(00:00:00) Thank you very much, Bob and good afternoon. Everyone. My guest this afternoon is Harlan Cleveland. He is the former US ambassador to Nato and before that he served as a former assistant Secretary of State in the Kennedy and part of the Johnson Administration and during that time he specialized in peacekeeping forces putting them together and deciding how they should be employed or deployed and currently Professor Cleveland is director of the Hubert Humphrey Institute for public affairs at the University of Minnesota Professor Cleveland. Thanks for being with us this afternoon. Thanks very much like to be here. One of the things that's in the news today prominently displayed on the front pages of newspapers here in the Twin Cities and it's also in our newscasts today. Is that the top officials in the Marine Corps today have been saddled with a fair amount of the blame for the terrorist bombing that took place at the barracks in late October in Beirut Lebanon where our peacekeeping forces deployed. You have been critical of how that force is being used in that particular. The world and before we take some calls from listeners about your perspective on world politics and particularly the Middle East and the NATO countries. I'm curious to know what you think of today's findings by the Congressional committee that looked into who was to blame for that bombing or at least the lack of security which apparently surrounded it. Well, the tendency is always to look for the least senior officer and blame it all on him. And that seems to be what they've done. There was obviously a major military straight military mistake when you have that juicy a Target out there hundreds of Americans in a in a place where the word Urban Guerrilla was practically invented for Beirut. You don't bivouac them all in one great building and and then lightly defend the perimeter. I mean that just from a military point of view, but the real problem is the the mission itself. Are you had? A violation of when I was in the peacekeeping business one of the few solid rules. We had was no Soviet or US troops on the ground. Nobody would regard them as neutral, but what they said of themselves and they would draw the other end and they'd be targets for terrorists then on top of putting US troops in. The other members of the multinational Force are all NATO countries. Which gives the Kremlin a free ride propaganda lies saying you know NATO is intervening in Lebanon takes you a paragraph to explain that that really isn't the way it works at their individual NATO countries that NATO troops are not in there and so on but you know by the time you've lost your audience and the propaganda battle. Then on top of that, of course, there isn't any theater Commander. It isn't a force. It's four different forces, each of them responsible of their own Capital the British the French British the French the Italians and the US and and the case of the French & and the u.s. Of course France used to be the colonial power and where what we are great power and you just can't You can't work at that way. It's not it's it doesn't you've got to have a peacekeeping force. I think the news was that. We told the French an hour before taking on the syrians the first time so there's very little in your opinion very little coordination between at least the French and the Americans and perhaps all the way around with this current Force. Well, I suppose there's a certain amount of coordination. But but since the decisions are political People keep talking about the enemy one of the congressman on the radio this morning was talking about. Well, there's enemy all around. Dancing realize that a peacekeeping force is supposed to be soldiers without enemies. That's a new kind of force. It's a very difficult for us to it must be to both put together and also deploy and and and keep intact I would think and train I mean it's a different attitude on the part of the forces on the part of the platoon leaders on the part of the overall commanders and there are training programs for this sort of thing Scandinavians, and others have done this before for other Ben. Twenty peacekeeping operations are so through the UN and most of them have been quite effective and successful. But they they depend on placing a force between other forces. In such a way as that it's to deter and not to be there as a combatant and then and then on top of everything else people talk about appropriate technology in the developing world. I can't think of a more inappropriate technology than using a battleship against Oregon Urban guerrillas. That really has to be one for the book for Guinness Book of Records. I want to ask you a question a follow-up question about Lebanon, but let me give out a couple of phone numbers. So our listeners can can ask you questions. If you have a question for Harlan Cleveland this afternoon director of the Humphrey Institute for public affairs and your listing in the Twin Cities call us at two to seven six thousand and if you're listening to us around the state of Minnesota call us toll-free at 1-800-669-9133 toll-free number that works to outside the metro area of the Twin Cities, but anywhere in Minnesota, 1-800-662-2386 win cities is 2276 thousand. Well, if you were sitting in the advisory Council sitting in the same room with our president this afternoon, he's going to have a news conference in a few hours about seven hours from right now and you were to counsel him about Lebanon and our role. What would you tell him and assuming that you would say that our troops out to get out of there quick? What would you say in response to someone else around the table who would say we can't possibly do that? The whole place will fall like a house of cards and and it'll just deteriorate into one massive Civil War. Well, it's not exactly a in great shape