Back to Basics in Moscow

Secretary of State George P. Shultz is in Moscow today, Marine pillow talk and its consequences for security no doubt still ringing in his ears.

It is rotten timing that when Shultz left, Washington was awash in outrage at the latest Soviet intrusions in a decades-old eavesdropping campaign by both countries to discover where the other plans its next move on the global chessboard.

What should be ringing in Shultz’s ears is the shriek of conflicting signals about arms-control talks and the opportunity that the bedlam offers. He should be setting the stage for discussions of a policy framework under which both countries would conduct themselves over the next decade or two. That might give the jumble of current proposals on nuclear arms some meaning--make it look less like a basketball game with 80 players on the floor at once.

Consider the jumble. An Administration spokesman has pronounced President Reagan’s proposal to dismantle all American and Soviet missiles dead. The House of Representatives has in effect ordered no early testing for “Star Wars,” the program designed to put exotic weapons into space one day, in a generation or two, that could shoot down in-coming Soviet missiles.

The Soviets may tell Shultz that they have a new idea about proposals to dismantle American and Soviet medium-range nuclear weapons that are now based in, or pointed at, Europe. They may want to get rid of all of theirs, including 100 that they would have been allowed to swing to other targets under the proposal. General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev may have said that he is ready to negotiate short-range missiles as well, although that is less clear.

The same spokesman who said that the plan to dismantle all nuclear weapons is dead also said that the United States may negotiate a timetable for Star Wars development in exchange for a peek at what the Soviets are doing on new missile defenses. But Shultz’s instructions apparently are not to talk about Star Wars or limiting nuclear tests. He is to concentrate in his Moscow talks on medium-range missiles.

Perhaps someone in each country tracks these moves and countermoves and can draw a straight line between each proposal and the overall strategic interests of each country. As we have suggested before, however, it would be much easier to keep score if the leadership of the two nations would first describe to one another, without posturing, just what its strategic interests are. That would make it easier to draw lines in the other direction that would show not only how many weapons were needed, but also why.