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• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301630006-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: March 11, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO N REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
PROGRAM ABC Nightline STATION WJLA-TV
ABC Network
DATE March 11, 1985 11:30 P.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
TED KOPPEL: This time the Soviets seem to have opted
for a long-term change. The man who took charge within hours of
Konstantin Chernenko's death represents a new generation. But
what else does he represent? And what, if anything, should we
expect from those U.S.-Soviet arms talks which get underway as
scheduled tomorrow morning?
We'll talk live with Henry Kissinger, with former
British Minister of Defense Denis Healey, and with a former
high-ranking Soviet diplomat, Arkady Shevchenko.
KOPPEL: The transitional period, it would seem, is
over. Another Soviet leader who was too old and too sick when he
took power to hold on to it has died. And now a 54-year-old has
taken over, someone who, theoretically at least, will be around
for a generation. Get used to the name, Mikhail Gorbachev.
According to at least normal life expectancy, Gorbachev should
have plenty of time to put his mark on Soviet affairs.
And take note of something else. Tomorrow morning in
Geneva, just a few hours before the late Soviet President
Konstantin Chernenko is buried, U.S.-Soviet arms talks get
underway. Certainly American negotiators would have understood
if their Soviet counterparts had requested a 48-hour delay, but
no one even asked.
We begin our examination of this new chapter in U.S.-
Soviet affairs by turning to Arkady Shevchenko, a former aide to
Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko, later an Undersecretary of the
U.N., and even later a defector to the United States.
OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
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Mr. Shevchenko, explain that to me. Why this urgency to
continue with those U.S.-Soviet arms talks as scheduled?
ARKADY SHEVCHENKO: The Soviet leadership attach great
importance to the forthcoming arms control negotiations. There
are both domestic and external pressure on the Soviet leadership.
And above all, they're interested in preserving what they call
the strategic military parity.
KOPPEL: I understand that. What I'm talking about now
is a very, very narrow question. No one would have thought
anything was wrong, no one would have believed that the Soviets
placed any lesser premium on those talks if it asked for a
24-hour delay, a 48-hour delay. Why move ahead, literally, as
the funeral arrangements are underway?
SHEVCHENKO: Well, why not? I see no problem there.
KOPPEL: Well, I assure you if an American President
died, that American negotiators would come back for the funeral.
SHEVCHENKO: Well, I'm sorry, but Chernenko cannot be
compared with American President. Soviet Union, Kremlin have the
collective leadership, a few key men who've been running the
country, not only in the Chernenko period of time, but in the
period when Andropov was stricken, even before. So for them it
was no surprise, no problem. They knew what is going to happen.
And why, I mean, to delay negotiations?
KOPPEL: All right. No big deal, then.
SHEVCHENKO: No big deal.
KOPPEL: All right. No bid deal, then, that you have a
54-year-old Party Chairman now? No big deal that this man is
going to be around for 20 years, maybe?
SHEVCHENKO: Let me tell you, Ted, that first of all we
have to be more careful in talking that Gorbachev already become
a person who has a power which Brezhnev had or Khrushchev before
had, because still majority in the Politburo in the hands of the
old people. The party apparatus in the Soviet Union is of older
men, and he has a lot of time to go before he can consolidate his
power and become a real leader.
KOPPEL: I heard one television correspondent -- I'm not
even sure if it was on our network -- but one television cor-
respondent today speak rather glowingly of this Kennedy-like
image. Here you've got this young, enthusiastic, vital new
Soviet leader with his very attractive wife, lovely young
children. Does that make any difference at all?
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SHEVCHENKO: Don't be impressed by that. It's -- of
course, it's very good for the public, I mean, and after the
Soviet leaders for so many years have been actually invalids who
disappear from the public opinion for so long. I mean Gorbachev,
who is intelligent man, who is a very social and well-educated,
and so on and so forth, but we have to have no illusions that we
still deal not with one person, we deal with the Soviet system,
we deal with the Politburo, we deal with the party apparatus in
the Soviet Union, and not just a new leader.
d
ill b
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ith
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ynam
e w
e more
c, w
a new
s
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e,
some changes in the domestic policy of the
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doubt that there will be any changes in the
foreign
Soviet Union.
KOPPEL: All right. Give me a very
quick,
thumbnail sketch. You met him back in 1977.
Your
him in terms that we can understand.
perhaps with
Union. But I
policy of the
if you would,
impressions of
SHEVCHENKO: My impression was very good about him. And
it not only was my impression. Because he was a good manager in
industry, in agriculture in Stavropolskaiya (?) when he was a
First Secretary, and he impressed very much the leader of the
Soviet Union who'd been coming to resort in Kislovodsk, Kosygin,
Andropov and others. And I think he made a career there, because
many other regional leaders in the Soviet Union, the party
leaders, they didn't have such an opportunity.
And I think that there is a potential in Gorbachev for
the future. But let's not exaggerate at this stage. Let's wait
for some time before we come to any conclusion what kind of a
leader he will be.
In the past, you know, how many mistakes have been done
involve the Soviet leaders. Let's wait and see what he will do
in several years, and then we will come to a conclusion.
KOPPEL: On that note of caution, let's take a break.
Later we will talk with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
and with former British Minister of Defense Denis Healey about
the impact of Gorbachev's accession to the power, on the Geneva
arms talks.
But first, when we return, Nightline correspondent James
Walker looks at the issues the two superpowers must deal with at
Geneva.
KOPPEL: When the U.S. delegation to the arms talks
arrived in Geneva this weekend, chief U.S. negotiator Max
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Kampelman warned that the differences between Washington and
Moscow are profound. The Soviet delegation, on its arrival
Sunday, sounded a rare note of agreement, at least on that point.
But the Russians blamed the U.S. and President Reagan's Star Wars
proposal for making the task of arms control so difficult.
Here's a report from Nightline correspondent James
Walker on the issues that must be dealt with.
JAMES WALKER: The selection of Mikhail Gorbachev as
Communist Party Secretary raises a crucial question about the
future course of the Geneva arms control talks -- namely, will
Gorbachev be able to assert himself, as his precedessors
Chernenko and Andropov could not, and fashion-his owh arms
control strategy? The last Soviet leader to do that was Leonid
Brezhnev, the place Moscow, May 1972. In a warm and cordial
atmosphere, Brezhnev sat down with President Nixon to sign the
historic SALT I strategic arms limitation agreement. The
centerpiece was the ABM, or anti-ballistic missile, treaty. Both
sides agreed to deploy only token defenses against a nuclear
missile attack by the other. The agreement began an era of
detente and heightened prospects for future arms control.
Here on the frigid plains of North Dakota can be found
one legacy of the ABM treaty. Each side was permitted only one
ABM base. The U.S. chose to put its here, defending an area
populated by offensive missiles, not by people. The complex went
operational in 1974, but was quickly shut down by a budget-
cutting Congress.
This abandoned anti-missile base is a monument to the
idea that war in the nuclear age was best prevented if both sides
were vulnerable to nuclear annihilation. The doctrine was called
mutual assured destruction. Its nickname, appropriately, was
MAD. MAD was the basis of an arms control process that effec-
tively killed the idea in this country of trying to defend
against a nuclear missile attack.
But all that changed on March 23rd, 1983, when President
Reagan offered a different vision of a future dominated by
something other than the balance of terror..
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: What if free people could live
secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the
threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that
we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles
before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?
WALKER: Ambassador Gerard Smith held negotiate the SALT
I treaty. Smith believes that by resurrecting the idea of
missile defenses, President Reagan undermined the basis of 15
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years of arms control efforts.
AMBASSADOR GERARD SMITH: The premise of the ABM treaty,
I think, has been proved correct: that if you have a hold on
defenses, the prospect of getting limitations on offensives is
somewhat better.
FRED IKLE: That theory has been totally disproven,
because, as you know, the Soviet arms buildup in strategic forces
continued year after year. For the last 15 years they've had the
biggest nuclear buildup in history, the ABM treaty notwith-
standing.
And indeed, as we now look back, many of us realize an
intellectual mistake was made.
WALKER: Fred Ikle also worked on the SALT negotiations.
Now a top Pentagon official, he offers a quite different approach
to arms reductions.
IKLE: We will, as the President indicated, use the
negotiations in Geneva to discuss a different concept, where we
both could move to a relationship where defensive forces become
increasingly more dominant, where we could make this transition
in a stable fashion, and where we then could reduce offensive
forces sharply, and eventually eliminate nuclear offensive
systems.
