Nacht: I remember some of the Reagan Administration officials said that the European proposal for the intermediate nuclear force talks was not an opening negotiating position, it was the only negotiating position....Now there was none of that rhetoric in public associated with the START proposal, and even when Mr. Brezhnev came back with quite a lot of criticism about the proposal and some different ideas, the Administration interpreted it very positively and said, well, this shows Mr. Brezhnev wants to speak....There are many problems with the opening position, but, I mean, it does clearly seem to be an opening position, and that's a positive step forward on this kind of relative basis.

Sherwin: I think it's a positive step that the Administration has taken reluctantly as a result of external pressure. I think that point has been made in terms of political strategy, and the critical question becomes has it really changed its strategy? And the answer to that in my view is, yes. Has it changed its objective? The answer to that at this point. I think, is maybe. It may have to change its objective.

Crimson: Dealing with the change in the Reagan Administration's policy, do you view it as the Administration becoming educated to the realities of arms control or actually changing its view of the Soviet Union?

Mandelbaum: Once in office, a variety of pressures come to bear on any president that incline him to favor arms control, and these pressures have come to bear on Mr. Reagan. They have been enumerated here: domestic political pressure, international pressure, the feelings of our allies. Costs are important. Mr. Reagan has budget problems. A large nuclear buildup promises to be extremely expensive. And also...presidents have really felt the personal weight of the nuclear responsibility that each of them bears. And I think Mr. Reagan can hardly avoid feeling that way as well.

Sherwin: Let me go back to a point that was brought up a little bit earlier by Professor Nye about deterrence because this is really at the heart of things...That is the alleged reason we have nuclear weapons and we continue the build-up. We live in a system that believes that deterrence is what prevents war, and war will be nuclear, so deterrence prevents nuclear war. And I think one of the problems that has emerged...that, with respect to our nuclear weapons, we really go beyond deterrence. I think that it is true that we have to deter the Soviets from striking the the United States with nuclear weapons or giving them an opportunity to think that they're in a position to do so....The problem is that we try to sort of expand the usability of nuclear weapons, and it's a recognition of that that has also been a contributor to precipitating this concern about nuclear weapons. Taking it from deterrence, specifically, into the general area of diplomacy, with limited nuclear war, for example, creates opportunities for slip-ups. And those slip-ups or potential slip-ups are very frightening.

Crimson: What is your evaluation of Reagan's whole nuclear build-up plan in terms of arms themselves, and along with that, does the term "nuclear superiority" in your mind have any meaning anymore?

Sherwin: Yes, it has a meaning, and the meaning is tied to the point that I was making--it's called nuclear diplomacy, atomic diplomacy, or nuclear blackmail, that sort of thing. The fear is that the side with more, with a superiority, will be willing to threaten more. It's a vague, general perception that has specificity, that is in a sense contrary to theory and in a sense beyond the bounds of history....It's a problem in cultural anthropology, and we don't want the Soviets to be superior.

Mandelbaum: I think it's true that no one is clearly sure what nuclear weapons beyond those clearly necessary for deterrence are useful for. And since it's not clear, since as we search the historical record of the last 37 years we don't come up with any clear answers as to just how nuclear weapons can be used diplomatically....

It seems always better to err on the side of caution....Nuclear weaponry constitutes a fairly small portion of the defense budget, and so running the nuclear arms race does not tax the capacity of the American public. Second, I would agree, and this is very much a debatable point, that continuing to run the nuclear arms race, erring on the side of caution, caution defined in precisely this way, hasn't really been all that dangerous. It's simply been a moderate expense.

Nye: Well, on the point of superiority, I think the quest for superiority is futile, because I don't think either side is going to allow the other to achieve it. And the reason is that if one side believes the other has superiority, it may be more cowed in the possibility of a diplomatic confrontation....In that sense I think there is a concern that you don't have a sense of superiority on which there is a danger of miscalculation....So I think both sides are going to, in fact prevent that from becoming as imbalanced as it has been in the past....

On the question of the Regan force build-up. I think you have to approach that by asking what is it that you want from your nuclear weapons. And clearly you want them to provide deterrence, but you want more from them than that. You want them to be able to support the umbrella which you extend over allies such as Europe and Japan, and this is called extended deterrence. And you do want them occasionally to bolster your diplomacy. And I think that's becoming more and more difficult in a world of party....I'd want to see nuclear forces which are relatively invulnerable in their bases so that there's no prospect that they would be used in time of crisis for fear of their being lost. And in that sense I would tend to support the broad outline of the Reagan modernization of nuclear forces.

Crimson: Would you say there would be any long-term alternatives to a deterrence [policy] along the lines of what's already been said?

Nacht: There are several issues on the table here that I would like to respond to. The first on the question of nuclear superiority. It may be the case that the quest for nuclear superiority by either the Soviet Union or the United States is futile. But I think it will be pursued with all due vigor by both sides.

The reason I feel that is because I don't think that the nuclear arms competition between the two superpowers is some kind of irrational or non-rational behavior pattern. I think it's very much a central element of what I see as the major competitive relationship in international politics....So it may be that now that the Soviet Union has eliminated many of the numerical interiorities it faced previously and we're in a situation of ambiguity....There are still some areas in which the United States is superior, but I think in most measures of nuclear strength, I would argue that it is quite clear that the trends are adverse to the United States....

The two sources of glimmer of hope when they [the Administration] look at the Soviet Union and when I look at the Soviet Union are, one, that perhaps there is quite serious concern in the Soviet leadership about what the Reagan program might really look like in the late 1980s and perhaps this is a good reason to negotiate agreements now....The other is, and I know that very few people in the West and in the Soviet Union have a good handle on this, but there is some sense that perhaps the Soviet Union is entering a period of such extraordinary economic difficulty that they're really beginning to feel the pinch....It may be the case that there is not an infinite capacity for expansion in the Soviet system and that in a period of transition in leadership they they may find arms control, legitimate constraints, limitations, even reductions of nuclear weapons, to their economic and political advantage.