Edward L. Rowny
memorandum for record," and we were no exceptions. Karpov confided to me that
he too reported that he had done brilliantly and "slaughtered" us.
This twice-a-week schedule might sound like a relaxed pace, but considering the
preparation time and follow-up reporting, it was a demanding schedule.
Q ..
Can you tell me something about the substance of your START negotiations?
The first thing that President Reagan decided to do was to determine what U.S.
A
forces needed before we began negotiating with the Soviets. Fifteen years of
neglect of our military forces had left us in a weakened posture which put our
security in jeopardy. It also undermined any leverage we might have at the
negotiating table. While President Reagan was determined to improve our militarv
posture, he realized that our resources were not unlimited. The first step in
developing the five-year modernization plan was to figure out where to put our
priority efforts and how to allocate scarce resources to areas that needed them
most.
I was fortunate in beiig a player in this exercise. It gave me a better understanding
of what our weaknesses were and how we were going to correct them. It also gave
me the opportunity of evaluating which parts of the modernization program would
later give us strength at the negotiating table. This process took place for the most
part in the Pentagon, although there were some cabinet meetings on it to which I
was privileged to attend.
We learned early in the game that our command, control, communications and
intelligence systems, what is known in the military jargon as
were in pretty
bad shape. Even the forces we had could not have readily been put into action
because we didn't have the command structure and communications hardware to
control our forces. A high priority was assigned to the littleknown and
unglamorous-but highly important task-of improving
Once
improvement was started it was decided to modernize strategic forces
across-the-board. We wanted simultaneously to bring the land-based leg of the
triad up to higher degree of effectiveness, to push forward the sea-based leg of the
triad, and improve our airborne forces. One of the first actions that President
Reagan took was to put the Bl program back on track which President Carter had
derailed earlier. As the five-year plan evolved, it got into important systems
beyond the three legs of the triad, such as developing sea- and air-launched cruise
missiles. This was important because U.S. cruise missile technology had moved
ahead of the Soviets' technology by an estimated five to eight years.
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