A Nation Coming Into Its Own

On July 4, 1985, Richard Nixon sits in a low-back armchair, his legs crossed on an ottoman, his hands contributing to his account of the past 40 years of atomic diplomacy by drawing circles in the air, playing an absent piano, shooing away a wrong idea, coming together in an arch or making points in precise order: one, two, three, four. It is shortly after 8 a.m. Two mornings back to back he has been discussing the effects of Hiroshima on the world and on the presidency in his office in a federal building in downtown Manhattan. The building's air-conditioning system is off because of the national holiday, but the room is not yet hot. Outside, the streets are empty and lifeless, except for a McDonald's. Nixon wears a blue-gray suit, a white shirt and a red-and-white-striped tie. The chair he occupies is backed into a corner of the office. Wide windows on either side of him offer a view of antiquated wooden water tanks on the rooftops of nearby buildings and a sky that is pale blue and still as a wall.

"Oh yes, I remember vividly. I was in New York City when the Bomb fell. I had returned from the South Pacific and was stationed at the Bureau of Aeronautics, 50 Church Street, doing legal work on military contracts. I remember very clearly that I was going home that night in the subway, and I saw a newspaper with a headline. Something like MASSIVE BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN. I didn't give it much thought because we had heard about the buzz bombs in London and the other new weapons that were used during the war, and I said, well, this is just another one. I just assumed the war would go on.

"So I was surprised when V-J day came a week later. I really hadn't celebrated V-E day very much because I knew how tough the Japanese were, and that the war in the Pacific might take a long time. I was sure that I would be rotated back to duty on one of the islands. What I remember about V-J day is that Mrs. Nixon and I went to Times Square to celebrate, and I got my pocket picked. Never forget that! In those days we didn't have a great deal of money. Sort of put a damper on the day."

The summer of 1945 may have been the last time in his life that Nixon had the luxury of paying casual attention to the Bomb. Nuclear weapons were to color politics from that time on, and Nixon's political career was to extend from Congress in 1947, to the Senate in 1951, to the vice presidency under Dwight Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961, to the presidency in 1969 and again in 1973. His view of Hiroshima is that the bombing not only brought nuclear weapons into international diplomacy but that it brought America into the world. What he saw in Hiroshima was the beginning of national stature on a global scale, the onset of American maturity.

"Should the Bomb have been used against Japan? There's no simple answer. [General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the Bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants.

"Now we have to put that in context. If that proposition had been accepted during the war generally, the Allies would not have bombed Germany, and we would not have made earlier strikes against Japan. Remember, at least 35,000 were killed in one night in Dresden. Our fire bombing of Tokyo [in March 1945] killed 83,000 in a single night. They all were deliberate bombings of civilian areas. MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off, which I think speaks well of him.

"But looking at it another way, in terms of whether or not the bombing of Hiroshima saved lives in the long run, most observers agree that it did. If we had invaded the main islands, it would have cost perhaps a million American casualties, certainly more than a million Japanese. How many civilian deaths did the nuclear bomb cause? Well, it cost a total of 200,000 in two places, and that's terrible. But it may have saved ten times that number.

"Of course the Bomb had a traumatic effect on the Japanese. I was in Hiroshima in the 1960s, speaking at a dinner of the country's leaders. The Japanese are excellent hosts. They drink pretty good, as we say. All through my speech there was clapping and laughing, and then I mentioned the bombing, something to the effect that it should never happen again--and the light went out of their eyes. All the smiles went. It was as if somebody had [he makes the gesture of cutting the air with a sword]. Like that. Hiroshima was simply too horrible to think about."

In saying that the Hiroshima bombing saved ten times as many lives as it claimed, Nixon may actually be understating the issue. In fact, estimates at the time were that as many as 10 million Japanese would have been lost in an American invasion, as well as a million U.S. troops. In the summer of 1945, Japan had more than 2 million soldiers and 30 million citizens prepared to choose death over dishonor. The kamikaze pilots and the Japanese troops who fought at Okinawa and Iwo Jima had already established the point. This is not just the American view. Kawamoto and most other Japanese today feel that Japan's military government never would have surrendered without an absolute catastrophe.

