Leslie Gelb was the director of Policy Planning and Arms Control for International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense from 1967-1969, and Assistant Secretary of State in charge of politico-military affairs from 1977-1979. Before and after his Carter administration tour he was a journalist at The New York Times. The interview focuses largely on U.S.-European tensions in the arms control sphere during the late 1970s. A fundamental issue at the time, he explains, was the European fear that the U.S. was not committed to its deterrent role in Europe. Discussing the pivotal speech by German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1977, he recalls that it hit us like a thunderbolt. Seen by some as a challenge to Carter, the speech created considerable confusion, even among the Germans. He blames U.S. mishandling of the neutron bomb episode for crystalizing the Europeans lack of confidence in U.S. contributions to European security. This led Washington to make the political decision to deploy intermediate range nuclear weapons in Europe. He adds that since it was clear NATO would not allow the missiles to be deployed without an accompanying arms control proposal to the Soviet Union, the U.S. conspired with the British, French, and Germans to craft a proposal that mainly functioned as a political smokescreen for allowing the missiles to be deployed. Mr. Gelb concludes by describing the multilayered reasoning behind the deployment of U.S. missiles in Europe, and agrees with public opinion that President Carter did not do the best job of pulling together all of the opinions within the U.S. government to give the country a clear direction to follow.