anyway, but no, I think we should do what we should have done to begin with is organized a truly International force and there are a number of countries around the world who have participated know how to participate I'd prefer it to be done through the UN because I think that the UN has more professional experience and doing this kind of thing. It looks as if we need a little professional experience in there. But if it can't be done through the UN organization, it can can be done under the UN Charter as a Consortium of the concerned a coalition of the willing to but the bring some forces in there that that are not politically vulnerable because of being regarded as having an axe to grind we obviously have some axes to grind there and everybody knows it what about people who will say this will this will be seen by other powers around the world as the United States backing down from some Street gorillas who've forced them out and that the whole business of stature again that may be raised by some people in some quarters. I think that that is a problem and it would be a major problem if If we just left and didn't prepare the way by having a successor for us. That's why I think that the way to get us out is to get the right kind of international force in do you see any movement in that direction? Not at all. Not at all. I think the Reagan Administration is really as somehow lost the art of using international organizations as a part of our foreign policy like to talk more about that in just a minute. We have a phone Bank full of callers to ask you questions. So let's take our first call right now. Good afternoon know we're listening for your (00:08:25) question. Probably the famous Park on that very subject somebody in the administration suggest. We pull the Marines on put an Armored Division in but that isn't my question was the deployment of these new missiles in Europe right now in Germany, you're beginning to see what amounts to a guerrilla War by the young people that don't want the missiles against our army and how their government going to face that and secondly with Korean Pilots of commercial airliners seeming to be rather notorious and getting lost over Russia. Doesn't it pay for us to give the Russians a very best in computers and radar. So if we won't start a nuclear exchange on a false Brooke And I miss reading by somebody that isn't really that competent. (00:09:14) Okay, there are two questions in there. I think on the on the situation in Germany. I think that the primary responsibility for handling demonstrations and the police work in Germany obviously has to be a German responsibility. It's important that our own installations be adequately protected as we've just learned in Beirut, but but I think the responsibility for the policing has to be on the ahead of the the German government West German government and they have in fact been taking that responsibility. They've they know they've got a problem domestically. They think it's containable so far they've contained it and what about giving the Soviets the best of our computers so that we can reduce the risk of War through misunderstanding. Well, I don't think that the Soviets problem is the lack of Hardware myself. I do think that it's very important to us. That they'd be able to communicate up and down their own line of command and with us in a big hurry and there any hardware problems. We got to help him solve them but I don't think they've got Hardware problems. I think they've got attitude problems. I think for example in the Korean case that what must have happened was that the the decision to fire on that plane was taken entirely within military channels if there had been any political consideration of the matter. I think that it wouldn't have taken about two and a half days for the Kremlin to figure out what to say about it. Once it happened. You know, one thing you do planning a political operation here at you write the press release. That's the first thing that happens practically. So so I think I must have taken within military channels and within the military channels. All the rewards are for being tough. There are any rewards for looking timid in that step? so I think they knew what they were doing. But the the people who could think about doing it within the larger context of the kind of political Fallout that it would create in the United States and elsewhere just weren't in the room with it when the decision was taken. Let's take another call. Good afternoon. You're on the air. (00:11:44) Thank you. I'm calling from st. Cloud. There seems to be a tendency to view the our involvement in Lebanon as a kind of a trap and I'd like to switch to a much larger. Trap may be the largest context of all the nuclear nuclear weapons race, which seems to me the kind of a trap that Europeans and Americans and Soviets are caught in it. What is the escape from the arms race trap is not the arms race itself the greatest danger now too Northern Hemisphere and what would be the way other words? What is the cause of the arms race? I Take it at some political conflict between east and west and what are the prospects for getting at the cause of the arms race by resolving whatever the political causes are. (00:12:34) Well, I think you're right there. You're very right to focus on the cause rather than on the arms as a tendency to sort of count the beans on each side and figure that that's a substitute for for policy. But the cause I think is just a deep sense of grievance and rivalry between two very powerful countries to some extent blocks of countries. And a and a lack of trust which results in in continually trying to be ahead in military terms mostly. It's we've been trying to be ahead. And then finding that the Soviets are also bright and developed country in many ways and are able to do whatever we can do. Usually with