Our Nervous Allies

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev proposed last month to rid the Earth of nuclear weapons by the year 2000. One purpose of anything so grandiose in scope had to be to encourage Europe to put pressure on the United States to make concessions in the Geneva arms talks. The reaction from Europe is turning out just the opposite.

What has happened instead is that President Reagan’s negotiating flexibility is being limited by nervousness among the European allies over how a nuclear-free Europe would affect their security. These concerns were in turn reflected in Washington’s response this week to the general secretary’s proposal.

Both U.S. and Soviet officials had indicated that the best hope for early progress lay in following up on Gorbachev’s suggestion, as part of his January proposal, that all U.S. and Soviet medium-range missiles in Europe be eliminated. That impression was strengthened when the Soviet leader told visiting Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that a Euromissile agreement was not conditional on resolution of the quarrel over Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.

The Reagan Administration’s first inclination was to accept Gorbachev’s goal of zero-zero levels of U.S. and Soviet missiles in Europe, but to reject the part of his proposal calling for a freeze on French and British nuclear forces and to insist that the number of Soviet SS-20s in Asia be cut in half.

But when Administration officials traveled to European and Asian capitals to discuss such a response they encountered a surprising degree of reticence.

The Japanese and Chinese objected to allowing the Soviets to keep even half the SS-20 missiles now aimed at Asian targets; they saw this as a way to take pressure off Europe at Asia’s expense.

Allied governments in Europe, which rode out political opposition to deployment of U.S.-made Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in their countries, have no desire to reopen the subject. More important, they fear that removal of U.S. medium-range missiles could become the first step in a U.S. nuclear disengagement from Europe. The West Germans, especially, observe that if the United States and Soviet Union dismantled all of their medium-range missiles in and around Europe, they would have to depend on conventional air forces, artillery and troops to defend themselves against attack--areas in which the Soviet Union enjoys the advantage.

All this serves as a useful reminder that the U.S.-made Pershing 2 and cruise missiles are being deployed in Western Europe at the request of our allies--and cannot be negotiated away in the absence of other steps to reenforce their security. But allied nervousness does become an obstacle to the prospects for a U.S.-Soviet deal.

In his formal response to Gorbachev this week, Reagan accepted the goal of eliminating medium-range missiles from Europe. But he had to add a demand for their elimination from Asia as well, and he had to take note of the need for achieving a balance of conventional arms before the dream of eliminating nuclear weapons could become a reality.

Gorbachev, presiding over the 27th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, predictably attacked the Reagan response to his initiative as inadequate. In a sense it was. But the problem lay not so much in Washington as in allied capitals.

Obviously some quiet diplomacy is in order between the United States and its allies in order to minimize unnecessary impediments to arms control. But the Soviets may as well understand that, when it comes to negotiating a balance of nuclear or conventional forces in Europe, the U.S. President cannot ignore the security interests of the allies as they themselves perceive them.