Whether or not America used the atom bomb solely to effect that surrender is another question. After Europe, the nation had its bellyful of war, and the assumption of the times was if the Bomb could bring peace in one shot, then use the thing. But a strong impulse for retribution must have applied as well. Harold Agnew was not alone in feeling that the Japanese "bloody well deserved" Hiroshima. There is also a theory that the U.S. used the Bomb as much to frighten the Soviets, with whom it was about to divide the world, as to win the war with Japan. More have dismissed this theory than embraced it. The Soviets, however, believe it to this day.

Then, too: Was it in fact the Bomb that brought the war to an end? The Japanese government was in total disarray in the summer of 1945, so Hiroshima and Nagasaki may merely have provided an excuse for a surrender. The Soviets entered the war on Aug. 8--after Hiroshima and before Nagasaki. The Japanese may have concluded that it would be better to surrender to the Americans than to risk prolonging the war and allowing the Soviets to take more spoils. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey conducted just after the war concluded that the atom bombings were not decisive in defeating the Japanese, and in reality may have strengthened their will to resist.

Certainly almost all who were involved in the Hiroshima decision believed at the time that the Bomb would be effective and that its use was necessary. Both presumptions, applied initially to Japan, were soon to shape all nuclear diplomacy after the war, since the presumptions of necessity and effectiveness would make threats to use nuclear weapons believable. Nixon inherited those presumptions, though he came to question them. He did not believe that the bombing of civilian populations wins wars. Eventually the whole problem was to be made immaterial, once Soviet and American nuclear weapons so grew in numbers and in power that the threat of mutual annihilation emerged as the only strategy available to either side. At first Nixon observed this process. Later he managed it.

"I didn't really begin to realize the significance of the Bomb until I was a candidate for Congress, and came to Washington in 1947. Even then, my sense of how the Bomb changed the geopolitical balance of the world grew rather gradually. There were two immediate developments as a result of our having the Bomb. One: the demobilization on the part of the U.S.--much too fast. Two: the demobilization on the parts of the British and the French--much too fast because they had the crutch of the Bomb. Suddenly the U.S. was the most powerful nation in the world. From that time forward, whether we wanted to or not, we would have to play a major role on the world's stage.

"And I would say that we did not want to play that role. World power is something very much opposed to the ingrained American attitude. Basically, Americans are idealists. We go into war for pragmatic reasons, but we have to be appealed to on idealistic terms. We are very impatient about being in a world where balance of power may make a difference, where one must sometimes recognize that you win without getting total victory. The fact that the Bomb made us a world power meant that we had to learn how to be one, and it has been very difficult."

As Nixon talks, the mannerisms for which he has often been burlesqued start to crop up. Yet in his presence the sudden scowl, the self-administered hug are not only not funny; they do not seem at all spasmodic or out of joint with what he is saying. He is 72, and perhaps his mannerisms have grown less pronounced over the years. But here he is speaking about things with which he feels supremely comfortable, history and diplomacy, and the comfort shows in his face and body.

At the same time, he is plainly not comfortable talking to a stranger, and that shows too. Occasional informalities are quickly caught up, crumpled and tossed away. He shows no signs whatever of seeking affection, as one does in a normal conversation, and rather than expanding on an idea or a story in the interests of courtesy, he will begin to fade off, and suddenly snap to attention by saying, "So much for that." There is almost no small talk. The amiability is reserved for his subject.

"Now let's talk about the Russians. Americans were surprised when the Russians got the Bomb . So now we both had the Bomb, but the Americans had more of them, and that is when the U.S. started using the Bomb as a diplomatic stick. There is a revisionist theory going around today that the Bomb did not play a significant role in our foreign diplomacy since World War II. The theory has developed because the Bomb is very unpopular. But I know it played a role. It played a role in Korea. It played a decisive role in the 1956 crisis in Suez, in calling Khrushchev's bluff and keeping him out of that area. It also played a decisive role in 1959 in Berlin, when Khrushchev was threatening to pull out of the Four-Power pact. It played a role in Cuba, of course, but a different kind of role, because that was when everything, including the presidency, changed. I'll come to that."

