
Bruce Blair: They are important and inspiring to me personally. And it's a real privilege for me to contribute to it in anyway that I can. Meanwhile back at the ranch, the US and Russian nuclear forces are continuing to be postured to fight a large scale nuclear war with each other on short notice. How short is this fuse if the US and the Russian National Command centers set launch orders right now to their alert missiles. Without any prior notice or preparation, how long would it take to fire them and how much fire power could be unleashed. You are not allowed to answer this pal. The answer is that the main forces could be salvo'd in one to two minutes, and within about 15 minutes all the rest of the alert missiles could be fired. About 2,500 war heads in all equivalent to something like a 100,000 Hiroshima bombs or three times more fire power than is need to kill 25 percent of the populations of the United States, Europe, Russia and China combined. This short fuse runs from the bottom to the top of the chain of command in Russia and the United States as the two sides today still strain to provide a capability for Launch on Warning. Much of the decision process within these command systems is checklist driven. It's wrote it's really quasi automatic. The early warning crews labor to meet a three minute deadline, for assessing whether attack indications from surveillance sensors are real or false. They run through this drill everyday. If there is an assessment that North America is under apparent nuclear attack, then Omaha Strategic Command in Omaha is allowed as little as three minutes to brief the President on his options and their consequences. And then the President has between zero and 12 minutes to absorb the information and choose course of action. That's the situation today. The de-alerting could lengthen this short fuse by hours, days, weeks, months, even years. It could would remove the threat of sudden delivered attack and thereby cut the Gordian knot of these mutually reinforcing hair trigger postures. And it would also buy ourselves a wide margin of safety against mistaken and unauthorized launch, and even theft of nuclear weapon. The current alert postures keep hundreds of weapons in constant motion in the field, exposing them to capture at the most vulnerable stage of their operation; that is transportation. Unless and until these postures are stood down and locked down, the Nunn-Lugar program will be hamstrung. And in my estimation will ultimately fail. In my paper, I present four de-alerting options that are my favorite, there are plenty of others to consider. And you can view them as alternative choices or as a four step blueprint. Step one is; immediately revise the war plans, eliminate massive attack options and thereby eliminate the first strike first strike threat. And also eliminate Launch on Warning. Involve simple changes in emergency war procedures, nothing complicated to accomplish this. The missiles could also be de- targeted stripped of all wartime aim points. Many of you probably think that that has already happened during the ClintonYelstin years but it did really didn't happen. This first step would take days to reverse. There are downside of it, primarily is that it's not very verifiable. Step two in the blue print; immediately isolate all silo-based missiles from external launch control, as was done in 91' by President Bush when he de-alerted almost half of the Minuteman force almost overnight. And submarines at sea would refrain from installing a critical electronic component known as an inverter which would preclude launch. Both of these actions would buy a large margin of safety and required days to reverse, and both can be verified in meaningful ways. Step three; over the next one to three years separate all warheads from their delivery vehicles, but store them inside empty silos and submarines tubes. Triton subs would each have 11 tubes with a single warhead in each, plus 11 tubes with unarmed missiles and two tubes with cranes for relating warheads the missiles at sea in a national emergency. Same here for the Minuteman, half of the silos house unarmed missiles, the other half store the warheads for those missiles. It's a scheme that extends launch time by weeks to months but insures the survivability of the forces because of the dispersion and protection afforded. It lends itself to adequate verification and it deeply reduces the salience and the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy. Step four the big leap, is to transfer all nuclear warheads from any combat field deployment to storage facilities on land. This consolidation of warheads under strict surveillance and verification, combined with the lengthy time for reconstitution, which would be weeks to months would greatly marginalize nuclear weapons and represent a giant stride down the path toward elimination. It would also put arsenals in a fully locked down status that would be optimal for preventing the accidental or unauthorized use or theft of nuclear weapons. Now, as the paper lays out this is the step that must be taken with great caution because of the potentially extreme vulnerability of warhead depots to breakout and attack by even a small number of nuclear weapons or even by conventional forces. So verification must be very effective, cooperative and since all of the P5 arsenals are become significant in this situation, all of them also need to participate. We also might have to impose some constraints on offensive, conventional operations at that time. So I want to just wrap by emphasizing again that keeping one weapon, much less 1000s, ready to fire upon the receipt of a short computer stream of signals, which is the current situation, is inherently risky and it's especially so in an age of terrorism and information warfare. It's clearly undeniably in the strongly in the US and Russian interest to stand down their forces and work together to create really a universal taboo against anyone ever putting nuclear weapons on Hair-Trigger Alert. Those were the points I wanted to express.
Henry Kissinger: Do you expect the same safeguards be applied to the Russian weapons; are they designed the same way?
Bruce Blair: We have a real expert here in General Dvorkin; they are not designed in the same way. There are some there are some similarities and some rather sharp differences and the paper suggests options on the Russian side that would be more or less comparable in terms of the time to re-alert and verifications of the but there are very sharp asymmetries in the way the two sides operate their nuclear forces.
Tom Graham: What about submarine launched -?
Bruce Blair: Sorry .
Tom Graham: What about submarine launched weapons?
Bruce Blair: On the on the Russian side?
Tom Graham: On both sides, how to deal with it?
Bruce Blair: Well, all four of these steps deal with the submarine launches. Removing massive attack options from the war plans submarine launchers and so do removing critical components from the submarine like an inverter in the case of United States. An inverter is an electronic component that converts DC to AC power to allow the Westinghouse steam pressure generates to be ignited to to propel the missile out of the two into the surface. They are comparable components in Russia's operating side. I have looked into a lot of Russian options and some of them are analyzed in the paper. The step of taking warheads off missiles and storing them inside of submarine tubes, I think applies much more uniquely on the US side because Russian missiles and warheads are hermetically sealed inside their tubes as I understand it and crews have no normal access to them. But there are other options that General Dvorkin in his book with Alexei Arbatov have laid out that I think provide comparable degrees of de-alerting on the Russian side and then of course lastly, if the war heads are taken off the submarine and put in land based storage, then it's a fairly symmetric proposition for both sides, on both submarines and and ICBM de-alerting.
George Shultz: General Dvorkin, would you like to say in your paper, you address this. Would you say something, and then I would like to ask Bill Perry and Sam have to make the comments. As Secretary of Defense you mentioned the President the Secretary of Defense is somehow in that chain of command.
