Facts Support Only ‘Broad’ Interpretation of ABM Treaty

The Nunn-Levin amendment to the 1988 defense authorization bill, which would hold the Strategic Defense Initiative hostage to a narrow interpretation of the Anti-Ballistic-Missile treaty, has generated about 300 pages of expert commentary.

Yet the truth in this Senate debate is actually rather simple to determine:

--Thanks to declassified records of our negotiations with the Soviet Union in 1971 and 1972, we can now document that the Soviets repeatedly and consistently rebuffed U.S. efforts to ban the testing and development of mobile or space-based “futuristic” ABM systems.

--In addition, we now know that the Soviets were so convinced that the ABM treaty did not limit the development and testing of space-based futuristic ABM systems that in March, 1985, they sought a separate accord to ban such activities.

These points make clear that the Administration’s so-called “broad” interpretation of the treaty is in fact the only interpretation supported by the facts.

Indeed, the negotiating record shows that the Soviet Union never agreed to define future systems, beyond a rather vague reference to systems based on “other physical principles,” and agreed only to ban the deployment of such systems after prior “discussion and agreement.”

It was the U.S. negotiators, not the Soviets, who wanted to limit both existing and futuristic ABM systems.

Our opening gambit in this effort was to propose a ban on the development, testing and deployment of either space-based or mobile exotic ABM systems, which we referred to as “other devices.”

Typical of the Soviets’ reaction to this proposal was a blunt statement by their chief negotiator, V. S. Semenov, that including such a provision limiting future systems would make the treaty both “amorphous” and illegitimate.

On this point the Soviets refused to budge. Instead, in September, 1971, we retreated by dropping the reference to “other devices” and proposing only to restrict the deployment of future exotic ABM systems. The Soviets, however, still objected.

“We have proposed, and the U.S.S.R. has not as yet accepted, that each side undertake not to deploy ABM systems using devices other than current ABM system components to perform the functions of these components,” our negotiators said in a report to Secretary of State William Rogers toward the end of 1971.

“The Soviets contend, in essence, that this amounts to trying to put a box around something that does not exist,” they concluded.

The continued resistance of the Soviets finally led to a compromise--the essential points of which were sketched out in an exchange between A. N. Shchukin, the Soviet negotiator, and Paul Nitze, the U.S. negotiator, in mid-December, 1971.

As other Soviet negotiators had done for weeks, Shchukin objected to our efforts to limit futuristic systems. Such a provision, he insisted, was not only vague but also unnecessary.

If new technologies should emerge that would allow future ABM components to carry out the tasks of existing components more efficiently and in a less costly manner, Shchukin wondered, “why should those be prohibited?”

Nitze objected that such new systems might render the treaty’s specific limits on missile launchers meaningless by obviating the need for interceptor missiles or interceptor missile launchers.

Shchukin, however, did not consider this a serious point, and explained that when and if such future systems reached a stage at which they could be deployed, the regulation of such systems could be referred to the Standing Consultative Commission, which would be established by the treaty.

A week after the Nitze-Shchukin exchange, Semenov made it clear that the regulation of future ABM systems in the text of the treaty was “unacceptable” to the Soviets.

Again the Soviet view prevailed. At that point in the talks the U.S. negotiating team dropped its effort to define ABM systems in such a way that would have explicitly included futuristic systems.

More important, our delegation dropped any reference to “other devices” in the text of the treaty, and agreed instead that a ban on the deployment of such futuristics would be covered in a separate side agreement, which later became Agreed Statement D.

Not surprisingly, all that this agreed statement banned was the deployment of future systems not submitted first to the Standing Consultative Commission, for discussion. The statement didn’t restrict the development or testing of such systems.

That was 15 years ago. Because neither side had any futuristic space-based ABM systems to test, the limitation of this type of technology did not become a public issue--at least, not until recently.

With President Reagan’s announcement of his SDI program in 1983 and the opening of the Geneva negotiations on space and defense in early 1985, however, the development of space-based missile defenses has moved to front stage center. So, too, has the ABM treaty.

Indeed, it was at the start of the 1985 talks that the Soviets insisted on a comprehensive ban on anything that might help perfect SDI.

The Soviets did not claim that such activities were already banned by the ABM treaty, but rather assumed that they needed to lay down a separate accord to accomplish this.

I first learned of this in a meeting last summer with Ambassador Henry Cooper, our deputy negotiator at the space and defense talks. What he had to say about the Soviets’ interpretation of the ABM treaty was astounding, so I asked him to put his views in writing.

In an Aug. 26, 1986, letter Cooper explained that it was because of the Soviet offer, and our negotiators’ initial confusion about it, that we welcomed a review of the negotiating record to establish precisely what the Soviets agreed to in 1972.

It was this analysis that led the Reagan Administration to conclude that the broad interpretation was in fact the only one that is legally binding on both parties--a conclusion that the Administration made public in late 1985.

By this time, however, the Soviets had conveniently flip-flopped and claimed that the ABM treaty did ban the testing and development of space-based ABM systems.

This move was understandable, Cooper wrote, because “our decision to constrain the SDI program to be consistent with our previously held views of the terms of the treaty put them in the best of all worlds. The U.S. legitimized the ‘broad interpretation’ for them . . . while continuing the narrow restraints on activities under the SDI program.”

This conclusion, unfortunately, is the simple truth. It is certainly the one that the Senate must reckon with in its current debate on the amendment offered by Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). If we fail to do so, the debate will be dangerously misguided.