Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XI, START I

298. Minutes of a Meeting¹

Washington, May 9, 1988, 7:30–9:00 a.m.

SUBJECT

• Meeting with Secretary Shultz and the Joint Chiefs of Staff

PARTICIPANTS

• Admiral William J. Crowe, USN
• General Robert T. Herres, USAF
• General Carl Vuono, USA
• Admiral A. Carl Trost, USN
• General Alfred M. Gray, USMC
• General Monroe Hatch, USAF
• Secretary of Defense Carlucci
• Deputy Secretary of Defense Taft
• Ambassador Ronald Lehman
• General Gordon Fornell, USAF
• Admiral Thomas Fox, USN
• Admiral Jonathan Howe, USN
• Secretary of State Shultz
• Ambassador Paul Nitze
• Ambassador Edward Rowny
• Ambassador Max Kampelman
• Ambassador Allen Holmes
• General William Burns
• Judge William Webster
• General Colin Powell, USA
• Colonel Robert Linhard, USAF

Minutes

The meeting started with an informal discussion on the Middle East at the table. About 7:45 a.m., the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs opened the main discussion.

Admiral Crowe: The Soviets have kicked up a lot of dust, but so far there’s no positive movement. The Chiefs are very concerned about specifics right now in the Nuclear and Space area. Details are the substance. There’s a lot of work, and it is not getting any easier. We’ve put down a number of placeholders, but we need to be hard-nosed and demand that the Soviets move in our direction.

Secretary Shultz: I think we need to think about how to handle the Ministerial, the Summit, and the post-Summit period. At the Ministerial, it is always a good idea to remind ourselves to discuss all four parts of our agenda.

[Secretary Shultz then went into a discussion of regional, human rights, bilateral, etc.—on which I did not take notes.]

—At the Ministerial, with respect to arms control, we are staffed up to have a good discussion. I guess we’ll have the JVE and the PNET documents ready for review at the Ministerial.

—I will have something to say on CW.

—We should continue to push to get the nonaligned nations issue and Soviet movement on human rights in the CDE far enough along to allow conventional arms negotiations to move forward.

—With respect to NST, we need to hear the Soviet views and try to push things along. No one thinks we can get treaties in either of these areas by the Summit, except perhaps Hank Cooper. Our problem, then, is where will we be by the Summit? And how should we proceed in the post-Summit period?

—In fact, we should ask ourselves how possible and desirable a START treaty would be at all after the Summit. All of you seem to be telling me that START is too difficult anyway. All the critical things—essential numbers—we can accommodate. Our question then is: Is it desirable to put all our elements down?

—With respect to ALCMs, we just put down a number of 10. The Soviets seem to have interpreted Shevardnadze’s remarks to me as a counter to that proposal.

Admiral Crowe: We have great difficulty with the idea of 28 and 20 as a count.

Secretary Shultz: Well, I’m not sure that was his only comment. We have to ask ourselves does what he said to us mean that he agrees now to the concept of discounting and all we do is argue about the number to be applied for each type of bomber. If that’s the way it is, we may have something to work with.

General Herres: Our distinguishability package was a very comprehensive proposal. Their idea of 28 and 20 is not a reaction to that at all. The distinguishability package was a lot of movement, and, once again, I don’t see their 28–20 as a reaction at all.

[It became obvious that the Chiefs didn’t seem to know about the additional Soviet position.]

General Welch: I agree with Herres. I thought we had a comprehensive package on distinguishability. If they want 28 ALCMs for B–52 discounts, then we aren’t going to have an agreement; I don’t believe that’s in our interest at all.

General Herres: Our distinguishability package was a full package.

General Welch: It’s not clear that in presenting this to the Soviets we put all our distinguishability package down on the table.

General Powell: Well, I still think that we did argue with them, and we explained it to them, but they can’t accept discounting.

Ambassador Nitze: I agree; they don’t accept discounting.

General Powell: They can’t accept the idea that we’re going to attribute 10 weapons to a B–52 when we know that it could carry [amount not declassified]

General Welch: Besides everything else, we need the right to reconfigure our aircraft. If there’s no discounting, we need the right to reconfigure them from a forestructure designed for SALT limits to a forestructure designed for START limits. And what we do with our B–52 is reconfigure them so they only carry 10, thus getting them in line with START, not SALT.