Vladimir Dvorkin: When I started working on de-alerting problems together with Bruce Blair more than 10 years ago, then we worked on all these problems on our own, you know. In 2004, Bruce presented to Senator Nunn to a nuclear threat initiative, a large study on various methods of de-alerting. All these methods had only one thing in common. As far as returning to alert status they are all the same. I view launcher warning as absolutely senseless. It's the under conditions when you know an exchange of massive nuclear strikes between Russia and US is completely absurd. No Commander in Chief you know, who has his mental faculties around him would launch a massive strike in response to a you know a perceived attack by single or or just a few war heads. Therefore I don't see as a threat, the American plan to deploy two conventionally of armed SLBMs on each on each submarine. When I thought about the obstacles to all these proposals, the obstacles to the implementation of the de-alerting proposals, I came to conclusion that we simply should drop the idea of launching missiles on the basis of warning. It is this idea that's put in the foundation of draft executive agreement which we produced in 2004. In order to prove that renunciation of Launch on Warning is real, we offered a whole list of de-alerting tests of different methods of de-alerting. And all of this is pretty verifiable. Our first set of you know opponent was General Habiger. Then I found out why he was opposed despite the fact that you know, he think same strap call, really didn't didn't know terribly well the whole sort of you know how the system of inspection and verification worked. Our study represented you know, we did for NTI was primarily based on the Russian strategic forces. I am not sure that all the methods for de-alerting SLBMs are you know really fit of both fit the US and are necessary for the US. So US submarines are not you know are really not not meant to launch missiles on warning. Russian SSBNs which are you know which are on combat alert at the base in principle, can Launch on Warning. They can launch for you know, while surfaced. As far as I know you know American SSBNs can't launch launch while surfaced. That's why we looked you know we considered de-alerting only for Russian SSBNs, not for American SSBNs. Therefore there are many methods for de-alerting strategic nuclear forces. I think you know, they are all very viable and and relatively simple. Well I understand the military who don't want to change the existing systems, don't want to take responsibility for it just don't work, and you know, and sort of you know, making allies more complicated. So first of all we need you know decision at the political level and here I return to the draft executive agreement which again thank you.
George Shultz: Thank you. Bill, your comment.
William Perry: In the late 70 when I was the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, I was awakened by the telephone call at 2 AM from the General who the watch officer in North American Defense Command, telling me that 200 missiles were on the way there is a computer who is telling me, 200 missiles were on the way from the Soviet Union to the United States.
Tom Graham: Toward the Soviet Union from the US?
William Perry: From the Soviet Union to the United States. I immediately woke up. Of course this was a false alarm. And he I am not I was not in the Chain of Command. He was calling me to discuss with me to get some advice from me on what the hell had happened. So that when he talked he explained this with the President the next morning, he would have some good answers for what the President would ask him. That was one of two false alarms during the four years I was under secretary. One of which was a human malfunction the other which was a equipment malfunction. So this makes me very sympathetic - understanding how it's very real, the danger was. With that background I have a question for Bruce which is which of these four proposals could and should be implemented unilaterally and which of them require a bilateral or multilateral agreements to make sense?
Bruce Blair: I would like your opinion on that. I think that I evaluate all these proposals and few others against five criterions; three that are of the same as David's, more or less. And I came to the conclusion in this search that it's always desirable to create a situation of reciprocity, but we have enormous amount to gain by removing the first strike threat that we project at Russia. If we can take steps unilaterally that would relax Russia enough to take its finger off the button. I think that that's critically valuable and important and that we should do it. And there is no doubt in my mind that at least the first two steps could be undertaken unilaterally, that is we revise the war plans, get rid of these massive attack options without which there is no way to project a systematic, comprehensive threat to to the Russian strategic deterrent. And get rid of Launch on Warning which is really only I think a danger to ourselves. It leads us and our forces in a very survivable configuration no change from today, there are still 1000 strategic warheads on our Triton submarines at sea, they they can launch immediately, either preemptively or on warning, but they still are survivable and they constitute a a very potent deterrent force. I think that we could make the same argument about you know same thing the Minuteman missiles, removing them from extra launch control and not putting the inverters on submarines and its the it would take about 18 hours to you know these inverters are devices that are normally installed after a submarine submerges and prepares to go on an alert control, they are kept off as a safety measure when submarines are not out on alert patrol. And it takes about an hour and a half, prepare with striking tubes to install them and you simply don't install them when you go out on patrol. Put something else in there in its place which can be verifiable at the end of the patrol survey, to show the Russians that we never went to on to combat alert.
Henry Kissinger: Explain that how.
Bruce Blair: Excuse me .
Henry Kissinger: When we do it unilaterally what's your explanation?
Bruce Blair: What is our political explanation?
Henry Kissinger: Yeah and how why do we explain that we are doing on why do we deprive ourselves with that capability that's a unilateral thing.
Bruce Blair: Well, as I was trying to emphasis, I think that the principle goal for us in the near term future is to get the Russian finger its nuclear button. It has submarines on the surface the Turzii, that are timed to be fired on warning. By the way our submarines also would be Launched on Warning, an order were made in the scenario that I laid out of a threat to North America that led to Presidential decision, our submarine forces would be launched just as quickly as submarine forces in Russia would be launched from Turzii. So we are trying to relax the Russian posture to protect ourselves, from even intentionally used weapons but certainly an accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons.
George Shultz: I think the distinction that Bill's question brought out, which you might look at it in your papers, what could be done unilaterally and what requires at least a bilateral agreement if not something broader that could be elaborated. Sam, you wanted to comment.
Sam Nunn: Yeah, I think that this is an enormously important subject, when you look at the posture of United States and Russia today; basically the United States has an existential stake in the Russian warning systems. We don't think of it that way, but if they make a mistake it's our bottom. They have just the reverse they have one in ours. So there is so much common interest here that it seems to me if we talk about something, it could be done. I know this sounds extremely difficult. I don't think it's that difficult politically. I have talked about it for years. Bruce Blair started me thinking about it a number of years ago. The way and Bruce and I have a little bit different way of describing this, because I have learned that the word de-alert to the US military is not a good word. They spent all their careers learning to be alert. And then you come along with a great, big nuclear scheme and you would say; now we want you to de-alert. And so the way I describe it and I am sure that's true in Russia also the way I describe it, even though I don't call well that's what you are doing I describe it as increasing warning time. Several of the papers allude to that. Increasing warning time is absolutely crucial. Every audience that I talk to I use the hypothetical of one of our leaders, Russia or US being inebriated and somebody coming in and telling that inebriated leader that they have three minutes to decide whether they launch their missiles or perhaps lose them. It's not in our interest to be in that position. Also, I think it's alluded to in a couple of papers; China does not upload their missiles now. Last time I was briefed they didn't they may be moving away from it. It's very important that United States and Russia to move away from our hair-trigger posture before China moves toward their hair-trigger posture. The other dimension I would put in play is the proliferation of submarines. There are going to be all sorts of submarines out there and they go increasingly have either cruise missiles or ballistic missiles on them. And we we basically I asked for a briefing years ago from the Strategic Air Command about our ability to detect the origin of a submarine launched missile in real time. And then I asked the same question in the Soviet days about the Soviet's ability. The unclassified version of what came back was we weren't very good at it. And the Soviet's were not as good as we were. So a third country, they wanted to precipitate a major battle between the two superpowers could in my view increasingly be able to do that in the future. So there are all sorts of reasons to move in this direction. Now politically, lets let's assume, Bruce has enough on the table technically. And General Dvorkin has written a brilliant paper on this subject. So the experts can deal with the technical side, but politically actually I don't discount the possibility, it could be done in this administration. The two presidents could basically say we want to give each other more warning time. You could draft a statement that everybody in this country could understand. It's in our interest for the Russian President to have 30 minutes before he has to decide, pick a number. And then if we get 30 minutes, then we can get perhaps you know .
