Analysis : Rhetorical Overkill Marks End of Washington Talks

Although Secretary of State George P. Shultz had difficulty swallowing the word, he and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze appeared to agree that the U.S.-Soviet relationship was heading back toward detente as a result of their talks.

But their accomplishment, though significant, was not great enough to justify Friday’s glowing phrases.

“The rhetoric is really disproportionate to the tangible products of the meeting,” one U.S. arms control expert said. “What is striking is that the two sides have decided to put such an upbeat gloss on it.”

To be sure, two of the three main purposes for their meeting--to move the intermediate-range missile agreement toward completion and to advance plans for a new summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev--were achieved. Even the third goal, to make progress in limiting strategic offensive weapons, may also turn out to be nearer as a result of some vague new language from the Soviets.

Nevertheless, it can be argued that their “agreement in principle to conclude a treaty”--which would eliminate nuclear missiles with ranges from 300 to 3,000 miles--in fact had been reached at least earlier this year and perhaps as far back as the 1985 summit in Geneva. Even Assistant Secretary of State Rozanne L. Ridgway acknowledged that Friday’s statement “sounds anti-climactic” in view of the expectations raised by U.S. and Soviet officials in recent months.

Nonetheless, the momentum created by the enthusiastic words from both sides probably ensures the success of the negotiations on the remaining technical issues that will lead, finally, to the signing of a treaty.

A U.S.-Soviet summit meeting in Washington was promised at the Geneva summit. It was to have occurred last year, in fact, but the 1986 summit instead took place in Reykjavik, Iceland.

And the least progress was made in converting another 1985 agreement in principle--to reduce intercontinental offensive weapons by half--into a concrete treaty because of the continuing impasse over the Reagan Administration’s efforts to develop its Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based missile defense system also known as “Star Wars.”

Still, Shevardnadze, speaking in the ornate, high-ceiling reception room of the Soviet Embassy here, was almost ecstatic in describing the outcome of the three-day session as “a common success for all mankind, for human civilization.

“Today we are making the first major step toward a nuclear-free world,” he said at another point. During the talks, he added, his emotions ranged “from anxiety to a strong emotional uplift.”

When asked if it was “the beginning of a period of detente,” he said: “Yes, I believe this is the beginning of a new period. I would call it the material basis, a very substantive, very good material basis, for that new period. . . . It is also a reflection of the beginning of detente.”

A Taboo Word

Detente has been a taboo word among conservative Republicans since 1976, when former President Gerald R. Ford, under attack by challenger Ronald Reagan in that year’s presidential primaries and losing public support, banned it from his vocabulary. Reagan had charged that under Ford detente had been “a one-way street” in favor of the Soviets.

Shultz managed to avoid using the word, albeit with difficulty, when he was asked if this was the start of “the Reagan Administration’s version of detente.”

“Well, things have changed tremendously” in the superpower relationship in even the past three years, let alone 10 or 15 years, he said. He cited “worthwhile discussions and movement” in human rights, “increasingly rewarding” discussions on regional issues such as Afghanistan, “increased” bilateral contacts and “progress” on arms control.

“So there is movement,” he said, but adding, “I wouldn’t want to put a label on it.”

Besides avoiding the use of the word detente, Shultz’s characterization of progress in non-nuclear fields appeared modest compared to the rhetoric claiming great achievements in the latest talks.

Arms control has become the centerpiece in U.S.-Soviet relations, but it is also on the leading edge of the Kremlin’s efforts to convince the world that it has become a peace-loving rather than confrontational military power.

Convincing West Europeans

Thus, arms agreements and a new summit serve Gorbachev’s domestic economic agenda but also his determined efforts to convince West Europeans that the threat of East-West conflict has receded. If he succeeds, the theory goes, the European public will be less willing to support increased spending on conventional forces and new nuclear deployments to which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is already committed as compensation for the withdrawal of 2,500 older nuclear devices since 1984.

For the Administration, an intermediate-range missile agreement and a summit this year--November is the most likely month for the meeting--will help the President restore some of the credibility eroded by the Iran- contra scandal.

Then a 1988 summit in Moscow, with or without a new strategic arms agreement, will provide a significant boost for the Republican presidential candidate later in the year.

The most important advance on the intermediate-range missile issue during the Shultz-Shevardnadze talks was the finessing by the two sides of the issue of the U.S. warheads on 72 West German Pershing 1-A missiles, which can reach targets 460 miles away.

The Bonn government had committed itself to dismantling the Pershings when the U.S. and Soviet missiles are eliminated, and the Administration has promised to withdraw the warheads after the Germans retire the missiles.

Differences Over Timing

Differences still remain, however, over the time in which the U.S. and Soviet missiles are to be dismantled--three years or five years--and the annual pace at which each side will reduce toward zero. The Soviets have about twice as many missiles and five times more warheads in this category of weapons.

In addition, the two nations have yet to settle details of a verification regime to guard against cheating. Its broad outlines are agreed, but differences exist on such matters as the annual number of on-site inspections and the nature of the facilities to be inspected.

These are largely technical matters, as both Shultz and Shevardnadze said, but they are unresolved now as they were before the visit. The change now, as the joint U.S.-Soviet statement said, is that “the Geneva delegations of both sides have been instructed to work intensively to resolve remaining technical issues and promptly to complete a draft treaty text.”

Even less advance can be discerned in the Geneva talks on strategic offensive weapons and space-based defenses. What movement did occur came from Soviet changes.

In strategic weapons, the Soviets showed some flexibility by accepting the principle of sub-limits on the number of warheads permitted on ballistic missiles and agreed that their biggest intercontinental missiles would carry no more than 10 warheads each.

‘Showing a Little Ankle’

The sub-limit change provides an opening--”they are showing a little ankle,” as one official joked--to explore a method of counting and setting ceilings on how warheads may be distributed on remaining delivery systems, an issue that the Administration considers crucial to any agreement, but how far the Soviets are prepared to move will be discovered only when the Geneva talks resume next week.

In space defenses, the Soviets appeared to accept, albeit elliptically, that certain so-called exotic SDI weapons, such as lasers, may be tested in space if they are at low power and incapable of harming anything. Until now, the Soviets opposed testing any potential anti-missile system outside of ground-based laboratories.

The basic impasse remains over anti-missile defenses, however. In exchange for an agreement on offensive strategic weapons, the Administration has proposed to pledge not to deploy any anti-missile system for 10 years. But the Administration wants freedom to put SDI in space after that, if research proves that such a system is feasible. The Soviets want the existing ban on anti-missile systems to continue after the 10-year period.

But, with the hope of marginal movement, Shultz and Shevardnadze ordered that an “intensive effort should be made (at Geneva) to achieve a treaty on 50% reductions in strategic offensive arms within the framework of the Geneva Nuclear and Space Talks.”