M. Gobachev Goes to Washington

An element of suspense attended conclusion of the agreement on intermediate-range missile forces to be signed by President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Tuesday. The last difficult details on verification provisions were worked out only last week. But now the agreement is complete. The signing of a treaty eliminating all Soviet and U.S. land-based ballistic missiles with maximum ranges of 300 to 3,500 miles will be the centerpiece of the Washington summit, the first signed arms-control agreement between the two nations in eight years--and, if ratified, the first to be enforced in 15 years. Indeed, it will represent the first major agreement on any subject concluded between them in well over a decade.

Yet the INF Treaty may not be the most significant development at the summit. A still more important agreement for reducing strategic intercontinental arms by 50% hangs in the balance although the world may not know the outcome on that issue for several months.

The INF Treaty has been negotiated because the leaders of both countries believe it serves their national security--and it will. It begins a process of reduction of nuclear arms, the dismantling and destruction of hundreds of missiles and launchers, some recently built. In addition, it removes missiles that could be weapons of early resort. Despite some concerns that this may weaken deterrence, agreement is more likely to reduce possibilities of uncontrollable escalation if inadvertent hostilities should break out. This agreement, moreover, provides for asymmetrical reductions--in favor of the United States and its allies--and serves as a precedent for future asymmetrical reductions where one side holds a preponderance. Equally important, it includes provisions for verification and monitoring, including on-site inspection. This is another important precedent and an initial trial of measures necessary for strategic arms reductions.

Finally, the conclusion of this treaty by the Reagan Administration, after all it has done to undermine earlier arms-control agreements and stir suspicions about Soviet compliance, will re-legitimize the arms-control process. This, by itself, is no mean contribution.

Critics point to an artificiality of reductions in intermediate-range weapons while longer- and shorter-range weaponry continues unconstrained. But if the INF agreement is a first step, followed by negotiated agreements reducing other nuclear weaponry, it will serve as the opening wedge in a broader arms-control process.

The future prospect for additional agreements on arms limitation and reduction is more promising than the bleak history of Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Talks, Strategic Arms Limitations Talks and Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) over the last 15 years would suggest. New negotiations on conventional arms in Europe will probably begin next spring. And negotiations are already far advanced on strategic-arms reductions on the order of a 50% cut in number of nuclear warheads.

The most significant potential development at the summit involves discussion of strategic reductions. Both Reagan and Gorbachev endorsed the goal of 50% strategic reductions at their first meeting in Geneva two years ago. Now, they seem to share a belief that such an agreement can be reached within a few months, in time for signing of a new accord at a follow-up summit meeting in Moscow in mid-1988. They will probably endorse that this week. Is it realistic?

There are three quite different--and difficult--problems, in addition to many secondary issues. One is resolution of remaining issues on “sublimits” imposing constraints and ceilings on specific parts of the strategic forces. In particular, the United States wants to impose heavier constraints on (Soviet) land-based ICBMs, and lesser ones on (U.S.) sea-based ballistic missiles.

The second major problem is verification of reductions. But while essential, and not easy, verification will not prove a serious issue given the remarkable shift in Soviet attitudes on the subject already displayed in the INF agreement.

The third problem is quite different: It is the question of parallel constraints on strategic anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defenses--above all, space-based systems--a Soviet demand. The Soviets stress the interrelationship between strategic offensive and defensive systems, and the potential offensive as well as defensive roles of space weaponry.

Both during Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze’s talks in Washington in September and Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s talks in Moscow in October, the Soviet side disclosed changes in its position, narrowing the gap between the two sides. Provided the ABM issue is dealt with, a mutual compromise on strategic sublimits and verification can be reached.

The space weapons and ABM issue has loomed as the principal obstacle to negotiating strategic arms limitations ever since Reagan embarked on his quest for a Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983. The short-lived strategic arms elimination “breakthrough” seemingly achieved by the two leaders at Reykjavik in October, 1986, soon collapsed over this. Reagan, eager as he was to reduce and even eliminate nuclear weapons, was not prepared to forgo his vision of a unilateral strategic defense. His dedication to that goal seems unwavering. Why, then, should we now believe the problem may be solvable?

Soviet objection to SDI remains undiminished. But Gorbachev has concluded that the physical limitations on developing such systems are so daunting that the practical issue will not arise for years. This awareness, coupled with Reagan’s adamant stand, has led Soviet leaders to progressive concessions from their initial --and impractical--demands that even SDI “research” be banned: first, to seeking a more practical and limited “strengthening” of the ABM Treaty that would bar SDI testing in space; and now, to the more modest stand of “strict observance” which would limit but not ban space testing. Since the ABM Treaty is of unlimited duration and the United States itself insists that it be strictly observed, there should be no problem.

Unfortunately, while over the past three years the Soviet Union has retreated from its demands for limits going well beyond the ABM Treaty, the United States has retreated from the ABM Treaty itself. The “broad interpretation” of the ABM Treaty haphazardly endorsed by the Reagan Administration in October, 1985, would unilaterally amend the treaty as written, negotiated and ratified in 1972 just to allow for testing and development of space-based ABM systems. This self-serving interpretation has been rejected--by the U.S. Congress, by all but one of the treaty’s negotiators, all three living former Presidents and a bipartisan eight of the 10 living former secretaries of defense.

While devised as a clever way to enlarge the scope of SDI testing, this ill-considered move now stands as a principal obstacle to agreement on strategic arms reductions. Apart from the Administration’s reinterpretation of the ABM Treaty, there is also the fact that the treaty allows either party, if “supreme national interests” demand, to withdraw it on six months” notice. At Reykjavik, however, the United States proposed a commitment by the two countries not to exercise their rights of withdrawal for 10 years. Later, at Geneva, the United States cut this to seven years, coincident with the proposed period for affecting the 50% reduction in strategic arms. The Soviet Union now seeks a 10-year non-withdrawal commitment.

Is agreement on a compromise resolution possible at this summit? If so, an agreement in principle could lead to a full-fledged strategic arms agreement by mid-1988. More likely, however, will be a discussion pointing toward a solution without reaching it. In that case, the question of whether the Reagan Administration can conclude a 50% strategic arms reduction agreement during its diminishing term in office will remain uncertain for some time, and will become a sharply reduced prospect after a few months.

In either case, the ultimate judgment as to the significance of the Washington summit of 1987, and the legacy of the Reagan Administration in this key foreign policy area, will probably come clear onlyin retrospect. It can be the decisive step toward historic achievement--or the end of the road for what this Administration can accomplish.