George Shultz: It takes more than 30 minutes to sober up.
Sam Nunn: Yeah several cups of coffee every audience you talk to understands that. Now every audience you understand. I particularly did during a previous Russian administration I won't call. The Presidents could say they could make a declaration that here is what the two of us have agreed to. We are going to call our military leaders in. We are going to tell him, the top people in defense and military to spend time and give us options on increasing warning time. That's not a hard statement to draft. It could have enormous psychological effect enormous. And so I think it's politically politically doable. And the details the technical side of it, the verification side of it; all of those are complex but you could basically explain to the people in Russia and the people in the United States and the people in the world why you were doing this and you could set a tremendous example for others. Now, other dimension I would add is cyber space. We think our Chain of Command is not capable of being penetrated. We hope the Russians is not. We don't know about India, we don't know about Pakistan, we don't know about Israel. We certainly don't know about North Korea. But at some point, somebody, some cyber expert go and penetrates the command and control of somebody's missile defense. And god forbid when that happens. So there are all sorts of reasons here to move in this direction. I also think we always talk about vertical arms control, getting the numbers down and all that's very relevant and they David's paper, I would say it was almost accepted by unanimous consent and their counter Russian papers that have come almost to the same steps that David has come to. General Dvorkin has written one of them. But I think the horizontal aspects of of arms control are just as important and that we are not going to go down anywhere near zero vertically until we move horizontally. And the beginning point of horizontal is more warning time, from four minutes to 10 minutes, to 30 minutes, to an hour, to a week, to a month. You get in to a month, this whole equation psychologically changes and you are then asking, why do we have these arsenals warned at each other. That's horizontal. And I think the horizontal scenario is often neglected. It's just as important as the vertical, and within the horizontal, survivability of what of reduced numbers is enormously important. When you reduce number, survivability becomes more important. And therefore you have to look at that horizontal as you look at the vertical.
George Shultz: Anybody disagree. Nobody can possibly disagree with this. Now, I have Scott, Henry, Tom, Joe, Matt - well and and so I think I will have to close the book, so we can move to the next topic. Right Scott.
Scott Sagan: Thank you, George. I have two comments. We have had excellent papers and whether we were discussing David's paper on reductions or Bruce's on de-alerting, we quite naturally focused on two related themes. What are the technical merits of proposals that are made and what are the impacts on US-Russian relations, their ability to do these things? When I took Sergio Duarte's UN perspective and even Henry Kissinger's comments that we need to focus more attention and discussions and then potential future papers on the global security conditions that these probably are embedded in. As a way to look at different, horizontal issue, that is the impact of these issues on horizontal proliferation and other countries, non nuclear weapon states and the new nuclear weapon states decisions in this regard. In that point I just want to note that we have a Non Proliferation Treaty Review Conference coming up in 2010. And my analysis is in fact looking having been in the last one in 2005, many of our efforts to try to get improvement in that treaty regime will not be possible unless we are seen to have made major steps forward; beyond what we have already promised. We will discuss this briefly tomorrow when we talk about the Comprehensive Test Ban. But many non nuclear weapon states say, we already got to trade off from the Comprehensive Test Ban that you promised earlier, and so I would suggest that there is real time urgency to deal with some of these de-alerting and reduction issues so that the US and Russia and hopefully the P5 have proposals ready that they can begin to implement and make further promises by 2010, so that when we try to get non nuclear weapon states to accept restrictions on their say on the Article Four, issues by enrichment, or Article 10 issues by withdraw from the treaty. Then we have something to trade and something to show for having done a lot more than we have done thus far. That's point one. Point two, I think that the restrictions domestically not just in the military, but in the general US public, about implementing some of the very thoughtful and I think very useful proposals that that Bruce and Sam and others have proposed in this area, is a sense of complacency. A sense that we don't need to that, the Cold War is over, why should we be worried about this? And here I just want to encourage people to pay attention to in much more detail than has been in the past, what occurred this summer, on August 29th when the US Air force lost for 36 hours, six nuclear weapons, where at Minot Air Force Base, the technicians loaded what they thought was a pylon of conventional armed cruise missiles on the B-52; did not use the special security forces to guard that B-52 because they thought that this was just armed with conventional explosives that were going to be sent to a down to Barksdale Air Force Base. Therefore they left it out on the run way, without special security forces flew it the next day with the pilots still not knowing that they had six nuclear weapons on the wings of this B-52 weapons which are not supposed to be flown in that manner because they lack fire resistant kits, so that if there was a crash you would have plutonium spread in the immediate area. And there hasn't been a huge outcry about this, a couple of articles. Indeed the Air Force's position has been if I quote it correctly that, "There was a failure to follow procedures procedures which have proven to be sound." Well the procedures will not permit people to follow them, or procedures are not followed it says something about the training and or, a sense of complacency around this issue. So I would just think that this near miss or this near accident that occurred and a safety and a security problem should serve as a real warning sign that hopefully can get rid of some of the complacency that we have in this in our body politic.
George Shultz: Thanks Scott, Henry.
Harry Rowen: Scott provided the perfect lead in if you are to say turn around this sense of complacency, in the sense that the Cold War, be complacent. Oh by the way we and Russia have 1000s of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. Wait a minute, why? Isn't the Cold War over? Why do we have this? A possible justification if there be force such a posture policy. Cold War is over. I mean something didn't change. A lot of looking at this it looks very ancient as though we were still there. And so something didn't change. Now some things did change, the numbers Scott produced, First President Bush unilaterally made took forces off alert of bomber and missile forces, very useful thing and he he just did it and the Russians followed course, that was fine. So a very good question is to how much of this could be made unilateral and I believe should be made unilateral. It would be great if we could get everybody to agree, but let's not depend on it, if it's not necessary. But some of these point that of what Bruce is talking about can be done unilaterally, should be done unilaterally, and even Bruce also months ago, we talked about the reliability of that whole warning chain of command and I think we agree. We had skepticism based on on the history. That should be regarded as a completely reliable. Then this episode occurred August of 29, that was also stuck with. Scott has expressed it by the interesting story. Then there is the next day, a different story, wait a minute. We got be connected to the fact that 1,382 US and 1,272 Russian nuclear warheads are on Launch on Warning status. I mean I think that is just mind blowing it boggles my mind if this is the case 16 years after the end of the Cold War. What is going on? What's going on? I think it's a failure of political leadership. I think the military are in their routines, they keep doing their routines. The little discussion footnotes I guess about top command authority being vulnerable has always been I mean ever since Russians had nuclear weapons, sure it's vulnerable. Okay, what do you do about that? I mean there are things some things have been done I guess, but in any case, as an argument, the use for preserving this fundamentally terrible posture. So I would argue, go down the path that Bruce advocates the initial step; certainly talk to the Russians, trying to get this joining much better but go, in any case, go and then see where it leads.
