Analysis : Weinberger Departure May Speed Arms Control

The expected departure of Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger from President Reagan’s Cabinet will remove a strong and influential brake on the arms control process and probably will alarm conservatives who share Weinberger’s profound suspicions of dealing with the Soviet Union.

But it is doubtful that the resignation will make any substantive change in the terms of the emerging U.S.-Soviet agreement to eliminate land-based medium-range nuclear missiles or in its ratification, according to senior U.S. officials and private experts. And that probably is true also of the expected next step in the arms control process, an agreement to cut back long-range strategic missiles.

“Most of the pieces (of both agreements) are already on the negotiating table,” one of those officials said. “It’s more a matter of waiting for the right time and then arranging them in the right way. And the Defense Department has signed off on all of the U.S. positions in that process.”

Carlucci May Get Post

Indeed, coming just as the superpowers are on the verge of signing the medium-range missile accord and moving into high gear on negotiating a new strategic weapons agreement, Weinberger’s resignation and his expected replacement by White House National Security Adviser Frank C. Carlucci should speed up the movement, another senior U.S. official said.

“It should make things a little easier. The Joint Chiefs of Staff should have more flexibility and independence under Frank Carlucci, and they want a new strategic treaty and are less enthusiastic than Weinberger for SDI (the Strategic Defense Initiative),” he said.

“Cap was extremely argumentative and stubborn when it came to dealing with the Soviets. It’s not so much that he opposed all arms agreement but that he feared ‘soft’ diplomats at State would give away the store.”

Said a senior State Department official: “Weinberger was not so much against arms agreements per se as he was afraid that such agreements would begin the ‘slippery slope’ toward a new era of detente in which the Russians would cheat and support for large U.S. defense budgets would disappear.”

Created Hurdles

However, others note that, whether it was intentional or not, virtually all of his positions on arms issues have or would have had the effect of creating new hurdles to agreements.

In his fervor for the Strategic Defense Initiative, for example, the secretary has pushed for early deployment of missile defenses, although doing so would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and make a new strategic arms agreement almost impossible to achieve. And his insistence on testing the new Trident 2 missile with 10 and 12 warheads, when it is expected to carry only eight, complicates negotiations because previous agreements provided that all missiles would be counted as if they carry the maximum number of warheads with which they were tested.

Jack Mendelsohn, deputy director of the non-government Arms Control Assn., noted that in November, 1985, on the eve of the Administration’s first summit meeting with the Soviets, Weinberger wrote President Reagan a letter--quickly leaked to the press--urging him not to make any concessions on offensive or defensive weapons. He urged the President to avoid even reaffirming existing agreements.

Letter Called ‘Sabotage’

Robert C. MacFarlane, then the President’s national security adviser, called the letter an effort to “sabotage” the arms talks.

Weinberger, who is intensely loyal to Reagan, has been the greatest champion of SDI, while Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s key arms control adviser, Paul Nitze, would like to discuss the ambiguities in the ABM treaty as a way to ease Soviet concerns. The White House, with Weinberger’s support, has refused to permit it.

“The big question now is whether George Shultz will now prevail,” Mendelsohn said. “Will there be more ‘give’ on strategic defense to allow the negotiating process to continue?”

The answer may be no. Even with Weinberger gone, hard-liners in the Administration--including the President himself--are not likely to go so far as to open SDI up for discussion even though the arms control process may move more smoothly now in other respects. Nor is Carlucci expected to alter the Pentagon’s positions radically or soon, several experts said, even if he is so inclined.

Reagan Firm on SDI

He knows first hand the President’s very strong commitment to SDI and would be unlikely to ask him to reexamine that issue in the near term.

The impact of Weinberger’s departure on a related question is harder to gauge: Once the medium-range missile agreement has been signed next month, will ratification be more difficult or easier with a new secretary of defense?

Conservatives may be more likely to vote against the treaty because Weinberger will not be there as secretary of defense to support it, several officials said, even though he is likely to support it as a private citizen.

However, Weinberger has been so critical of alleged Soviet cheating and so outspoken in demanding the strictest verification measures--”you have to have the ability to do what bank examiners do,” he has said--that the inspection provisions in the new treaty are bound to seem inadequate.

Carlucci, on the other hand, comes to the issue with a relatively clean slate, which will make him more convincing on verification to moderate senators than Weinberger, but less convincing to conservatives, Mendelsohn added.