Search for New Weapons-Talks Team to Begin

The Reagan Administration will start searching in earnest this week for a new team of arms negotiators and will begin addressing the even more difficult question of what the U.S. negotiating positions should be when Soviet-American arms talks resume.

Last week’s agreement in Geneva by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko to reopen negotiations on offensive nuclear weapons and to begin new talks on space weapons was largely procedural. However, it was particularly significant in two respects, according to Administration officials:

--For the first time in 13 months, the superpowers will return to the bargaining table, even though Moscow and Washington differ publicly and explicitly on which weapons are needed to achieve and maintain nuclear stability and on the point from which the two sides will be starting.

--For the first time in 13 years, the two superpowers will have a forum for broad negotiations on offensive long-range and intermediate-range nuclear weapons and on anti-missile and other defensive weapons, with an eye toward comprehensive treaties that could stand for the rest of the century.

‘Not the Millennium’ “It’s not the millennium,” one senior official cautioned. “There are lots of problems ahead--lots.”

However, another official said, “The fact that we’ve agreed to negotiate, without having a common basis for viewing the weapons, was really quite a feat.” After at least five years of icy relations between Washington and Moscow, he said, the accord suggests momentum from the top leadership in both countries toward serious bargaining and eventual agreement.

The United States wants to persuade the Soviets to accept strategic defense as a valid and stabilizing concept in the nuclear age, thereby reversing the longstanding U.S. tradition of viewing offensive weapons as the sole basis for deterring an enemy nuclear attack.

Ironically, the two nations took precisely the opposite views when arms control talks were initiated in 1967. The Soviets then insisted that strategic defense systems were valuable components of nuclear deterrence and that offensive weapons alone needed to be controlled. Only with the first strategic arms agreements in 1972 were they convinced that each side should forswear anti-missile systems in favor of a balance in offensive nuclear weapons.

The Reagan Administration seems particularly pleased with last week’s outcome in Geneva because it demonstrated that it could not only negotiate with Moscow but could impose discipline on its own arms control officials, who have widely diverging views on the subject.

Paul H. Nitze, Shultz’s special adviser on arms control, is credited with providing a unifying concept, on which the disparate elements in the Administration could agree, as the basic U.S. presentation to the Soviets in Geneva.

Soviets view space defenses as an offensive weapon Nitze’s approach holds that the foundation of the first arms-control agreements in 1972 has proved wrong. The two sides then agreed to severely limit--in practice, to virtually eliminate--anti-missile weapons and to place a ceiling on offensive nuclear missiles and bombers, a ceiling that was to have been reduced in subsequent agreements until neither side would be able to launch a surprise attack against the other.

Despite those agreements, the number of nuclear warheads on the intercontinental missiles and bombers of both sides has quadrupled over the following 13 years, largely because of the development of multiple warheads atop single rockets and the failure to agree on radical curbs in subsequent negotiations.

Thus the old concept has failed, Shultz argued to Gromyko, and a new basis for nuclear stability is required. The new U.S. approach is to seek reductions in offensive weaponry in the short term while embarking on research on anti-missile defenses (referred to as the “Star Wars” program) as the possible basis for maintaining a stable deterrent in the long term.

The Soviets, while agreeing to resume talks, complain that the U.S. space-based defense program is intended to enhance its offensive capability. No anti-missile defense will work well enough to protect against a massive Soviet surprise attack, Moscow officials argue, but such a system would be effective in protecting U.S. missiles held in reserve against retaliation by Soviet weapons that survived a U.S. surprise attack.

Thus, in the Soviet view, the aim of the space-based defense program, particularly when coupled with President Reagan’s buildup of offensive weapons, is to achieve U.S. strategic superiority and to give Washington the capability to launch a surprise attack. At Geneva, the Soviets refused to allow the “space arms” talks to be called “space defense” talks because, in their view, such weapons will have offensive rather than defensive aims.

For this reason, their primary goal in the coming talks will be to curb the U.S. space defense effort with bans on developing, testing and deploying space weapons. Moscow introduced a treaty at the United Nations in 1981 to bar all weapons from space, and U.S. officials expect a similar proposal to be made when the new Soviet-American talks commence.

At the outset of the new talks, Moscow is expected to seek, in particular, a moratorium on tests of the U.S. anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon, which is being developed to balance an operational Soviet anti-satellite system.

President Reagan has hinted that the United States will show “restraint” once negotiations begin, but Moscow is expected to seek a total halt in the U.S. program before the first test of the weapon in space against a physical target, now scheduled for June.

Although that is what the United States expects, some Administration officials note that in Geneva, the Soviets did not mention an anti-satellite moratorium. This led one senior official to conclude that the anti-satellite program--which is only one of a number of possible “space arms”--has only been a propaganda stalking horse for the Kremlin’s true aim of engaging the United States in sweeping negotiations to ban all space missile defense weapons.

Controversy is expected early in the space arms talks over the subjects to be covered, as well as on the substantive differences on those subjects.

The United States, for example, wants to discuss extensive Soviet surface-to-air missile systems, such as the SAM-10 and SAM-12, which have some limited capacity to shoot down intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The Soviets, for their part, want to negotiate curbs on the U.S. research program for space-based defenses, which is aimed at producing a defensive system that would knock out ballistic missiles as they travel through space to their targets.

Moscow and Washington finessed the issue of what subjects will be taken up in the space arms forum, agreeing last week not to fix an agenda at Geneva. While the Soviets probably will take the lead in making space arms proposals, the United States is expected to make the first moves in talks on two other issues: long-range and intermediate-range offensive weapons.

Moscow’s negotiators walked away from earlier negotiations--dubbed START, for strategic arms reduction talks, and INF, for intermediate-range nuclear forces--13 months ago, after the first U.S. intermediate-range Pershing 2 and cruise missiles were deployed in Western Europe to begin balancing the Soviet SS-20 missile force.

Those talks had gone on for several years, and each side had presented well-developed proposals. Both negotiations had reached an impasse, however.

More Modest Cutbacks

At the START talks, the centerpiece of the U.S. proposal was a plan that would have resulted in a two-thirds reduction in Soviet land-based missiles and warheads--which make up the bulk of Moscow’s nuclear might. The Soviets proposed more modest cutbacks that would include U.S. bombers and cruise missiles as well as ballistic missiles. Washington began to show flexibility by offering to consider “trade-offs” between different kinds of weapons, but its new position was not explored in depth by Soviet negotiators because it came just before the talks broke up.

At the INF talks, the Soviet position was that no U.S. missiles in Europe were allowed, while the United States insisted on equal numbers with the Soviets.

These positions will provide the basis for U.S. entry into the new talks, although disagreement is already emerging within the Administration on whether any changes should be made.

“They were good proposals when presented and they are still good, well-thought-out proposals now,” a senior Defense Department official said.

A U.S. arms control official said that some new options might be developed as fall-back positions to respond to Soviet proposals or Soviet interest in U.S. proposals but that new proposals should not be developed.

A State Department official, however, contended that the United States should prepare additional substantive proposals in advance so that it will be ready if Moscow offers “radical reductions” in offensive weapons, as it recently promised. Otherwise, he suggested, the Administration might not retain support in Congress and Europe for its policies.

Reagan and his advisers ‘will be sensitive to any flexiility in Soviet positions.’ The United States is almost certain to appear to be reluctant to bargain seriously on space arms, something the Soviets may be counting on. If it appears unresponsive to a Soviet offer on offensive weapons as well, congressional backing for the Administration’s defense programs (including MX and the space-based defenses) will erode quickly, and European anti-nuclear movements will revive with equal speed, this official said.

During Reagan’s first term, U.S. negotiating positions have been hammered out and changed only after a great deal of bitter debate between the Pentagon and State Department, and this pattern may occur again. However, officials here were uniformly more optimistic last week that there will be less wrangling in the future.

‘Biggest Change’ “The biggest change I see coming from Geneva,” one official said, “is in the attitude at the White House. They (President Reagan and his aides) are now looking for opportunities for progress, and they will be sensitive to any flexibility in Soviet positions. They won’t permit the bickering this time.”

Another important reform is the elevation of Nitze, the former U.S. negotiator at the intermediate-range talks, to Shultz’s chief aide for arms control. Nitze already has largely eclipsed Assistant Secretary of State Richard R. Burt as Shultz’s chief adviser on the issue, thereby removing one of the more contentious figures in past arms control conflicts with the Pentagon.

Nitze is also helping Shultz become more expert in arms issues and therefore more influential with the White House in bureaucratic battles with Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and Assistant Defense Secretary Richard N. Perle.

The Administration now must find a chief negotiator for the new arms talks who will “ride herd” on all three sets of talks. It also must choose negotiators for each of the three negotiations.

Max Kampelman, who led the U.S. negotiators at one of the follow-up sessions that followed the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, is favored by Shultz and Reagan’s national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, for the top job.

However, other White House officials, as well as officials at State and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, fear that Kampelman may not be as knowledgeable on substantive issues as required. At least one North Atlantic Treaty Organization government official said he feared that Kampelman may introduce human rights into the arms talks unnecessarily.

Nitze himself has been mentioned for the job, despite his desire to remain in Washington because of an illness in his family. Former Sen. John G. Tower of Texas, a Republican conservative, also has been mentioned for the post.

Retired Gen. Edward L. Rowny, who led the U.S. delegation to the START talks, is expected to be named head of the U.S. team to the long-range offensive weapon talks.

A career State Department official, Ambassador James E. Goodby, has been mentioned as a candidate to lead U.S. negotiators to the intermediate-range offensive weapon talks. Goodby is currently head of the U.S. team at the Conference on Disarmament in Europe. Before that assignment, he was Rowny’s deputy at the START talks.

A scientist is being sought to head the U.S. team at the space arms talks, officials here said. One name that has surfaced is Dr. Robert Jastrow, who is director of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration research institute in New York and has written extensively in support of the space-based defense program.