Bruce Blair: Can I make a two finger intervention?
George Shultz: Yes, but perhaps you would accept Sam's amendment, use the words increase in warning time.
Bruce Blair: Okay, sure. One complication that should be put on the table and also relates to the question of unilateral alert that has that explains some of this quite apart from the end of the Cold War and the legacy postures of the US and Russia and as that. In 1997 President Clinton signed listed 60 that was interpreted by the nuclear forces as requiring the creation of strategic nuclear war plan for China, for the first time in many years after President Reagan removed China from the strategic war plan around 1980-81'. And that then has led to creeping, targeting of China over the last decade, expansion of the numbers of weapons on submarines on alert with target assignments submarines because we don't like to target China with land based rockets that have to fly over Russia, over to targets. In the posture review of the Bush Administration in 2002 you may recall said that Russia is no longer an immediate nuclear contingency, which implied implies to me that we don't need quite that statement, our own superficial posture review statement, we don't need weapons on launch ready alerts to deal with Russian contingencies. But that posture statement did designate China as an immediate nuclear contingency you know the context of the US-China Taiwan dispute obviously. And that has led to a completely new rationale for targeting and alerting of US forces and that target set I think before too very long will actually sort of cross over with the Russian target set and China will become the new sort of designated rationale for a lot of this a lot of this business.
George Shultz: I have Tom, Joe, Matt, Rose and and I am going to ask you to be very short, because in about five minutes I am going to shut the book on this and turn to Rose.
Tom Graham: Well, I think all of Bruce's options are very interesting and certainly the first two would could be done unilaterally if not bilaterally. I think option three is especially interesting because its there, the de-alerting sort of merges with reductions. In other words to do option three you have got to have no operationally deployed systems which is fits in with to some extent with David's paper. Now, I think that's something that could be a very interesting medium term goal, because where as I agree, we would have to be a different world to actually get to zero given the verification requirements and so forth, I do General Dvorkin and with Graham Graham Allison. But to get to this stage, which would be which would capture a lot of what we would want big zero, that is zero deployed and this kind of de-alerting, it wouldn't require that. You could you start verification command to address most of the verification issues and I don't think the question of conventional forces would come up here because the US and Russia in any case would still have several hundreds at least weapons and if not a few more, but I do think it would have to be more than bilateral. It would have to be multilateral to do the option three no deployed systems and and very much be alerted because it would be a significant change in the status of forces. I think the British and the French and the Chinese at a minimum would have to be part of it.
George Shultz: Thank you, we can see there is an interaction between the papers which David, you and Bruce made a little bit. Joe.
Josef Joffe: I would like to raise a question. Undoubtedly, de-alerting getting off hair trigger-alerts, is a smart and and overdue idea. But how far do the length of the the period between de-alert and re-alert? I have heard a month some months or about a month. And that brings the issue of crisis stability. You know we have all of the first example of crisis instability because of non-alert forces World War I. So the Germans figured before the Russians, start mobilizing afterwards got France and they have already started marching and that gets somehow we have World War I. What if we have what do we do at a crisis? How do we re-alert? And once we start re-alerting, how will our opponents presume they are real reacts? Won't that bring about precisely the kind of clash we sought to abolish? Unless you really think that de-alert is the that rendering missiles non functional is the first step to rendering them non existent. If you still think that these things are little tilted, which I think they do you have to do you really get sure stability when you go from de-alert from de-alert to re-alert. That is part of that's what we should start to think about that you don't have to be a Strangelovian character to think in these terms. Very rational rational issue.
George Shultz: I think your comments highlight the importance of saying this as an interaction between the vision and the steps, some of these broader things we will be talking about.
Matthew Bunn: Okay, couple of quick points. First of all, I think Scott is absolutely on target. We have to think about what can we do both in statements and in concrete actions before 2010 that will change the political dynamic in 2010 from what it was at the 2005 NPT review. And I think that's one thing that this group ought to focus on as may even come up with a list, you know here are five or 10 things that are to be done prior to 2010. I think that will be very useful. Secondly, I think on the de-alerting point in particular, I think it's so important that by taking this action United States and Russia could begin forging a global norm, that it is just too dangerous to have nuclear weapons poised for a launch at a moments notice. And that that's just an unacceptable thing for any country to have and then begin once we done it ourselves, we could then begin leaning on other countries and you could end up with a world of essentially global alert as you said, zero deployed weapons or however you want to describe it. Third, on the dangers of the re-alerting race; it seems to me one has to look at the dangers of the situation we are in now compared to the potential dangers of a re-alerting race and at least intuitively it seems to me not too hard to design a de-alerting posture that's a heck of a lot safer even including the dangers of a potential re-alerting race than the posture right now.
Speaker: Well I think the issue of launching a warning and hair trigger alert is becoming right now is so urgent and they complete this support what Sam Nunn was trying to do for years or decades and if you go back to beginning or the post cold war period there was a real understanding among among American professional military strategies that is a decline of rational early warning system. The risk of accidental launch because of false alarm tremendously increased and some ideas were in why don't we give ration and financial help so they could restore of their configuration of early warning satellite for example and then eventually we all became complacent perhaps because of unilateral statement made by president Yeltsin in the bill 1995. Once he was in a very good mood and he said that, he instructed soviet military to redirect all the intercontinental ballistic missiles. You may remember, it created horror and got me in trouble because I was bombarded by questions from American mass media, so the only thing I could offer I said probably he he redirected them to Mars.
Pavel Podvig: Thank you I have a very brief points in following his advise of trying to look at to varying kind of a specific and immediate issues that - the steps that could be make I think it's it's re - recognized that in de-alerting one of the most difficult issues of how do you verify, how do you make it transparent and it's it's doable but that's that's difficult but I think we should understand that there are real tangible benefits of de alerting even in the case where it's - when it's not transparent and verifiable. If that Minuteman missile is disconnected from the from the all such circuitry, it won't - If launched even on in error whether or not Russia can verify that and the same is true in the in Russia, if a missile does not have a battery it won't fly as a result of an error whether or not that can be verified by the United States. But I think as it, they refers stopping that direction, it is entirely possible that the United States and Russia could take obligations whether you unilaterally or in kind of put it together to pledge that their forces are not on alert most of the time or has a rule. So that sort of the connective that offer lot statuses as a general practice and from there they they constitute they could do - move forward but that might be a first step and I think it's quite -.
George Shultz: Thank you last word to general Dvorkin, Bruce if you want to say anything by the way.
