Meeting on the Defense Budget 5 December 1962 excerpts David Coleman editor The Presidential Recordings John F Kennedy The Winds of Change Volume Six December I 1962February 7 1963 New York W W Norton 201 pages 28 and 47 p 28 President Kennedy the purpose of our strategic buildup is to deter the Russians number one number two to attack them if it looks like they are about to attack us or to be able to lessen the impact they would have on us in an attack I think everybody agrees if they concentrate on our cities we can't be sure enough of their targets they may be hard or they may have submarines So that we can't successfully carry out a first strike without taking--as I understood the Secretary's position--an inordinate amount of damage If our point really then is to deter them it seems to me that we're getting an awful lot of I mean with the Polaris submarines with the planes we have the Navy's strategic force and with the missiles we have-and which we're known to have--we have an awful lot of megatonnage to put on the Soviets sufficient to deter them from ever using nuclear weapons Taylor Well I agreePresident Kennedy Unless we accept-- Otherwise what good are they You can't use them as a first strike weapon yourself so they're only good for deterring If they attack us if we fail to deter them and they attack us then it's just destroy them out of--just to fulfill your part of the contract chuckling But we just drop it on their cities and destroy them and ruin the Russians I don't see quite why we're building as many as we're building p 47 President Kennedy I must say that I'm all for the convention of the day but I think that the chance of using these weapons is I don't know socially circumscribed but the chance of using conventional are not And I think that we ought to err on the side of generosity on airlift and on equipment for our military forces and on ships to transport these forces and helicopters and all the rest Because I think that the chance of firing these off at all these SlOP targets is and when they do nobody's going to care                     National Security Archive    Suite 701  Gelman Library  The George Washington University    2130 H Street  NW  Washington  D C  20037    Phone  202 994‐7000  Fax  202 994‐7005  nsarchiv@gwu edu