Leave It to Shultz and Shevardnadze

Zbigniew Brzezinski, assistant to the President for national-security affairs during the Carter Administration, was asked to comment on the progress of arms control.

QUESTION: Opponents of the Strategic Defense Initiative have loudly contended that we could have no arms control as long as the President stuck with his program. Now the President hasn’t budged. But, on intermediate-range nuclear forces and other issues as well, it appears that the Soviets are ready to deal. What does this say for the Administration’s hard-line approach over the last six years? And what does it do for the future of SDI?

ANSWER: It proves that the SDI has been an important negotiating leverage. This point is now conceded even by some of the critics of the SDI. The Soviets have learned that it simply does not pay to attack the SDI head on, and therefore they’re trying to create a context in which the domestic opposition to the SDI will attempt to scuttle the program on the ground that arms-control progress makes new strategic programs less necessary. In general, I think it is useful to recall that in the last several years the Soviets have on several occasions aborted negotiations and then they came back once convinced of U.S. firmness. It is a good lesson to remember.

Q: Do you see any traps in the present Soviet proposals?

A: The Administration has been trapped by its own proposals rather than by the Soviet proposals. The “zero-zero” formula (the 1981 U.S. proposal to eliminate all U.S. and Soviet medium-range missiles in Europe) made sense when we were trying to prevent SS-20 deployments prior to our own INF deployments in Europe. But once these deployments have taken place the zero-zero formula gives more political and military benefits to the Soviet side than to the United States. Militarily, the Soviet Union gains invulnerability from such time-urgent (quick-strike) counterforce systems as the Pershing 2s while retaining its own capacity for depressed-trajectory (short warning time) attacks on the U.S. command centers and even some strategic bases. Politically, the zero-zero formula threatens to generate a wave of anxiety in Europe regarding the possible strategic decoupling of the United States and Western Europe. This is why in my judgment, if we can, we should try in the negotiating process to somewhat alter the Reykjavik formula, moving away from the zero-zero formula for Western Europe and European Russia and 100 (missiles) for the continental United States and 100 for Asian Russia to a formula that perhaps would involve 100 in Europe, 100 in America, 100 in western Russia and 100 in eastern Russia. Such a formula, I think, would be politically and militarily preferable.

Q: Does the Administration want an arms-control deal now as one way of salvaging the Reagan presidency in light of the Iran- contra affair?

A: I cannot fathom, if you will, internal motivations of the Administration, though I do suspect that the desire for a public-relations spectacular probably is stronger now than it was, let us say, four or five months ago, before the Iran affair broke into the open. That is worrisome. But I think that the President should remember that his stock actually rose after Reykjavik, when the public perceived him as strong-willed and determined rather than as weak. If a bad arms-control agreement leads to a summit in Washington, my guess is that in the long run it would hurt the President rather than help him, and therefore he would be well advised to negotiate on the merits and not try to exploit negotiations for domestic political purposes.

Let me add a footnote here. I personally believe that if an INF accord is reached, it should be signed by (Secretary of State George P.) Shultz and (Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A.) Shevardnadze, and not by Reagan and (Soviet leader Mikhail S.) Gorbachev at a summit in the United States. I believe that a Gorbachev visit to the United States should be deferred until after the Afghan issue is resolved. I think that it would be literally impolitic and even immoral for Gorbachev to be seated at a major public-relations extravaganza in the United States while the Soviet army conducts hostilities against the people of Afghanistan.

Q: You have stated in the past your belief that we need to work on some longer-range regimen of strategic stability for the likely conditions of the 1990s and the 21st Century, including strategic defenses. Do you see arms control progressing this way, and, if so, do you see it leading to a safer world?

A: I would certainly hope so, but that requires deliberate strategic direction, particularly from the United States, since we do have the technological initiative. I believe it is crucial that we try to move the arms-control negotiations and more generally the U.S. strategic relationship in two critically important directions: First, to seek Mutual Strategic Security by regimen in which both sides either tacitly or by agreement accept some restraints on the number of offensive strategic systems, and particularly those that are so accurate that they can be used in a first-strike attack, and combine such more restrained deployments of strategically offensive systems with the deployment of some limited strategic defenses. In other words, a restraint on each side’s capacity to execute a preemptive strategic attack combined with each side possessing the additional insurance of some limited strategic defenses--not for total societal protection but to ensure that command, control and strategic retaliatory forces are survivable. Second, we need to expand strategic arms negotiations into what I call comprehensive arms-reduction talks, which would include conventional forces of the United States and the Soviet Union and particularly those deployed in Europe. I think it is in the interest of both sides militarily and it is in the interest of Europe politically for the conventional forces of the United States and the Soviet Union to be reduced in Europe either by joint agreement or by some tacit initiatives taken unilaterally by each side.