a delay of a few years but not very many. For example, when we decided to put multiple Warheads on our missiles. I was because we were that was going to put us ahead see but then it turned out that once they learned how to do the same thing. They could put more missiles into their more Warheads into their canisters because they were building bigger canisters for other reasons. And so we wind up with a sort of self-inflicted window of vulnerability that everybody now talks about that's the nature of an arms race and it's not inconceivable that if we started on a d escalation. A freeze or something of that of that type for a start that the Soviets would follow that to do you think that it was a mistake for the United States and the other NATO countries to start putting in the Persian twos and cruises into into West Germany a few weeks ago. Would it have been better to wait six months? I think having having said that we would do so unless we got somewhere in Arms Control to then have not done so would have been a very serious. I think they're their military significance is practically nil. We can reach any place that the Persians can reach we can reach from from here with few more minutes, but it's not a big deal. Was the times involved who gotten so tiny anyway, 10 minutes 15 minutes half an hour of travel time for those weapons, but my own feeling was that and Bob McNamara said something like this publicly. I think that even though had no military significance that the political significance of not doing. It was such that we probably ought to go ahead with it, but it's But that was a Vine that we perhaps could have avoided getting into the begin with in other words the so-called to track decision for years ago. Maybe wasn't the smartest way to go. Well, at least it didn't work and it hasn't worked so far. In fact, it's it has now resulted in standing down all their arms control negotiations that were that we're going on before let's take another call from a listener. Good afternoon. You're on the (00:16:09) air. Yeah. I'm not calling from st. Louis Park, but I've been thinking a lot about neutrality lately because well prompted by this John McPhee article on Switzerland and New Yorker and I know a lot of sweets and their attitudes. I was wondering what you might foresee for the prospect that some other European countries in the course of this next several decades might choose to go that course (00:16:31) to go what course of neutrality well, you know, it's an interesting thing that the NATO has now been going on for a full generation and they're not only have been no defections from NATO but they've actually been some accretions to it Greece and Turkey Spain and so on so the solidarity the sense that the West Has to hang together in some degree and to some extent is very strong and continues to be very strong. I remember one person from from one of the countries that might be accused of thinking about going neutral someday. Using this analogy with me. He said it's like you had a big damn. And people were walking around the lake above the dam and saying she's has a nice Placid. Like why don't we take the damn away now? Well people realize that if you take the damn away that all hell would break loose and that just because you feel more passive about it, perhaps in Denmark or some of the other countries Greece. Now, there's a general sense that if NATO weren't there something like it would have to be invented the French feel the same way the goal felt the same way. He very carefully he made a big noise about getting out of the NATO military establishment, but the one thing that he didn't do Was anything that would harm the military operation of NATO? He didn't forbid overflights and he didn't chop off the communications most of which go through France from the north to the southern theater. So I don't really think that there's much much chance of individual breakaways like that. I think that the biggest danger would be a general falling out between Europe as a whole and the United States. And then the Finland ization as they say of Western Europe, but I think if we hang in there they'll hang in there 19 and a half minutes now past 12:00 noon. And our guest this afternoon is Harland Cleveland who is a former US ambassador to Nato. He is currently director of the Humphrey Institute of public affairs at the University of Minnesota. If you have a question for Professor Cleveland, you can give us a call. We have a couple of lines open in the Twin Cities 2276 thousand and outside the metro area 1 800 600 mm. Take another call. Good afternoon. You're on the air. (00:19:25) Yes. I'm calling from South Minneapolis. I'd like to ask about Lebanon again the political instability there seems to be the real cause of lot of the problems going on and I'm wondering what this country can do to help bring about more political stability and possibly bring in a regime. That would have a broader base. Of them narrowing christian-based and I have a second somewhat related question. Do you believe that the firing on Syrian positions by the United States has any kind of volatile potential danger for escalation? (00:20:06) One of the political instability it is their political instability. I mean there really is no way in which the United States matter how many mediators will be a point is going to solve that internal problem. They're going to have to talk to each other. And the trouble with putting in a well-known American mediator into the middle of the picture is that everybody Tunes their antennae toward him instead of toward each other. He becomes the star and and it's as if the mediator and our labor negotiation were were, you know, making all the announcements and being a big hero, but every everybody has ever been in that kind of a negotiation knows that the mediators job is to make sure that