Talks Needed on Conventional Forces

Mikhail S. Gorbachev is the smartest and most innovative fellow to run the Soviet Union since Lenin. Whether he is also wise enough to heed the legitimate security interests of the United States and its allies remains to be seen.

For anybody interested in arms control and more civilized relations between Moscow and the West, these are heady days.

A year after the Reykjavik summit meeting ended with the apparent collapse of prospects for significant nuclear-arms-reduction agreements, a U.S.-Soviet agreement on the elimination of medium-range missiles in Europe is all but in the bag.

Gorbachev, expressing hope that this accord will spark a “peaceful chain reaction” leading to more arms control, is going all out to nail down a follow-up agreement on deep reductions in the superpowers’ strategic nuclear arsenals while Ronald Reagan is still President.

Yet there are some distinctly furrowed brows in Washington and allied capitals--not just among knee-jerk conservatives who are deeply suspicious of any arms control, but also among sensible moderates.

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says that he has “serious doubts” about the emerging U.S.-Soviet agreement to eliminate all medium-range missiles with a reach of more than 300 miles.

Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), backed by Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is pressing the Reagan Administration to provide detailed information on how the prospective treaty will affect the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s “unity and effectiveness.”

Although the Senate may end up attaching some reservations or “understandings,” there is really no danger that the medium-range-missile treaty will fail to win ratification if it is signed as expected at a Reagan-Gorbachev summit late this year. The political pressures for agreement are simply too great both here and in Europe.

The Euromissile agreement, however, would still leave the Soviets free to target some of their big multiple-warhead missiles on Western Europe. So a follow-up agreement providing for deep but balanced cuts in strategic nuclear missiles is attractive to the American and allied governments--and, for different reasons, to Moscow.

Now that Gorbachev has moderated his demands for restraints on President Reagan’s “Star Wars” program, such a treaty may indeed be achievable.

So far so good. Reagan’s mouth is watering for arms-control victories to offset the damage to his image from the Iran- contra affair. And while European political leaders have some qualms, none are prepared to oppose either a Euromissile treaty or a balanced, verifiable agreement on a 50% cut in strategic nuclear weapons.

The problem is what comes next; the Europeans, especially, worry that nuclear-arms-reduction talks have acquired a momentum that threatens to exceed common sense. These concerns were reflected in the recent warning by Lord Carrington, secretary general of NATO, that the West must avoid “headlong denuclearization.”

NATO strategists warn that as the nuclear deterrent is reduced, the West must either build up its conventional, non-nuclear deterrent or persuade Moscow to negotiate away its edge in tanks and other conventional arms.

James Thomson of the RAND Corp., a Santa Monica-based think tank, told a meeting in Oslo last week that the West had erred in negotiating nuclear-arms cuts without tackling the Soviet Bloc’s superiority in conventional arms. In his words, “If there is to be a continuation of the East-West arms-control process, we should insist that it concentrate on conventional forces and set the nuclear-force issue aside for awhile.”

The French and British agree. To quote Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “In my opinion we should not disarm much further in nuclear arms--at least not until we have a ban on chemical weapons and an approximate balance in conventional weapons.”

The political reality is that Congress is not prepared to vote higher defense budgets to pay for stronger conventional forces, and neither are the Europeans.

The Kremlin says that it is willing to negotiate cuts in non-nuclear forces. It could be true, since the Soviets cannot rechannel significant resources from defense to the civilian economy through nuclear-force reductions alone. Based on the long and dismal history of such negotiations, however, the West is entitled to skepticism.

It seems more likely that, once U.S.-Soviet agreements on medium-range and strategic nuclear weapons have been finalized, Moscow’s next move will be to propose elimination of tactical, short-range nuclear weapons from Europe.

Since most of these weapons would explode in East or West Germany in the event of war, West German politicians would be inclined to go along. But Washington, Paris and London all are convinced that, unless a conventional military balance can be established first, such a move would open the way for Soviet political intimidation of Western Europe.

Before trying to play that sort of game, Gorbachev should remember that the United States would still be bound to defend Western Europe with nuclear weapons if necessary, and that lowering the nuclear threshold would not therefore be a rational policy for the Soviet Union.

The Soviet leader should understand also that he could end up driving West Germany into a nuclear alliance with France and eventually to possession of its own nuclear weapons.

Such a development might well be accompanied by a rise in German nationalism and of West German preponderance in Western Europe. If so, it could produce potentially dangerous instabilities. And that should give the Soviets pause.

It’s extremely important, therefore, to test Soviet sincerity on conventional-arms reductions, and to do it quickly. Otherwise progress in nuclear-arms control may, paradoxically, set forces in motion that will result in a greater danger to peace than exists now.