In an article, The Unimpressive Record of Atomic Diplomacy, McGeorge Bundy, who was John F. Kennedy's National Security Adviser, takes a somewhat different tack. Arguing that "there is very little evidence that American atomic supremacy was helpful in American diplomacy," Bundy cites Iran in 1946 and Quemoy and Matsu in 1955 and 1958. But he also suggests that atomic diplomacy did not affect the outcome of Korea either. Nixon says otherwise.

"Eisenhower had to find a way to bring that war to a conclusion. The truce talks had gone on for two years. During the talking at Panmunjom, tens of thousands of people were being killed. He had said, 'I will go to Korea,' in our campaign, and he was one of those new politicians who believed he had to keep a promise. Mark Clark was in command. Clark, knowing that Eisenhower did not want to get involved in an expanded ground war in Korea, understood that the only option for breaking the logjam was nuclear weapons.

"Eisenhower probably considered it, but he was concerned about using the Bomb in Korea because it was another Asian country. That had to be in the back of his mind. It was in the back of my mind, at least. And yet he was between a rock and a hard place. He had to end the war, he ruled out the use of ground troops, and all he had was the nuclear option.

"He decided then to give [Secretary of State John Foster] Dulles the responsibility of talking to Krishna Menon, the Indian Ambassador to the United Nations, who had very good relations with both the Russians and the Chinese, and who loved to talk to people--a great blah blah blah. And Dulles--not exactly in a threatening way--said, 'You know, we are very concerned about Korea,' and 'The President's patience is wearing thin,' and finally saying that unless the logjam is broken, it will lead to the use of nuclear weapons. It worked. The Chinese were probably tired of the war. And the Russians did not want to go to war over Korea. But it was the Bomb that did it. I'll tell you why."

He enumerates what he considers the requirements for successful nuclear diplomacy. The fingers start counting again:

"One, the U.S. must have unquestioned superiority. Two, the place involved in the conflict must be of supreme American interest. Three, a conventional option must not be available. Four--and this may be the biggest factor--the President of the U.S. must have credibility. Korea fit in all respects. But the main thing was that the Russians did not want to mess with Eisenhower. Lyndon Johnson made this point rather sadly once when I had breakfast with him in 1969. He was talking about the bad advice he got about halting the bombing in Viet Nam. He said that Averell Harriman came to him at least twelve times, and said that if we'd stop the bombing, the Russians would use their influence to restrain the North Vietnamese. Johnson said, 'I did it twelve times, and not a one of them did a damn bit of good. Ike was different,' he said. 'The Russians feared Ike. They didn't fear me.' "

Nixon pauses. He seems amazed by Johnson's confession even now. Throughout this whole discussion of the Bomb's history, he does not move or fidget much, but his voice suggests how involved he is in these recollections.

"In 1956 we considered using the Bomb in Suez, and we did use it diplomatically. The Russians called on us to join them in sending a combined force to drive the British and French out of the area. Eisenhower's response was that that was unthinkable. We were trying to use diplomatic leverage, but he wasn't about to join the Russians against our allies. Well, Khrushchev was feeling his oats, and he made a bloodcurdling threat that the Russians would go in unilaterally. Eisenhower's response was very interesting. He got Al Gruenther, the NATO commander, to hold a press conference, and Gruenther said that if Khrushchev carried out his threat to use rockets against the British Isles, Moscow would be destroyed 'as surely as day follows night.' From that time on, the U.S. has played the dominant role in the Mideast.

"Then there was Berlin." Nixon sits up straight. He is about to tell a story he enjoys.

In 1959 the Soviets were threatening to recognize the East German regime's authority over Berlin, which would have had the effect of denying access to the city for the U.S., France and Britain. It also placed the Adenauer government in jeopardy. Eisenhower made it clear that he would oppose the Soviets' attempt to violate the Four-Power agreement.

"He held a press conference, March 11, 1959. It was Eisenhower at his best. He rambled and rambled. People said he didn't know what he meant. But Eisenhower always rambled deliberately, because he was trying to make a point another way. At the press conference it was mentioned that a new budget had gone up to the Pentagon, reducing American ground forces by 50,000. So one of the first questions shot out of the box by a reporter was if the President, in view of this crisis in Berlin, intended to re-evaluate the cutback.