every idea he has it somebody else's idea and and that understand the background himself and that's what we haven't been doing. I think we'd be better off with a gun with an international mediator on the political side. Just as we'd be better off with an international peacekeeping force on the on the peacekeeping side. It is a very unstable situation. But remember that Lebanon for a long time lived with an impossibly ambiguous Arrangement, whereby a Maronite Christian had to be the top man, but then there had to be two different kinds of Muslims in the next two jobs and maybe you could have a different kind of a Christian in the foreign Ministry and all this kind of was like a like a Tammany slate but Tammany worked and and so did Lebanon in fact back 10 15 20 years ago. Lebanon was in some ways the most successful underdeveloped area in the world and the Lebanese are wonderfully creative people Philip Habib when he was here said thing to do is to let them go back to what they're really good at which is making money. Yeah. Well, so they've got to work it out among themselves and I don't think an American peace plan for doing that is going to be very effective anymore than in our civil war. It would have worked very well if The French on the Russians are the British or somebody had come in and say Here's the way you're going to you're going to work it out. Here's here's a here's a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation that the government had better get out and so forth. So I think that the firing on Syria on the Syrian positions is a very dangerous tactic just because it's so volatile there. I don't think it has quite the The risk of getting the Russians involved that that one would think from the headlines because I think the Russians make a very careful distinction between their commitment to Syria and their commitment to Syrian occupied foreign territory somebody on NPR just yesterday the day before made this analogy that their commitment to Syria was a little like our commitment to Israel. We're committed to Israel, but we're not really committed to their occupation of other territory and I think the Soviets are making that same drawing that same line. but but the syrians themselves are Quite strong with Russian weapons and it really would be a tragedy if we got into a some kind of a direct bore with with Syria. Let's take another call from a listener. Good afternoon. You're on the air. Hello? Yes. Yeah, would you turn your radio down base? Okay. (00:24:10) I have a question about the tendency of the political leaders in this country to Define any decision like in Lebanon for instance as being somehow in our Vital National interest. And I mean, it's obviously not and what happens when something comes up that really is in our national interest and they've gone to this. Well so many times that nobody believes them anymore. (00:24:33) And I think that's a very good question is the old wolf wolf crying wolf wolf story. The you'll find it whenever we get particularly our troops involved in a situation. that the rhetoric about The involvement of our national interest tends to escalate very rapidly it did even in Grenada when we started in to rescue some Americans students and we wound up with solving the whole Caribbean problem in our rhetoric and and similarly in Lebanon. The Marines went in there as part of a multinational Force to keep to hold the ring while the Lebanese and the other factors in the equation the Israeli and the syrians. Sorted out a an answer to how to get rid of the foreign troops and get the Lebanese back together so that they could be a country again. but once we were fired on then you find people in the government and some of the military leaders talking about the enemy whoever it was out there swipers our mortars and and talking about how we're going to stay in there until Lebanon is stable again. Well boy that maybe a millennium or two. It's been they've had brother a long record of fighting with each other in that part of the world. And how each of those local fights comes out is really cannot be our problem. But as we make it our problem then the government keeps setting up situations in which whatever happens the American people seem to have lost and that makes the government unpopular with the American people because they don't like to feel I don't know losing so it's bad business and internal politics to I think that the president will have to get the Marines one way or another out of Lebanon before the election or the Marines themselves will be for Reagan. What? What the hostages were for Carter, let's take another call. Good afternoon. You're on the (00:27:03) air. Good afternoon. Dr. Cleveland recently. Mr. McNamara has been making more than a little bit of noise about what he thinks should be done regarding a nuclear deterrent in Europe. He had recently 12 or 13 points in Newsweek magazine. I believe five or six of them were along the lines of confidence building but the main point or thesis of his program was we should renounce first use in light of the fact that I don't see the former Secretary of flexible response Fame of the Vietnam War the failed military policies over there running around from campus to campus in the United States demanding and requesting at the same time a draft situation as were. The only member of the NATO alliance of does not have one and with some resentment. I might add by the West Germans the French and British because of that this man proposes a new first use policy. That doesn't make any credible military sense in the light of the fact that the Russians have 50,000 tanks on the folder Gap. Can you comment on (00:28:05) this? Well, I think that what he's recommending in effect is that we recognize the reality the extreme improbability of first use of nuclear weapons by an American president. I've