A Partner for Arms Control : Soviets Still Evidence a Desire to Deal With Reagan

From what we know about the opportunistic bent of the men who run the Soviet Union, it would be natural to expect the Kremlin to do what it can to take advantage of President Reagan’s discomfort over the arms-for-Iran scandal. And if this means that arms-control negotiations must be put on indefinite hold, so be it.

Things may indeed break that way, but it is intriguing to note that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev is going out of his way to signal that he wants to continue doing business with Ronald Reagan.

Two weeks ago Gennady I. Gerasimov, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said that Moscow was unwilling to wait until Reagan’s successor takes office in 1989 for accords on reduction of nuclear weapons. In his words, “We believe time should not be lost . . . . Military technology is developing rapidly, and if we don’t stop it now, it will be even harder two years later.”

In a long meeting with Sen. Gary Hart, the Democratic presidential hopeful who was in Moscow last week, Gorbachev himself said that he still hopes for an arms-control accord while Reagan is in office.

Assuming that he meant it, the question is whether Reagan will be too preoccupied with the controversy over arms sales to Iran to deal effectively with arms control or anything else.

Unquestionably the President’s authority in foreign affairs has been severely weakened by the events of recent weeks.

The faith of the European allies in Reagan’s competence was severely strained by the Reagan-Gorbachev summit at Reykjavik, where the President blithely discussed the virtual dismantling of the nuclear deterrent that has been the basis of European security for 40 years. Moderate Arabs were not amused by the revelation that Reagan has been peddling arms to Iran, which is at war with Iraq.

The President’s standing with the American people also suffered from the astonishing discovery that, at the very time he was vowing not to make deals with terrorists, he was supplying arms to a fanatic government that is a major source of terrorism.

The staff of the National Security Council is in shambles as a new director cleans house and brings in people untainted by the scandal. The result should be a more capable NSC staff in the long run, but there is bound to be a period of disarray.

The Soviets will be willing, of course, to collect whatever advantage falls their way--including the probable collapse of U.S. financial backing for the anti-communist contras in Nicaragua.

It would be only natural for the Soviets to be further tempted to stonewall the arms-control talks on the calculated gamble that the next President will be more accommodating on “Star Wars,” nuclear testing and other issues, and less dedicated to U.S. military strength.

So far, however, the Soviets have reacted with overall caution and restraint--which lends credence to suggestions that they would find a crippled U.S. presidency out of sync with their own agenda.

As a key West German official made the case a few days ago, “Gorbachev has been in office for almost two years, but has made very little progress on the reforms that he believes are needed to make Soviet society more productive.

It’s in his interest to stabilize relations with the West so that he can concentrate on his problems at home. He needs progress on arms control now.”

Not everybody reads things that way. But the optimistic interpretation is buttressed by the more accommodating Soviet posture on verification in recent months, the tentative progress made on nuclear-arms reduction before the Reykjavik meeting broke up in disagreement over strategic missile defenses--and by some intriguing changes by Gorbachev in the style of Soviet rhetoric on foreign policy.

After the 1985 Geneva summit, Gorbachev told his countrymen of his “profound conviction that less security for the United States compared to the Soviet Union would not be in our interest, since it could lead to mistrust and produce instability.”

In his speech to the 27th Communist Party Congress last February, Gorbachev forwent the usual ideological mumbo jumbo about the inevitable triumph of communism. While reaffirming the need for a strong military, he observed that “the character of present-day weapons leaves a country with no hope of safeguarding itself solely with military and technical means. The task of ensuring security is increasingly a political problem.”

This is something new. Soviet leaders have always tended to define Soviet security requirements in terms that seemed threatening to their neighbors.

Gorbachev, it is true, has yet to demonstrate that actual Soviet behavior will change with the shift in rhetoric. You don’t have to believe in Santa Claus, however, to recognize that Soviet self-interest may lie in trying for an arms-control deal now rather than later.

Reagan is not the Kremlin’s favorite President; he has given it little reason to think that he will make even minimal concessions on strategic defense in order to win reductions in the formidable Soviet missile forces.

However, the Soviets--who still smart from President Jimmy Carter’s inability to win Senate ratification of the SALT 2 treaty--can be confident that if they can strike a deal with Reagan, a leader with powerful conservative credentials, he can make it stick on Capitol Hill.

If the Soviets hold out for a successor President more to their liking, they risk the election instead of somebody who will be even harder to deal with. And any new President, whatever his coloration, would take at least a year to get his ducks in a row for serious negotiation. That takes us to 1990 or so.

Such a delay may be a formidable prospect to a regime that needs to avoid the possibility of an accelerated arms race at a time when it wants to concentrate on internal reform and development.

All bets are off, of course, if the Soviets ultimately conclude that, like it or not, Reagan no longer has the authority and ability to conduct serious business with Moscow or to defend American interests in the world generally. Then the next President of the United States, whether Democrat or Republican, would inherit a stickier world situation than we have now.

Plenty of people think otherwise, but Reagan is described by close associates as serenely confident that his capacity to lead the country will not be diminished by his present problems. The Soviets, it would seem, are among those who hope that he is right.