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

302. Memorandum of Conversation¹

Washington, May 20, 1988, 2:12–3:30 p.m.

SUBJECT

• Meeting of the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff

PARTICIPANTS

• The President
• The Vice President
• 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
• General Welch, USAF
• Secretary of State Shultz
• Secretary of Defense Carlucci
• Deputy Secretary of Defense Taft
• Chief of Staff Howard Baker
• Mr. Kenneth Duberstein
• Mr. Marlin Fitzwater
• General Colin Powell,
• Ambassador John Negroponte
• Colonel Robert Linhard, NSC
• Captain Linton Brooks, NSC
• Colonel Don Snider, NSC

The meeting started at 2:12 p.m. with opening remarks by the President.

The President: As you know, you have a unique responsibility to assess the ability of the United States to perform the military tasks required to execute our strategy and ensure our security. This is particularly true in your evaluation of the Arms Reduction proposals that we plan to put forward. I would like to know what you think we can successfully negotiate at the Summit.

General Powell: Secretary Carlucci, would you like to say a few words.

Secretary Carlucci: I think we should go directly to the Chiefs; Admiral Crowe.

Admiral Crowe: I’ve just returned from my wife’s home in Oklahoma. The American people are mighty proud of you, Mr. President, and of what you’re doing. Arms control is highly popular right now, and is being well received by the American public.

From the JCS standpoint, we are happy that you are seeking treaties of substance that make a difference. You want agreements that provide for verifiability and for stability. We can support treaties of that sort.

—The INF Treaty is a good Treaty. We told you in December of last year that it was militarily sufficient and would enhance U.S. and Allied security. There has been nothing to change our minds since then.

—With respect to a START agreement, however, this situation is a bit more difficult. The current proposals are certainly sound and in the right direction. I want to emphasize strongly, however, that among all your advisors the Joint Chiefs must pay the most attention to details. The detail is fundamental; specifics are substance. We’re very interested in making sure we get the counting rules, definitions, and procedures down correctly.

—We were charged early in the Administration to ensure that any proposal that we made provided relative to the forces of the Soviet Union that the U.S. could possess sufficient force to execute our national security with reasonable assurance of success. [Note: the referrence is to the initial tasking in NSSD 1-82.]² The Chiefs have spent hundreds of hours working on this tasking. We are now meeting every day on arms control.

—To work through the START labyrinth takes a lot of time, and right now going beyond our current positions—if you ask us to examine additional positions, I would have to say that the Chiefs don’t have a lot of ability to do more.

I would like to ask the individual Chiefs to provide their views on where they stand in areas that they’re interested in. The first item is SLCM. Admiral Trost.

Admiral Trost: Mr. President, let me talk to you about SLCM. SLCM came up as a part of START, even though it’s a tactical system. Initially, we called it tactical, and we said it was inappropriate to include it in START at all. However, at Reykjavik, you told the Soviets that we would participate in finding ways to limit long-range nuclear SLCM, and now we are unable to divorce it from START.

—The Chiefs subsequently set forth what we could not accept with respect to SLCM:

1. Limits on conventional capability;

2. Some range threshold above which all SLCMs would be considered nuclear;

3. Anything that imposes problems with our policy of not confirming or denying the presence or absence of nuclear weapons; and

4. Intrusive verification that would compromise our operational security or our ability to conduct our mission.

—The Soviets have proposed platform limits, suggested that we should identify a range above which all SLCMs are considered nuclear, and sought limits on the types of ships which can carry SLCM.

—The Soviets have a large number of shorter range nuclear-tipped, sea-launched cruise missiles that are of concern to us.

—The Interagency Group agrees that there are no verification procedures currently on the books that would help us in verifying nuclear-armed SLCMs. [At this point, Admiral Trost gave the President some pictures of U.S. SLCMs. They included a picture of a Tomahawk land-attack missile/nuclear (TLAM-N), Tomahawk land-attack missile/conventional (TLAM-C), a Tomahawk land-attack missile that drops bomblets and an antiship version of the Tomahawk.]

—We have planned to put sea-launched cruise missiles on a number of our submarines, including the 637 and the 688 class and the new SSN–21’s. On surface ships we have them in armored box launchers or vertical launch tubes. [Here a second picture was shown the President.]

—The real issues are what we plan to do with them and why the Soviets are worried about them. We plan to put them on about 100 subs and about 90 surface ships. The Soviets are worried because this spread of capability is better than having all nuclear capability bottled up in our 15-carrier battle groups.

—The Soviets, on their part, have lesser needs for sea-launched cruise missiles, but they are building both supersonic and subsonic variants. All the Soviets’ proposals hurt with respect to the points that I made earlier. They certainly hurt our operational flexibility.

—The bottom line is SLCM are too valuable to trade away, especially if our conventional capability could be capped.

—[1 paragraph (3 lines) not declassified]

—We considered these conventional SLCMs in planning for the Libya raid,³ although they weren’t used. And we plan future growth for this capability, perhaps to a 2000-mile range system with greater accuracy.