heard Bob McNamara say Privately, I know I think he probably has said publicly that he doesn't he can't conceive of any circumstances in which either of the two presidents he worked for Kennedy and Johnson would ever have used nuclear weapons first, even in the Cuban Missile Crisis, even in the Cuban Missile Crisis, our fear then was that what we were doing was we were creeping up very carefully on the use of force through the blockade and so on and our fear was that they would escalate it suddenly, but but I don't think that there was ever a consideration of are using nuclear weapons to to enforce the art are edict which was those Cuban missiles had to be taken out of there. the most the most forceful thing that was considered during that period was so called surgical strike. You'll find that whenever there's a crisis the Air Force always comes out in favor of a surgical strike. So I I just don't think that. Then where? I don't think that the threat of First use is a credible threat. even Kissinger, you know said after he left office, he made a speech in London, which he said that and indeed I would go so far as to say that we have invented. the ultimately unusable weapon as you can't really think up a military scenario in which this kind of Weaponry is going to be so useful that that you then use it and indeed what is now coming out about possible nuclear effects. Indicates that if you use enough force in a first strike the first strike contains the second strike that is to say even if there's no retaliation, you'll do it to yourself. You'll do it to yourself. So it's not mutual. So excited just plain suicide as you well know there is a great deal of discussion these days about the whole business of the nuclear arms race ended his probably gained in momentum just over the last year and a half two years. Are we focusing on the wrong subject the wrong area are we being misled by these new and terrible not so new but these weapons of mass destruction. Should we be looking elsewhere to solve our problems? Do you think well I come back to this notion of the unused ability of the weapon. And I think that both the Reagan Administration. And I would say also some of the leadership of the peace movement tend to make the same error. The parallel error that is to assume that the the possibility of nuclear war is. Is real eminent probable and so something drastic has to be done in one case. Raising military budget and the other case stopping the military program, but the trouble with that is that the nuclear issue is gotten to be a great big boulder in the middle of our path as very hard to see around now and to see all the other things that are happening. And where is the initiative coming from and World politics these days it's not coming from the US Soviet relationship is coming from the dynamism the turbulence agitation of the modernization process in the developing world. And it's those Rising expectations and all that burbling up of ambition and rivalries in the developing world that is creating situations where local governments. Can't seem to govern vacuums are created into which the Soviets are drawn quite willingly I think and and we are drawn somewhat unwillingly but equally forcefully so but we haven't put development in its full sense of not only economic development but cultural and and fairness Equity issues justice issues. Human rights issues into the middle of our foreign policy where it belongs. It's still kind of out there on the periphery while we talk about the kinds of weapons that aren't going to be used and indeed. It's even getting in the way of having a sensible defense program because we tend to produce things that aren't going to be used and then there isn't any money left to produce the kinds of for of the ready mobile kinds of forces that might actually be required in a real emergency. It is 26 minutes. Now before one o'clock in my guest is Harlan Cleveland who is director of the Humphrey Institute of public affairs at the University. We have several callers on the line. Let's get to another one right now. Good afternoon. You're on the air. (00:33:55) Yes, Technically when you mentioned specifically about the use of the reconditioned Battleship close inshore off Lebanon high probability. You think of them using those ss-20 missiles that are in place highly accurate themselves. Also when you're in Lebanon Israel, you don't have to either many days to realize the nicest place along the to live as long at kostal literal. Now when the Arabs Palestinians were pushed out of their homes and - Jerusalem, I can't understand why the Israelis as intelligent as they are didn't realize it. They would have to create a similar Homeland now, just south of Israel along the coast are they had such a place he can Town built can't United States to put pressure on them to do something like this, and this would solve the whole problem. Thank (00:34:46) you. Well, you're certainly right that that Coastline along there. I think the lemon is one of most beautiful countries in the world and that must be a nice place to live but not when you got the New Jersey just offshore shooting rounds over your head. I think that the I think some kind of Homeland is is it certainly got to be necessary to? to get the Palestinian issue off the agenda and We've been to many years assuming that what's going to happen to the Palestinians that somehow the most important subject in the world. And it is important because it has the potential of so much danger and developing exacerbating so many rivalries in that part of the world and I don't have a solution to it. I don't I don't even think that Americans need to have a solution to it. My Middle East policy is rather rather simple. Whatever you guys can agree on. I'll not only agree with I'll help guarantee. It'll help Finance it but I'm not going to