terrence. My own view is that it's unlikely that we're going to find any magic formula that will permit us to escape from the box of nuclear deterrence....

Let's assume 60 percent of all the nuclear weaponns on both sides were destroyed, an event whose possibility I would calculate as somewhere between epsilon and delta....In other words, you have to go so far from where we are now to a period in which there isn't a very complex game of nuclear deterrence, that I think we're in it for the long term....

On the question of the forces, again, without sort of going into yea or nay on particular systems, I would just try to add one point that hasn't been quite spelled out so far. This whole issue of limited nuclear options, limited nuclear war, I feel is much less motivated by political considerations or doctrinal considerations. In this particular case I'm a believer that it's technology-push that's at the forefront...It's not a matter of the technical community sort of sitting on their hands, you know. They've been pushing forward and developing new systems and letting the technology lead them. Now we have these weapons, now it's up to the decision-makers to figure out the reason for their use....We have to now really invent. I would submit, a doctrine to explain, to rationalize, the need for the numbers of weapons that we have. And it's true I think on the Soviet side as well.

Sherwin: There are so many interesting points on the table that I hardly know where to begin....The first is Michael's comment about we need to rationalize the doctrine to fit the technology that exists....I think that's exactly where we have to insert ourselves and stop, that we can't keep allowing the engineers to create weapons that will control the international situation....Now we can only do that, of course, in partnership with the Soviet Union, and that's what START is all about...

I would say, point two, that in terms of recommendations, that it is the extended-nuclear umbrella that we have back away from....It's getting too dangerous. The weapons are getting too sophisticated. There are too many of them. They're being used to counter too many situations, and we have to begin to move back to a position of nuclear weapons for deterrence of nuclear war. And I think that a no-first use approach is a good step. Not because that's going to solve anything; in fact, it clearly will create, temporarily, some other problems. But it's a step in the right direction, if taken in the right spirit....I certainly would be for taking that step unilaterally. In other words, a general point that I would make is that arms control and the general political situation are totally linked, and that you can't have an arms control--a positive arms control policy--without a detente policy....

I would also argue that if we're going to reverse the nuclear arms race, the general trend of more and more and more, the technological push, the technological imperative, what we need to do is begin to dismantle a part of the structure that has propelled the nuclear arms race in the post-war period, and that is what we have to begin to dismantle. Let's call it the American dominance of NATO. I think that West Germany, for example, has to be encouraged in its reorientation of the expansion of its interests towards the East, towards the Soviet Union, that it is really only Germany in reorienting itself towards playing something of a middle ground, the honest broker between the East and West, that will create an atmosphere in which the United States and the Soviet Union can reach some genuine progress on detente. Because as long as Russia fears a potential West German threat, there will never really be any progress between the United States and the Soviet Union. So in other words what I'm saying is that everything ties in to everything else in the most fundamental way.

Nye: Let me reply on the extended deterrence. I think it still is important. In the balance of power since 1945 it has rested on the back of the major industrial areas of the world....close to the Soviet Union, which sets some of the basic dilemma of extending deterrence....The arguments about extended deterrence being dead: I think it's premature. But you are probably going to work in a mixture where there'll have to be more of a conventional component in it than a nuclear component...

I think I would depart from the no-first use declaration because it does have a strong effect on Europeans....Everything I've seen of European responses, they want the residual uncertainly in the Russians' mind that a war in Europe on conventional terms could lead to a nuclear escalation, and the idea of going to a purely non-nuclear defense. I think, creates considerable anxiety. I think you can get about 85 percent of the benefits that a no-first use pledge would bring about...while avoiding some of those intense political costs of creating uncertainty in Europe by a declaration that nuclear weapons are a weapon of last resort....You would have a no-first-nuclear use so long as there has been a withdrawal of conventional troops.

Mandelbaum: I would say perhaps a couple of things about the European issue and extended deterrence. I myself don't feel that a no-first use pledge would make much difference as long as there are 7000 or I guess now 6000 American nuclear weapons in Europe. I don't think the Soviet Union would act on the assumption that the United States would not use these weapons even if the American president said we wouldn't. So I think they have and will continue to have a deterrent effect by their very presence....One of the things that Marty Sherwin said seemed to me a very provocative suggestion--that...control of nuclear weapons depended on the international climate and the international climate would be improved if West Germany, at least if I understand it correctly, moved away from a close association with the United States and served as more of a bridge between East and West....

Extended deterrence is the policy made necessary by the Atlantic alliance and the American effective monopoly of nuclear weapons, although not total monopoly of nuclear weapons within the alliance. As long as that political arrangement holds there will have to be extended deterrence, and the United States will have to worry about the requirements for it....I don't think there's likely to be a complete rapprochement between West Germany and the Soviet Union as long as the Soviet Union in effect occupies a quarter of the German nation.

Sherwin: Could I just clarify. I don't think that the issue of Germany is zero-sum gain, that is to say that every time they make an extension towards the Soviet Union we lose out. They always will in the foreseeable future be part of a Western alliance. I simply think we should not stand between their efforts to reach a hand to the east, too.

Nacht: The post-war period, with all of its grief, has been a period of peace for 37 years....There have not [been] many periods of 37 years of peace. The principal reason for the peace in my own view is that the United States has had the military force to deter the Soviet Union for attack--either with conventional or nuclear weapons, and because, in part, Germany has been divided and Japan has been militarily weak and under the American nuclear umbrella. It may be that there are other worlds that are better than this world, but I don't think we can get from here to there without running a large risk of major hostilities....On foregin affairs, one can hypothesize four consequences of the no-first use doctrine if it was in fact embraced by the Reagan Administration, the probability of that being, I think, zero. Well, let's assume for the moment, for argument's sake, that they do. The four possibilities are: one...what Mike said, no difference. They make the statement, nothing happens, life goes on. Second possibility is presumably what the authors wanted: namely a kind of redirection toward strengthening our conventional forces in Europe.

Crimson: Do you see that as preceding the declaration?

Nacht: No, I think the argument is that a declaration of no-first use would stimulate the build-up of conventional forces by the Europeans. They don't advocate waiting 10 years until the forces are in place before making this declaration....Anyway, I think a third possibility is a decline of American credibility of unclear guarantees toward Europe and a movement toward talking to and thinking with and listening to the Soviet Union in a way that is highly undesirable for American interests. And finally, there's another possibility, and that's a sort of waning dependence shift of Europe away from the United States but not toward the Soviet Union and a growth of, perhaps, nuclear proliferation in Europe....

It has a kind of emotional appeal which is very alluring. But I think that if you look at the political practicality of it and the possible threats...it's either...modestly malignant or terribly malignant....