Treaty to Bring Pressure for New NATO Arms

The U.S.-Soviet arms control treaty now in the final stages of negotiation, while eliminating ground-launched intermediate-range missiles, will create pressure to step up the deployment and capabilities of other nuclear weapons not covered by the agreement, especially air-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles, U.S. and NATO officials say.

However, a move to deploy new weapons, while permitted under the planned treaty and considered necessary by some NATO strategists on military grounds, could send political shock waves through Western Europe by appearing to circumvent or negate the accord.

Some officials express concern that eliminating intermediate-range missiles will also add to what they see as a larger danger of sliding toward a denuclearized Europe, which could find itself at the mercy of Moscow’s far-stronger conventional forces.

Thus, even before completion of the U.S.-Soviet agreement eliminating missiles in the 300 to 3,000-mile range, strategists in Washington and here at the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have begun wrestling with problems that they expect to arise from such an accord.

Most immediately, officials say, such a treaty will increase pressure to:

-- Reach a new strategic arms agreement with Moscow that would reduce long-range (intercontinental) offensive weapons.

-- Compensate for the loss of medium-range missiles by increasing the number and quality of non-restricted weapons of the same range, notably air-launched and sea-launched weapons, as well as of short-range missiles--those with a range of less than 300 miles.

-- Begin negotiations with the Soviets on reducing such short-range nuclear forces in Europe, as strongly urged by the Bonn government last month. It is these negotiations especially that some strategists see as accelerating a move toward removing all nuclear weapons from Europe.

NATO is particularly concerned with the last two issues but has yet to decide how to tackle them.

Options Marching By

“We are letting the options march by right now without opting for any of them,” one alliance official said.

The United States, which is negotiating with the Soviets on the long-range weapons as well as other weapons systems, is planning to make a determined effort to reach an agreement reducing those strategic offensive weapons before the end of this Administration.

Western officials see several risks if the intermediate-range missile agreement is not followed soon by a reduction in long-range weapons. Among them are both tangible and subjective dangers, they say.

One is that both sides will seek to increase their long-range arsenals to use those weapons as substitutes to cover targets formerly assigned to the intermediate-range missiles.

The Soviets will eliminate more than 1,565 warheads based on 683 missiles. In exchange, the United States will dismantle 364 Pershing 2 and ground-launched cruise missiles, each with one warhead, and forgo deployment of 224 additional such missiles.

Another potential pitfall is that the Europeans will again begin to fear that their interests and safety are being separated--”decoupled,” in the jargon of strategic planners--from those of the United States by the elimination of the intermediate-range missiles if there is no reduction in the threat from the strategic systems.

It was the fear of such decoupling, among other factors, that led West Germany a decade ago to call for the deployment of the U.S. intermediate-range missiles that are now to be removed.

Not all authorities accept these arguments, however. For example, some Western officials here point out that the Soviet deployment of the SS-20s in 1977, to which the U.S. deployment was a response, was made in a visible and potentially intimidating way, and that this “political” use of the SS-20s was the main contributor to the European fear of decoupling. With the SS-20s to be removed now, the resurgence of such fears is not likely, in their view.

Nonetheless, U.S. officials, concerned that a new medium-range missile agreement may otherwise be short-lived, will give high priority to breaking the logjam in the strategic arms arena.

Regarding the second impact of the prospective treaty, two factors have now come together to create the impetus for new and increased forces to compensate for the eliminated medium-range missiles.

In 1983, the NATO defense ministers agreed to cut the number of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe by 2,400--to about 4,500--while improving the remaining weapons. The other factor is that NATO strategists fear that elimination of the medium-range missiles removes a major rung from the escalatory ladder in the alliance’s doctrine of “flexible response.” Under this doctrine, NATO has sought to be able to threaten to use nuclear weapons of increasing power and range to deter or stop a Soviet invasion.

New weapons that could be used to restore the rung in the ladder, at least partly, include sea-launched cruise missiles and a new air-launched cruise missile, neither of which are prohibited by the prospective accord, as well as a modernized Lance land-based ballistic missile whose 75-mile range would be increased, perhaps doubled.

Four NATO nations, including the United States, now have a total of 88 U.S.-made Lance missile launchers in Europe. These are for the only Western missiles under the 300-mile limit of intermediate-range missiles. The Soviets in contrast have about 16 times as many such weapons.

The risk is that if NATO seeks to deploy new weapons, and in sufficient quantity to have the desired effect, the impact on West European public opinion could lead to protests comparable to the uproar that occurred in 1983, when the first U.S. intermediate-range missiles arrived.

German View on Lance Missiles

Moreover, the Lance is precisely the kind of weapon that the West Germans want to see restricted. The Bonn government has noted that such weapons can hit only German soil--East Germany or West Germany.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in announcing last month that his government would dismantle its 72 intermediate-range missiles when the U.S.-Soviet agreement was implemented, also repeated that he strongly favors “follow-on negotiations to be held on short-range nuclear missile systems in Europe.”

The other three major NATO powers--Britain, France and the United States--disagree. They prefer to wait for an extended period--ostensibly for analysis of the consequences of the coming agreement--before new talks aimed at further nuclear cuts.

One day after Kohl spoke out, President Reagan reiterated the U.S. view that any such talks should be held in conjunction with negotiations to reduce conventional and chemical forces.

Some NATO leaders fear that a new intermediate-range missile accord will start an unstoppable slide down the “slippery slope” toward eliminating all nuclear weapons from Europe--on aircraft and ships as well as missiles and artillery shells--without ending the Soviet superiority in chemical and conventional forces and without any commitment to increase NATO’s conventional weapons enough to deter a Soviet invasion.

Some West German officials insist now that Bonn does not want to begin talks immediately on short-range systems but does want to “keep it on the agenda” for the future, and that if sufficient new weapons are developed to compensate for the elimination of the intermediate-range systems, Bonn’s concern about short-range weapons may fade.

But officials of other Western governments here are not so sanguine. Some express concern that the Germans are creating conditions for another rancorous “dual track”--a situation in which deployment of modernized Lance missiles would be threatened if the Soviets do not reduce their short-range missiles. In 1979, NATO offered to forgo deployment of its intermediate-range missiles if the Soviets would dismantle their SS-20s, a dual track deal now to be reached but only after enormous effort and controversy within the alliance.