Admiral Crowe: Do you think that there’s anything in this?

Ambassador Nitze: It could really help if we could move to an “as equipped” situation.

[(At this point, Linhard jumped up from the back, and explained that he thought they were missing the point here; that we had talked the Soviets into margins; that now their position has changed, and it’s not necessarily 28–20 and maximum carriage, but rather they object to the idea of all types of ALCM-carrying bombers being counted as 10. Rather, they would like to count individual types, and as we understand what they’re suggesting, they’re hinting that they would be prepared to have the type count be more in line with operational carriage rather than maximum carriage.]

Secretary Shultz: Well, I don’t know where all this will carry us. We need to absolutely understand what the position is, and there is a big distinction between an operational load and a maximum carriage—maximum load.

Ambassador Nitze: Yes, we should press them on what they mean by operational load.

General Welch: We can’t accept a number above 10 for our bombers. If we do, we’re not going to have any operational bombers.

Ambassador Nitze: Well, we need to explore all this.

Admiral Crowe: Yes, we do need to explore this. We need to know where they are.

General Powell: Shevardnadze knows all about discounting now. Karpov always knew. What they’re afraid of is what we count as 10 in peace time would be in a crisis; we’ll load the second 10 on B–52H’s and they’ll face 20, not 10.

Ambassador Nitze: We need to keep far away from an “as equipped” rule, and we should move to discounting by type.

General Herres: A type number near operational load may be the average; an operational load would be great. Let’s avoid “as equipped.”

Ambassador Nitze: Don’t say an average. Let’s just say it’s a number near the operational load, and that it’s a fair number.

Ambassador Kampelman: I think we could negotiate a number for each type. We don’t have to call it discounting because it’s really a number near the operational load. We could separate the number by type and certainly it’s not “as equipped.”

General Herres: Let’s call it a counting rule then; let’s not call it a discounting rule.

Ambassador Kampelman: That’s great; call it a counting rule.

General Herres: I agree.

Ambassador Nitze: Yes, we need to negotiate. When we do, we ought call it a number that’s fair for both sides. Then we’ll come in much less than 10 for their forces.

Admiral Crowe: Don’t they have the same concern as we do with respect to verification and the like? I don’t poke a finger in their eye, but I’m not sure that they wouldn’t want some numbers less than 10.

General Welch: We only have one type, and it’s at 10. Maybe I could go to eight if you had to negotiate it.

Ambassador Nitze: Well, our problem might be defining type.

General Herres: And we’ve also got to remember that our bombers carry more than theirs.

Ambassador Nitze: But I can distinguish between G’s and H’s and B–52’s and B–1’s. I’m sure they can too.

Admiral Crowe: All our proposals assume that they can. That’s part of our distinguishability package.

General Herres: Are they likely to offer new ideas in Geneva?

Ambassador Kampelman: It takes a while for them to offer new ideas in Geneva. Oh, but wait, you’re talking about this week. Yes, they might, because they’ll study it in Moscow

Secretary Shultz: Well, in Geneva, the real question is when we get there, are we really talking about trying to move things along, or will we just kind of tidy things up for the Summit. Tidying it up in one way could just be getting things into describable terms. Now, a lot of this depends upon their attitude, not ours. I don’t know who we’re going to see in Geneva. If their delegation is in a certain configuration, then it will simply be tidying up. But if Akhromeyev is in their delegation, they will be signaling that they’re prepared to move further forward.

Admiral Crowe: Well, we always want to make progress. We’re just not sure they’re ready. We’re all for moving forward.

Secretary Shultz: One way to find out is to press to see if they are.

General Herres: We also need the rest of our proposals. We’ve got to protect the ranges here until we know what the situation is with respect to conventional assets.

Secretary Shultz: But that’s our posture.

General Herres: Yes, but I just want to reinforce that there should be no treatment of range if there’s no conventional understanding.

Ambassador Kampelman: We all understand that.

Admiral Crowe: Yes, let me say it once more—no range now.

General Powell: What is our average number now for bombers?

