John S. Foster was director of Defense Research and Engineering at the Pentagon from 1965-1973, and earlier served as director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In this interview he faces an array of questions about the Nixon administrations approach to nuclear strategy and arms control. He describes his concerns about Soviet intentions and capabilities at the end of the 1960s, specifically the evidence that they were building more and more large ICBMs, as well as an ABM system. These developments stoked fears that the Kremlin was creating the capacity to attack the U.S. Minuteman force. He acknowledges indirectly the existence of pressures to continue building arms on both sides. He also admits that American strategists understood the attainment of slight differences in capacity were not really very important and would only result in an enormous expenditure of resources. Nevertheless, he maintains that it was important to aim for technological superiority, in part to mitigate the overwhelming secrecy surrounding the Soviet program. In addition, he offers his views on: the need for the SALT treaty, the differences between Soviet and U.S. MIRV activity, the paradox of targeting major Soviet facilities despite the belief that a limited nuclear war was not possible, the conundrum of being better able to defend the Minuteman field than the U.S. population, and the plusses and minuses of ABM defense. He defends the objective of pursuing military research and development even though it will almost certainly lead to increasingly deadly weapons.
![Interview with Roland Timerbaev, 1986 [1]](https://bpldcassets.blob.core.windows.net/derivatives/metadata/commonwealth-oai:tb09m4116/image_thumbnail_300.jpg)
![War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Roland Timerbaev, 1986 [1]](https://bpldcassets.blob.core.windows.net/derivatives/metadata/commonwealth-oai:9593zc21v/image_thumbnail_300.jpg)