—Finally, we told our Allies, and the Congress that if the INF Treaty is agreed, that would be acceptable because we would have both dual-capable air and cruise missiles to back up the INF targets sets that are uncovered by removing Pershing II and GLCM and to compensate for Soviet cheating.

Admiral Crowe: Mr. President, the Soviet interest in SLCM may be a piece of a larger pattern of Soviet activity. The Soviets may be after the United States’ Navy, and, because of its capability, may seek to involve it in conventional arms talks. They would love to cut into our naval superiority. The next two issues, which I think we should turn to General Welch for, are ALCMs and mobile ICBMs.

General Welch: Mr. President, we in the JCS agree that mobile ICBMs could help stability if both sides have them and a verifiable mode limiting them to a specific number. However, these things are very difficult to verify. We need to get a complete set of rules before we drop the current unit ban on mobiles.

—The planned U.S. deployment mode would simplify verification. The approach we have in mind for both our road- and rail-mobile ICBMs would keep systems restricted to garrison during peacetime except for exercise and operational dispersals.

—If the Soviets agreed to a similar mode, then we would be prepared to propose a number of between 500–700 mobile reentry vehicles and to fall off our current position banning mobile ICBMs. But the Soviets must agree to deployment modes lending themselves to verification.

—With respect to air-launched cruise missiles, counting rules and verification procedures need to be worked out. The United States has offered such procedures.

—As for counting rules, the U.S. approach is simple and practical. Our approach is an indirect approach, attributing to each bomber a number of ALCMs. We would then count ALCMs by multiplying that number times the number of bombers for that type. The Soviets want a more complex, direct counting rule that would count both ALCMs and bombs. They would limit all ALCMs, both deployed and non-deployed. We don’t know how to verify such limits and they would not add to stability.

—To help the process, we have agreed that existing ALCMs with both conventional and nuclear capability would all be considered nuclear, and, in the future, that any conventional ALCM that we say is conventional would be distinguishable. The Soviets want to capture all future ALCMs under the nuclear rules. We can’t accept that, but we are ready to distinguish nuclear ALCMs and conventional ALCMs.

—In sum, Mr. President, we have a good solution if the Soviets are willing.

Admiral Crowe: Verification, Mr. President, is very pervasive. It plays in all the issues. In every case, we need very complicated and detailed rules. Maybe I can ask General Gray to add a little bit more on this.

General Gray: If we had perfect knowledge of our future requirements and how our future strategic forces will be structured, then we could simply devise rules for verification that would fit these requirements in the most cost effective way. Unfortunately, Mr. President, our knowledge is not perfect, and we face dollar constraints in the future and Congressional pressures that are beyond our control. To deal with this, we must protect our flexibility. We must try to design verification which meets our needs, while still maintaining flexibility, and, in the process, we must: (1) carefully protect our future force structure options; and (2) watch the cost of verification itself in terms of manpower, resources, and dollars.

Admiral Crowe: The bottom line with respect to verification is we’ve just got to get it right. This has been a very painful process, and we all recognize its complexity. Now, let’s turn to Defense and Space and hear from General Herres.

General Herres: I’d like to review what we want and what they want in the Defense and Space area. The Soviets want to have us commit to nonwithdrawal from the ABM Treaty and they want that recorded in a START agreement. We want more protection for U.S. rights, once we give that commitment not to withdraw. We want that protection recorded in a separate treaty.

—We need assurance, first of all, that our surveillance and warning satellites that are not components or potential components of an ABM system should run free. Otherwise needed modernization could be a treaty violation. This should be easy; it is in the Soviet interest as well.

—Today, both sides have early warning satellites. They are totally passive. In the future, they may become more active; therefore, we need agreement on how to distinguish between a sensor and a weapon as active sensors illuminate the objects about which they are trying to gather information.

—There is currently no interagency agreement on a suitable definition of a sensor. I don’t think we are that far apart, but we need to work it out. We need this definition because the treaty will be in effect for a long time, the issue is very important, and it could spill over very quickly as a precedent in other areas. Finally, we need it because it would be key to compliance and verification.

—Having worked sensors, we then need to know what testing we can do before deployment. Now we have ground test ranges. We must be able to define permissible SDI testing in space.

—Our initial idea was to define a test range in space. What we mean by that is to try to agree on a set of procedures so each side would be able to show the other that they were not deploying weapons when they were testing.

—The problem here is, again, boundary definitions. It’s very hard to make sure we get what we want while still protecting U.S. systems. This is a difficult problem, but I believe it’s not insurmountable.

—The implications of both of these items—sensors and test range in space—is that we must protect a number of sensitive U.S. space programs, not just SDI. All agree on this point, but as Admiral Crowe said, the substance is in the detail. We must go slowly. We must not let the Soviets force a choice between compliance and compromise of covert, sensitive U.S. programs.

Admiral Crowe: Mr. President, with respect to Defense and Space, and, in fact, in other areas, we found that the answers that we need must evolve over time. Key players in the Administration need time to think about and adjust their thinking and be comfortable with the answers that we want. We’ll get there, but it’s a tough job.

—Finally, we should talk about the conventional and CW areas. For this, let’s turn to General Vuono.

