HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

DEFENSE POLICY PANEL OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES,

Washington, DC, Friday, December 5, 1986.

The panel met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Les Aspin (chairman of the panel) presiding.

STATEMENT OF HON. LES ASPIN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM WISCONSIN, CHAIRMAN, DEFENSE POLICY PANEL OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

The CHAIRMAN. The meeting will come to order.

We are proceeding in our series of hearings on the Reykjavik summit. We have had a series of witnesses from the administration: Richard Perle, Ken Adelman, and Admiral Crowe. Yesterday we had Paul Nitze. We have had some outside witnesses: Jim Schlesinger, and a panel of negotiators, people who had negotiated in other administrations with the Soviet Union.

This morning we are very pleased to welcome a very distinguished panel of people who are more trouble than they are worth, you get into a lot of trouble if you get close to these guys, but never mind. They always have a lot of things to say, so maybe they have something to say about the Iceland summit.

Let me welcome our distinguished panel this morning, which is composed of the hard-core of the Scowcroft Commission: General Brent Scowcroft, John Deutch, and Jim Woolsey.

Welcome, gentlemen. Why don't you proceed with any kind of statements you would like to make and then we will talk about the Iceland summit.

STATEMENT OF GEN. BRENT SCOWCROFT

General ScowCROFT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a great pleasure for this great crew to be here to inflict ourselves upon you once again. Why don't we start out with a few thoughts about the summit and its impact on deterrence; for example, verification aspects of it and strategic force modernization, and then respond to your questions.

I think that the Reykjavik summit in part was designed both to give a lift to the American people to change terms of the debate and to lift us beyond the haggling around with small adjustments to force structures which were established for very different reasons than arms control.

The purpose of Reykjavik fits in reasonably well in some of its major components, especially the zero ballistic missile notion, with that of SDI in two respects. If the purpose of the Strategic Defense Initiative is to make ballistic missiles impotent and obsolete, then

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arms control can provide a service in reducing the threat which would have to be dealt with by an SDI.

In addition, I think that what Reykjavik does is to offer a way to alleviate the instabilities pointed out by a lot of opponents of SDI. That is, as you add to defenses, you increase instabilities and the possibility of a first strike by someone who sees himself outflanked. If you remove your offensive forces before you deploy defenses, that kind of instability may be avoided.

All of this is fairly heady stuff. I think fundamentally, however, the problem is that whatever the abstract benefits of going in this direction they have fundamentally struck at the policy of strategic deterrence, which has been the bedrock of American policy toward the Soviet Union for the last 40 years. They have struck at it in part advertently, in part inadvertently, but without at the same time having a convincing structure to put in its place. I think that is the fundamental concern that we would have with the proposals at Reykjavik.

On the strategic part, with respect to zero ballistic missiles, I don't know what the effect of a zero ballistic missile would be. I have some notions, but I am not sure. Neither does anybody else know what the effect would be.

To make that proposal, with all the implications it has for the deterrent posture we have had, which is fundamentally to rely on the threat of the use of nuclear weapons to deter Soviet aggressive behavior, is, I think, dangerous.

On the INF level, I fear what has happened is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles. We got off track on that in late 1981 with the zero option. That had some merit to the extent that at that time the Soviets had a deployment and we only had something on paper.

But the fundamental purpose of that INF deployment was to recouple the American strategic deterrent to the defense of Europe, which had been seriously eroded as the Soviets developed their own nuclear capability. It was a confidence-building measure, if you will, for the Europeans. To revert to a zero/zero INF in Europe, even though the Soviets get rid of far more forces than we, undercuts that psychological recoupling, and militarily, incidentally, leaves us with no counter to between 500 and 700 shorter range systems, which can perform many of the tasks of the SS-20.

So I think that fundamentally the problem of Reykjavik is the doubt that it has cast on the structure of deterrence, without offering a convincing replacement at this point in time.

The CHAIRMAN. John or Jim.

