Nuclear Moratorium: a Middle Path : Offer of On-Site Verification Shouldn’t Be Casually Dismissed

Americans are spending much energy these days sorting out the “public-relations chaff” from the “policy grain” in Soviet initiatives. Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s latest overture for a nuclear-test moratorium poses the problem in acute degree.

Responding to a U.S. refusal to match its own temporary moratorium on tests, Moscow has upped the ante. It has announced that it would accept an international system to verify such a ban, taking up the offer of India and other states to place monitoring stations on their territory. And it now professes readiness for “certain measures of on-site verification to remove the possible doubts about compliance with such a moratorium.”

Magic words, those: on-site verification. Although its practical value varies greatly from case to case, such verification stands at the heart of debates about ways to prevent cheating on arms control. Symbolically, on-site inspection has long held promise as a central method for building confidence between the superpowers.

Its implications would go far beyond the specific merits of a nuclear-test ban, for which many experts consider on-site inspection desirable but not essential. Its principal importance would be as a precedent for verification of the ambitious schemes that both sides have proposed for reducing strategic weaponry. The concept is also vital for substantial progress in lowering conventional-force levels in Europe, where negotiations are showing sparks of life after long stagnation.

President Reagan needs to bear these wider considerations in mind as he ponders Gorbachev’s private letter of Dec. 5. As he did in crafting a constructive response to pre-summit Soviet movement in the Geneva arms negotiations, Reagan would be wise to examine the opportunities, as well as the problems, posed by Moscow’s newly professed concern for verification.

For three reasons, U.S. officials have reacted initially with understandable caution. There is a native distrust of all moratorium proposals, rooted in memory of the intensive Soviet testing in 1961-62 that followed an earlier moratorium by the two countries. At that time, however, seismic-detection technology was more primitive--and there was no on-site inspection. If Gorbachev really means it, verification might now be adequate to discover cheating and to prevent preparation of test sites for a rapid break-out from a moratorium.

Whether or not he is earnest, Gorbachev’s apparent flexibility on verification raises two other red flags for some U.S. officials:

First, a number of them fear that it will disrupt tests needed for the MX and Trident missiles, as well as for the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative. For the two missiles, however, the main advances lie in accuracy; potent warheads already exist for them, and additional testing is of marginal value. In the SDI program the pursuit of X-ray lasers based on nuclear weapons does not jibe with Reagan’s repeated assurances that the program will rely on non-nuclear technologies.

Second, the Administration is disturbed that Gorbachev’s ambiguous references to on-site inspection are simply a sharp propaganda ploy. The desire for a comprehensive ban on nuclear tests is a longstanding point of consensus among the non-nuclear majority of states. Moscow’s unilateral and unreciprocated suspension of tests last August, on the 30th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, put Washington on the defensive internationally. That moratorium is to end Jan. 1. The latest Soviet gambit is surely timed to tighten the screws, creating the impression that the stated U.S. interest in an eventual agreement to prohibit tests is pure sham.

It will be hard to counter that impression, given the historic emphasis that the United States has placed on verification requirements as the main obstacle to agreement. If Gorbachev were actually willing to permit on-site inspection of “suspicious events” at test sites in the Soviet Union, he would have met the basic U.S. demand. He would have provided a credible response to Reagan’s invitation for Soviet technicians to visit U.S. nuclear-test sites and to the President’s suggestion of “open laboratories” as a way of reassuring each other about research on strategic defenses.

We will never know whether the offer is genuine unless we probe the Soviets on the details. What kind of monitoring devices would be placed where? How many inspections would be permissible, and under what terms? What defines a “suspicious event?” And, most important, would inspection be “on demand” of the apprehensive country, or merely an arrangement that no one would buy--”on invitation” of the suspect?

Until now the Administration has declined to resume negotiations on a comprehensive test ban, arguing that the two governments should concentrate on cutting current forces before worrying about tests for future systems. Thus there is no ideal forum in which to pin down details about Gorbachev’s offer. Yet it would be absurd for a government that has so vociferously stressed verification to dismiss such a crucial prospect without thorough discussion.

Fortunately, the President has attractive options for a compromise on this issue. There is virtually no sympathy in the American government for a comprehensive test ban at this time, but there is a middle path toward common ground with the Soviets.

Reagan could coax the diplomatic process forward by taking several related steps. The United States could ratify the long-pending Threshold Test Ban Treaty and Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Agreement, both of which have been deferred because of alleged verification deficiencies. This could be coupled with a reduction in the permitted test threshold from 150 kilotons to 50 or 75 kilotons. Most significantly, the President should propose an annual quota on the number of tests, perhaps five each for the United States and the Soviet Union. While both sides could meet their critical test objectives, it would slow the process dramatically--four or five years would be required for tests now conducted in one.

In this context of fewer and smaller nuclear tests the United States could press for a five-year experiment to evaluate on-site verification arrangements of the sort that Gorbachev seems to envisage. Such an experiment would in fact be more valid in a situation where some tests were conducted. It would provide a basis for more informed judgment of the feasibility of a comprehensive ban. And it could afford indispensable experience for cooperative measures in other arms-control arrangements.

If Gorbachev’s idea of on-site verification is inseparable from an immediate moratorium, it is dead at birth. But if he is prepared to consider a phased approach through lowered thresholds, tight quotas and confidence-building experiments, it could indeed be the catalyst for the ultimate ban on nuclear tests that both sides claim to favor.

The Soviet leader’s letter challenges the President to keep alive the impulses that he nourished at the fireside summit. For the day on which Soviets and Americans inspect each other’s nuclear test sites will mark a decisive stride toward the “real arms control” that Ronald Reagan seeks.