Arms Control : THE LINE BETWEEN STEADFAST AND STUBBORN

A mystery of political power is how to lead devoted constituencies in new directions without betraying them. Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised in 1940 to keep Americans out of a war, World War II, he knew they had to enter. Richard M. Nixon promised not to deal with a country, China, he knew the United States had to recognize. Charles de Gaulle said he understood a French nation that wanted to keep a colony, Algeria, he knew was destined to be free.

The big question facing the Reagan Administration is whether the President can sign an arms agreement he has always told his followers was inadequate--one that would build on SALT II and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and that would reshape his beguiling dream of a perfect defense against nuclear attack in a way that would reflect scientific and diplomatic realities.

By taking such a step, Ronald Reagan could go down in history as a major figure in U.S. foreign policy. For not only might he then be able to reach a major arms-control agreement, he might succeed, like Roosevelt or Nixon, in establishing a true national consensus over a highly sensitive subject.

None of this seemed possible in 1980. Though the liberal community tries to reassure itself that, but for Reagan, the arms-control process would have made significant progress by now, the truth is that when Reagan entered the White House, arms-control negotiations were in a political cul-de-sac.

In the American system a fiercely opposed minority can ensure stalemate on a few highly sensitive issues. Race relations was such an issue at one time. In recent years, arms control and relations with the Soviet Union have proved too difficult for the American system of government to handle. The Senate never ratified the Threshold Test Ban Treaty of 1974, the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty of 1976 and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) of 1979.

But now Reagan has an opportunity to lead the country out of this cul-de-sac because of a new factor: Each superpower is running out of money. Fortuitously, the U.S. Congress recognized this reality about the same time as the new leadership in the Soviet Union realized it.

An unexpected achievement of the Reagan presidency has been to prove that this country cannot spend its way to security. Excluding inflation, the Reagan Administration in its first five years in office increased the defense budget 51% while slashing domestic programs (excluding Social Security and interest on the national debt) 30%. This represented an astounding $330 billion in cumulative real growth in the U.S. defense effort. Yet the Administration admits that even if it receives every penny it requests, at the end of the process the Soviet Union will still have more missiles, tanks and naval vessels than the United States.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev seems to have reached similarly disturbing conclusions. In any event, he seems to have openly challenged the views of the Soviet military. His Politburo, unlike Leonid I. Brezhnev’s, does not include a single top soldier as a full or voting member. In addition, whereas some Soviet generals have publicly argued that the international situation resembles the 1930s, with “international imperialism” again threatening the Soviet homeland and justifying a continued defense buildup, Gorbachev told the 40th V-E Day rally that today’s situation is “absolutely unlike” the 1930s.

Gorbachev has gone on to reverse the postwar pattern of arms-control negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Customarily the United States has advanced concrete arms-control proposals while the Soviet Union concentrated on grandiose schemes designed primarily for propaganda. Today the concrete proposals are from Moscow and the public-relations replies from Washington.

Under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union has matched Reagan’s dreamy vision of a world protected from nuclear weapons through a “Star Wars” defense by proposing more concretely that the world make itself safer by beginning to dismantle some of the threatening arsenals. It has announced a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, and repeatedly extended it--most recently until next Jan. 1; permitted U.S. scientists to discuss verification experiments on Soviet soil, and challenged the United States to use this period to negotiate a comprehensive test-ban treaty. In addition, Gorbachev has proposed significant reductions in offensive nuclear weapons (provided Reagan renounces his Strategic Defense Initiative); decoupled any U.S.-Soviet agreement on intermediate-range systems in Europe from agreement to end the quest for SDI, and held out hope for progress in the Conference on Disarmament in Europe, the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Talks and U.S.-Soviet negotiations to eliminate chemical weapons.

When the Reagan Administration says it will no longer be bound by the limits of SALT II, the Soviet Union requests a special meeting to discuss the treaty. While the Reagan Administration is reinterpreting the ABM Treaty to permit development work that all previous administrations have argued are in violation of its provisions, the Soviet Union proposes that the treaty be strengthened. Perhaps most important, the Soviets, sensing the great damage done to the arms-control process by assertions that they violated past agreements, have indicated greater flexibility on the question of verification.

Admittedly, many of these proposals have hooks or traps. Nonetheless, the U.S. response has been inadequate. Although the President himself has reacted to the new Soviet positions by describing them as a turning point, the Administration generally has not done much more than improve its rhetoric. Especially misleading is the the proposal made to the Soviet Union that the two superpowers agree to revise the ABM Treaty to permit the United States to pursue SDI aggressively, with an understanding that the United States will be permitted to deploy what it has developed at the end of the process in return for a promise that the United States, if necessary, will be willing to share technology.

No Soviet leader could sign such an agreement. If one side succeeds in erecting a space shield, the response of the other will be to increase the size of the offensive threat. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger inadvertently revealed this in a Nov. 13, 1985, memorandum to the President, leaked to the press, in which he stated that “even a probable (Soviet) territorial defense would require us to increase the number of our offensive forces and their ability to penetrate Soviet defenses to assure that our operational plans could be executed.”

But, in addition, the current U.S. position on SDI is totally unacceptable to the Soviet Union because no Soviet leader could trust any American leader to share the technology were the United States to seize the lead. Even Reagan cannot himself bind a future Administration to cooperate in sharing U.S. technology with the Soviet Union in such a sensitive field.

At this point there appear to be two solutions to the “Star Wars” dilemma the Administration has helped create. One is to scale back the SDI program so that it remains consistent with the ABM Treaty. Within those provisions, the Administration could construct a defensive system to protect one missile field and the nation’s capital. Another approach is for the United States to propose a joint SDI research project to the Soviet Union, thus assuring Soviet leaders that the United States will never gain a military edge. Of the two options, only the first is politically feasible.

All this might lead one to extreme pessimism. But certain factors permit modest optimism that Reagan will leave an important arms-control legacy. The first is that the Soviet Union seems genuinely ready to compromise. Even an Administration far to the right will be reluctant to allow such an opportunity to pass. The other is that the price domestically of passing up this opportunity is steadily mounting and the United States is entering an election period.

In politics, remaining steadfast is important. Even critics respect that quality in a politician. But avoiding the image of mere stubbornness is also important.

Reagan has been the most successful American politician of his generation by seeing most clearly where the fine line between steadfastness and stubbornness lies. If he shows such vision now when it counts, his can still be a presidency that indeed enhances the nation’s security.