Vladimir Dvorkin: Joint data exchange center to become an important element of increasing the warning time that Senator Sam Nunn talked about. For me it's a sort of sore spot because during president Clinton's visit to Moscow in 1998 I had to prepare proposals on this issue in one day. In 98, the president agreed to create to create joint the join data exchange center. It was rebuilt on the basis of the institute which I come, the research institute which I commanded at that time. Everything was ready that you know this of the tables of organization, the staffing, the duties or the procedures. During ten years of that nobody seems to need it. I wonder why nobody on the American side raise the issue of what happened to the center, what needs to be done to - to get it to work. The center can work in real time. You know clarify the - you know this the you know the the reports on missile launches coming from early warning system of both US and Russia. I have no answer to why this centre became you know it is gone unclaimed by anybody and may be some of the political figures around this table could you know could tell me why why nobody needs it.
George Shultz: Well that's a very helpful observation. Okay I think we want to turn now to Rose.
Rose Gottemoeller: Thank you very much gentlemen and thank you for the opportunity for speaking to this group and preparing this paper was quite a I would say designator of my summer and interesting to to dive in to these issues again. So I appreciated the opportunity. I was actually going to start with the question that Mike McFaul raised this morning and we discuss that length so I am not going to return in detail to the situation among the Russian political elite and how they can or cannot now embrace this agenda but I would like to make two small points about politics in Russia today. First of all one thing we did not address in our previous session was to degree to which Putin himself will be in transition. There is some sense that he may slide side ways in to the prime ministerial post but I do believe that we will face a presidential transition in Russia and we have to bear in mind that there will be new configurations of political actors there. So it is something to bear on mind. I generally agree with those who are more less optimistic around the table but I think that we do have to bear that in mind and particularly that there will be some period whether may be no decision makers willing to grasp this agenda and run with it and so we may be facing a situation where for a while we won't have the opportunity to engage with them so I do agree with Dr. Kissinger and some others who made the point that we should be trying to move forward now in order to to try to discuss these issues with the Russians. One other very small point on politics which gives me some hope on the missile defense issue and that is we have had a significant change in Poland. The polish elections that just took place have brought into will bring into the leadership of Poland a completely different political configuration and so I think now the door may be more open in Poland to work with the united states on the very proposal that has been laid out, that is that there would be some kind of delay built into the deployment of missile launchers in Poland so just to give you sense based that there are some opportunities on the political front and in the way political configurations are changing in Europe and in Russia but there also so may be some constraints and I think we need to be aware of that and be planning our actions accordingly. Now the second thing I wanted to say with regard to planning actions. I would like to back up since point about the difficultly of first steps and the need to take concrete operational steps and for this group to come up with some early proposals in that regard. So I would like to propose based on Henry Kissinger's comments in our last session that we actually think about reinstating what were called in an earlier era strategic stability talks. These were chaired by Mr. Ross, Mr. Mamedov they had a profound impact on how the Russians, the soviets thought about a strategic stability and really were an important facilitator for the success of the start one negotiations. I would call them global evolutionary talks or something in in that realm but they would be a as John McLaughlin proposed the dialogue at 30,000 feet and would really try to engage some of these issues with the Russians about how they see the goal global evolution and how we see it. There is a certain activity on the second track that has already begun in this regard and Dr. Kissinger is being involved in it so I think we can just talk about trying to begin this officially and beginning it soon even before the transition in the Russian presidential presidential structures. Now let me return to my remarks, I was asked to look at eliminating short range nuclear weapons designed before and deployed and in order to facilitate our discussion here I would like to simply raise three questions for you to pursue in the discussions. First of all the most common criticism of my paper was that among several people I heard from most - that it is impossible to distinguish short range nuclear weapons from any other type and that is mostly because the same war head can go on launch vehicles of various ranges. Everybody understands that, I essentially duck the issue in my paper by referring readers to Annie Wills excellent discussion of the issue in her CRS report and also then by stressing that war heads whether launched on short medium or long range missiles will eventually have to go into the same basket for reduction and elimination particularly as numbers move low and lower. The first question to you all for discussion. Is the premise of this paper essentially a one that we can set aside and should we instead be stressing a general basket of war head elimination measures divorced from the issue of their launch vehicle range and their deployment geography, that's a fundamental question that clearly you know the answer is yes and I have undermined the whole premise of my paper but I do think it's a question worth explicitly addressing around this table because it was a comment that was raised by many many experts and people that that I respect. Second question, ironically just as Russia is resistant to engage on nuclear reductions in the theater, NATO countries today seem better prepared politically economically and militarily than they were in the 1990s to do so. NATO politicians are concerned about the budget burden of continuing nuclear deployments and are willing to seek out on that question. The United States has become increasingly focused in its strategic planning on the whole notion of global strike which emphasizes centrally controlled, precision long range conventional strike missions with a deemphasize on what happens in Europe. So the the peer again has done a lot of change in US doctrinal approaches that I think can can underlay a change in how we look at nuclear weapons in Europe and there is also recent precedent. NATO nuclear weapons war withdraw quietly from Greece in 2001 and over the past decade and a half, there has been a steady diminution in the readiness posture of nuclear weapons in NATO Europe. So NATO seems more ready to dispense the nuclear weapons in Europe then they were certainly the last time I looked at this question in government in the 1990s and my question to you is is this a goal that we should consider pursuing unilaterally? Perhaps in time for the NATO NATO's 60th anniversary in 2009, to spur momentum with the Russians and to counter criticism from the nuclear and from the neutral non-aligned countries and this gets back to Scott's very important comment about the need to be ready for the NPT review conference in 2010, is this something that we should we considering in the NATO alliance as a unilateral initiative. My personal answer to this question is no because I see the need to really engage with the Russians and a negotiation on this point and get something for this, we have been concerned for years. I raised this issues in my paper about the possibility of vestigial nuclear capability in Kaliningrad we don't know enough about that, that's one small point but my view overall is that we should not simply go for with the unilateral proposal in regard but should to engage the Russians in a negotiation and leverage this issue in order to get some results that we want from them but I do appreciate your views on this question and whatever we decide in this project we should still look to the 60th anniversary of NATO for its forcing function on this question and we should now remain silent in terms of what goes into the strategic concept for NATO, we cannot just continue I think in the past as we have renewing our language on nuclear issues in the NATO strategic concept. And finally the third question, the emphasis on my paper is very much on deep confidence building especially using existing success stories and I talk at length about war head safety and security exchange agreement which is a bilateral agreement between the united states, Russian federation has looked at some extremely sensitive issues with regard to war head safety and security. But we have developed extensive cooperation on the basis of some real world problems after the Los Alamos fires for example in 2000. A question of this safety of the nuclear weapons against fire and lighting strikes that was one it was taken up in the WSSX context. My question to you is, I am quite confident that on a bilateral basis we have every mechanism to engage the Russians in deep confidence building but how quickly do we want to engage third countries? We have a great amount of work to do just with the Russians to get them to the negotiating table, do we want to confuse the picture by engaging other nuclear weapon states early? My sense is yes but within reason and here again I would appreciate your views and your advice on this question I am sure for example that the Pakistanis and the Indians would be very interested in knowing more about fire and lightning dangers to war heads but we want to teach them? We have the same eventual goal as with the Russians to get them to the table to negotiate constraints on nuclear war head deployments and eventual reductions and elimination activities with the goal of a total ban, again my paper emphasizes the need to engage all nuclear all states having nuclear weapons in some way early in confidence building efforts but how fast and how intensively do we want to engage them in deep technical confidence building when it could give them more savvy than they have today about managing their warhead arsenals? This to my mind is a very important question overall in this project. As we look to engaging other countries in pursuit of a total ban, it of course relates to a political sense about what would change the calculus of various countries though understanding technical complexities and a sense of being engaged as an equal lead counties such as Pakistan and India to an early commitment to common purpose or renew their commitment to deploying nuclear weapons and further developing their own capabilities so that is a very important question overall for the project I would like to leave at that and I look forward to our discussion thank you.