General Vuono: With respect to conventional arms control issues, Mr. President, our intent in all arms control has always been to increase our security and reduce the chances of war. We can apply the same concept to what we pursue in the conventional area.

—There are two things we have to keep in mind: (1) we need to be careful not to involve dual-capable systems, and thus undercut our residual nuclear capability; and (2) we need to remember always that this is an Alliance-to-Alliance problem, not a bilateral US-Soviet problem. We worry about anything the Soviets do which would result in further elimination of nuclear weapons from Europe.

—With respect to the chemical weapons area, we continue to favor a complete ban on chemical weapons. Now it’s very difficult for us to verify such a ban, and that remains our toughest problem. We also have to remember that this is a multilateral problem and, again, not a bilateral problem. We need to find some way to cover ourselves during the transition to the complete implementation of the ban. We need a security stockpile or some method to ensure that we can maintain our security as we work towards the ban.

Admiral Crowe: Mr. President, these are the JCS views on the arms control issues they are most concerned about. We are proud of the progress that we’ve made in INF and START. We know, Mr. President, that you want to try to document that progress at the Summit. We caution against using any such document for taking any new steps. We’ll give a memo to General Powell that captures all of the Chiefs’ feelings. We hope it will help.

—This is a frustratingly slow process. We’re frustrated too. The Soviets are patient negotiators. We must work patiently like they do. I think that now they may be testing us to see how far we will go.

—However, Mr. President, I can assure you that the Joint Chiefs support the basic goals you have set forth. We are committed to achieve them. We can’t predict the outcome, but we’re willing to try as hard as we can. Are there any questions?

[No questions]

—In that case, we’ll move on to regional issues.

[Omitted here is information unrelated to START.]

—The only remaining item is the status of military-to-military talks and exchanges. These were a spinoff from the last Summit. They are being executed under the principle of reciprocity. The charter was really laid down in Secretary Carlucci and Minister Yazov’s meeting in Bern, Switzerland. I have invited General Akhromeyev to come to the United States. He has agreed in principle, but there is no date yet. I hope it will be in July. We will proceed carefully and analyze what is achieved in these talks after the Ackremeyov visit. We see the possibility of future exchanges from war colleges, exchanges by high-level commanders and commanders in various regions of the world, and perhaps exchanges of sports teams.

—That’s all we have; we’re open to questions.

The President: Does anyone have anything to ask?

Secretary Carlucci: Mr. President, with respect to the last point, I will meet my counterpart, General Yazov, on the margins of the Summit.

The President: Admiral Crowe, I’ll look forward to seeing what you send to General Powell.

Secretary Shultz: The military-to-military talks that Frank Carlucci mentioned offer unique opportunities. The Soviets have responded with enthusiasm. What we need to do—Frank and I agree—is to sit down and see what we want so we can operate one coordinated strategy with both military-to-military contacts and diplomatic plans supporting each other. We ought to decide what we want now and then figure out how to manage the meetings and plan for the meetings to achieve it. In short, we need to plan. This will not be difficult to do.

Admiral Trost: We’ll get a signal from the Soviets early in June as we go to the INCSEA talks [periodic discussions under the Incidents at Sea Agreement]. This time they’ve offered the INCSEA delegation to meet with the Soviet Chief of Naval Operations; this is a real new step. There will also be a visit to Leningrad.

Secretary Carlucci: I agree that we ought to get together on a plan, but we do have objectives: (1) to better understand Soviet doctrine and what they mean when they say they are shifting from offense to defense, and (2) to reduce dangerous military incidents involving the forces of both sides. We are making very slow progress.

Admiral Crowe: I have another objective. I want to get my counterpart, Akhromeyev, to get to know our country and know about the U.S. military. I think it’s very important for him to have a good sense of knowing who he’s dealing with, and as he learns he may change and modify his views.

The President: Tell him if there is no meeting of the minds, we’re going to start recruiting Afghanistan freedom fighters.

Admiral Crowe: We’re not that mad at the Soviets yet.

The President: But you know, what you said is true, they are very unknowledgeable about us. This touches on a great frustration of mine. How can I get Gorbachev into a helicopter to fly from here almost anywhere to see workers’ houses with their cars and lawns and pools? How can I convince him that it’s for real and not a Potemkin village?

I believe that Gorbachev is inclined to believe his country’s propaganda about us and has no real picture about our country. You know, he did go to Italy with his wife and get a car and drive around as a tourist. I wish I could encourage him to do the same here.

Admiral Crowe: In Italy, I’m sure when he did that he discovered how well a country can run without a government.

General Powell: Have you any more questions, Mr. President?

The President: No, I think that’s all.

Admiral Crowe: We wish you success at the Summit, sir.

The meeting ended at 3:00 p.m.

1. Source: Reagan Library, Linhard Files, JCS-PRES MEETING, May 20, 1988. Secret. Drafted on June 2. The meeting took place in the Oval Office. All brackets are in the original text.
2. NSSD 1-82, “U.S. National Security Strategy,” February 5, 1982, is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. XLIII, National Security Policy, 1981–1984.
3. Reference is to the U.S. air strikes on targets in Libya on April 15, 1986.