68. Personal Note Prepared by the Deputy Secretary of State (Dam)1
[Omitted here is discussion not related to START.]
A crucial meeting on START was held in the White House under NSC auspices.2 The President foreshadowed two decisions that he was to make clear the next day. One was that he was prepared to go up on the number of deployed missiles from the 850, which is our present position. The second one had to do with the throw-weight issue, which has become such a source of excitement within the Administration and in the press. Rather than going to the OSD/ACDA position of direct limits on throw-weight, the President decided to stay with the State Department position, which was that indirect limits should be our position, which would take the form of collateral constraints on heavy missiles, particularly the SS-18. On the other hand, if the Soviets would [Page 247] prefer to negotiate direct limits in the form of overall weight limitations on throw-weight, then we would be prepared to negotiate on that basis.
It was an excellent meeting, which is quite surprising, in view of the fact that so many people were in the room, including even the head of the advisory group and General Scowcroft, and in view of the severe differences of views at the lower levels of the State and Defense Departments. My own view was that direct limits on throw-weight would be far from the disaster that some State Department people have suggested. Everything turns on the level of that throw-weight. In view of the fact that the Soviets presently have nearly three times the throw-weight of the United States, any demand for equality at levels at or below the U.S. level would simply be asking more than one could reasonably ask the Soviet Union and would signal to the world that we did not want a START agreement with the Soviet Union.
[Omitted here is discussion not related to START.]
- Source: Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S–I Records: Deputy Secretary Dam’s Official Files, Lot 85D308, Personal Notes of Deputy Secretary—Kenneth W. Dam—Oct. 1982—Sept. 1983. Secret. Dictated by Dam on June 14.↩
- According to the President’s Daily Diary, the meeting, which started at 9:37 a.m. and ended at 10:25 a.m., took place in the Cabinet Room. Handwritten notes on this meeting are in the Reagan Library, Lehman Files, START: 06/04/83–06/06/83. No formal minutes of the meeting were found.↩