Word: burtness
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...most articulate and effective advocate of this position was Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, a former congressional aide to the late Senator Henry Jackson and a longtime opponent of SALT. Perle and Burt-"the two Richards," as they came to be known-were to become the principal antagonists in the battle over the Administration's conduct of nuclear diplomacy. That battle continues behind the scenes to this day, with Burt trying to maneuver the Administration back toward talks that might yield an agreement, and Perle blocking him at every turn...
...supply-side arms control." He meant there would have to be years of unilateral buildup in American defenses before there could be a resumption of bilateral talks. Even then, Perle would be deeply skeptical about the wisdom of any arms control. "This stuff is soporific," he once remarked to Burt. "It puts our society to sleep. It does violence to our ability to maintain adequate defenses." Meese was echoing this sentiment when he said, early
McFarlane worked closely with Burt to prepare a memo from the White House in early March 1982 that ordered the various agencies to close ranks behind a START proposal by May 1. The purpose of the deadline, remarked McFarlane, was to set off "an explosive charge that will blast apart the log jam in the bureaucracy...
Seeing that he was outnumbered, Burt looked for a way to give the State Department option what he called "a little sex appeal." He suggested proposing to the Soviets a straight swap: the U.S. would cancel its program to develop the MX if the Soviets would dismantle all 308 of their SS-18 heavies...
...Burt got the idea from two veterans of SALT, Lieut. General Brent Scowcroft (ret.), who was advising the Administration on what to do about the MX, and William Hyland, then a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and now the editor of Foreign Affairs. Scowcroft and Hyland had been aides to Kissinger and later ran the NSC staff during the Ford Administration...