General Welch: Well, for ALCMs it would be close to [amount not declassified], but we shouldn’t forget that at Reykjavik we would let non-ALCM-carrying bombers with 18 or so weapons count as 1. So we’ve got to assume that the Soviets are less concerned about the numbers than we thought.

Ambassador Nitze: And besides that, we face unlimited air defenses.

General Welch: Yes, that’s right. We need 10 because we face air defenses. If we have count more than 10, we would need to do something about the air defenses differently. If they want less than 10, that might be understandable. For example, their aircraft now carry 12–16; ours carry [amount not declassified]; we’re carrying 10. We’ve never counted 28; we’ve never loaded to 28. Since ours carry [amount not declassified] and we want 10 and theirs carry 12–16, it would be fair for them to ask for 8. That would be even-handed. Of course, we should not agree to that, but it may seem just.

Admiral Crowe: I’d be interested to see if they still agree to the basic principle agreed at Reykjavik.

General Powell: We did walk through most of this with them, and they gagged on the 90 B–52H’s, which would carry [amount not declassified], not 10.

Secretary Shultz: Well, it was different at Reykjavik too, because then we were talking about 6000 plus weapons, and we were trying to put some parity on weapons, but now we are at 4900 with parity on ballistic missile warheads, and it kind of reinforces the argument that we need certain discounting. Right now, we’ve got to work within the 1100.

General Welch: But we can’t forget the asymmetry and air defenses, and we would have to add numbers on our side just to offset the advantage to the defenses.

Ambassador Nitze: But they could respond that we could deploy defenses if we wish, and we have better technology than they do. You know, they watch things like that.

General Welch: It’s not better. They have AWACS–2 and very good fighters, and they have an advantage in their legislative process.

Ambassador Kampelman: If we can work via types, okay. The key is let’s make sure we understand this. You’re telling me if we can work by types, it’s okay; the key is that you want to protect the 10-loading for us and also want to protect conventional carriers. Right?

Admiral Crowe: Yes, that’s right. But in our end-game to the conventional issue may be less troublesome than it is now.

Secretary Shultz: Well, I thought it was true that you are unwilling to have OSI at ALCM heavy bomber bases.

General Welch: No, no, that’s not true. We said that our counting rule made it unnecessary. We don’t oppose on-site inspection.

General Herres: Yes, our basing mode in the distinguishability package solves this.

Secretary Shultz: But you thought you wanted to avoid on-site inspection on bombers like Stealth.

Admiral Crowe: What we meant was that when we get down to the end-game, we may have less problem with conventional bomber carriage.

General Welch: By our rule, we would accept OSI at non-ALCM bomber bases.

Secretary Shultz: But once again, I thought you didn’t want OSI at an ATB base.

General Welch: Yes, that’s true. We see no reason for OSI for a system that’s never tested with ALCMs. So it’s true that we object to OSI for the B–2. The B–2 is not programmed to test with ALCMs; it’s not planned to test with ALCMs; there are no ALCMs.

Ambassador Rowny: The Soviets want 20 ALCMs counted for the B–1 and 2.

General Welch: We can accept OSI on the B–1 to show that there’s no ALCM that can be carried.

Admiral Crowe: Let’s turn to mobiles.

Secretary Shultz: Right now we’ve got 2 numbers I think we need—one on mobiles and one on SLCMs. We can pin those down; we can pin down the four corners.

Admiral Crowe: I defer to Herres on the recent discussions on mobiles, but I think we should agree on verification first.

General Herres: We need a comprehensive verification package, not a partial package. This can be done. We’re making progress. There are big disagreements on the deployment areas, and strong views are held there. We all agree, but we need numbers if we’re going to fall off our ban. The number we think is right is a range of 500–700 RVs. That’s lower than the Soviet number, but we don’t think we should consider any number until the verification is agreed.

Secretary Carlucci: If we lay down a number, it may cause Congress to block what we’re trying to do and, by the way, we’re not sure what verification regime we need because our basing mode may change. The Soviets have mobile missiles; we don’t. Our basing modes can change; we shouldn’t do anything right now.

Secretary Shultz: But that’s where we are now. They have mobiles, and we don’t.

