Baffling Trail

Washington and Moscow last week left an arms-control trail baffling enough to make a hunting dog weep. At one point the trail led to deadlock over 72 nuclear missiles in the hands of the West Germans and the difficulties of making certain that nobody could cheat on an agreement to disarm nearly 1,000 medium-range American and Soviet missiles based in, or pointed at, Europe. At another point it led to a September planning session for a summit meeting to celebrate the first arms-control treaty in nearly a decade.

In Geneva, Soviet arms-control negotiators once again said that any agreement to dismantle thousands of other missiles--particularly those with global range--must include negotiated terms for the pace of development of defense systems like “Star Wars,” the missile-proof umbrella that President Reagan wants to erect over the United States. The Administration dismissed the idea as propaganda, and predicted that the Soviets would back down.

Of the two trails, Europe had the better chance of leading somewhere. By the standards of the nuclear age, the West German missiles are old and feeble, and Washington or Moscow or both could decide that they are not important enough to block an agreement. Making certain that there is no cheating is only as complicated as the negotiators want to make it. Over the years, satellite photos have traced patterns of activity around missile factories and test sites; suspicious changes in routine could be cause for demanding an on-site inspection. There are risks that the satellites will miss something just as there are risks associated with no arms control at all.

The trail of discussions on global missiles still led nowhere, as it did when last year’s summit meeting in Iceland broke up in a deadlock over Star Wars.

Reagan is anxious to negotiate deep cuts in the nuclear arsenals of both countries, but only if an agreement leaves the United States free to test elements of a space-based Star Wars system. The Administration also insists on deciding for itself what tests, if any, would be prohibited by the 1972 ABM treaty that limits the deployment of defenses and the development of new defense systems.

Last week’s Soviet proposal agrees with the U.S. plan to reduce the number of intercontinental missiles in both the United States and the Soviet Union to about 6,000. But it would tie the reduction to an extension of, and a strict interpretation of, the anti-ballistic-missile treaty. Few analysts outside the Administration think that the Soviet proposal is rooted in politics or that Moscow is prepared to back away from its position soon, if ever.

What makes retreat unlikely is that strategists in both countries fear more than anything a surprise launch of missiles as a last, unthinking resort during a crisis. In theory, the concept of mutual assured destruction (MAD) would prevent such an attack because missiles from the target country would be launched in retaliation.

A defense system on the scale envisioned by the President would break up the concept, and it is not just the Soviets who see it that way. Both the President and General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev have said that nobody could win a nuclear war and that one should never be fought. But, just in case, strategists argue that if one country has a defense system, the other needs more missiles, not fewer, to overwhelm the defenses and keep the threat of retaliation valid. As Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger wrote in a memorandum to the President on the eve of the 1985 summit meeting in Geneva: “Even a probable (Soviet) territorial defense would require us to increase the number of our offensive forces and their ability to penetrate Soviet defenses.”

We continue to think, as do many strategic analysts in the United States, that the best of all worlds is a combination of deep missile reductions and negotiated ground rules for developing defenses that would apply to both sides. So far the President is adamant, and there is no more indication that he will change his mind than will the Soviets. For now, the world must settle for the reductions that would come with an agreement on missiles in Europe and hope that even relatively modest reductions would get both countries into the habit of thinking smaller when it comes to nuclear weapons.