Can We Cross the Reykjavik Bridge? : Success May Hinge on Sincerity in Sharing Defensive Secrets

The news out of Reykjavik gives me an uneasy sense of deja vu . It puts me in mind of Vladivostok, where a dozen years ago President Gerald R. Ford and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev came close to a historic agreement that would have capped the superpower nuclear competition.

The sticking point then was cruise missiles, not the Strategic Defense Initiative, but the outcome was the same--frustration and disappointment. “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” is a fact of life in arms control negotiating. The toughest part always comes in the endgame.

Fourteen months after Vladivostok, the cruise missile business was almost sorted out. But Ford’s political advisers talked him into backing off the deal because of the challenge to his nomination from Ronald Reagan, who was coming on strong from the right.

Then Jimmy Carter won the presidency and the bargaining began anew when his Administration decided--to the anger and chagrin of the Soviets--not to start where Ford had left off.

It took two and a half years to cut a new deal in June of 1979--SALT II, a treaty only marginally better than that which was within Ford’s grasp in early 1976. But the Soviets did that agreement in when they invaded Afghanistan in late 1979. Carter withdrew SALT II from Senate consideration, knowing that the Senate would not ratify the accord in the post-Afghanistan climate.

The experience of Vladivostok and the failure to ratify SALT II were bitter lessons for both sides. Opportunity does not always knock in the difficult world of U.S.-Soviet arms control. Can we avoid Reykjavik being another agreement that almost--but never--was? Can we afford to wait another dozen years and suffer yet another round in the nuclear competition--before the correlation of forces, and maybe the stars, are right again?

Reduced to its simplest terms, the question we face is: Can we capture the extraordinary accomplishments of President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at Reykjavik by cutting a deal on SDI that is acceptable to both sides--and gain an agreement of such magnitude that it will guarantee them a place in history and probably a Nobel Peace Prize? In some ways, as Reagan essentially said in his post-summit speech to the nation, public opinion in the United States holds the answer to these questions.

So what about a deal on SDI? The problem, simply put, is that both sides fear the other will use SDI not as a defense against a first strike, but as a defense against a ragged retaliatory strike following a first strike.

This is the fear that has driven all of the concerns about the role of strategic defense in the era of deterrence and that led to the anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972. With a significant defense deployed on either or both sides, the nuclear calculations change dramatically. “But we’d never be the one to strike first,” say both sides. But as President Ford so often said, “Trust is earned, not given,” and trust does not yet--and will not for a long time--mark the U.S.-Soviet relationship.

Can nationwide defense of the extraordinarily ambitious character envisioned in Reagan’s SDI program play a constructive role in preventing nuclear war? Yes, but probably only when the threat, in this case the ballistic missile threat, is reduced to zero, or nearly so--which is precisely what Reagan and Gorbachev ended up agreeing on. It is the characteristics of the transition period from here to there that they could not agree on, and whether to have defenses at the end of the transition. Can the transition be worked out?

Yes, if the will is there--and it seems to be--and if the shocked bureaucracies in both the United States and the Soviet Union don’t torpedo the deal.

Reagan and Gorbachev said, “Let’s do it in 10 years.” That’s very ambitious. For starters, there are momentous issues that must be dealt with that couldn’t be resolved in Reykjavik, like the problem of British, French and Chinese ballistic missiles. Will these nuclear forces--likely to grow to 300-400 missiles and nearly 2,000 warheads within a few years--be left intact? Or is their elimination--an awesome negotiating challenge--essential to the deal?

Then there are bombers and cruise missiles, systems whose low-altitude, inside-the-atmosphere flight paths make them invulnerable to current SDI concepts. Will these systems, currently in much greater numbers in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, remain in both sides’ arsenals while the long-term nuclear problem (which includes dealing with the nuclear capabilities of nations such as Israel and Pakistan) is worked out?

And there is the defense of Europe, which could be very expensive for the Atlantic Alliance without nuclear weapons. While these problems are sure to be difficult, it seems that a joint U.S.-Soviet commitment could surmount them if a deal can be worked out on SDI.

The question really comes down to whether the President is--and whether we are--serious about sharing the fruits of SDI research with the Soviets.

If that is the case, then a careful movement of SDI out of the laboratory and into deliberate series of ever-more advance tests--to higher and higher laser powers, from ground tests to high-altitude tests, from aircraft to space-based tests, from simple targets to real missiles--can probably be fashioned. The caution that would have to be exercised and the building of trust that would have to take place would challenge both nations--their political leaders, their military establishments and their people.

It has no precedent in human history. But neither do nuclear weapons.