Secretary Carlucci: Well, it’s hard to say if START will get us mobiles or not.

General Powell: But they have mobiles.

Secretary Carlucci: START would sanctify their mobiles.

General Herres: Perimeter-Portal is really tough. It’s a lot of big money. No one really knows the cost right now. It could be 2–3 million per site; that seems low. And it’s all coming out of the Defense budget.

Secretary Shultz: But that’s the only budget that counts.

Secretary Carlucci: But we can’t do it all out of that budget.

Secretary Shultz: I thought we were ready to lift the ban on mobiles, and that you wanted to go talk to Congress first.

Secretary Carlucci: Before we lift the ban, the President ought to meet with Congress and talk to the leadership. The House, for example, funded both programs—Midgetman and M–X—equally, and that puts both at risk. I’m very uncomfortable with that. The House is playing politics on this issue; the Senate is fine. We need some commitment out of the leadership to relieve the situation.

Judge Webster: The Congress will want to monitor this, and the Congress will want to track it. And we need enough things in the sky to do both. If we’re going to fall off mobiles, I really think we should only keep one category of mobiles.

Secretary Carlucci: That’s fine, but which one?

Admiral Crowe: Well, we’ll be blasted in Congress if we scrapped either of the two.

General Powell: We left the President last week with the thought that we didn’t want to move until we had a feel for Congress. For the Ministerial, we want to talk verification. And it looks like we don’t want to talk any number until we agree on verification.

General Herres: Our position is zero until we fall off the ban.

Secretary Carlucci: That’s always been our position. Why fall off now? Why not get something for when we fall off?

Secretary Shultz: Well, I could stay under those conditions, and if you ask me, I’d say we have a chance of meeting them in about 1992.

Secretary Carlucci: But this is the most fundamental aspect of our strategic forces.

Secretary Shultz: But they have more and more mobile forces day-by-day, and we have none. I thought the JCS thought that some constraints would be useful.

Admiral Crowe: Well, the fact that we don’t have any is exactly the reason why we need to involve the Congressional leadership.

Secretary Carlucci: I don’t think there are 10 people up there on the Hill who have thought about this issue.

General Herres: You know, if the number we negotiate with the Soviets is large enough, there’ll be a natural constraint on the SS–24’s, and we’d also like to keep the limit within the 1540 to force the Soviets to face a tradeoff of heavies for mobiles.

Admiral Crowe: (Looking at Secretary Shultz) Do you think that’s acceptable? (Shultz laughed)

Ambassador Kampelman: Look, we need to ask. You can’t know until you ask. You can’t ask if you don’t have a number in mind. The conditions you put on us just paralyzes us. What you need to do is set forth the objective and let the negotiators choose the devices. Let’s agree on the objective. We need some flexibility on how we get there. We know how important the verification is, but numbers are important too.

General Herres: The conditions are there because things tend to hang together.

Admiral Crowe: And the Congress makes it a hell of a lot worse.

Ambassador Kampelman: Well, I’ve been talking to Jim Woolsey.

Secretary Carlucci: Sharing (?) He’s the one who’s driving the problem.

Ambassador Kampelman: He says he’s not. He wants to talk to Herres. He has some good ideas.

Secretary Carlucci: He might make Midgetman cheaper. And then he wants to let it go to the next Administration.

General Welch: No matter what the number is, it seems like verification is the same. Let’s get on with verification. Even Woolsey says now he’d let me rebase the first 50 M–X on rail.

Admiral Crowe: What progress could we make on number if we’re agreed on verification?

Secretary Shultz: Well, I’m waiting for General Welch to say that he wants a number of 1000.

General Welch: In the best of all worlds, I’d say I want a 1000; and in the real world, I’d probably get less, maybe 500; 500–700 works. It doesn’t hit the 500 baseline, which is 50 M–X. If I got everything I wanted, I’d want 1000.

Ambassador Lehman: The range of 500–700 allows us to avoid a firm position on numbers. Therefore, we don’t have to fall off the ban as hard.

General Welch: And the RDA, which restricted to deployment area, allows us to do what we want to do and allows the Soviets to do what they want to do too.