STATEMENT OF JAMES WOOLSEY

Mr. WOOLSEY. I would like to say a few words about the verifiability as I see it of the zero ballistic missile proposal. I want to stress that my comments are limited to that and not to the rather more modest suggestion for the end of a five-year period, which was also part of the Reykjavik proposal. I am talking about the proposal that ballistic missiles be entirely banned by 1996.

It has been suggested, I understand, that a ban would be easier to verify than an agreement which allowed a few of something, and

I suppose that is true in a sense. It is also easier to verify than the Soviet proposal-which we apparently discussed somewhat favorably at one point-a ban on all nuclear weapons. But these are such close siblings, and I think so highly unverifiable, that the difference between them in terms of verifiability are modest.

The point is that in any proposal in which we have agreed to ban all ballistic missiles by a specific period, such as by 1996, our offensive ballistic missile deterrent has been destroyed, because we keep agreements. The Soviet Union has a rather different attitude toward how close it is willing to cleave to agreements or whether to violate them.

We have seen violations of the ABM treaty with the Krasnoyarsk radar. We have seen encryption of telemetry. We have seen them deploy an SS-25 saying that it is a modification of an SS-13. To my mind that is a little bit like saying an F-16 is a modification of a Korean-war vintage Saber jet. It is true they are both single-engine jet fighters. The Soviets have already developed a small, mobile ICBM and deployed it.

The Soviet Union is, if not the most secretive, one of a handful of the most secretive societies on earth. It has the largest land mass on earth. The opportunities for covert production, storage and maintenance of a ballistic missile force, small and mobile, in that land mass and in that type of society are extraordinarily great.

Reliability, it would seem to me, could reasonably be tested by space launches occasionally of a vehicle which would serve as a ballistic missile. We really would be faced, in a zero ballistic missile world, with a Soviet Union which had every prospect of being able to retain a ballistic missile force while we did not.

The point about the great difficulty with-and I think, frankly, the extreme lack of wisdom behind the zero ballistic missile proposal-is that the advantage of the Soviets of being able to maintain even a small force is very great once we have destroyed our own deterrent, particularly the most survivable part of that deterrent, the ballistic missiles on our submarine force.

Now, as long as one is talking theoretically about a world free of ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons at some point in the future, some vague point in the future, that is one thing. That point in the future might be the same day at which the Soviet state withered away. It might be some time rather far down the road. That sort of talk, it seems to me, comes under the category of rather general hopes.

But once a date is attached to such a proposal, such as 1996, then we are, I think, rather clearly and implicitly saying that within that time period, we believe that there would be a reasonable verification regime for zero ballistic missiles, a regime under which we could verify, to our satisfaction, the absence of Soviet ballistic missiles. To my mind, that would require at the very least a completely different type of Soviet state than the one which exists today. It would require a Soviet state which, not to put too fine a point on it, had publications such as Aviation Week which carried Soviet classified programs in great detail, had committees of the Supreme Soviet which questioned members of the Politburo about their programs in public, and so on. Even that might well not be enough. It would require a conversion by 1996 by the Soviet leadership to a

commitment to a free and open society, and if that conversion occurred, arms control would, I imagine, be lost somewhere in the noise.

So I believe that talk and proposals which point toward a specific date within a decade, by which it would be reasonably verifiable for the United States to be able to trust that it could have confidence in an arms control agreement that had zero ballistic missiles-I believe that a proposal of that sort is entirely unsound, unwise, and irresponsible.

The CHAIRMAN. John.

STATEMENT OF PROF. JOHN DEUTCH

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Because of your generous opening remarks, I thought that what I might do is give you some views about modernization of the ICBM force.

The CHAIRMAN. I am having trouble hearing. Pull the mike a little closer.

Mr. DEUTCH. My colleagues here have mentioned that the fundamental assumptions under the Iceland summit is that a world without ballistic missiles, ICBM's and SLBM's and with SDI, is a safer place for the alliance and a world in which there is a reduced probability of nuclear war. I think that is a tempting proposition. I also believe that it is a false proposition.