masterminded. Do you think the American governments in the recent history of too often felt as though they had to solve all the world's problems and this situation in the Middle East and just sort of before they step back and think about it for a little bit and pick and choose which ones are going to deal with. Yes and whatever whatever whatever it is appoint a special ambassador to go and become fix it, you know, if it's another it's Central America or the Middle East and the result of that you see is that the media all tend to Cluster around our special person. So what he's doing seems like it's the center of the picture. Where is the center of the picture is really the underlying rival reason and troubles that someone have to be settled among the people who are troubled and But you know the American mediators easy to talk to he speaks a language that the media can understand and then have to have translation or anything and but it just distorts the whole the whole picture when the problem is to get them talking to each other. Let's take another call. Good afternoon. We're listening for your (00:37:31) question. Hello, I'm calling from the st. Cloud area st. Joseph. I'd like to commend to you the comments of Earhart eppler who is the leading theoretician of the peopling of the Social Democratic party in West Germany and also the president of the clerk and tag, which is a Christian lay organization. I think he's raising some moral questions that we have to look at harder. I can't agree with you that the deployment of the Pershing and the crews were necessary because we had made that commitment because I think that the danger is far greater now with the short time warning time for Russia. So Russia has to be much more frightened now of their position geographically, it is a very important factor for them that those those missiles are there the SS 20s were not a threat to us in the sense that these missiles now are to them and when you have spoken of negotiations, I think you use suggested that we were entering into them in good faith in a way that I think we cannot that. I cannot agree we are because we have really two things being said by Ministration to the public we are being told the Soviet Union is a engaged in world domination Tendencies and on the other hand, they say among themselves and reports of come out about this again. And again that Soviet Union's weakening and it will you know soon be basically pushed over. So just a double message we're getting and I do not say good faith in these negotiations. So I think what is really called for is a nuclear freeze. So I'd like you to come in and then if you (00:39:01) would okay, thanks for your call. All right agree with the beginning in the end of what you said. I agree that. Dr. Keppler is a great thinker and I think the nuclear freeze is a good first step, but I think that it's important to not to be Too one-sided about those SS 20s. It's true that the SS twenties don't can't hit us us Americans. But if you are sitting in Germany or Britain or Italy well within their range you might feel differently. I remember once in a nuclear Planning Group meeting at NATO. It was kind of an argument about what is a strategic weapon. How do you tell us where teacher from a tactical weapon and the McNamara was then Secretary of Defense settled the question. I thought very neatly by saying a strategic weapon is anything that can hit me? And I think the Europeans have felt that the Soviets had moved a kind of Weaponry that would that would threaten them. with no counter Force and so the logic was well, okay, if they're going to do that we better do this now, you know, that's the logic of the arms race and it and it leads to nonsense and Perdition if you keep on escalating threats on both sides that are probably with unusable weapons, but but that is the way it developed and it wasn't holy a lot illogical to to have that kind of have that kind of counterforce thinking coming up as a result of the ss-20. It really did start with the Soviet decision. To put a new class of intermediate rage Weaponry into the picture. Okay, let's take another call. Good afternoon. You're on the air. (00:41:03) Thank you. I have a comment and then I sort of comment question. I want first comment is on the panel following the movie The Day After did you notice that all the commentators were men and all were white. My second thing is it's obvious that Lebanon is in a civil war we seem to learn nothing from Vietnam and I cannot understand how we can't reach President Reagan to get him to understand that the terrorists are calling the shots, and we're not (00:41:36) I didn't even notice that they were all men at all white and in fact commented on it and my living room at the time, but for some reason the president never asked me. For advice as to what to do and even the ABC doesn't ask me for advice as to what to do. So I had no control of it. I think there are a number of women who could have made a contribution to that and number of people of other races just as I have thought for years finally getting around to it. Now, I propose during the Kennedy administration that among the first astronauts should be women and minorities. Okay. We have Seventeen eighteen Seventeen minutes left. Let's let's get to another caller. Good afternoon. You're on the air. (00:42:26) Yes, dr. Cleveland yesterday in the Wall Street Journal the lead editorial was entitled helping Afghanistan and in the editorial the paper advocated more arms particularly small air defense missiles and also that the United States provide a sanctuary for Russian deserters that are starting to make their way into the West. How do you react to those (00:42:51) issues? Indeed I think to have at least one and perhaps to All Things Considered reported last week that two Soviet defectors from the Army had at