Is Arms Control Worth the Risk? : Is It a Problem or a Solution? Voices Around Reagan Differ

There is more to the arms-control debate inside the Reagan Administration than disagreements over exactly how to respond to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s letter of June 23. Hidden behind arguments about the specifics of the American position are different philosophical approaches to the very concept of arms control, and indeed to the very idea of cooperation with the Soviet Union.

The debate is hardly about the future of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Nobody in the Administration is willing to give up SDI research, or even make concessions detrimental to it. Neither is anybody claiming that the United States can go much beyond research during the next decade.

Similarly, on the crucial issue of the modernization of the British and French limited nuclear arsenals, senior U.S. officials agree that the Soviet demand for a freeze is profoundly unacceptable. And all relevant players in Washington feel that as long as the United States has to rely on nuclear weapons to compensate for Soviet conventional superiority, there is no alternative to rejecting the Soviet proposal for a comprehensive nuclear-test ban.

Nor would it be accurate to describe the feuds between the Defense and State departments as a struggle between hard-liners and moderates. Secretary of State George P. Shultz on many occasions was willing to be bolder than Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger in using military force to combat Soviet-supported regimes and factions in turbulent Third World areas. Surely readiness to confront the Soviet empire on the ground is as much a criterion of toughness as is readiness to confront it in negotiations.

Yet it is precisely the matter of diplomatic accords with the Kremlin, especially in the arms-control area, that deeply divides the Reagan Administration. The conflict lies in two sharply different assessments of arms control’s effect on American security.

One school of thought, centered on Weinberger and his intellectual guru,Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard N. Perle, has a profound distaste for arms control. The skeptics are convinced that the real problem is not the bomb but rather the Soviet Union armed with it. Here the nightmare is a Munich-type appeasement. There is a fear that arms-control deals with Moscow are detrimental to the conceptual clarity that is essential for mobilizing Western public opinion against the Soviet threat.

There is little expectation that negotiated arrangements with Gorbachev will substantially slow the Soviet military buildup. On the contrary, the assumption is that, encouraged by Western complacency, the Politburo, under the cover of arms control, will intensify its military preparations. There is nothing, then, that Gorbachev or any other Soviet leader can realistically afford to offer that would change the naysayers’ minds.

The second school of thought--led by Shultz and his arms-control adviser, Paul H. Nitze--does not see arms control as a panacea. It supports the Weinberger camp’s view that in nuclear competition with the Soviet Union the United States must rely first and foremost on its unilateral efforts rather than on negotiated arrangements with the Soviet adversary. But here the similarity stops.

While being aware of the Soviet desire to lull the Western world into a false sense of security, the second school believes that the neglect of arms control is not an answer. That might even, by surrendering the high moral ground to the Soviets, play right into Gorbachev’s hands. Arms control is, if nothing else, considered to be an indispensable tool in keeping the North Atlantic Treaty Organization together and in maintaining a pro-defense consensus in the United States.

In addition, the Shultz-Nitze group thinks that arms control can achieve some modest but important substantive results. It can serve as a shock absorber, allowing the two sides to exchange information and reassurances about each other’s strategic programs. It also may be used as an occasional stop sign--giving the rivals a chance, before building a new weapon, to pause and to talk it over. The rationale is that if you really want to, you will deploy it anyway. But in case you are less than enthusiastic--because of technological, budgetary or doctrinal reasons--an agreement might help avoid the building of an unnecessary or a destabilizing system just out of the fear that otherwise an opponent may do it first.

For the first school inside the Administration, arms control is strictly a problem. For the second, it is part of a solution, if properly managed. The hidden agenda of the first is to let arms control fade away. The ambition of the second is to crown the Ronald Reagan presidency with a major arms-control agreement.

In the past, Shultz usually has been successful on matters of procedure ensuring that the process of negotiations would go on. Weinberger, more often than not, has been allowed to prevail on the substance of the American positions, guaranteeing that the process would not move very far. President Reagan has seemed to be reasonably comfortable with the outcome.

But eventually the President will have to choose between the two conflicting approaches to arms control inside his Administration. Too much is involved, both in terms of American security and Reagan’s personal legacy, to allow this choice to be made by default.