Inevitable Logic in the Reagan Posture

When the rhetoric and recriminations from the Iceland summit have died down, two questions deserve careful and objective analysis.

--Is it in the interests of the United States and the Western allies to consider arms-reduction proposals that would eventually eliminate, rather than reduce, long-range nuclear weapons from the arsenals of the major powers?

--Just what is it about the Strategic Defense Initiative that is so threatening to the Soviets?

The idea of a nuclear-free world is as alluring as it is illusive. A few days before the summit, a Soviet ballistic missile submarine caught fire and sank off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. This incident, one of a growing number of accidents involving nuclear weapons, suggests that unless something is done to put the nuclear genie back into a lead-lined bottle, a catastrophe somewhere, sometime, is a statistical certainty. President Reagan’s offer to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to eliminate all intercontinental ballistic missiles over the next 10 years is obviously appealing. But does it make sense from a strategic point of view?

Put crudely, the answer is yes--provided we are prepared to spend a lot more money to upgrade our conventional forces, or, alternatively, be prepared to become a more isolationist power with significantly reduced military commitments around the world.

With budget deficits at all-time highs, political pressure is being applied to cut defense expenditures (the bulk of defense outlays go to non-nuclear forces), not raise them. But equally important, few Americans wish to see a dramatic pullout of Western Europe or South Korea, or abandon plans to protect oil from the Persian Gulf during a Middle Eastern crisis.

Since 1945 we have been able to deploy and use conventional forces to protect--sometimes not so smartly--our interests around the world. This has been accomplished precisely because, in the last resort, our nuclear forces have been a major deterrent to Soviet encroachment in areas of vital interest to us. Take away the bulk of the nuclear umbrella and the Soviet Union--in regions such as Europe, the Middle East and northeast Asia--has a significant advantage in conventional forces. Given the wealth and manpower of the Western allies, this need not be the case. But in practice it is. We cannot decouple nuclear deterrence from regional conflict. The two issues are indelibly linked.

What we are seeing when Gorbachev insists that SDI be effectively killed is the Soviet fear of our technology. I do not believe that they have greater expectations than our experts do as to the feasibility of effective defense of cities. However, they are very worried about an array of advanced, non-nuclear military applications that the dozens of SDI-related programs hold promise for.

Soviet technology is inadequate and poorly maintained, as the submarine fire and the nuclear plant accident at Chernobyl bear witness. The Soviet system of defense procurement, while efficient for the production of tens of thousands of tanks, is unable to innovate and stay abreast of cutting edge technology. Anybody who follows the computer market knows how quickly new systems appear and, when they do, how quickly weak companies can be ruined. The Soviets have reason to worry that their weaknesses in high-tech culture will not only undermine their long-term military stance but will leave them behind in the all-important consumer goods market.

To this extent there is something almost pitiful about Gorbachev’s demand that the United States limit the development of promising non-nuclear technologies to the laboratory and his crude attempt to sandbag President Reagan into a bad deal.

We should be prepared to continue negotiations on the SDI programs in return not only for major reductions in offensive weapons, but U.S.-Soviet agreements on the most dangerous regional crises. But to expect Reagan or any President to “abandon” SDI is to misunderstand the issue.

Advanced technology, including military applications, is a natural and healthy outgrowth of a free but competitive society. Since we are not prepared to negotiate away our way of life, the Soviet leaders will have to adjust to our inevitable progress in non-nuclear defense technologies. If Reykjavik is seen as a first step toward better understanding of each other’s hopes and fears, further compromise is possible along with a parallel reduction in the risks of superpower confrontation. However, if the Soviet Union persists in a “take it or leave it” attitude to SDI, progress will be difficult.