WALKER: The Reagan strategy emphasizing defense relies
on scientific developments since the early 1970s. The ABM
systems of that time used high-speed rockets with nuclear
warheads to intercept incoming weapons high above the United
States. But this type of defense was easily overwhelmed by
another technical innovation that made it possible to pack
several nuclear warheads into the nose cone of a single missile.
Now, recent laboratory experiments with lasers and
particle beams offer hope that an effective non-nuclear missile
defense may now be possible. These weapons would be based in
space to destroy Soviet missiles shortly after launch, before
they can deploy their numerous harder-to-hit warheads.
President Reagan's $30 billion research program on these
defensive technologies is considered by some to be an additional
obstacle to arms control.
AMBASSADOR SMITH: What I'm afraid of is that by seeking
a technical solution, we are preventing the arrival of a real
solution which lies in agreements between the two parties.
WALKER: The two negotiating teams are now in Geneva,
set to begin their long-awaited talks tomorrow. President Reagan
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appears determined to go ahead with his Strategic Defense
Initiative, hoping that it will lead to a more secure world. The
Soviets are equally determined to stop it, saying that it can
only set off a new arms race in space.
The death of Konstantin Chernenko and the rise of
Mikhail Gorbachev seem to have had no effect on Soviet strategy
in Geneva. The differences between the two sides are so profound
that no one is expecting an agreement any time soon.
KOPPEL: When we come back we'll discuss the impact of
the Kremlin changeover on the Geneva talks with former Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger and with Denis Healey, former British
Minister of Defense, who talked at length with Gorbachev when the
Soviet official visited London last December.
KOPPEL: Joining us live now from our affiliate KTRK in
Houston is Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State; and in our
New York studios, Denis Healey, British Labor Party spokesman on
foreign affairs and former Minister of Defense. Mr. Healey has
met and talked with both Mikhail Gorbachev, the new Soviet
leader, and with his predecessor, Konstantin Chernenko.
I hope you'll understand if we focus greater interest at
the moment on the man who has taken power. Do you accept what
Mr. Shevchenko said at the top of this program, that it will be a
long time before he really asserts control?
DENIS HEALEY: No, I don't actually believe that. I
think, to begin with, the age of the Politburo has gone down a
good deal since Andropov died, because the old men who died have
not been replaced, and the young men whom Andropov brought in,
like Varotnikov (?), Aliyev, Chebrikov, are now major figures,
along with Romanov and Gorbachev himself.
So, I think Gorbachev's influence, the fact that he's
been clearly slated to take over for the last year, will be very
substantial right away, but not in the arms control field. When
we met him we found that he constantly asked General Chervov (?),
who is an old veteran, right back from SALT I, to answer the
detail questions.
I think Gorbachev's main interest will be seeing that
something is done to reduce the crushing burden of armaments on
the Soviet Union, because he's primarily concerned to revive the
Soviet economy, and he knows that can't happen unless they can
provide the sort of advanced consumer goods which skilled workers
in Russia now want, which they can't have so long as they're
spending this money on arms.
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And don't forget, according to the CIA, since 1976
Soviet arms spending has been increasing at only half the rate of
American arms spending. And since President Reagan came in,
American spending's gone up 50 percent in real terms, and Soviet
only 10 percent.
But even so, it's an unacceptable burden for the
Russians if they want to improve their economic performance.
KOPPEL: Dr. Kissinger, that, then, poses the Russians
with a considerable dilemma. Because if, as President Reagan has
said, he intends to go ahead with the Strategic Defense Initia-
tive, Star Wars as it's come to be known, that is going to be a
multi-multi-multi-billion-dollar program. And if the Soviets
have to match it, it'll cost them far more than they've had to
spend.
HENRY KISSINGER: Well, I'd like to make two comments.
First, I don't think one can judge Gorbachev's influence
only by his relationship to the older generation. In the past,
any new General Secretary has had to assert himself, even against
his contemporaries. And the exact lineup between Gorbachev,
Romanov, Aliyev, and all the others will not become apparent for
a year or two. So he will have to spend a fair amount of his
time on consolidating his domestic position.
Secondly, of course the strategic defense will impose a
burden on the Soviet Union. The question is, what kind of an
arms agreement ae they prepared to make in order to avoid that
burden? And must we give up the concept of strategic defense in
order to reach it? And there, I believe that simply reducing
offensive weapons at the number of weapons that have been reached
will not really make a difference, a significance difference to
the threat to humanity. And therefore, it might ease the burden
to the Soviet economy somewhat; it will not change the basic
strategic equation, particularly..