Secretary Carlucci: Bob Linhard can tell us more about verification. Where do we stand on that?

Colonel Linhard: A large number of elements have been agreed on with respect to verification: we agreed on principles for suspect site, but we need much more work at the major and captain level to get down the details. However, we have reached a point where I could explain to my mother how verification works.

[General Laughter]

Colonel Linhard: I was going to explain it at the 711, but General Gray would kick me.

Admiral Crowe: Let’s talk about SLCM.

Secretary Shultz: They laid down a verification regime for SLCM and some numbers. We said that the verification regime was no good, and that we advocated unilateral declarations for both sides.

Admiral Crowe: I agree. It has to be on both sides.

Secretary Shultz: We now have language for that declaration, but no number.

Admiral Trost: We have a number—1500 nuclear SLCM.

Secretary Shultz: Yes, but 1500 is about double the number you really are contemplating.

Admiral Trost: No, no, it’s what we need. That’s the needed number.

Secretary Shultz: So you’re telling me 1500 is a hard requirement.

Admiral Trost: Yeah, we need to maintain some flexibility here. General Galvin needs some SLCMs—1500 is a good number.

Admiral Crowe: Is there any real Soviet interest in declaration?

Secretary Shultz: No, I don’t think so, but we have to recognize that the Soviet objective, I think, is to get a handle on US Navy capability. They’re having a good time with this now. They’re playing with neither-confirmed-nor-deny and they’re playing with us in other countries. They’re stalling and we have a problem. If there were a prospect for an overall agreement, there might be a chance that they would agree to a declaration. What we need to do is make our position clear. I’m not talking about it from a PR point of view, but we need to have something we’re for so that we can have those who support us fall in line and help.

Admiral Trost and Admiral Crowe: (Together) We agree.

Secretary Shultz: 1500 is very, very high, and that number may be a problem.

Admiral Trost: Well, you know, there’s a 1600 number for SNDVs and 2700 SLCM on their side. Are we to make that clear? It also protects about 40–50 of their equivalent SLCMs to our TOMAHAWK. But all their 2700 are aimed at NATO forces.

General Herres: We should point out that it’s not in their interest to pursue a range exclusion. They would see no reason for making it a zero range.

Admiral Crowe: But with no range exclusion at zero range, 1500 is going to be too small for the Soviets.

Admiral Trost: We need to strike deeper into the Soviet Union than they do beyond the shore. Therefore, any shorter range is just no good.

General Herres: Yes, they have many coastal targets they can shoot at that are significant; we don’t.

Secretary Shultz: I know that SLCMs are in some manner a part of START, but in some manner they shouldn’t be. We shouldn’t look at them as a part of START, but we should understand if there’s an assault on SLCM, there’s assault on US Navy capability. We need to put our mind to protect the capability of the United States Navy. All the proposals the Soviets made have dimensions that attack our Alliances and our nuclear neither-confirm-nor-deny policy. Akhromeyev as much as said to me we are going to hear a lot more on US Navy capability as we move on, and they’re trying to use this to beat up on us to offset the ICBM asymmetries.

Admiral Crowe: I agree.

Secretary Shultz: I think we need a much broader, much deeper approach.

Admiral Trost: This is the first attempt to capture a non-strategic system in START. Once again, I believe it’s a clear attempt to curb NATO’s maritime power, and, by the way, they’re covering the globe with proposals. The only area that they don’t have proposal on is the South Atlantic.

Secretary Shultz: That’s exactly my point. We are close to being dead in the water right now. We need to do a better job on positioning ourselves with other countries.

Admiral Crowe: The idea of doing away with a range exclusion would help us with the Soviets and with Scandinavia. You ought to go down to zero range, a declared approach, and some number, and that would look pretty good.

Secretary Shultz: We have to be really careful about how we take off on that. Our problem is that we don’t have proposals; we just object to their proposals. What I would love to be able to do is to say, yes, we’re in favor of SLCM restrictions, but we are in favor of SLCM restrictions down at zero range and a limit of 1500, or a declared number of 1500. But you are reluctant.

Admiral Crowe and Admiral Trost: (Together) No, no, we’re not reluctant. (CJCS Chairman asked Admiral Howe for his view.)

