The Washington Summit : This Summit Did More in First Day Than 2 Before It

With the signing of the unprecedented agreement eliminating ground-launched medium-range missiles and an agreement, reached even before the superpower leaders held their first meeting, that President Reagan will go to Moscow next year, more was accomplished Tuesday on the first day of this U.S.-Soviet summit than at either of its two predecessors.

And the specific agreements, while limited in nature, signaled what may be a far more important attainment: a major step toward establishing a more stable and predictable framework for relations between the world’s most powerful adversaries.

Encouraging as the beginning was, U.S. officials remained wary. Before the summit ends Thursday, it could still be derailed by the kind of “surprise” that reduced the last summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October, 1986, to shambles at the last minute. Renewed Soviet adventuring in the Third World, supplying MIG jets to Nicaragua or other unforeseen developments in the months ahead could also undo what is being accomplished.

Within the realm of arms control, Gorbachev made clear that radical cuts in strategic arms remain tied to U.S. restraint on anti-missile defense systems. How the two are linked apparently does not have to be spelled out this week, but “it’s a ticking time-bomb,” said William G. Hyland, editor of Foreign Affairs and a former senior national security official in the Gerald R. Ford and Richard M. Nixon administrations.

‘New Political Climate’

Barring such setbacks, the superpowers do appear to be entering a “new political climate,” in Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze’s phrase, with the treaty signing and the Gorbachev’s clear intention to help Reagan get it ratified by scheduling talks to key congressmen.

The Soviets have declared that another “bitter experience” with arms agreements that were laboriously negotiated and signed but never ratified, as three have been since 1974, would doom chances for a far more significant agreement cutting strategic offensive arms in half and also abort the slowly dawning era of Detente II--or “Detente 1 1/2,” as one Soviet expert dubbed it.

For the United States, too, Senate refusal to ratify the agreement would be the worst of both worlds. Even those arms experts such as former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, who opposed its signing because of its danger of dividing the United States from its European allies, advocate ratification.

They fear Senate rejection might cause some North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations, already restive over rapid shifts in U.S. strategic policies, to demand removal of the U.S. medium-range missiles already deployed, even though the Soviets would then be under no obligation to remove their weapons.

Pact With ‘Evil Empire’

The U.S. domestic political calculus is also changed somewhat by the treaty. The fact that one-time arch-conservative Ronald Reagan has signed an arms agreement with the “evil empire” will go far toward removing the issue of arms control from partisan American politics.

Four of the six Republican candidates for President oppose the treaty, in large part because the polls show that conservative party faithful oppose in principle any deal with the Soviets, according to one senior Administration official. When the fact sinks in that Reagan himself has endorsed the agreement, a greater legitimacy should be conferred on the arms control negotiations process, he said.

The overarching goal of both leaders in the summit process is to achieve a greater degree of stability and predictability in the relationship. As President Reagan said after the treaty-signing ceremony: “We can only hope that this history-making agreement will not be an end in itself but the beginning of a working relationship that will enable us to tackle other issues, urgent issues, before us.”

But while the two men agreed that curbs on the more menacing weapons, long-range nuclear missiles and bombers, will have first priority among those issues, Gorbachev said he wanted “radical cuts in strategic offensive arms, subject to preserving the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty.”

Disagreement Over Treaty

He was thus reflecting recent Soviet willingness to rely on the ABM treaty of 1972 to contain the Strategic Defense Initiative, the U.S. space-based missile defense system now being developed. The treaty forbids deployment of anti-missile weapons (except for one system in each country), but the Administration disagrees with the Soviets and most Democratic congressmen on how much development and testing of new weapons can be legally carried out under its terms.

Thus Gorbachev may be prepared to finesse the issue--”to kick it down the road,” as one expert said--by seeking to preserve it without arguing, for the moment, on which interpretation of the treaty’s terms is correct. But Gorbachev clearly signaled that the Soviets have not given up on this cardinal point of previous Soviet proposals, which is to constrain U.S. missile defenses before radically cutting their own offensive weaponry.

In a second reference, Gorbachev ignored the ABM question. He expressed hope that “during next year’s return visit” of Reagan to Moscow, “we will achieve a treaty eliminating practically half of all existing strategic nuclear arms and with substantial cuts in conventional forces and arms in Europe.

“Once all this is accomplished, we shall be able to say with confidence that progress toward a secure world has become irreversible.”

Pessimism and Optimism

This pattern of linking missile defenses to offensive arms cuts in one sentence, then dropping it in a second, was identical to Soviet-proposed language of a U.S.-Soviet statement last month after Shevardnadze visited here. It has given rise to both pessimism and optimism about prospects for eventual success in radically reducing the offensive arsenals.

And while Gorbachev is not attacking SDI frontally, as he had previously, his dislike of the program has obviously not changed.

“People want to live in a world in which American and Soviet spacecraft would come together for docking and joint voyages,” he said, “not for ‘Star Wars.’ ”

The two leaders also agreed to focus on conventional force cuts in Europe as a next priority for arms control, and they hinted at movement on chemical weapons. But Gorbachev offered no menu beyond arms control, while the President cited the topics of regional conflicts in the Third World such as the presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan, and human rights, as among his “urgent issues.”

Some experts believe that Reagan must stress and even win some Soviet concessions on Afghanistan and Jewish emigration if the summit is to be judged a success by his fellow Republicans. To satisfy his right wing, it must be more than just another “arms control summit,” one specialist said.

These specialists also express concern that Reagan’s promise to go to Moscow next year will put more pressure on him than on the Kremlin to get a new strategic arms agreement for signing at that time. But a contrary view is that Gorbachev wants a treaty more, in order to bind Reagan’s successor as President to the progress made so far.