"Eisenhower made one flat statement. He said, 'We are certainly not going to fight a ground war in Europe.' But then he went on to say, 'What possible good would it do to send a few thousand more Americans to Berlin, even a few divisions? After all, there are 500,000 Soviet and German troops in East Germany and 175 Soviet divisions in that neighborhood.' [Nixon repeats "in that neighborhood" with relish.] Somebody brought up nuclear weapons. Eisenhower then went off on a monologue about how senseless nuclear war was. He didn't see how nuclear weapons could free anything. He gave the impression they were so destructive, so terrible. Naive readers of the transcript of that press conference will think that Eisenhower was ruling the Bomb out, because it was so terrible. At the end of the conference, someone raised the nuclear question again, and Eisenhower just closed the conference by saying the United States will stand by its commitments. 'We will do what is necessary to protect ourselves.'

"People asked, 'What in the world are we doing? [Nixon feigns bafflement.] We're not going to send in ground forces. Eisenhower speaks disparagingly of the possibility of using nuclear weapons. What does it all mean?' Four days later, testimony before a Senate subcommittee by Air Force General Chief of Staff [Thomas] White was released. White told the Senators that the Berlin crisis could lead to a general war with the Soviet Union and 'nuclear weapons have to be used.' [Nixon relaxes, delighted.] The Russians back down."

He notes that Berlin met all the conditions of successful nuclear diplomacy. He draws a comparison to the Berlin crisis of 1961, which resulted in the building of the Berlin Wall: "Khrushchev backed down with Eisenhower, and went forward with Kennedy." He attempts to emphasize that he is not criticizing the way Kennedy handled the 1961 situation, but then he points out that Kennedy capitalized on the term missile gap in the 1960 campaign, in which he defeated Nixon. "Maybe Khrushchev believed it." Nixon adds that there was no missile gap in 1960. "We actually had a 15-to-l advantage in strategic missiles at the time of the '62 Cuban missile confrontation. But the 'missile gap' phrase got people worried. Americans are sitting fat and happy on the ultimate weapon, and suddenly they think, well, maybe it isn't always going to be that way."

On the Cuban missile "complication," he focuses on the abilities of Khrushchev, with whom Nixon was linked in the public mind since the publicized "kitchen debate" at the American Exhibition in Moscow in 1959. He rates Khrushchev "the most brilliant world leader I have ever met." That brilliance was manifested, he says, in Khrushchev's having nurtured a reputation for rashness and unpredictability. "He scared the hell out of people." Yet he was the kind of leader, Nixon believes, with whom nuclear weapons were relatively safe--unlike "a nut like Gaddafi." As for those who now say that America's nuclear superiority in 1962 had nothing to do with Khrushchev's backing down, "Don't kid yourself."

But this time nuclear diplomacy worked both ways, he says. Khrushchev backed down, but Kennedy agreed to take U.S. missiles out of Turkey. He also agreed to "quit supporting anti-Castro forces stationed in the United States." Now, according to Nixon, the usefulness of the fear of nuclear retaliation was beginning to wear thin.

"The Cuban missile confrontation was the whole watershed. The Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister [Vasili] Kuznetsov told John McCloy, who had been Kennedy's disarmament adviser, 'We agreed to pull out, but you Americans will never be able to do this to us again.' "After that began the massive Soviet buildup of nuclear arms." We had a policy of building 1,000 weapons, and we thought that if they built up to 1,000 as well, that would be all right, a standoff. What happened is that they didn't stop at 1,000. That is the situation that confronted me when I became President."

The world of real missiles that Nixon conjures up is one he has never visited. Some of that world lies in Montana, where 200 Minuteman missiles are planted in 23,000 sq. mi. of flat farmland extending from the middle of the state to the northern Rockies. Spread out at good distances from one another are 150 Minuteman IIs and 50 Minuteman IIIs, representing 20% of the total 1,000-lCBM force to which Nixon referred. A Minuteman III travels at more than 15,000 m.p.h. at an altitude of 700 miles. Flying over the Pole, it can reach its target in the Soviet Union in less than half an hour.

