Now, a U.S. Position of Strength : Reagan Is in Improved Arms-Bargaining Stance With Soviets

President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev smiled a lot during the Geneva summit meeting. They agreed on the importance of avoiding nuclear war. But they seemingly remained light years apart on the cardinal question of just how arms control can contribute to that objective.

At best, many months of tough negotiations lie ahead. At worst, given their sharp differences over “Star Wars” and their fundamentally different visions of the future, the gap may be unbridgeable.

Democracies are not at their best in such a test of wills. Because of the open nature of our society, our leaders find it next to impossible to play their cards close to their chests; fallback positions quickly become public knowledge. Members of the Kremlin inner circle keep their quarrels within the family; they can exploit the divisions in our society, but we have no opportunity to return the favor.

Certainly Reagan faced very serious problems on his own return from Geneva. First and foremost, unless he comes to grips with a huge budget deficit and an enormous imbalance in U.S. foreign trade, the economy may become increasingly unable to provide reasonable prosperity at home while sustaining the military and political competition with the Soviet Union.

Reagan nevertheless left Geneva with a lot more going for him than did Gorbachev, the tough new Soviet leader.

Contrary to Marxist theory, which holds that the communists are pre-destined by history to win the struggle for supremacy with the wicked capitalists, time is not necessarily on the Soviet side.

What the Soviets call the correlation of forces--a concept that encompasses not just military strength but economic, political and psychological factors as well--is running against Moscow of late. Overshadowing everything else are the problems with the Soviet economy--problems that are deeply rooted in the system itself.

Gorbachev, in his departure press conference at Geneva, said he had told Reagan that if the United States continued with its strategic defense program, “I’ll have to do something about it.”

No one should imagine that he didn’t mean it. But the Kremlin leader cannot escape the fact that an accelerated arms race would put an even greater strain on the Soviet economy than on ours.

The old Stalinist system of centralized economic planning worked well enough when the challenge was to build smokestack industries. However, the same system is a disaster in the era of computers and rapidly changing technology.

In the decade ending with 1975, the Soviet economy grew more rapidly than ours. Since then, despite the U.S. problems with flagging productivity and an overvalued dollar, the situation has reversed. The Soviet economy is not much more than half the American, and is further behind now than it was 10 years ago.

The Central Intelligence Agency is forecasting a Soviet economic growth rate of only 1 1/2% to 2 1/2% annually for the remainder of the 1980s--a performance that allows for no step-up in military expenditures without cutting even more deeply into the troubled civilian economy.

Stanford Prof. Henry Rowan, formerly a senior CIA official, puts it this way: “If the Soviet economy doesn’t grow much, the military sector can increase only at the expense of consumption, investment or support of the overseas empire.”

Rowan’s own conclusion is that Gorbachev cannot afford to squeeze the much-put-upon Soviet consumer any further. In his words, “This leaves investment and the military to absorb shortfalls.”

Gorbachev, in his post-summit remarks, said that if Reagan persists with his Star Wars program, Moscow will respond in “effective though less expensive ways.”

No doubt he referred to an expansion of the Soviet offensive missile fleet--something that is unquestionably in his power to do. But that will hardly solve his problem.

Most Soviet military scientists probably agree with most of their U.S. counterparts that a leakproof anti-ballistic missile defense is unattainable. However, the people who run the Soviet Union have a deep respect for Western, especially American, technology. They cannot be absolutely sure that the Americans won’t work a miracle.

Besides, the Soviets know, as do the West Europeans, that anti-ballistic missile research will beget advanced technology useful for offensive as well as defensive weapons--and perhaps crucial for global economic competition.

Thus, if Gorbachev cannot talk Reagan into abandoning his plans for expanded research into strategic defense systems, he will have no choice but to enlarge his country’s own, already-sizable Star Wars program. But this is a race that the Soviets would prefer to avoid.

Despite Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger’s suggestions to the contrary, the United States is well ahead of the Soviets in most technologies relevant to Star Wars. And the disparity in the underlying infrastructures is even greater.

The Soviet Union, with its ability to concentrate resources on high-priority projects, can make formidable missiles with accurate guidance systems. If need be, it can probably keep pace reasonably well in strategic defense--at least for awhile--even though it remains unable to produce sufficient foodstuffs or reliable electric shavers and ballpoint pens.

However, Gorbachev’s public remarks suggest that he understands the danger that the Soviet Union will fall hopelessly behind in the computer-based technologies that are crucial to his country’s long-term ability to compete in the military as well as the economic sphere.

To avoid this, he has ambitious plans for modernizing the Soviet economy. These plans, in the view of most Western analysts, do not include tipping the allocation of resources even further toward the ravenous military-industrial complex, which already consumes 12% to 14% of the Soviet gross national product.

The fact that Gorbachev finds himself between the proverbial rock and the hard place doesn’t mean that the United States can dictate the terms of an arms-control agreement to the tough crowd in the Kremlin. It does mean that Reagan is in a strong bargaining position that should not be wasted.

If the President plays his cards right--and that admittedly is a big if--it just may be possible to nudge the Soviets into a significant compromise involving reductions of offensive nuclear forces on the one hand and a negotiated definition of the difference between acceptable and unacceptable Star Wars research and development on the other.