I really had high hopes as a result of the work we did on the MX commission, that we had in fact forged something which would continue and on which we would have a serious exchange of views. It fell apart. I think it fell apart on both sides, the Legislature and the Executive.

I think that we need somehow to make a more serious effort and I certainly commend this committee, and especially the gentlemen here now, to pursue and repair that. We have got to talk to each other at two ends of the avenue in which we have not been▬▬

Mr. HUNTER. Are you referring perhaps to the congressional initiatives that included the ASAT ban, the test ban, the chemical ban and SALT sublimits, which are unilaterally surrendered by Congress before the President went to Iceland?

General ScowCROFT. I am referring to all those things. There is a sniping back and forth.

On the MX commission, when the 100 MX's weren't proposed, the administration says there was a bargain, the hell with you, so we will go to three warheads. It has been that kind of game and we can't afford it, and there are enough good people at both ends that we can somehow break this down and get into a serious dialog, I think we can solve the problem.

Mr. STRATTON. You said in your opening remarks, in responding to Mr. Aspin, that there hadn't been enough guts. I think that has been the problem in the Congress. We haven't had enough guts to recognize what the threat is and to do something serious about it. We are running around the edges here with arms control measures which aren't going to stop the Soviet Union as Brzezinski has been pointing out in his book.

General ScowCROFT. I agree completely, Mr. Stratton.

But, you know, we are in the curious position now that the people that you criticize are now, generally speaking, on the right of the administration as a result of Reykjavik, further confusing the problem.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, let me ask one question. Apparently, at Reykjavik Mr. Gorbachev spent a great deal of time telling the President of his concern about the potential for a U.S. first strike. From the very start of SDI in March of 1983, the President said he recognized there was a linkage with what we are doing with strategic offensive modernization.

What about that? Do the Soviets have a legitimate concern? When you look at MX and Minuteman 3 and Midgetman and D-5, when you add up all those warheads that we could potentially deploy over the next few years with this concept of a defense, do they have a legitimate concern that we are trying to develop a first strike potential, where we could hit them and then have enough of a defense to soak up a ragged response on their part? Because apparently this was something Mr. Gorbachev spent a lot of time discussing with President Reagan, which we didn't get much feedback on from our side.

Is their concern on this something that we are going to have to take into account?

Mr. DEUTCH. My own view on that, Mr. Dicks, is that the modernization program that has been proposed by the Scowcroft Commission and elsewhere realistically appraised in the context of

what a ballistic missile defense, imagined future ballistic defensecertainly it is not present now-and the fact the Soviet Union has a considerable submarine based force, as well, means that it would be, in my judgment, very unlikely for the Soviets to be able to imagine that or could perceive we could have the capability of really carrying out a credible first strike, just as we don't view it as part of our credible strategy.

I think it is hard to see why the modernization program we have undertaken would lead the Soviets to that serious conclusion.

Mr. Dicks. Even including D-5 now?

Mr. DEUTCH. Including D-5. You know, the number of submarines at sea is not going to be as high as 20.

Mr. DICKS. I understand that.

Mr. DEUTCH. Second, if Mr. Gorbachev were to hold that view genuinely, you might ask what he might expect an American President's reaction to be to the build-up of Soviet forces for the past 10 or 15 years, because the growth in their number of warheads and the growth of their missile systems, both sub-launched and landbased, has also been exceedingly considerable, and, in fact, because of the very substantial throw-weight advantage, gives them possibility for substantial growth. I might add that they also have a different ballistic missile defense possibility for breakout. If he is generally concerned about the U.S. threat, it seems that he would

Mr. DICKS. But because our forces are assymetrical, because they have 60, 70 percent of their force structure in land-based ICBM's that are fixed targets, they are more vulnerable in terms of their total force structure to a first strike.

Mr. DEUTCH. Only in percentage terms, Mr. Dicks. They have so much more throw-weight that the 30 percent that they have in their sub-launched force represents the potential of many more warheads than we have in our Trident force, if they wish to configure their submarines that way.

Mr. WOOLSEY. Let me add one point, Congressman Dicks. We went through a period, I think, around the time of the ABM treaty, in which it would have been plausible, at least imaginable, and I think many Americans probably hoped, that both sides wouldthat is neither side would-move toward effective counter-force, counter-silo systems.

I think it is quite clear that any hopes that existed in the West for that were principally and first dashed by the Soviet development of effective large MIRVed counter-force ICBM's. And by the end of the 1970's and the beginning of the 1980's, even though Minuteman 3 does have some accuracy, the combination of numbers and hardness of Soviet silos and of numbers and accuracies and yield of Soviet warheads meant that the Soviet Union could do a much better job of putting the U.S. ICBM force at risk than the U.S. could do of putting the Soviet ICBM force at risk.

I don't think there was a way in which the United States could responsibly have let that situation continue. I am not surprised that Mr. Gorbachev or any other Soviet leader would love to have it continued, but I don't believe that we could responsibly have foregone developing counter-force systems ourselves in order to put Soviet silos at risk in the same way they had put our silos at risk.

Now, out of that growth of our own programs in the last few years-D-5, MX, hopefully the small mobile ICBM-we may be able to encourage ourselves to move to a rather better strategic relationship, one in which first and foremost our own systems are evolving in a direction such that they would be more survivable because they are mobile, and in which we can do nothing to stop them and so the Soviet Union is doing the same thing.

If we can do this successfully, over the course of the next decade or so, one might glance up and find that even though the Soviets had still a very high proportion of their ICBM force, of their total strategic forces, in ICBM's, a rather high proportion of that ICBM force was mobile and, therefore, not particularly vulnerable. And from the Soviet point of view, they would say, I would think, that that would be desirable.

