The Task Is to Rebuild Faith in Arms Control, Deterrence

As the post-Reykjavik week unfolded, grounds for moderate optimism could be detected. Both President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev emphasized that their talks had achieved useful gains and refrained from castigating each other.

There was enough in common between what they said to show that they were not entirely whistling in the dark. Hope gleamed on the intermediate-range nuclear force issue when Soviet chief negotiator Victor Karpov hinted after his visit to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that INF might not be linked to an agreement on Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. The North Atlantic allies’ show of firm support for Reagan’s position after Secretary of State George P. Shultz had briefed them in Brussels seemed another straw in a fair wind: Maybe the allied leaders knew something that the rest of us did not.

But by the end of the week any optimism aroused in Europe had evaporated and allies’ attitudes on Reagan Administration policies were growing more critical. Gorbachev had shown that Karpov’s smiling flexibility on INF had no substance to it. Noises of complaint from NATO military commanders about lack of consultation on the removal of cruise and Pershing 2 missiles from Western Europe raised further concerns for European observers. The American position at Reykjavik looks to have been improvised after all.

How far had political consultations gone before the meeting, commentators asked. If the military were not party to the return to the zero option in Europe, were their governments?

Almost nothing was being said publicly by allied leaders on Reagan’s final initiative, the elimination of ballistic missiles over 10 years, but Thatcher and French President Francois Mitterand quietly announced their continuing belief in the need for nuclear deterrence. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was reported to be concerned about both the INF and strategic missile proposals. What was going over the wires privately to Washington if these were the public positions of principal allied leaders?

Reflecting on all these developments, the focal points of allied public pessimism is clearly SDI itself--and what an obstacle it looks! Both Reagan and Gorbachev are committed strongly and openly to opposing positions on SDI, to which all agreements on offensive systems are linked.

Europeans also noted the sampling of public opinion after Reykjavik, which indicated that for the present, at least, the President had most of the American people behind him.

There seems little prospect of a change in basic U.S. policy--nor, for that matter, in Soviet attitudes--from which concerned allies might draw comfort.

The issues that alliance leaders now have to address are fourfold: to rebuild confidence in the arms-control process; to find policies that have some prospect of reopening the way to arms-control agreements; to halt the erosion of public confidence in nuclear deterrence (to which desires to eliminate ballistic missiles contribute), and to work toward development of a long-term alliance strategy, which honestly confronts the question as to what role strategic defenses should play if they prove feasible.

No allied leader, however skilled a communicator, can rebuild public confidence in arms control without there being policies that look as if they have some chance of success at the negotiating table. The most obvious areas in which to work are INF and strategic systems, probing the nature of their linkage with SDI.

The growth of anti-nuclear sentiment will not be halted without a coherent, consistent and convincing strategy to put to the voters. There remains considerable allied support for maintaining sufficient nuclear forces in Europe to demonstrate the political commitment of the United States to the defense of the continent. Removal of all SS-20s capable of hitting European targets does not mean of itself that Soviet short-range systems will also be withdrawn.

There is no credible substitute for flexible response, which requires a demonstrably potent nuclear capability. Elimination of ballistic missiles will remain an unsound strategic goal for as long as it takes to eliminate Warsaw Pact superiority in conventional and chemical capabilities.

It seems likely that anti-nuclear feelings will increase in Europe and elsewhere in the aftermath of the Reykjavik meeting. The alliance must thrash out mid- and long-term strategic goals and force structure goals for nuclear systems and not be too slow about it, so that a reasoned case can be put by governments to their own people while they are still willing to listen. These are all formidable tasks and it is too much to expect success in them all. If we fail more than marginally, however, we will be unlikely to have a robust alliance in a decade’s time.

Of course, this was true before Reykjavik. But the meeting has highlighted problems that many had either forgotten about or chosen to ignore. We cannot say, on either side of the Atlantic, that we have not seen a warning light flashing from the Hofdi House. But what are we going to do about it? That is the question that allied opinion wants answered.