No Sudden Moves

The long talks that led up to the new East-West security agreement, adopted in Stockholm on Monday, were less newsworthy than the nuclear arms talks that have received far more attention. But by making preparations for conventional war in Europe harder to hide, the pact makes nuclear conflict less likely, too.

Western military men have long considered a bolt-out-of-the-blue missile attack the least likely way for a nuclear war to begin. Far more likely, in their view, is escalation from a conventional conflict--with the most dangerous scenario involving a Soviet attack on Western Europe using conventional, non-nuclear arms.

The best way to avoid nuclear war is to avoid armed conflict between the East and the West at any level. That being the case, it is extremely important for both sides to have the ability to recognize the difference between maneuvers and actual preparation for aggression--especially in Europe, with its heavy concentration of weapons and men. Otherwise, war could be triggered by mistaken worst-case interpretations of suspicious-looking troop movements by a potential adversary.

Fortunately, both sides recognized the danger. This week, after almost three years of negotiations, representatives of 35 nations from East and West produced an agreement covering troop movements everywhere in Europe, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains, except in Albania.

Beginning Jan. 1 any signatory, in East or West, must provide 42 days prior notification of land maneuvers involving more than 13,000 troops or 300 tanks. If more than 17,000 troops are involved, all signatories to the agreement must be invited to send observers. A full two years’ warning would have to be given on maneuvers involving 75,000 troops.

Any signatory-nation can demand an almost immediate on-site inspection, to be conducted on land or from aircraft provided by the suspect country, if it sees evidence that the agreement is being violated.

Compliance with the new pact, unlike the much milder provisions of the 1975 Helsinki accord, is mandatory.

The agreement should make it harder for either side to prepare for an attack under the mask of large-scale maneuvers. By allowing letting each side to become more familiar with the maneuver patterns of the other, it should reduce the chances of war being set off by misinterpretation of an adversary’s movements. Potentially most important of all, agreement to the verification provisions may signal a Soviet willingness to accept reasonable on-site inspection demands in other areas of arms control, including possible bans on chemical arms and nuclear testing.

This agreement, like others before it, may prove to have some loopholes. At least, though, the pact lays down ground rules that cannot be bent or broken without paying a heavy political price--and inviting the other side to conclude that war preparations are indeed under way.