Third-Tier Policy-Maker, First-Tier Responsibility

In the midst of the Iran- contra scandal, President Reagan decided to breach important SALT limits on offensive forces, prompting needless controversy. With most of the Reagan Administration bogged down in damage control and bureaucratic deadlock, chalk up another victory for Richard N. Perle, an assistant secretary of defense.

Perle is a gifted oppositionist who has waged a daring and at times brilliant campaign against nuclear arms control from a third-tier Pentagon office. Unfortunately, the more he has succeeded in carrying out his private agenda, the more that agenda has diverged from the nation’s larger interests: Perle’s efforts to dispose of existing strategic arms-control agreements work against Reagan’s hopes for radical arms reductions and effective strategic defenses, while disrupting the Western alliance. Yet, for many, Perle is a Washington success story.

He leads a small, dedicated group of strategic analysts who believe that Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter signed arms-control agreements that hurt the United States and helped the Kremlin. Seven years ago, they had difficulty getting their views heard. They sniped at the SALT agreements and U.S. diplomacy from Capitol Hill and defense-oriented think tanks. But now, thanks to Reagan, they draft instructions for U.S. negotiating teams from the Pentagon, National Security Council staff and Arms Control Agency.

Perle stands out among his peers because he is a master of rhetorical devices and bureaucratic intrigue. These have been magnified because Perle had the good fortune to work first for a senator with a strong grasp of details and then for a President with a weak one.

Sen. Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson of Washington state was one of the Senate’s last great intimidators. He combined a prosecutor’s tenacity with a command of national security issues to make life miserable for those who didn’t share his abiding distrust of the Soviet Union. Modest deviations from an Administration’s opening negotiating position or imprecise treaty texts could be elevated into national security concerns under Jackson’s withering fire. In an arena where the clout of assistants is directly proportional to the stature of their bosses, Perle became a force as Jackson’s aide. He developed a talent for devising positions that appeared unobjectionable at face value, but could then be applied selectively to stymie executive-branch initiatives.

Perle uses the same tactics within the executive branch by pushing for negotiating positions facile enough to sound appealing on the evening news, but unwise or impossible to negotiate. This tactic backfired when the Soviets accepted, in principle, one of Perle’s favorites--a complete ban on intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe--much to the surprise of the U.S. intelligence community and our North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies. The Kremlin evidently believed it was worth forgoing a decided imbalance in Euromissiles to secure the more important objective of decoupling the United States from NATO--mutual defense being the reason for deploying the missiles in the first place.

NATO was also stunned by another “zero” option pushed by Perle and embraced by Reagan at the Reykjavik summit: abolition of strategic ballistic missiles over 10 years. Incredibly, Jackson’s disciple now champions dismantlement of two legs of the existing strategic triad to clear a path for Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Perle’s zero options and support for SDI have at least one thing in common: They deepen divisions within the NATO alliance--inadvertently serving Soviet objectives.

Perle’s ability to influence policy is a reflection of the Reagan presidency. His boss, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, defines his job as selling the Pentagon’s budget, not as imposing coherence or fiscal discipline to the U.S. defense effort. Weinberger’s best argument is the Soviet threat, and no one is more adept at framing it (or at placing critics on the defensive) than Perle. Weinberger sounds shrill; he lacks the low-key delivery that makes Perle sound so reasonable while making a case the U.S. intelligence community cannot support.

Perle also has great influence because he works for a President uninterested in the substance of public policy. Perle understands that in an Administration equating leadership with giving speeches, the President’s core beliefs become a surrogate for national security policy. Within this environment, public assertions do not need supporting analysis. Effective policy implementation is remote under the best of circumstances, but particularly so in the bureaucratic free-for-all that has become institutionalized under Reagan.

The President is also notoriously lenient with feuding subordinates, especially those who follow his oratory to its logical conclusion. Well-placed officials, self-righteous or brazen enough to circumvent bureaucratic gridlock to act out Reagan’s rhetoric, have been secure--knowing the President cannot repudiate them any more than his own core beliefs. Perle has thus been immune from attack.

Perle excels at bureaucratic infighting because it is easier to stop something in the government than to make it happen. He wins arguments the old-fashioned way: by being in command of the facts and knowing how to shade them. He also wins by attrition, guile, ingenuity and because adversaries know that he does not take opposition gracefully. His preferred tactic is to propose something that jibes with Reagan’s rhetoric but makes successful negotiations remote.

State Department officials have been a poor bureaucratic match for Perle because they propose moderate alternatives to the Pentagon’s extreme options. Then, when the President or his national security adviser split the difference to placate both State and the Pentagon, Perle has advanced his position.

Two of the President’s bedrock assumptions--the need to make nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete” and the evilness of the Kremlin--are grist for Perle’s mill. Administration pragmatists learned long ago to work around Reagan’s belief system--either to soften its rough edges, or to encourage alternative courses that appeal to the President’s self-image. On arms-control issues, State Department officials decided that defending “fatally flawed” agreements or opposing SDI were losing propositions. Instead, they promoted the negotiation of new accords. Their strategy succeeded: The President’s belief system can accommodate SDI, historic arms-reduction agreements and the death of SALT just as he can reconcile the simultaneous pursuit of increased defense spending, lower taxes and a balanced budget amendment. The result, however, is chaos--the pursuit of initiatives that bear no logical relation to one another.

Perle’s crusade against arms control could not succeed without Soviet misdeeds. The Kremlin provided them in spectacular fashion during Reagan’s first term, shooting down a civilian airliner, boycotting the Geneva negotiations and violating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty by building a radar at an inappropriate site. In Reagan’s second term, the Kremlin has been more circumspect. Nonetheless, Perle has managed to elevate routine Soviet misconduct into high crimes.

With the help of like-minded souls elsewhere in the bureaucracy, Perle succeeded in transforming modest compliance flaps into serious violations, while blocking any diplomatic resolution of these problems. By agreeing to issue questionable citations over Soviet non-compliance and setting conditions for corrective action that were unlikely to be met, Reagan became a hostage to his own rhetoric. Maintaining the President’s “credibility” then required “proportionate” responses to Soviet misdeeds--nothing less than the death of the SALT I and II agreements.

When these matters were discussed in the White House, did Reagan fully comprehend the issues? Did he receive sound options? The sordid particulars of the Iran- contra episode suggest he did not. And if the President was poorly advised and ill-informed on such a politically explosive issue, why not on the minutiae of treaty compliance and negotiating instructions? After all, how could anyone argue in front of the President that the Kremlin’s hands were clean on the compliance issue? (Or the Administration’s hands were slightly dirty?) How could anyone object to breaking agreements that, the President claimed, the Soviets had already violated?

Perle will be a powerful force in national security debates for decades to come. His rhetorical gifts and obstructive techniques are sure to bedevil future Administrations trying to pick up the arms-control pieces scattered during the Reagan years. Perle has had support--from Soviet misconduct, a resurgent right-wing, well-placed bureaucratic allies and an indulgent President and secretary of defense. Nonetheless, he has proved that an individual can make a difference in government service. Unfortunately, Perle has applied his considerable talents to killing arms-control agreements.