Only the Small Knock the Summit : Reagan and Gorbachev Gambled and Broke Up the Logjam

The Reykjavik summit marks not the end of serious arms-control negotiations, but the beginning.

I cannot understand why there is so much pessimism from sensible people about the outcome. All the ingredients are now present for a major arms deal, and I am confident it will happen. In Iceland, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev took the sort of risks that mark the difference between bureaucrats and political leaders.

Gorbachev gambled by making major changes in the Soviet position right up to the end and then hoped to bounce President Reagan over the Strategic Defense Initiative hurdle. Reagan gambled by giving the Soviet Union their head in discussing a global settlement, which was not on the agenda for Iceland, and hoped that Gorbachev would not make SDI a sticking point.

But neither gambled recklessly, both had a clear view of their limits, and in negotiating to their limits both men freed up the bureaucratic logjam that has bedeviled the negotiations over reductions on strategic arms and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces.

It is all very well for the armchair critics to say that summit meetings should be totally prepared beforehand and heads of government only should attend to sign a previously negotiated text. That is a bureaucrat’s view of politics. It is not surprising that former senior presidential advisers in recent Democratic and Republican Administrations, who have never won a vote in their lives, should take the bureaucratic view. They have been all too quick to point to the political embarrassment of a failed summit. So what? Politicians win votes for having a go and then having the courage to call off the gamble if it does not succeed. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Among politicians’ virtues should be a readiness on occasion to take responsibility and make decisions on their own initiative and cut through the bureaucratic inertia.

Those who now cry “I told you so” are the small men. Reagan and Gorbachev were right to gamble, and given that neither gamble quite came off, both men were right to stand firm. They will think the better of each other for the fact that Gorbachev insisted on toughening up the antiballistic missile treaty and that Reagan maintained the United States’ right to conduct SDI within the narrow interpretation of that treaty.

Both men will now respect each other the more for knowing that they have sticking points. It is certainly not beyond the wit of either them or their staffs to find a way around the SDI problem. I suspect the best answer lies now not in trying to make substantial changes to the ABM treaty, but to accept that it will last for 10 years on the narrow interpretation. Concentrate instead on making changes in another crucial area, that of the test-ban negotiations. Here both men can change their positions, with less loss of face, while respecting each other’s points over ABM.

President Reagan should remind himself that he launched SDI with an announcement that it was a non-nuclear program. Some American scientists are urging him to keep open the option of a nuclear explosion in space as the energy source for the laser beam part of SDI. He should tell them that he has no intention of going back on his word and that any energy source must be non-nuclear. He should tell Gorbachev that the U.S. nuclear-test program will not be used as a cover for SDI-related nuclear tests and that he will stand by his statement asking the Senate to ratify the threshold test-ban treaty with tougher verification provisions. But he should set at an initial limit of 10 to 20 kilotons, not 150 kilotons. And neither should he rule out eventually banning all tests.

For his part Gorbachev should accept, at least for a period, that the United States will not sign the comprehensive test-ban treaty. And he should recognize that by agreeing to a limited number of low-threshold tests, the United States will have moved a long way to limit his most immediate concern over SDI.

With such an understanding, the outline of the INF and strategic arms reduction accords that were agreed to in Reykjavik could, within months, be the basis of a global arms-control agreement of historic proportions.

Gorbachev should remember that Reagan’s commitment to SDI may well not be shared by the President who will take office in 1997, when the new agreement over the ABM treaty could expire. Also, by depriving the SDI program of a nuclear source of energy in space, Reagan will have made it much harder for the United States to make the major technological breakthrough that Gorbachev fears is due in the next 10 years.

Reagan, by moving on the threshold test-ban treaty, would not have to change his publicly stated positions and would have kept faith with his own defensive vision of SDI. It would be for his successors to determine whether that vision is capable of being fulfilled.

A giant stride toward making the world a safer place in which to live and toward reducing the risk of nuclear war was taken in Iceland. Now we need only a few small steps to complete the process. I am confident that those steps will be taken.