least temporarily taken up residence in New York City. Well, I think we've been doing that for years everybody from Einstein on down and I think we ought to continue to do it. I think that one of the great strengths of this country is has been our willingness to to be relatively permissive about about Asylum or maybe overdoing it in relation to our Southern border these days, but but I think it's that's been an important strength. Jack Kennedy once said our purpose in the world is to make the world safe for diversity and that's resonates in the American political psyche because that's where we come from. We are a diverse people. I don't know enough about the local situation on the ground mode to know what kind of weapons they need. But the Afghans have made things pretty uncomfortable for the Soviets there now for several years and it's beginning to look like like Soviet Union's Vietnam a little bit. And I think whatever can be done, too. To help keep it that way is good. But I think it would be a mistake for us to make that our war. It's again the tendency to feel that. If there's a problem it had better be the Americans who go there go in there and fix it. What would what's the line what line oughtn't we cross in order for it than to become our war in other words what clandestine supplies of arms? Okay, but not not actual troops. What's the line that we you're suggesting we oughtn't to cross over that would well, I think the main thing is that there needs to be a valid indigenous group. That is that is operating. that validly calls for our help, but did happen in Grenada after all underneath all the all the rest of the folder all that wasn't fat fact a group of valid leaders of small countries in that part of the world the thought this was something that they wanted to do and they wanted our help in doing and I think that that the assistance to To people who are trying to defend their own liberty. As always been something that's been important in our in our foreign policy. I don't myself think that making it clandestine helps very much. First of all, it doesn't stay clandestine secrets are pretty hard to keep as a CIA keeps finding out but if it's worth doing it's worth doing in the open. So you would suggest letting everybody know we're going to send ground air missiles to Afghanistan. Well, if if the if there's an Afghan group that is trying to buy ground air missiles and They don't have to buy them from us because there are other people that that produce them also and I wouldn't think that we ought to reach for that business particularly, but but I don't see any problem in in being one of the sources of supply for a beleaguered group in Afghanistan. That is Is trying to handle the situation where they're big neighbor is leaning on them. Let's get to another caller. Good afternoon. We're listening for your question. (00:46:46) I agree with that. You can make throw away a large chunk units are weapons. But what you have to do is comment, what you have to do is you got to have a large enough conventional capability to counter to conceivably counter the Soviet Soviet threat. I mean it's as if Will for 40 years, let's say the only other system I could convert to as if we invent a nerve gas and we've been threatening the Soviet Union that if they attacked us will use this nerve gas on them, you know, we could make nuclear weapons almost the same just as useless or just hold them in reserve and you and threaten to use them. But the thing is the nuclear freeze movement does not want to tell you the other half that if you want to reduce nuclear weapons that you've got to spend vast. The film's more unconventional defense. (00:47:40) Okay. Thanks for your call. That's a very good comment and and and I think that people who are focusing on the nuclear issue. Many of them do tend to focus so exclusively on it that they don't paint the rest of the picture in but it's not necessarily true that it requires vast new sums for conventional arms. There's at least one group of Scholars in London. Just now the head of it is going to be a visiting professor in our in the Humphrey Institute next year. Frank Barnaby used to be head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. They're working out there. They're trying to work out a a reorganization of the kind of conventional defense of Western Europe taking advantage of all the the state-of-the-art changes that have come about in conventional defense and offense, for example As a counter to those thousands and thousands of Russian tanks. Maybe you don't need thousands and thousands of Russian tanks. Maybe you just need to make sure that there are enough people with handheld Eddie tank guns that can Pierce their armor. And that's an extremely cost-effective. I mean the tank the tank anti-tank equation is now very cost effective on the defense side. And that apparently is true in a number of areas. I heard a briefing on this few months ago. That was very impressive that made it look as if it might be possible to erect a valid conventional defense of Western Europe with in something like the present budgets of the NATO countries and that is indeed the other side of the coin of declaring against first use of nuclear weapons. Let's take another call. Good afternoon. You're on the air. (00:49:51) Hello. My name is Lee Garrett, and I'm calling from the Luke I would agree with the professor and a number of people who have called that one of the major issues today is the nuclear arms race and that another the major issues is the antagonism between Soviet Union and the United States as to whether or not we or someone would use nuclear arms. I think it would be helpful to quote to people who are intimately involved with that sort of decision. One of whom is General Bernard Rogers, who was the American commander of NATO troops in Europe in 1982. He