Soviet Arms Offer Laid Before NATO : Shultz, Diplomats Say Approval by Alliance Is Likely After Consultations

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, after briefing U.S. allies on his Moscow negotiations, said Thursday that the Western Alliance has “a hard decision to make” on whether to accept the Soviet offer to eliminate shorter-range ballistic missiles from superpower nuclear arsenals.

But, Shultz added, it is a decision that “we’ve been wanting the opportunity to make” since negotiations began in 1981 on intermediate-range nuclear forces. And he said that it will be made “promptly” in order to move ahead toward a treaty dealing primarily with longer-range nuclear missiles.

Lord Carrington, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was noncommittal after the Shultz briefing on the Soviet offer, which Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev put forth with a challenge to accept it immediately, asking the United States and its NATO allies, “What are you afraid of?”

Consultations Due

U.S. and European diplomats said the proposal is likely to be approved by NATO, after several weeks of intense consultations, if the lower-range limit of these missiles, now considered to be about 350 miles, can be firmly fixed in the agreement.

Otherwise, NATO and U.S. officials said, they fear that they will lose their option to modernize and improve aging missiles of even shorter range in the Western inventory in Europe.

After the NATO briefing, Shultz returned to the United States, arriving at President Reagan’s California ranch, about 30 miles northwest of Santa Barbara, in late afternoon. He received a kiss from Nancy Reagan and a “Welcome back” from the President.

‘A Good Meeting’

White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. and Frank C. Carlucci, the President’s national security adviser, met with Reagan and Shultz in the modest ranch house in the Santa Ynez Mountains.

“I had a good time in Moscow. It was a good meeting,” Shultz told reporters and photographers before the meeting began.

U.S. officials listed a variety of additional concerns about any hasty acceptance of the Soviet proposal. The first of these is that eliminating all nuclear missiles with ranges of 350 to 3,000 miles--categorized as intermediate-range nuclear forces, or INF--could create momentum toward a “denuclearized” Europe. This would destroy the NATO strategy of relying on nuclear weapons to counter Soviet superiority in conventional ground forces.

Doctrine Challenged

More immediately, the Soviet offer challenges the NATO military doctrine of “flexible response,” which, Shultz said, was adopted to keep NATO’s options from being “limited to the light switch or not”--that is, all-out nuclear war or surrender.

The concept of flexible response, a senior U.S. official said, calls for “a hierarchy of military capabilities, going from conventional up through nuclear, so that you could be flexible in your response and adequately respond to any kind of attack.”

“You don’t have to cover all the rungs in the possible ladders of escalation,” the official went on, “but in order to have a policy of flexible response, it is wise to be reasonably covered at each one of the major rungs.”

European Concern

Flexible response will remain NATO doctrine in any case, officials said, adding that the issue is whether to be without the “rungs” in both the longer-range INF missiles (1,000 to 3,000 miles) and the shorter-range INF missiles (down to 350 miles) at the same time.

Another concern, European officials said, is that eliminating these missiles would raise fears that the United States was withdrawing its nuclear umbrella, a process known as “decoupling” or “delinking” from Europe.

But U.S. officials pointed out that the main U.S. security link with Europe is the presence of 300,000 U.S. soldiers. In addition, there are 4,000 U.S. nuclear warheads in Europe that would remain here even after such an INF agreement.

‘A New World’

A final concern in the context of the Soviet offer, another senior U.S. official said, is that “after Reykjavik (scene of last fall’s American-Soviet summit conference in Iceland), there’s a new world out there of reduced nuclear weapons rather than increased.” The official’s point was that President Reagan and Gorbachev agreed at Reykjavik to cut their nuclear arsenals in half, in contrast to previous arms control treaties that allowed increases in warheads up to specified limits.

“Managing reduction is turning out to be a particular new challenge of our times,” the U.S. official said. “It raises the question of how fast. Some people are saying, ‘Let’s slow down this process so we can absorb this new experience.’ Others are saying, ‘This is an opportunity we can’t pass up, because we don’t have these weapons systems.’ ”

The United States has no short-range INF missiles in Europe, but there have been proposals to introduce new missiles in this category, the official said, adding that “there is simply no easy path,” despite the implications in Gorbachev’s challenge.

Living Preference

Put another way, for all the recent Western demands for reduced Soviet missile superiority at all levels, many NATO military commanders would prefer to live with a Soviet numerical edge rather than with the equality of zero nuclear missiles.

The broad INF agreement discussed in Moscow, which both sides agree is ripe for completion, would focus first on longer-range INF missiles. All would be eliminated from Europe, but each side would retain 100 warheads--the Soviets’ to be kept in Asia, the Americans’ in the continental United States. The reductions would be accomplished within four or five years, according to U.S. officials who were present at the Moscow negotiations.

At present, the Soviets have 1,323 warheads on the triple-warhead SS-20s. Of these, 810 are in Europe, and all would be eliminated. The additional 513 warheads are east of the Ural Mountains, and they would be reduced to 100. The United States has about 316 warheads on its longer-range INF missiles in Europe, 100 of which would be saved but stationed in the United States.

‘Collateral Restraints’

To prevent the Soviets from circumventing the agreement on longer-range missiles, the United States has always demanded that “collateral restraints” be put on the shorter-range missiles, which might be moved forward or modified to substitute for the withdrawn missiles.

The missile systems that Washington specifically wants to limit, or “capture,” as arms control experts put it, are two Soviet systems capable of being upgraded: the SS-12/22, with a range of about 600 miles, about 130 to 140 of which have been deployed; and the SS-23, with a range of 350 miles, about 12 of which have been deployed.

The United States has no missiles of comparable range in Europe, although West Germany has 72 Pershing 1-A missiles with a range of 450 miles. Their nuclear warheads are under U.S. control, but the United States has refused to negotiate on weapons held by its allies, including 44 French Pluton missiles in this range. No Soviet allies have missiles in this category. In this situation, the United States proposed that shorter-range INF missiles be limited to equal levels on both sides at some reduced level. It did not propose a zero level, however.

Shorter-Range Attention

The new Gorbachev proposal is zero for the shorter-range INF systems, to be achieved within one year. He also proposed eliminating all nuclear missiles with shorter ranges, but this proposal is to be negotiated subsequently and in a different form, he said.

Serious attention is now focused on the offer related to the shorter-range INF missiles. Some NATO nations, among them West Germany, favor reducing the lower-range limits for these missiles below 350 miles, to include the Soviet Scud missile that has a range of about 100 miles. About 600 Scuds and other very-short-range missiles are targeted on West Germany by the Soviets and some of their allies.

But NATO and U.S. officials complain that lowering the range would preclude improvements to the U.S. Lance missile, with a 70-mile range, which the NATO military commander, Gen. Bernard W. Rogers, wants upgraded in range and capability as part of the modernization program approved by NATO two years ago. At that time, the United States agreed to reduce its total nuclear stockpile in Europe from about 6,000 weapons, including artillery shells and mines, to about 4,500.