern weaponry are
often fueled by ancient religious or racial hatreds, and they have the
potential, by virtue of their savagery and their geography, to draw in
larger and stronger adversaries and pave the way for larger, and possibly
nuclear, encounters.
This is a particularly important time for a reconsideration of the struc-
ture of conventional military forces in Europe. The proposals for unilat-
eral reductions by the Soviet Union are of great political significance, and
they may well be, in addition, militarily very significant. It is a little early
to assess all of the implications, because some of the appropriate military
responses depend upon the details of the proposed cuts. In the opinion of
many students of this subject, if those unilateral steps are taken as prom-
ised, in an appropriate fashion, the bugaboo of a short-warning attack in
Europe would disappear.
There is no doubt about the political response to the Gorbachev initia-
tives: It does not depend upon details, and Mr. Gorbachev has puBed off
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CHALLENGES FOR THE 1990s
another grand gesture that the Europeans cannot ignore. It is also likely
that there will be political fallout in the United States related to budget
problems and a growing weariness over the continued support of very
affluent allies facing an apparently diminishing threat from the Soviet
Union.
The current military forces in Europe are the product of almost 45 years
of old thinking, based on ideological and political differences between
NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations and, most particularly, between the
United States and the Soviet Union. Aimed at preventing Soviet domina-
tion of Europe on the one hand and countering Western hostility toward
Communism and threats of interference with Soviet internal affairs on the
other hand, the two sides quickly built up military establishments de-
signed to deter each other in Europe.
To the West the Warsaw Pact is in a position to threaten a rapid
conquest of Europe, with great conventional arms superiority, which
could be countered only by early use of tactical nuclear weapons and the
threat of an attack on the Soviet Union by strategic weapons. The West
has always maintained that its forces are solely defensive in character. I
have never been able to ascertain if that is the way the Soviets view them
or whether they think of them as threatening.
The Gorbachev proposals for force reductions as well as changes in
doctrine, as reported by CISAC's Soviet counterparts, from an offensive
to a defensive posture should, if implemented, provide a basis for future
serious force reduction and restructuring. If the political climate in the
Soviet Union continues to change along He lines we have seen under Mr.
Gorbachev's leadership, the question of intention, as compared with
capability, will begin to play a more important role. To be slightly
facetious about this, we have an enormous capability against Canada, but
the Canadians do not seem to be the least bit frightened, because they
know our intentions are honorable.
It is, frankly, already unimaginable, to me at least and perhaps to
others, that the Warsaw Pact would attack Europe. I think that the grave
caution with which we now approach the issues of conventional force
stability, with concern over bean counting and verification, is pardy a
carryover from 20 years of negotiations on strategic systems. More
important, there is a great body of military experience and folklore about
the principles of conventional warfare that has gone largely unquestioned
for far too long. While outsiders have not hesitated to offer advice and
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SUMMARY REMARKS
criticism on nuclear weapons issues, they have largely accepted the posi-
tion that the military has been at the problem of nonnuclear war for so
long that they must know what they are doing.
This situation seems to be changing. As a consequence of new tech-
nologies and, in particular, advances in command, control, communica-
tions, and intelligence, it is by no means obvious that, even with the
numerical superiorities in some weapons categories, the Warsaw Pact, in
fact, would prevail in a conventional war with NATO. It is not written
anywhere that you must fight tanks with tanks, and so on. The time seems
ripe for some very significant moves that would lessen the likelihood that
the forces held by NATO and the Warsaw Pact would be, in fact, un-
leashed ilk a crisis. That is what is meant by "crisis stability."
Professor Doty referred to the testimony before the Senate Armed
Services Committee, on April 6, 1989, of no less an authority than
General Andrew GooUpaster, who made a series of very significant sug-
gestions. This is not a woolRy headed academic (though he does have a
Ph.D. from Princeton); he is a highly respected military man. The sugges-
tions that he made would have a dramatic impact on stability. For
example, as Professor Doty quoted, he proposes a radical restructuring of
the forces of NATO and the Warsaw Pact on the basis of parity, with total
active forces on each side at no more than SO percent of NATO strength.
Another suggestion: continued U.S. force presence in Western Europe,
land and air, but at no more than 50 percent of current values. These are
rather heretical suggestions. In another forum I understand he has brought
into question a number of over shibboleths that have always been used to
support the current NATO force structure, regardless of Soviet actions or
intentions.
Professor Meselson talked to us about chemical weapons. There is
something extremely unpleasant about chemical weapons. In my own
experience, I had an uncle who was gassed during World War I. The fear
of their use appeared frequently during World War II. Then there is their
actual use in the recent Iran-Iraq war and concern about that lunatic
Gadhafi and He so-called pharmaceutical plant kindly provided by the
GermansI hope that is not what Chancellor Kohl meant when he said
Germany did not need these weapons anymore.
Compared with nuclear weapons, as Professor Meselson has told us,
chemical weapons are sort of "greasy kid's stuff." But under the right
circumstances they can be quite devastating, and, of course, they are
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CHAI [ENGES FOR THE 1990s
much more readily accessible than nuclear weapons and are a potential
terrorist weapon. At the present time there is great support for the treaty
being negotiated at the Chemical Weapons Convention in Geneva, which
would, in fact, ban the manufacture, possession, and transfer of chemical
weapons and be subject to onsite international verification. There is, as he
has pointed out, no international law against production or possession of
poison-gas weapons, only the "no first use" agreement of the 1925 proto-
col.
The last subject discussed today was nuclear proliferation. It has
always seemed that a world with more than the current five acknowledged
possessors of nuclear weapons is an inherently less stable one. India, of
course, has exploded a nuclear device, and I think it is reasonable to
presume that it must have some actual weapons. Of course, it strains
credulity to believe that Israel does not have nuclear weapons. We heard
today about the rumors rampant about Pakistan and South Africa. Inci-
dentally, with regard to developing a nuclear weapons program without
testing, I might remind you that the Hiroshima bomb was used without
having been tested.
It is vitally important, as Mr. Keeny has emphasized, to maintain the
nonproliferation regime that has prevailed for the past 45 years and to
strengthen the 1968 treaty in the review of 1990 and again in 1995.
Unfortunately, among the 130 current signatories, some of the most likely
suspects are not included. But as the United States and the USSR make
progress toward START, and perhaps movement toward a comprehensive
test ban, they will be in a better moral position to urge smaller nations to
eschew nuclear weapons and engage their cooperation in keeping them
out of the possession of the truly irresponsible.
Professor Doty noted that the world is spending about $1 trildion a year
on arms. This tragic waste of money and the associated productive talent
diverted from humane endeavors must be stopped. The resources needed
to arrest the physical deterioration of the planet may simply not be
available if this international mania is not ended. Overpopulation of the
earth, the greenhouse effect, ozone-layer depletion, rain forest and species
destruction, drought, hunger, and energy requirements are the things Tat
will provoke the international security issues in the twenty-first century.
We must, as a world community, dedicate ourselves to survival, and no
time, no money, and no resources can be wasted.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
warsaw pact