Ten Minuteman Ills are under the immediate control of the "launch facility" called Tango Zero. Tango is situated on a farm 80 miles northwest of Great Falls. Aboveground the launch facility appears to be an elongated, plain, fenced-in house. Belowground lie two connected "capsules," rooms shaped like medicine capsules; one is the equipment room, the other, sealed behind an 8'/2-ton blast door, is the room where a two-man crew, sitting at two separate "status consoles," receives messages and stares at boards of lights. On June 6 this year, the command crew was 1st Lieut. Donald R. ("Skip") MacKinnon, 32, and 1st Lieut. Stephen J. Griffin, 24. June 6 was an atypically busy day for them because the launching codes were being changed, as they are periodically. A Diet Pepsi can rested on one of the consoles. Five miles away from Tango Zero, a Minuteman III "floats" in a vertical underground cylinder, pointed upward, held in place by mechanical "articulating arms" that look like four sets of three fingers. The missile is hospital green; no U.S. flag is painted on its side.

If a U.S. President were to begin launch procedures, he would signal the Strategic Air Command headquarters near Omaha, which would send messages with an "enabling code" to places like Tango Zero. The enabling code allows the missiles to be unlocked. MacKinnon and Griffin then open a red metal box containing a book that verifies the code received, along with two small keys. The six-figure code is dialed into a machine, and the missile's "safety" removed. Standing 12 ft. apart, the two crewmen then turn their keys within no more than 1.5 sec. of each other (it is impossible for a single person to turn both keys) and hold them in place for 5 sec. In another launch facility, another two-man crew performs the same procedure simultaneously. When all this is done, the missile lifts off.

The farm on which the procedure would take place belongs to Everett King, a burly man in his late 30s whose face is sun-red from his cap line down. King is less troubled by the capsules in his land than by a rabid skunk in the area that might threaten his children, and by a raccoon that commandeered the basketball backboard over the garage and will not back off. Besides missiles and Air Force personnel, King's 5,000 acres contain spring wheat and fallow land in alternating green and brown stripes, a crop of oats, malting barley, a sleepy horse, a donkey and a 60-mile view extending to the Rockies. On a late-spring afternoon, the mountains glow like dark ice.

King sees the presence of the missiles as an unfortunate necessity. "Anyway, nobody's safe from 'em anywhere." He does not spend his days worrying over nuclear war but he is almost certain one is coming. "You've got all those toys around. Someone's going to fool with them sooner or later. Look at Hiroshima. The Bomb was already used once. Things are building all the time. The Middle East, Central America. I listen to the radio a lot when I drive my tractor, and they were just sayin' the other day that there was--what was the name of that country? Pakistan--they were sayin' that Pakistan might get the Bomb. So nobody's safe. No, I don't mind the missiles on my land. If they go off, it'll probably happen at night. I'll never know."

The most likely circumstances under which nuclear war would occur, says Nixon, are the following: 1) an accident, 2) proliferation, 3) a small war in which U.S. and Soviet interests collide, 4) a miscalculation by one superpower of the other's interests, 5) a Soviet pre-emptive strike against China: "They cannot allow China to gain sufficient nuclear strength." Elaborating on the small-war theory, Nixon says it is unlikely that a nuclear conflict would be ignited in either Afghanistan ("too far away for us") or in Central America ("too far away for them"). The most probable place would be the Middle East. "But, you know, the Russians might be a little goosey about going in there because they could think, 'Those Israelis have a Masada complex.' Someone pushes the Israelis, the Israelis might just bomb the bastards!"

Nixon's office is much hotter now; the air conditioning is missed. Outside, an early Fourth of July celebrator has set off a brief volley of Chinese firecrackers. By nightfall the East River will be ablaze with rockets.