Tom Graham: Dr. Rose, it would seem to me that that problems of dealing with Russia on this issue you mentioned the CFE treaty, IMF treaty are so serious that that to bring in other states any time soon with with a very very difficult I would think it would take some time to bring the Russians to the table in a constructive way recognizing that of course the objective is a worldwide ban on short range of systems and then once having done that, once having having down some kind of common ground with Russians. I can see bringing in NATO nuclear states or even the P5 that that it's been a big jump to other countries like India, Pakistan, Israel because for them or at least some of those countries, short range nuclear weapons are, I won't say it's all they have, but is a much more important part of that their forces than this is the case with with the P5 so it seemed to me as sort of a three stage thing with the first stage taking the longest part of you know the Russians.
Rose Gottemoeller: Yeah come back on that directly you know Tom I started their when I started working on this paper, I started exactly where you are but I thought and and I distinguish in my paper between resolving some of these major political issues with the Russians and political confidence building so to speak and what I call deep technical confidence building with regard to the the nature of our cooperation on strategic reductions on war head reduction eventually and so separating out those two things, I began to believe and I still do believe that it is going to be important to try to engage all of the countries having nuclear weapons in some way early. We have already begun some of these with the Pakistanis and the Indians talking to them about nuclear weapons physical protection particularly particularly it comes out of the whole Nunn-Lugar CTR, cooperation and the expansion of that beyond the Russian federation. So I do think we need to differentiate and I agree with you absolutely, we are not going to get the Russians to the table until we address some of these political issues around the overall arms control treaties and you know bring them to the table in that sense and that I see being resolved by this kind of high level set of discussions about the evolution of the strategic situation over all but then can we start to have a conversation with all of the countries early that would deal with some of these issues related to war head specifically?
Tom Graham: A conversation yes but I can't see India, Pakistan, Israel etc doing some very much about the reduction until US Russia reaches reach some time with reductions.
Rose Gottemoeller: Well I agree I agree.
Graham Allison: Rose I like the paper very much and it seems to be like its actually responds to the question about some steps that could be taken forward particularly something we have thought about the 60th anniversary that may come as an opportunity I think it's with we should try to underline - I will just have two points, the first issue mention is global strike - it's again worth remembering. Part of why the American strategic community of people who are doing - which to list - that obviously had become to be more comfortable about reducing the role of nuclear weapons it's that they believe they can destroy their targets without nuclear so destroying targets is about two things. One, explosion and two accuracy and the beneficiation of the target and obviously this is a factor there it's how how accurately you could identify the target, for the Americans, that's a very attractive proposition, for the Russians it's source of great envy. I have thought of it so how do you will take that into account in this conversation. But point two as Russians think about targets that they might like to destroy under some scenarios and may think active only if you are in the general staff about targets in the Chinese border, but then then you says about other borders as well. The second point is - how much will you need in going with the agenda, you identify to go back to the conversation that I think John Abizaid and Henry and others identified earlier, how Russia is thinking about what they rightly regard as dangerous borders and the conversation this this strategic stability of broader conversation that you said is the prerequisite, how much progress do you have to make in that to make feasible any things concrete in this threat again I you are living in Moscow so you are seeing this but one of ours starts a treaty conversation like this. The first question is what about Ukraine in NATO. the second question is what about Ukraine in NATO then little bit afterwards what about Georgia and then what about you are deploying other things in the four fielding - in the former Warsaw pact without conversations with us until you get it so far down the line that then you are only discussing where do you should do it sooner or later or whether bigger or less. So how much can you imagine making progress on the more technical points all with - where do you point out rightly has been extremely it's been extremely - amazingly possible that have some technical progress on the same kinds of items like safety and security of weapons but on the agenda that you identify without the broader political - without that was talking about but doing something about the other items.
Rose Gottemoeller: At the end I am happy to respond directly. It's an excellent point Graham and it's been very interesting to me living and working in Moscow the degree to which the highly technical cooperation that goes forward under the cooperative threat reduction and Nunn-Lugar program continues to go forward without any barriers being thrown in its way and it's a kind of cognitive dissonance because you have all the the very negative noise at the political level but down below at the technical level you have a great deal of very sensitive cooperation moving forward - I mention the war head safety and security exchange agreement but now we are operating in some of the most sensitive sites in order to enhance their physical protection of war head storage, war head deployment, material, storage etc so my own view again reflected in the paper is formed by this experience that there is a lot that is possible at the technical level and I believe could be enhanced and driven forward I think that agenda could be driven forward rather quickly and that is one reason why I am urging now that we begin at a higher level to have some kind of strategic stability or global evolution talks because I think that would further improve the environment for technical for technical progress on confidence building because where the tensions come in now, it's because there is this feeling of frustration, feeling of upset, feeling of concern at the political level - a constant fear a constant concern that will begin to impinge on the technical level, that hasn't happen yet so I think the degree to which we could begin early a high level discussion on a more political level I think would only enhance the opportunities for fast movement on technical confidence building, on deep confidence building as I call it.
George Shultz: I have Mark, Pavel, Sid, Jim, Matt. So I close that book there we'll have lunch after - you always come in anytime you want. You were at the end wait or you want to speak out.
Mark Fitzpatrick: Oh thank you well Rose's excellent paper you and the thought of great questions you put forward with lot engaging with third countries and one set of those countries is that the countries where weapons are deployed, I was very glad that you focused on the issue of Turkey because it demonstrates the interconnection between this issue and the one we will be talking about tomorrow at regional confrontations I think as Iran continues it's acquisition of nuclear weapons capability, Turkey is one of the neighbors that is most likely to want to have some capability of its own not so much because it deals the strategic threat but it has a power balance and the presence of its own presence of NATO nuclear weapons some of which come under Turkish control in the event of a crisis may be one of the ways of of recruiting turkey from taking that we are connected to extend that it reinforces a nuclear umbrella and I you you noted that Turkish population doesn't actually want the nuclear weapons there and that- that may change bright the investment now the talks about how how we take in to account the Turkish prospective here.