Admiral Howe: We can defend such a declaratory posture, and it’s defensible from the Soviets’ point of view too. There’s no reason why we can’t go ahead and do this.

Admiral Crowe: Yes, this would allow us to cast the SLCM issue differently—make it a Navy-to-Navy issue.

General Herres: (To Secretary Shultz) Is this a treaty stopper?

Secretary Shultz: Well, it certainly is an end-game issue. We need to be for something and the Soviets would probably not buy this unless they wanted to close on a treaty.

General Herres: Should we go further now, or should we wait until end-game?

Admiral Trost: I thought at first that we ought to wait until end-game, but I think we ought to push now—push it not as part of START, but push now—give them something that they can table.

Secretary Shultz: Can you give me something that we can table?

Admiral Crowe: We agree, and we’ll work on it today.

Secretary Shultz: Okay, but won’t zero range hurt our position on ALCM?

General Welch: Well, I think we’re going to have to differentiate. I’m all for a 0–1500 for SLCM, but we absolutely have to be ready to explain why it doesn’t apply to ALCMs.

Secretary Shultz: (To Welch) Can you give me some points on that?

General Welch: Yes.

General Herres: We do have to keep them separate, but you’ve got to remember that we already are talking about ALCM carriers, not ALCMs, and in SLCM we’re talking about SLCMs.

Admiral Crowe: As Linhard would say, this is going to be hard to explain to our moms.

General Powell: Well, it seems like a bold idea.

Ambassador Lehman: It will be difficult to explain to our moms. Therefore, we ought to stick with declaratory and tell them that we want to declare zero.

Admiral Crowe: It’s absolutely essential that we have no ceilings—that we’re only talking about declaring a number.

Ambassador Rowny: We should tell them no number until they agree to pull out the language in the their treaty on SLCMs and they show their interest.

Admiral Trost: I agree to this type of proposition, and I think I’d agree to a declaratory approach.

Admiral Crowe: Let’s turn to Defense and Space.

General Herres: It’s difficult to deal with the issues right now, because we’re putting in jeopardy some of our space programs. We need to be very careful. For example, the limit on a number of space platforms brings around the question of how do we deal with challenges to our classified launchers, etc. And this all begins with the sensor problem. It’s very, very tough to deal with futures with respect to sensors. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that what we’re trying to do is let our warning systems, etc.—our early warning systems—run free. However, if we can get the sensors, like ALPARS, nailed, then we can go look at test range. But we must do sensors first.

Secretary Shultz: Okay, so sensors are alright, but you’re not ready on the test range.

General Herres: That’s right.

Admiral Crowe: We gave you quite a bit of material on sensors—a lot of Q’s and A’s.²

General Herres: We do have a problem on sensor launchers too, but this may be a little bit easier.

Secretary Carlucci: Have we ever discussed the idea that early warning in space is like large-phased radars on the periphery?

Ambassador Kampelman: Didn’t you discuss that with Yazov?³

Secretary Carlucci: No, I started to, but he raised Krasnoyarsk. I think it’s a good concept, and they already have eight or nine on the periphery.

Secretary Shultz: Here we are—we have a President who’s in favor of SDI, probably more strongly in favor than any of his successors are going to be, and a program hog-tied by the Congress. Carlucci worked out with Nunn an operational approach to the broad/narrow interpretation, and it’s applied to Congress. Then we looked around and said maybe we should try this with the Soviets. So far, we’ve cycled through a few ideas, but we found nothing to our liking. Don’t we have anything to put forward?

Secretary Carlucci: As I said, we can work the sensors.

General Herres: That’s right. That’s the first block; it’s a good starting point; and then we can work further.

Secretary Carlucci: And I’ll even help with the Senate.

The meeting ended at about 9:00 a.m.

1. Source: Reagan Library, Linhard Files, JCS Breakfast on Arms Control, May 9, 1988 (4). Secret. Drafted on May 17. All brackets and blank underscores are in the original text.
2. Not found.
3. Carlucci and Yazov met in Bern, Switzerland, March 19–20. Memoranda of conversations are scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. XLIV, National Security Policy, 1985–1988.