"I found a far different world and a far different presidency in 1969 than when I left the Eisenhower Administration in January 1961. In these respects: first, the overwhelming superiority that the U.S. had over the Soviet Union in terms of nuclear weapons was gone. In 1961 we had a first-strike capability. That was gone. The Soviet Union was not yet ahead of us, but they certainly were equal to us. In the campaign, I made the point that we must be No. 1. I made the point not out of an appeal to ego, but because I remembered what superiority had meant to us when we had it. I felt it was very important that the Soviets not have it. But in the interests of avoiding nuclear coercion, we had to have sufficiency, which meant parity. And what parity meant for nuclear diplomacy was this: the U.S. had to develop a nuclear strategy to deal with the world as if nuclear weapons did not exist.

"So in 1969 we saw a different world in terms of the nuclear power balance. We saw a different world in the relationship between China and the Soviet Union. The split between the two had really begun in 1959, but U.S. policies had not changed one bit. Now there was no question that a split had occurred. And then the U.S. was involved in the war in Viet Nam. So I had three priorities on becoming President: to change the relationship with China, to change the relationship with the Soviet Union and to bring the war in Viet Nam to an end. What I had in mind was a three-track approach to those problems. I wanted to end the Viet Nam War in a way that would be consistent with U.S. foreign policy interests. I was not seeking, as some unsophisticated or partisan critics have maintained, better relationships with China and the Soviet Union because of Viet Nam. I was seeking them as ends in themselves. It seemed to me very important for us to develop a new relationship with the Soviet Union because of the shift in the nuclear balance. And I was thinking not only of China then, but of China in the next century, and of the future balance of power among the U.S., China and the Soviets.

"To achieve those ends, I had also to consider how to end that war in Viet Nam. One of the options was the nuclear option, in other words, massive escalation: either bombing the dikes or the nuclear option. Of course, there was a third option: withdrawal. Get out. Blame Viet Nam on the Democrats. I rejected the withdrawal option because it would have been inconsistent with our foreign policy interests. At the other end of the spectrum, I ruled out bombing the dikes and the nuclear option. I rejected the bombing of the dikes, which would have drowned 1 million people, for the same reason that I rejected the nuclear option. Because the targets presented were not military targets. Nobody was exactly saying, 'Pave 'em over!' the way our friend in the Air Force, [General Curtis] LeMay, would have suggested. But I didn't see any targets in North Viet Nam that could not have been as well handled by conventional weapons.

"And then the other reason for my rejecting massive escalation: because I was convinced that it would destroy any chances for moving forward with the Soviets and China. So we went with a program of Vietnamization, which we coupled with withdrawal, which we coupled with military pressure, nonnuclear, which we coupled with the negotiating track. We went on all four tracks. And we wound up with not the most satisfactory solution in 1973, but it was a solution."

He frowns and shrugs. In rapid succession he looks perplexed, annoyed, engaged.

"There were three other instances when I considered using nuclear weapons. One was in the '73 war, when Brezhnev threatened to intervene unilaterally in the Mideast. We could not allow Israel to go down the tube. We could not allow the Soviets to have a predominant position in the region. That had to be the bottom line. I wanted to send that message, and putting the weapons on alert did that. We did not so much want to threaten the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons as to indicate that the U.S. would resist them, conventional and nuclear. That was my decision. There's been a lot of second-guessing that it was someone else's. It was mine.

"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.

"You see, I'm not talking about winning. I'm talking about the world as it is. The rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union can be managed but not eliminated. That's the kind of world we live in."

He plants his feet on the carpet between the ottoman and the chair, folds his arms on his knees and stares hard at his listener.

"The United States was meant to be a great power. De Gaulle said that France was never her true self unless she was engaged in a great enterprise. Since World War II, the U.S. has been engaged in a great enterprise. It has been good for us, internally, to feel that way. The moment we turn isolationist, it will be disastrous for the rest of the world. But in the long run, it will be disastrous for us too. We will become self-centered, introverted. As I look at young people these days, I see that each can make a difference in the world. Not just in his own family. Not just in his community. Not just in his country. But the whole world. I think Americans are very lucky to have the problems they have."

On July 4, 1985, would Richard Nixon say that the world is a safer place than on July 4, 1945?

"Yes."

Then, was Hiroshima, in some way, good for the world?

"Yes."