Scowcroft Voices Doubts on Soviet Arms Offer

The Soviet Union’s proposal to eliminate intermediate- and short-range nuclear weapons from Europe would require the United States to reverse a policy that has been the linchpin of European security for 35 years, former National Security Adviser Brent L. Scowcroft said Friday.

Scowcroft, describing himself as a traditionalist, expressed grave reservations about the proposals discussed earlier in the week by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He called the plan damaging to the interests of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States.

The argument that the Soviets would give up three warheads for each one surrendered by the United States is in itself reason for sharp skepticism, he said, “unless the Soviets have fundamentally changed and are now engaged in philanthropy.”

Policy Reversal Seen

“I think we are taking fairly sizable steps toward denuclearizing Europe,” he told reporters at a breakfast meeting, “and I think that reverses a policy since 1949 of using nuclear weapons to assure deterrence in Europe. . . . There isn’t anything that’s happened that invalidates that notion.”

Scowcroft, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, served as White House national security adviser in the Gerald R. Ford Administration and has long been regarded as a moderate on arms control issues. He headed a presidential commission that made a comprehensive study of U.S. strategic missile forces five years ago.

His criticism of the proposal came as the European allies undertook a serious review of it and as Administration officials looked optimistically toward conclusion of an elusive arms pact with the Soviets after six years of on-again, off-again talks from Moscow to Washington to Geneva to Reykjavik.

Concerns similar to Scowcroft’s were raised Thursday by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who warned in a Michigan speech, “We have to be very careful in these negotiations that we do not walk into a trap, at the end of which we will have removed from Europe those weapons which have been the major element of stability.”

Scowcroft, despite his profound reservations, said he expects that criticism will be swept aside and that an agreement along the lines now being discussed will be ratified by the Senate.

Although Europeans fear the prospect of being cut loose or left out of the coverage of the U.S. nuclear umbrella, Scowcroft predicted that the allies will find it nearly impossible to resist such an agreement.

“I think the Europeans have gone as far as they dare,” he said. “I think they have objected as strongly as they could. Are they going to stand in the way of the great anti-Communist (President Reagan) making an arms control agreement with the Russians when they have been pleading for it for seven years, when they are looking at a right wing saying the agreement is great?”

Gorbachev has proposed eliminating medium-range missiles in Europe and indicated his government’s willingness to get rid of its shorter-range intermediate nuclear forces there as well, even though the United States has yet to deploy comparable weapons.

The proliferation of American nuclear weapons in Europe began in 1952 after a study by the NATO alliance showed that the missiles provided the least expensive deterrent to the Warsaw Pact nations’ conventional military superiority.

Link to Conventional Forces

Scowcroft said an ideal avenue toward reducing arms in Europe would be to link nuclear weapons reduction to a scaling down of conventional forces, but he predicted that the Soviets would never accept this. The United States proposed a zero-option plan on mid-range nuclear weapons in Europe more than 10 years ago, knowing that it would not be accepted.

Now, the Soviet Union has about 810 intermediate-range SS-20 missiles, each carrying three nuclear warheads, deployed in Europe. The United States has 316 warheads on its longer-range missiles in Europe. Under the new proposals, the Soviet Union calls for all these to be removed and for separate negotiations to eliminate shorter-range missiles.

But Scowcroft said the debate is more political and psychological than military because the U.S. medium-range forces are no match for the Soviets’ huge SS-20s.