TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE
-15-
Teng: So for either side to use nuclear weapons against the other, it is a matter for great care by both sides.
Kissinger: That is without question. I was answering the question about the Soviet Union being able to make a first strike. My argument is that that is impossible.
Let's look at the reverse. The US has about 30% in land-based missiles, the rest either at sea or on airplanes. I would also like to tell you, we are planning to put long-range missiles into our airplanes - something the Soviet Union cannot do because they don't have airplanes large enough to do that. The Soviet Union has 85% of its force in land-based missiles. And its sea-based missiles, up to now, are very poor. And it has only 120 airplanes that can reach the U.S., and we don't think they are very well trained. In fact, under the agreement they have to reduce their numbers. They can compose their forces any way they want -- but the level we have agreed on is 2,400 for both sides. It is below their level and above ours -- if you don't count overseas weapons. So they will have to reduce their forces. We think they will get rid of their airplanes, but we don't know.
Teng: But they will not violate the agreement when they improve qualitatively.
Kissinger: Yes, but neither will we.
Teng: So you still have your race then.
Kissinger: But we have planned our forces for the 1980's and they have planned their forces for the '70's. By the early 1980's, both land-based forces will be vulnerable. And 85% of theirs are land-based while only 35% of ours are land-based. Secondly, they are making all their improvements in the most vulnerable forces, namely in the land-based forces. We are making ours in the sea-based and air-based forces -- which are not vulnerable, or much less vulnerable. For example, on their submarines, they have not begun to test a multiple warhead -- which means they could not possibly get it before 1980 into production. Which means, in turn, we will be, in accuracy and technical procedures, 10 to 15 years ahead of them.
Teng: We are in favor of your maintaining a superiority against the Soviet Union in such aspects.
TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE
