Undermining the Arms Talks?

Two weeks before the opening of new strategic arms talks in Geneva, the U.S. negotiating position--and perhaps the prospects for meaningful negotiations--is being seriously undermined by the Reagan Administration’s continuing inability to strike a sensible posture and stick with it.

If Administration spokesmen remain on what seems a muddled course, Washington is leaving itself open to a truly damaging split with the European allies, whose political support is vital to a meaningful arms-control agreement. The Administration also is making it unnecessarily difficult for the Soviets to negotiate a reduction in offensive arms.

The major U.S. negotiating goal is to persuade the Soviets to reduce their arsenal of big, multiple-warhead intercontinental missiles. The Soviets keep repeating that unless Washington is willing to negotiate constraints on President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative--the “Star Wars” proposal--a reduction of nuclear arms is “out of the question.”

If there were any indication that Reagan was willing to negotiate limits on Star Wars testing in exchange for meaningful cutbacks in offensive Soviet missiles, the Administration posture would make sense in terms of bargaining leverage. But he keeps reiterating his determination to proceed with testing and, if the testing is successful, to implementation.

Star Wars is an obstacle to arms reduction only if the program seems pre-destined to move beyond research to implementation. But the line between research, testing and implementation can be hard to define.

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 severely limited the deployment of ABM systems by both sides. But it did not restrict research. Both great powers have conducted extensive ABM research, including work on exotic technologies. There are no signs that the Soviets would accept the extensive and intrusive verification needed to enforce a ban on ABM research.

In a Thursday press conference Reagan repeated that “all we are doing is engaging in research which is legal within the ABM treaty.”

His strategy of proceeding with both Star Wars and an arms-control treaty at the same time falls apart the moment the research program is perceived as turning into a development program that could be seen as a violation of the ABM treaty.

Last week Paul H. Nitze, veteran U.S. arms-control negotiator, presented the best rationale for the Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative that we have seen. He laid down a stringent set of conditions that would have to be met before anti-missile weapons could be deployed.

The first condition was technological feasibility. Second, he said that the defensive system itself would have to be survivable; otherwise the nuclear balance might become less rather than more stable. Finally, it could not be cheaper and easier for the other side to build additional offensive missiles to overwhelm the defensive network than for the United States to improve the defensive system.

Nitze embraced Reagan’s goal of a world safe from nuclear annihilation, but stressed that achievement of the goal--if possible at all--would probably take until well into the 21st Century. He also said that the United States would seek to prevent “erosion” of the ABM treaty--reassuring words.

Since Nitze is the Administration’s chief arms-control adviser, we would like to believe that he was reflecting an established position that the United States will take to Geneva. Unfortunately, however, there were contradictory voices last week--including the President’s.

In his press conference Reagan raised the possibility that the United States, in light of alleged Soviet violations of existing arms-control treaties, may also feel compelled to violate treaty restraints.

This came on the heels of Pentagon confirmation that the space shuttle will be used to test Star Wars technology--specifically, the ability to aim and fire directed-energy weapons at incoming ballistic missiles--in 1987.

The ABM treaty prohibits development and testing of space-based “ABM systems or components.” Whether the scheduled tests violate the treaty is a matter of interpretation. At the least, however, the Administration is giving the Soviets an opportunity to charge that the United States is not really interested in arms control, that by refusing to negotiate limits on “research” testing Washington is condemning the Geneva talks to failure.

The skepticism of some Western critics was reinforced by the testimony of a Pentagon official on Thursday that seemed to suggest that the ultimate deployment of a Star Wars system is a foregone conclusion. Such assertiveness obviously blurs the distinction between legal research and treaty-violating developmental work. If the Pentagon is speaking for the President, arms-treaty prospects are dim.