Without ballistic missiles, as Brent and Jim have mentioned, it would be difficult to deter aggression in Europe. There would be the remaining vexing problems of short-range ballistic missiles, bombers and cruise missiles. There is the issue of the character of Soviet ambitions and the questions of verification.

Accordingly, I believe that my colleagues and I share an interest in seeing this Nation continue modernization of their ICBM forces. You may recall the Presidential Commission, which General Scowcroft chaired and which we were members of, put forward a package to the administration and the Congress which involved in my judgment, modest but important advances in the approaches to arms control, that stressed stability, and lowered the probability of the outbreak of nuclear war, a proposal for the deployment of 100 MX missiles in Minuteman silos, and most importantly, a small ICBM, 500, let's say, based on hard, mobile launchers on Southwest military bases.

The point I would like to make to you, to this committee, is that these views about the importance of maintaining deterrence for this Nation and for the alliance is that this modernization program for intercontinental ballistic missiles is still important.

The principal and paramount step that should be taken is to proceed with the full-scale system development of the small ICBM. The weight of that ICBM should be 37,000 pounds and it should be initially configured to carry a single warhead.

This is an expensive system, but it is a survivable system, one which can absorb very large Soviet attacks and it provides needed prompt hard-target capability for this nation.

As a second matter, my colleagues and I continue to believe that the possibility should be maintained for the deployment of 100

MXs. We are well aware of the views of the various members of Congress on this subject, and would note that the decision to deploy another 50 MX's does not have to be taken today or even in the very near term. The decision should depend upon how circumstances evolve over the next couple of years.

What is important is that one decides upon a basing system for that possible deployment of additional MX's, and there is some interest in what possible different basic modes might be.

I think that it would be wise to proceed during the coming year to support some research and development for MX basing in contrast to procurement of additional missiles for deployment.

What kind of basing makes sense? Our commission, after a great deal of debate with a variety of points of views expressed, came forward with a proposal for basing MX in Minuteman silos. In my judgment, the reasons for that were primarily that the deployment by the United States of MX in Minuteman silos gives the Soviets a very severe problem with the survivability of their own ICBM force the same problem that we face with ours-and, therefore, provides them with an incentive to negotiate sensible, reasonable and measured arms control reductions through the reductions of large throw-away, fixed, land-based missiles. I believe the rationale is still valid and should still be pursued.

Whether the basing is in Minuteman silos, or for an additional 50 MX's and possibly the initial 50 MXs, or in some other basing mode is a matter on which I personally, and I believe my colleagues, have an open mind.

I understand the administration may put forward a proposal to examine basing of an additional 50 MX missiles on railroad trains. In my judgment, if such a basing mode would not add significant additional basing costs to the base-line proposal of MX in Minuteman silos, it would be worthwhile to spend considerable effort on examining that development option.

In sum, the assumptions behind the Iceland summit, in my judgment, are not sufficient to assume that we will soon be or even should be aiming for a world without ballistic missiles, whether they are ICBM's or SLBM's. Accordingly we have to turn back to those vexing and difficult problems that are so hard to deal with. I have provided you with what I believe is the judgment of this group, of us three, that the original path that was agreed upon, while certainly imperfect, as is any path in the real world, remains one that should guide our policy direction of ICBM modernization. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Let me ask some questions just to start off, and then I will let my colleagues ask some. Are you aware that our proposal to ban mobile missiles is still part of our position in Geneva and the follow-up to Reykjavik?

Mr. DEUTCH. Mr. Chairman, there may be some difference of understanding about this, but it is my impression that that is not currently part of the administration proposal, although I am not the correct one to speak definitively on that. Perhaps one of my colleagues is closer to recent developments.

The CHAIRMAN. Let's leave that for a second. Let me just focus on the proposal as we know it.