KOPPEL: Let me go back to a question that I asked Mr.
Shevchenko at the beginning of this program. And it wasn't as
whimsical a question as it may have seemed. I am wondering why
it is that the -- and I interpret it -- and give me your sense of
it, if you would, Dr. Kissinger -- I interpret it a little bit as
Soviet posturing for publicity purposes -- this emphasis on the
U.S.-Soviet arms talks, which from everything I've heard are
expected to go on for years before anyone expects anything to
come out of them. Why, in that context, was another day or two
so important to them?
KISSINGER: Well, because I think they wanted to
emphasize for the American public the importance of it. I don't
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think that 48 hours would have made any difference to the outcome
of these talks.
Incidentally, I believe that the talks will conclude
fairly rapidly, I think in something like 18 months.
I want to repeat that the significant problem is what is
the agreement going to look like. This debate about strategic
defense is taking on somewhat absurd proportions. We have spent
-- President Reagan has dedicated $30 billion to research.
President Carter had dedicated $19 billion for research. So
we're speaking about $11 billion difference over a five-year
period. And what exactly is it that the Soviets are asking us to
do? Are we supposed to stop research? Are we supposed to stop
testing? What is it that they want from us?
HEALEY: I think what they want they've made quite
clear. I talked about this to Zagardin (?) when I was in Moscow
in November, and also to Mr. Gorbachev. They're worried, like
the last three Secretaries of State under the last three American
Presidents, that President Reagan's stated aim is unachievable,
that the most America can hope to achieve is point defense of
some of its land-based missiles. And if that's the purpose, to
the Russians it looks as if they're trying to prepare for a
possible first strike against the Soviet Union, so that only a
small proportion of the Soviet missiles can come back at the
United States, and enough of those can be stopped on the way by
this system.
And I think the Russians are anxious, not to stop
research, because we all know you can't verify what happens in
laboratories or people's minds, but to stop things which can be
verified, which are visible, like the tests of components in a
space-based system, the shuttle test which is now planned, I
gather, for two years' time.
And the most interesting thing is President Reagan did
offer last year the possibility of a moratorium on anti-satellite
tests. Mr. Burt of the State Department let it be known he was
in favor of this. It now seems to have fallen out of the window.
And I think the basic objective must be to get that sort of
agreement, because the thing is urgent. The Russians...
KOPPEL: All right.
HEALEY: Let me make this point. The Russians are...
KOPPEL: We're coming down to our last couple of
HEALEY: Could I just make this central point?
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HEALEY: This is urgent. And that's why the talks have
started right away, because the Russians have to device their
next five-year plan at the end of this year, and fill all the
vacancies in the Central Committee and the Politburo. And if
progress hasn't been made in that period, then the risk is that
anything that Gorbachev hopes to achieve may be frustrated.
KISSINGER: But it doesn't make any sense to ask us to
stop development of weapons that won't exist for ten years before
we even know by how far they are willing to reduce their of-
fensive weapons, especially the heavy weapons that are aimed at
our missiles.
And moreover, if they are worried that all we can
achieve is a point defense of our missiles, their retaliatory
capacity will remain intact because they can always attack our
cities if we should attack their missiles.
KOPPEL: Dr. Kissinger, let me jump in and pick up on
something you said a moment ago. You expressed the view that you
thought these talks would actually achieve something, or at least
be over, within 18 months. Why?
KISSINGER: I think that if one reads between the lines
what everybody is saying, the outline of some agreement like SALT
II, or reduce to a level of 1800 intermediate-range missiles,
limited to something like a formula of -- whatever the number is
on each side -- and then some form of words that permits research
to continue and defers testing for further negotiations seems to
me very probable.
I wouldn't be very crazy about such an agreement, but
that seems to me, between the lines, is what people are saying on
our side.
KOPPEL: Mr. Healey, a final thought just on that. Do
you think these talks will be long-lasting, and do you think that
they will achieve anything?
HEALEY: My fear is that if they don't achieve something
quickly, events in the Soviet Union may preclude any real
advance. And it's no good talking in terms of SALT I and II.
Some of the new weapons being developed, anti-satellite systems
which could destroy the eyes and ears which give early warning to
both sides, cruise missiles, which are easily hidden and can
carry nuclear or conventional weapons, those things will [be]
beyond the point of no return unless agreement is reached to stop
them in the next year.
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