Weinberger Pulls a Fast One : Early Start of a ‘Star Wars’ Defense Undercuts Arms Control

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger recently shortened the timetable for the first deployment of weapons under the Strategic Defense Initiative. When the President launched the project three years ago, the experts agreed that it would take at least a decade even to decide to deploy, much less to do so. Now Weinberger says that “we are seeing opportunities for earlier deployment of the first phase of strategic defense than we previously thought possible.” This means as early as 1993, with production decisions long before then.

The secretary’s meaning is clear. He and other staunch supporters of strategic defenses want to do as much as possible while Ronald Reagan is still President. After January, 1989, someone else will occupy the White House, and that person may not be as committed to the vision, at the extreme, of making nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” At all costs, the reasoning goes, whoever is commander-in-chief at the end of the decade must be faced with an SDI program that is too far advanced to be stopped.

The most immediate goal of SDI’s supporters is to invalidate the anti-ballistic-missile treaty of 1972, which limits work on space-based defenses to research: no development, no testing, no deployment. Indeed, distinctions about the nature of permitted research were key to the clash between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at last October’s superpower summit in Iceland. Gorbachev wanted a narrow restriction on permitted SDI research during the next decade, after which the two powers would negotiate again. Reagan wanted broad latitude, plus an understanding that deployments could proceed 10 years hence. On this point the Reykjavik talks primarily foundered.

When Reagan returned from Iceland, there was debate about precisely what had happened, including how far he had gone in offering to scrap different kinds and amounts of U.S. nuclear weapons. But there was general understanding that Reagan had, remarkably, made his point with Gorbachev in some key areas. Most important, there should be deep cuts in intercontinental-range nuclear launchers and warheads--at least 50%.

Despite the confusion, Reagan seemed to have a good chance of pursuing what happened in Iceland to a successful conclusion. Considerable work remained. U.S. officials had to think through the implications of various items placed on the table at the summit. The President had to continue his admirable discipline over the national security apparatus that lead up to Reykjavik, with Secretary of State George P. Shultz playing a leading role. Most important, the President had to decide what limits, if any, he would accept on “Star Wars” research, development and testing as the essential price of gaining Soviet agreement to a package of nuclear-arms reductions.

Then came the Iran- contras affair in early November, along with election results that restored the Senate to Democratic Party control and, as the cliche goes, ended the Teflon presidency. In the process, momentum for arms control that remained after the summit was dissipated.

During the debate over national security decision-making and the role of key officials like Shultz, however, SDI’s supporters have kept their eye on the key goal of precluding any limit on their efforts. For them, Reagan’s political problems with the Iran-contras scandal offer a chance to pursue strategic defenses with less risk of being subverted by the President’s desire for a major arms-reduction treaty.

At the same time, the Pentagon has announced that it will limit information given to Congress about areas of SDI research, in order to inhibit the Soviets in understanding the nature of U.S. programs and developing counters to them. This view has merit, provided there is broad agreement on underlying strategy, as was true of the “black” program to develop Stealth aircraft. By contrast, Capitol Hill skeptics see the clamp-down on SDI information as a way to hamper debate on basic issues while the program goes forward.

Of course, Congress is not impotent. It must vote money for SDI research--widely recognized as necessary and prudent--and it would have to vote money for deployments. Yet for opponents of the current effort to breach ABM treaty limits and to make some form of strategic defenses unstoppable, history is little comfort. In face of opposition, Presidents have sometimes had to modify strategic programs, but none has been defeated outright. With Weinberger’s determination on SDI, it is risky to bet against him in his effort to edge the United States over the line on deployments during the next two years.

Ironically, the defense secretary is taking advantage of the President’s political predicament. To be sure, Reagan is a fervent supporter of SDI, as he reaffirmed in his State of the Union message. But it is one thing to pursue the program as the result of debate on a coherent nuclear doctrine and in tandem with arms-reduction efforts that could either validate strategic defenses or make them irrelevant. It is another thing, as Weinberger & Co. are doing, to proceed in a strategic and political vacuum. Each step they take reduces Reagan’s chances of regaining command.

On Tuesday night, the President tried to put Iran-contras behind him and asked Congress, “Why don’t we get to work?” In the vital area of nuclear weapons, Reagan’s work is to ensure that his secretary of defense does not set the course of U.S. strategic policy by default.