It’s No Prize

The Soviet Union had led everybody to believe that an agreement on the elimination of medium-range missiles could be wrapped up during Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s visit to Moscow this week, and that this would clear the way for formal scheduling of a summit trip to Washington this fall by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. There were advance suggestions on both sides that the momentum provided by these events might produce a more important agreement on deep cuts in strategic nuclear forces--perhaps as early as next spring.

Thanks to some very dubious Soviet negotiating tactics, things didn’t work out that way. Shultz, after a four-hour meeting with the Soviet leader, said that the two sides were “virtually there” in regard to the medium-range-missile treaty. But hopes for an early summit meeting were derailed, at least for now, by Gorbachev’s last-minute refusal to schedule a summit visit unless the Reagan Administration guaranteed an “agreement in principle” to limit the “Star Wars” program for the development of a missile defense system.

In broad terms, the Soviet demand for the negotiation of limits on President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, is reasonable. But Gorbachev’s effort to treat a summit meeting as some sort of prize to be awarded or withheld is not an appropriate way to go about pursuing a change of heart by the President.

A treaty on medium-range missiles will, if it comes, be an important achievement in the long history of nuclear-arms control. But it is far more important to work out an agreement for deep, balanced cuts in nuclear weapons of intercontinental range. Both Washington and Moscow have agreedin principle on the desirability of 50% reductions, but negotiations have been stymied by Soviet insistence on banning the development of space-based missile defenses, and Washington’s refusal to accede to that demand.

Recently Moscow had indicated a degree of flexibility on the issue, including a willingness to allow certain kinds of in-space tests. It isn’t clear just how reasonable the Soviets were prepared to be. In any event the President, against the advice of some ranking experts within his Administration, stuck by his refusal to accept any meaningful constraints on U.S. freedom of action in pursuing missile defense.

That is unfortunate, not only because his posture may preclude the possibility of deep cuts in offensive strategic weapons but also because there is a clear need to set up-to-date parameters for allowable work on SDI with or without a strategic-arms agreement. That need is underscored by the publication of commercial satellite photos of a major laser installation on a Soviet mountain top. American experts, including some opposed to SDI, say that the laser is clearly military in purpose and could be the forerunner of a ground-based system capable of disabling U.S. satellites. Further down the road, it could conceivably lead to a system with anti-missile capabilities.

Moscow and Washington should wrap up the loose ends on the medium-range-missile treaty as soon as possible, and the Administration should rethink the wisdom of its refusal to negotiate sensibly on the SDI issue, because that is the best way to safeguard the security interests of the United States. Whether Gorbachev comes calling or not isn’t the important issue.