sent a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because that committee was considering reducing funding for NATO and in that letter he said and I quote without this minimal Force. The relative capabilities of the Warsaw Pact in the north German planes would be so overwhelming that we could not defend successfully without early use of nuclear weapons. And that is a quote and by early youth he means first use and if we look back at a speech or a report by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger to the Congress in February of 1982 again, I will quote from this report report several things the report (00:51:20) with sure, excuse me, I don't want to cut you off at all. But I do want you to kind of telescope what you're what you're going to say. We've got a number of caller still waiting to get on the air. (00:51:29) All right. I think the quote will speak for themselves if I could be allowed to give the quote. (00:51:35) Okay. Well, maybe you could give us just one, please. (00:51:37) All right. That's a defense secretary Caspar Weinberger did say in this speech. We recognize that for the foreseeable future. Our nuclear forces had to serve at least the following four purposes and one of which he says is to impose termination of a major war on terms favorable to the United States and our allies, even if nuclear weapons have been used and I would also like to remind our audience that we have used nuclear weapons. They were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki some years ago. So they have been used and I see no reason not to believe that they would be used (00:52:16) again. Okay, let's hear what Professor Cleveland has to say that well, I think that It's very important for the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, too. Stay with the NATO Doctrine, which is still that nuclear weapons would be used if we were getting into too much trouble on the conventional side. And the probability is that we would be in trouble on the conventional side because we haven't built that up because we depending on the nuclear weapons, but during the time that I was in NATO. I participated in a number of War games. I'm trying to figure out how you would use the nuclear weapons under those conditions. You have to assume that that you're back in your own territory because because we're not going to attack. So and we never figured out a way of using nuclear weapons in which most of the people got killed weren't the people on our side and that as a result of those war games. That's sobered up quite a lot of the Especially German politicians who were saying with the first soldier that puts his foot across the border. We should unleash our whole nuclear Arsenal it is the effects of these weapons are so enormous. That it's a new dimension. It really is a new dimension of explosive power and there isn't any way to contain the effect to military purposes in practice. So that's and I just think secretary Weinberger and the Russians who both are talking in terms of winnable nuclear Wars. r Are dreaming or at least having nightmares? Okay, five minutes before one o'clock. Let's see if we can get one or two more callers in good afternoon. You're on the air. Hello, go ahead. We're listening for your question. Let's try another line. Yes, go after good afternoon. We're listening for your (00:54:31) question. Okay, I got you the White House. All we've had is the vicious rhetoric from the present. He Weinberg unrest about the Russians and never a summit meeting. Summit meetings usually don't solve anything, but they put the leaders face to face or they can see that the other man is a human being with the same strengths and frailties. There's the one that's facing him and it usually seems to lower the level of hostility between the countries just to have face-to-face (00:55:09) meetings with about a summit between Reagan and andropov. Well, I think that we don't quite know where I drop off is up to it. It just might I guess but If I if I may say so without losing my non-partisan status here. I rather liked the proposal that Fritz Mondale has been making which is that there be regular Summits not not Summits at the end of a whole process where you're trying to dramatize an accomplishment but a regular enough annual meeting or something like that so that you know, what's going to happen. You don't expect the Miracles out of it you get used to the idea and the leaders get used to talking to each other. There is no doubt and each of us knows it from our own business experience or public experience that when you've gotten to know somebody even if even if you disagree with them, it is easier to imagine what they would do and it's easier to approach them informally as well as formally if there's one thing we've learned about human cooperation I think in history it is that people can agree on what to do next together if they carefully avoid trying to agree on why they're agreeing that is to say on ideology and but you've got to get to know the other person that you're dealing with So that they don't become symbols. that you defined by your rhetoric rather than by some kind of personal relations when you meet at that level, it's dangerous because you know, the people who are meeting are very powerful, but the important thing is not to set up a kind of symmetry that that unless An enormous success is had everybody will write it off as a failure. And that's that's the attractive attractiveness of doing it. Periodically Professor Cleveland. We're out of time. Thanks very much for coming in this afternoon. Our Guest has been Harlan Cleveland who is director of the Humphrey Institute of public affairs at the University of Minnesota want to thank listeners for calling in and also sorry we weren't able to get to all the callers this afternoon. We'll have to have you back sometime.