Sig: So I want a second on Rose's point about the importance of the of the technical cooperation, it's important not only to compliment the political process but often to catalyze the political process and and the nuclear material security is precisely that one of those cases where it wasn't done until we I was at Los Alamos at that time began to work cooperatively with the Russian nuclear weapons labs doing cooperative research activities that we were able to break through, we actually started doing the more sensitive things related to nuclear material security and and during those times the early nine 1990s up to sort of mid - the late 1990's that exchange between the laboratories was absolutely superb. And in this period we rose out of the weapon safety and security exchange, we were able to discuss that really important issues related to nuclear weapon safety and again that help the to catalyze the overall process. The point that I want to make is that unfortunately we have lost that the technical cooperation although the laboratory still work together to some extend, for example I initiated and still carry out with the with the Russian's annually a workshop on plutonium science the fundamental aspects of plutonium science and the Russians are willing to do that but many of the more sensitive things that we used to do are no longer on the table today and if I look that you know perhaps why is that so, on the Russian side what I find my Russian lab director colleague saying is that we need permission from the government to do that. You know during the early 1990s there was this enormous entrepreneurial spirit within these laboratories, that entrepreneurial spirit is - is no longer there because it's not to their advantage to stick their head out and so they are not getting the type of approval or the overall sort of backing to do that. On the US side you know for a variety or a very complicated the end and every difficult reasons that the laboratories have lost their voice in Washington and so they no longer brought to the table and so there large extent what Rose said is really correct. It's important to bring the technical in with the political but we have some how lost the ability to do that effectively.
Pavel Podvig: Thank you first of all I strongly support with the the point that Sig just made that this is the building of institutions is a very important then that's exactly the kind of a catalyst that would deal with the mistress that that actually exist in Russia today and speaking of mistress I think if of many ways you can deal with that. The issue of of US weapons weapons in Europe is one of those and I think you could argue that there are there are benefits in kind of a trying to use that that the issue as a leveraging in talks with Russia and try to get Russian to be more transparent but I would argue that there is a you get actually you get lot more benefit if you if the united states would neither would make that decision to withdrew or withdraw nuclear weapons from Europe unilaterally and present it as a as a kind of a group bill just to Russia and then -.
Rose Gottemoeller: So you would work for that?
Pavel Podvig: I would I would say that that's will deal with a lot of lot of mistress that exists in Russia and then based on that you could do to Russia and say well let's talk about some transparency and things like that I think that might work much better then if you try to sort of use the the whole issue of nuclear weapons in Europe as a leverage in in leverage negotiations I think that's -.
Sid Drell: Okay the word global strike came up both in Rose's remarks and in Graham's remark and it carries with it a some what a message of - well that's something the US can do, it's another area where we have this great conventional superiority which may make the Russians feel insecure in terms of reducing nuclear weapons. Can you just put a few words of reality on a global strike it exists in the US program so far has propped global strike, its whole motivation for using a huge missile, send it half way around the world to deliver a little pop of a few hundred pounds when the notion that turn quickly in get attractive opportunity before it moves. I just ask you to think of the challenge technically that you can at a moment noticed not a pleased surveyed momentum but it at moments noticed to locate a target that's moving as a terrorist threat and and in 15 minutes faster than you could use drums or aircrafts covers and many other options you going to hit that with this pop in a few hundred feet it's through a enormous technical challenge and I believe it's one that has we have thought a lot about but in the mean time politically because it is talked about this greater American technical advance and having conventional missiles sort of long range. It does have a negative impact on the thinking about reducing the nuclear weapons and Washington security in there and so it can do harm it would be real.
Speaker 2: Well back to the first question that Rose raised, I don't think there would be advantages to for going discussion of nuclear weapons in Europe instead put this thing on a hall way plan for global reduction, I think that's down to 500 to a 1000 portions. You can be sure that 480 would not be any more -. So I think you said you will make progress in the whole this problem solves itself.
George Shultz: Do you agree with that Rose?
Rose Gottemoeller: Well I as I said I felt it throughout the process and a lot of my paper did focus on you know how do we create a different mind set first of all in Europe among our European allies. I don't actually see that such a huge problem nowadays but with the Russians particularly so I see a necessity of dealing with the long term - the long term burr under the saddle that NATO nuclear weapons have been for the Russians I do see a necessity of trying to deal with that issue but perhaps it is a more or less confidence building activity that segues then in to the holloway phased approach rather than goes off as a unique negotiation all of its own. I could see fitting those things together.
Speaker 2: That could be part of the incentive for the Russians to to be the interest that's to go ahead in to something that we have been worked about.
George Shultz: I wonder that the - as you look at your papers as we get them ready for we might discuss this interaction in a way.
Sam Nunn: George, just ten seconds intervention. s it possible to at least try to pursue on the tactical battlefield side a swapping of the inventories so we have base line inventories, both sides most important that Russia does if we don't have a good inventory you don't know when one is missing and these weapons are unique in the sense if they can be transported, they are mobile and they are a terrorist dream.
George Shultz: A very good point, it that aspect that must be it has to be really kept in mind. Henry.
Henry Kissinger: I haven't thought about much of this discussion before I it's good reaction I think it's dangerous to separate nuclear deployment in Europe from the overall issue I think it's in our interests to establish the principle that we if a unified security concern that's been in the Europe and the United States, otherwise it will invite all kinds of monopolists to separate Europe from the United States. But I think in fact if there is a global discussion on reduction it will automatically bring about the reduction of of in a good case it's a significant reduction of European deployment. Secondly almost all of this discussion I have been doing on the Russia and the United States which I do not think it's the greatest peaks. Though many of the things are important, none of it is very neutral but I think we have to look into the impact of this on China and and how to bring China into this discussions so that they don't get the idea they have to resist a patrimonial maneuver by the Russia and the United States. Secondly, we have to look at the impact of these discussions of - but I would say relationship between Pakistan and India and how they will conceive and and and how ready they will be to participate in this because I think it's important - it's essential and finally what happens supposing a existing nuclear counties goes totally wrong, supposing the nuclear weapons in the Pakistan fall into the hands of Al Qaeda tribes rulers which is not totally impossible. How then to all the surrounding countries react, you know how India will react but Russia, China and we will then have some obligation for some common approach to that issue. You could remember that we evaded Russia, the Pakistan was listed as their top nuclear consideration so I don't know whether that will lead it but as we go down to the global security management that's what you mentioned becomes an issue that that needs to be studied.
George Shultz: I think without a respect to the Europe and global business there is a special characteristic, non European characteristic to these weapons namely they are special vulnerability to terrorist acquisition that has to be kept in mind, this is same as this point seems to me somehow you have to assert that into this equation than I think for next.
Speaker 3: Well that gets right into what I was going to say Rose on your first question should we you know treat all war heads same or separate attack nodes it seems to me when you are actually talking about negotiated, verified limits of a total number of that HR for me to see how you would have a verified total number of techniques separate from the strategic plan so I think at that point that's got to be nukes rather than one or the other. However it seems to me that it's not unreasonable to imagine that a a sort of another round of the 1991 type initiatives to try to get a better handle on the attack news in particular. Or on our side, Russian war heads that may be particular concern to Russia that we may not pass.
Rose Gottemoeller: You know, essentially unilateral measures.
Speaker 3: Measures were you might have, you might for example imagine that you sat, would take a couple of thousand war heads that it decided to it didn't really need any more. Put them in secure storage and this time allow the other side to come monitor it that they that they were there in storage and that they were secure. And that way in a matter of potentially weeks or months from a a decision, you could have I would want to focus it in particular on weapons that have either no permissive action links or environmental sensing devices or or older models that are easier to bypass. And you could have potentially in a matter of months that have all of those that are in the sense supposed to be the biggest dangers under jointly monitored lack and key. And that would be I think, significant step forward. But it it, I am am always serve the optimist and and I read your paper saying you know, World has a lot of obstacles to view and this kind of stuffs you know to think about. But it when I drop back, I think you know, even if I am Russian, I have I am concerned about the weakness of my conventional forces. I can't imagine why we need more than say, 500 on the east and 500 on the west of tactical nukes. And there is a lot more than physically exhaust in Russia, so that seems to me there is still an opportunity to take a significant chunk of what physically exists now and put it under some kind of jointly monitored biochemical key arrangement. If we really interviewed something similar and may be it's with the European NATO nukes, its may be that's what we get and return for that European NATO nukes.
George Shultz: Thank you. Then moving on to John -
Jim Goodby: Well, I think the connectivity that you are talking about between tactical nuclear weapons and strategic simply comes about through the parallel actions that that, I think you have leveraged totally equivalent to do. I hope this would have a whole series of things that are to be done in the short run. And I think one of those certainly it should be in the tactical nuclear weapons for the reason you mentioned they are terrorist target probably and not to be dealt with that way. But, I think handling them in a discrete fashion at the beginning is probably what to do it and then they have to be emerged, is it the point you mentioned?
George Shultz: General Dvorkin.
Vladimir Dvorkin: Rose raised the most difficult question difficult question which it has social and no progress in resolving it in the whole whole as a range of nuclear issues in the US-Russia Relations. It's especially difficult for Russia. It's probably still still a secret, but I will well, I will just disclose in any group. Russians have their old step doesn't have separate plans for - operations of strategic nuclear forces and tactical nuclear forces. It's thus said. So, it's all lets say, it's a it's a there is a combined or joint plan for forces at their levels. And the division of nuclear forces into strategic and tactical exists only because there there are strategic arms control and very much in the United States. Although I I think that it's necessary to conduct a full scale negotiations of strategic nuclear weapons. The you know, the best approach to tactical nuclear weapons is it will be through consultations. That's a very careful consultations discussing small steps; exactly the way Rose has presented it. We get the process of dealing with nuclear weapons as a whole as a as an integral process. But, the consultations of tactical nuclear weapons should be held separately. Yeah. Like that, I would have a lot of more more things to say about it. But I am asked for for only one minute.
George Shultz: Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: George George, could you ask him to take 30 more seconds to explain the whole why he is is it is it that the the second one is, but if the option you recommended is better than the first. But you are are extremely pessimistic about anything happening? Or, do you think the option of informal consultations in small steps could actually come to some conclusions, which one?
Vladimir Dvorkin: I didn't say that the consultation should be informal. The official consultation process. I simply that all your distinction from negotiations. We just start from already preexisting. So that base of of normal job actions, so on and so forth. And consultations are different because they start where there is no history. And the first step would be the the data exchange on these forces.
George Shultz: Thank you. Well It's been a yes Rose
Rose Gottemoeller: I wonder if I could just say one word in conclusion, and that is to thank everybody. This has been some good input for me. I will say I will confirm that this has been the most difficult issue to pursue in Moscow; and my Russian colleagues wire brushed me regularly on the question of non-strategic nuclear weapons and you know, their concerns about what the US is doing and their determination that nothing should be done to touch the Russian forces. So, this is a very very difficult issue I could see. I just wanted to make one final comment on Global Strike because, I didn't want to imply based on Graham's comment or or Sid's that I am a great proponent of global strike; I am not at all. The only point I was trying to make in my paper and it's a general point. In order to get over the long term barrier that's been in place to even considering new status for the NATO Nuclear Weapons moving them back to corners; whatever we are going to do with them. I think that there has to be a a kind of change of movement; and what I see has happened since the 1990's the last time I looked at this question in the Clinton Administration is that as change of mood has began to occur I think with regard to the Europeans, many of the budget issues surrounding further continuing their own support of deployments has served to to change their mood. But I think in Washington and in the United States over all the set of concepts that we call, "Prompt Global Strike" or "Global Strike" has has begun to change that mood politically in the in the United States. That's the only point I wanted to make; but I am not a fan of it myself. Thank you.
Henry Kissinger: But don't you think that that there are some concern that that generally arise about that country being non-strategic forces? It's really written by China and not by a chart deployments in Europe. And there are deployments in Europe and that our deployments in Europe as just a metaphor for their real concern about the INF concern.
Rose Gottemoeller: I agree with you absolutely, Dr. Kissinger. But it's very interesting to me how silent the Russians are on China. - very silent. And that they really loud - - on Europe. Very loud on Europe being the threat. So it gets to your point about metaphor. But, I do think nevertheless there is a certain political dynamic here and a a political requirement to try to approach the issues as they are particularly from today; which is "Europe as a threat" that we have to weave where the Russians are concerned about.
George Shultz: Its been interesting to me though the morning to see the conversation go back and forth between of recognition that there is a need for some broad umbrella; a vision some sort of sense that global strategies. But and and to have some sort of high level political rearrangement between Russia and the United States let alone with other country on the one hand; and then particular things that we have talked about particularly, in the time since the break. Its also been interesting to me as we have worked our way through this project and people have written to me, - some emotionally supporting what we are doing, but somebody will write occasionally saying, "I think, the idea that you might ever get this there are nuclear weapons, its nonsense. But, I agree with all the steps. It's simple and important to take." And, so the particular things have a very general appeal. And it was also saying to me to emerge in the discussion that there are lot of things that could be done tomorrow to our advantage. They are not depending on anything other than some commonsense particularly on increasing the warning time to use nukes perhaps and few other things like that. Well, I for me it's been a great morning and you deserve lunch. You go down the corridor into a server man you you will see whether there is a buffet lunch set up. And we will be back here to start our afternoon session at 2 O'clock. Thank you.