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"A second time involved China. There were border conflicts. Henry [Kissinger, then National Security Adviser in the Nixon Administration] used to come in and talk about the situation. Incidentally, this was before the tapes. You won't have these on the tapes." He continues without changing his expression. "Henry said, 'Can the U.S. allow the Soviet Union to jump the Chinese?'--that is, to take out their nuclear capability. We had to let the Soviets know we would not tolerate that.
"Finally, there was 1971, the Indo-Pak war. After Mrs. Gandhi completed the decimation of East Pakistan, she wanted to gobble up West Pakistan. At least that's the way I read it. The Chinese were climbing the walls. We were concerned that the Chinese might intervene to stop India. We didn't learn till later that they didn't have that kind of conventional capability. But if they did step in, and the Soviets reacted, what would we do? There was no question what we would have done."
He is in high gear now. He does not sound like a man out of office. He emphasizes that the entire history of nuclear diplomacy under the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon administrations led to a narrowing of the nuclear option. Thus the only way out for the superpowers is arms control, but "arms control must not be sought as a goal in itself. Far more important is our political understanding of the Soviets." For Nixon, this is where things get interesting, where the country gets interesting. Odd to realize that Nixon's America is not home and hearth, not the Fourth of July. It is a European empire, removed from Europe and without imperial designs, yet still the world's main player.
Should nuclear weapons be abolished? Impossible, he says. Without nuclear weapons the U.S. would always be a superpower because of its economy. But the Soviet Union would not be a superpower without the Bomb. In any case, the point is moot.
A weapons freeze? He sees a freeze as a "naive approach to a very complex problem. A freeze at present levels would leave the Soviets in a position of superiority."
Should the U.S. concentrate its arsenal on defensive weapons? He says that he favors the Strategic Defense Initiative (otherwise known as Star Wars), but that population defense would not be functional until the next century. "So what do we do about this century, in which we all live and some of us will die?" He offers one more list:
"First, lengthen the nuclear fuse. Strengthen our conventional capability in Europe. Deter all the way up the line.
"Second, the U.S. should alter its basic weapons strategy from targeting populations to a counterforce capability. That goes against those who support the idea of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent. But I think MAD is obsolete. What American President is going to risk New York and Chicago to save Berlin? As I look back on World War II and on the war in the Pacific, I think the whole concept of targeting civilian populations was morally wrong. In World War I, there were 16 million deaths. In World War II, there were 55 million. Much of the difference was that targets were noncombatants. I strongly believe that we should move away from the concept of massive destruction of cities and toward military targets. It's a better deterrent, a better chance to create stability.