But I don't blame Mr. Gorbachev at all for trying to bring pressure on the President, and Soviet negotiators, at a much lower level, have done that with me off and on for many years, to try to point out how destabilizing and unfortunate it is that the United States is developing these counterforce systems.

I think our response has got to be, yes, it really is a shame that you moved forward with the SS-9 and the SS-18 in the way you did and that we had to go through all this.

Next time around maybe we can evolve things in a more stabilizing direction.

General ScowCROFT. If I were a Soviet planner, I would not be concerned about a first strike based on the character of our offensive modernization programs as they presently exist. But I would contemplate that in conjunction with the development of a strategic defense that it would not be that I would have to plan on a contingency that the U.S. might consider it could launch an offensive first strike with a SDI sufficiently robust to intercept what could be a ragged response.

I really think, advertently or inadvertently, that Reykjavik proposals were designed to deal with that possibility. Because if, in fact, you get rid of your striking force first, then you remove that potential instability.

Mr. DICKS. Let me ask you this. I think that what Mr. Reagan tried to do was to give up our ICBM's and our SLBM's to try and save his SDI program-that is what drove him to lay his proposal on the table.

I don't think it was in our national security interest, but I think that is why he did it.

Now, is there any comment on that?

General ScowCROFT. I guess I would say that is implicit in the way I described it. I wouldn't put it quite so crudely as you, because I do believe-I think the President has a philosophical vision of where he wants to go, but the net effect is, absolutely, to do just that.

Mr. DICKS. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, thank you very much. It was a very interesting morning.

Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m. the panel adjourned subject to the call of the Chair.]

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

DEFENSE POLICY PANEL OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES,

Washington, DC, Wednesday, December 10, 1986.

The panel met, pursuant to call, at 9 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. This is the Defense Policy Panel which is continuing-and now just about winding up its series of hearings on the Reykjavik Summit.

We have had a series of witnesses from the Administration beginning with Richard Perle, followed by Ken Adelman, followed by Admiral Crowe, followed by Paul Nitze. Then we have had some outside witnesses.

We have heard from Jim Schlesinger. We have heard from a panel of former negotiators, people in previous Administrations who have negotiated with the Soviet Union.

We have heard from some members of the Scowcroft Commission and now we are very, very pleased to have with us General Rogers. We have one more hearing in the series, and that is going to be a closed session with Admiral Crowe, and that is now scheduled for Friday afternoon.

That session will wrap up this series of hearings and then we will be issuing a couple of reports on the Reykjavik Summit.

Let me say this morning I am very, very pleased to have before us a gentleman whom I admire and trust. I have long been very, very interested in what he says and very faithful in following what he has to say. Many of the things he talks about are things we ought to be doing.

It is a very great pleasure and honor, sir, to welcome you, General Bernard Rogers, before our committee. You have had a long and distinguished career in many posts in the Army. You have both the Joint Chiefs' perspective and the CINCs' perspective, having been the Commander-in-Chief in Europe since 1979.

General Rogers, welcome to the committee. We would like you to say whatever you would like and then, sir, we would like to ask you questions.

STATEMENT OF GEN. BERNARD ROGERS, SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER, EUROPE

General ROGERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I am pleased to have this opportunity to meet with this group and discuss some of the issues that are on your mind and on

mine. At the outset, I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, that so there is no confusion, the political authorities of NATO have re-affirmed recently that the Secretary General and the major NATO commanders-I am one of the latter-and the Chairman of the Military Committee, do not appear as NATO personnel before national parliaments, legislatures and congresses.

So that really means I am appearing in my role as U.S. Commander-in-Chief, European Command, but I have a fairly intimate knowledge of what the SACEUR thinks.

It might be helpful if I did offer some general comments in two areas. First, to remind you of the principle of NATO's deterrent strategy of Flexible Response and Forward Defense and, second, the approach taken to arms reduction negotiations at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe, SHAPE, give you my thoughts of how we do our business at SHAPE with respect to arms reduction.

With respect to the principle of our deterrent strategy of Flexible Response, of the three responses that are envisioned under that strategy, first, direct offense to defeat an attack or to force the burden of escalation on the shoulders of the aggressor-which is obviously our preferred attack-and second, deliberate escalation on our part to include the possible first use of nuclear weapons, it is the third response, the general nuclear response, which is the guarantor of our deterrent.

It is the second response, deliberate escalation to the first use of nuclear weapons, which might well lead to escalation to the general nuclear exchange, the one thing that the Soviet Union fears. It is because of that fear, that it is this third response, the general nuclear response, that guarantees our deterrence.

The policy of NATO is that it will never use any weapon first in an aggressive manner, but it does intend to defend itself.

As a consequence, if our deterrent is to be credible-and that is the mission of our strategy, the prevention of war-then the nuclear weapons that we use in our first use response must be able to reach Soviet soil from West European soil.

We must be able to put the Soviets in the same position they have had us in for so many years with weapons in the Soviet Union that could reach West European soil. It was for that reason that the decision was made on 12 December 1979 to put the ground launched cruise missiles and the Pershing II's on West European soil starting in December 1983.

In 1979, the only weapon system that we were going to have in Western Europe to reach Soviet soil was going to be the F-111 airplane, because the British Vulcan was going out of the U.K. inventory. A gap in our spectrum of deterrence was developing, as we were reminded by Helmut Schmidt in his speech in 1977.

So it was the deployment track to fill the gap in our spectrum of deterrence, which was the driving factor for that decision.

The second track, the negotiating track, was adopted in order that the first track would be approved. It was better to have two tracks than no track. But I find now, having been there at the time the decision was made in December 1979, the tendency is to forget the primacy of the first track, which was to deploy those weapon systems to fill that gap in our spectrum of deterrence.