314. Telegram From the Department of State to the Secretary of State’s Delegation1
219954/ToSec 140195. Subject: Info Memo: Discussions with Marshal Akhromeyev (S/S: 8821018)
I attended a dinner at Admiral Crowe’s residence July 6 in honor of Marshal Akhromeyev.
On the margins of that dinner, Akhromeyev and I had a private conversation. He described his talks with the Chiefs as being forthright, firm and, he thought, useful. He, and more importantly his generals and admirals, now understand the worries of the American generals and admirals better than they had before. I asked for an example. He said Admiral Trost had made a very good presentation on cruise missiles. Trost had described the U.S. Navy’s concerns about the growing Soviet nuclear threat to U.S. ships. Trost had charts and maps supporting these statements; he demonstrated that, as a result of the Soviet threat, the U.S. Navy had felt compelled to distribute its nuclear attack forces on a wider range of ships. This had driven the Navy to SLCMs. Akhromeyev’s people had earlier not fully perceived the extent to which the U.S. Navy thought the survival of its forces was threatened.
Akhromeyev said that NST negotiations had now gotten to a point where the direct national security interests of both sides were involved; from this point on it would be difficult to make progress. I said I thought the first step in a successful process of this kind was for each side to understand fully the needs and concerns of the other. It seemed to me that progress had been made in this direction. But then one had to look at how further substantive progress could be made. For example, we might identify five major issues in START; maybe it would not be possible to solve all five initially, but if we could solve one of those five, we might then go beyond to a series of lesser issues, so that one by one all issues might ultimately be resolved.
Akhromeyev said that we would have made enormous progress if we could achieve a solution to, say, three of the five major issues. I asked if we could make progress on one issue, didn’t he think we would have better hopes at progress on a second and then a third. He said yes. I asked him whether he still thought we could reach agreement on all major issues by the end of this administration. He said he thought [Page 1451] it possible, but not likely; both sides would have to make major concessions.
Later, when I reported my conversation to Admiral Crowe, his comment was, “what kind of pot are you smoking, Paul?”
- Source: Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, N880005-0334. Secret; Immediate; Nodis. Drafted by Nitze; cleared by Levitsky, and in S/S–0; approved by Nitze. From July 6–July 20, Shultz traveled to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Japan, and the Marshall Islands.↩