Edward L. Rowny
first checked with Washington. I told him I knew enough about S D I that I didn't
have to check with Washington.
The next day Karpov called on me and apologized for having accused the President
of violating the ABM treaty. However, he said it violated the spirit of that treaty.
I bring this up to highlight the extreme sensitivity with which the Soviets regard
SDI.
But let me return to the negotiations. In the spring of 1984 I recommended to
President Reagan that we collapse the two phases of our plan and talk about
simultaneously reducing ballistic missiles, bombers, and cruise missiles. The
President approved my recommendation.
With that big obstacle overcome, we began to make progress through the spring
and summer towards a START agreement. We were quite optimistic. This was
in sharp contrast to what was happening in INF, where the Soviets were making
ominous noises about breaking off negotiations if the U.S. insistedon deploying its
missiles in Europe.
We were also making a fair amount of progress on the verification provisions, the
definitions, and other aspects of the START agreement. But one rather large
obstacle remained. The Soviets insisted that every weapon deployed on a bomber
count the same as a ballistic missile warhead. We said that this was unacceptable
because we needed the bomber weapons to penetrate Soviet formidable air de-
fenses. We simply could not equate a bomb on a bomber with a missile warhead
on an ICBM.
There were other obstacles, such as how to treat air-launched and
submarine-launched cruise missiles. Ground-launched cruise missiles, not being
strategic, were not in my court; they were handled in INF.
It was during this time that Paul Nitze and Youli Kvitsinky had their famous walk
in the woods. Nitze tried out a personal idea to try to break the logjam. He did
not believe the Kohl government could carry the day and deploy U.S. PIIs and
GLCMs on German soil. Knowing that the Soviets were more concerned with
P I I s which could strike targets in Germany and Poland against which there were
no air defenses, Nitze proposed to Kvitsinky that the Soviets should reduce their
SS-20s to a number equal toGLCMs, and that we would give up deploying PIIs.
Nitze's team heard rumors of his proposal, but Nitze would not discuss it with
them. Knowing that I was opposed to Nitze's plan, they asked that I intervene.
I tried, but Nitze wouldn't talk to me about it.
147
Previous Page
