Carlucci Warns Europe of U.S. Pullout on Arms Issue

U.S. Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci warned Western Europeans here Sunday that America might be forced to withdraw its troops from West Germany if that country decided to ban nuclear weapons from its territory.

His warning was implicitly supported by several of the U.S. senators who have also been attending the 25th annual Wehrkunde (Defense Studies) Conference, a private group that brings together nearly 200 defense and strategic arms experts from both sides of the Atlantic.

Carlucci’s comments came a day after West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said that any reduction in U.S. forces in his country would be “an error of historic proportions.”

The theme of this year’s conference: a policy for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the aftermath of December’s signing in Washington of a superpower treaty to abolish all ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear weapons, those with ranges from 300 to 3,000 miles.

NATO’s policy has been to seek a consensus now to move ahead on East-West reductions of conventional military hardware and manpower while at the same time retaining short-range nuclear arms in Europe and also upgrading and modernizing them.

Such plans for the short-range weapons, those with ranges below 300 miles, have encountered resistance and apprehension in West Germany, not only among the population, as evidenced in public opinion polls, but within Kohl’s coalition government.

On Saturday, Kohl told the Americans that negotiations with the Soviet Union on reducing short-range missiles “to common ceilings” should get under way without waiting for an agreement on conventional arms. And Moscow has warned that modernization of the U.S. missiles could hinder future arms agreements.

The Soviet Union and East Germany have pressed Bonn to accept the idea that an outright ban on the short-range nuclear arms--often called battlefield or tactical weapons--is a logical next step to the accord to do away with intermediate nuclear forces.

In his remarks to the conference, Carlucci said that if West Germany is bent on negotiating the elimination of the short-range nuclear weapons, “we would be weakening the capability of our military forces to carry out their mission.”

“Then,” he added, “it is incumbent on me and other officials in the United States to look at whether indeed we could keep the forces here. So this is a very serious decision indeed, if you are moving toward a de-nuclearization of Europe.”

Nuclear Forces Backup

Carlucci tried to allay some official European fears that removal of the intermediate nuclear forces would lead to “de-coupling” the United States from its European allies.

Carlucci said, “The United States remains willing to deploy large forces here in Germany as well as at other critical front lines.” But he added: “The United States remains willing to back up its commitment with its nuclear forces. It is necessary, in turn, that the other allies accept their share of the burdens and risks.”

The differences over the future of short-range nuclear devices between West Germany and its NATO allies were also touched on by the American lawmakers who took part in the meeting Sunday.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the meeting that the Atlantic Alliance is at a “critical juncture,” with one road “leading backwards, down a slippery slope to European de-nuclearization, American disengagement and Soviet domination.”

Nunn recognized the apprehensions of many West Germans about the continued deployment of short-range weapons but argued that their presence actually serves to raised the nuclear threshold--the point at which NATO might be forced to employ nuclear weapons to counter a conventional attack against it by the Warsaw Pact forces.

‘Solemn Reaffirmation’

Nunn also discounted the notion, a prominent one in West Germany, that the removal of intermediate nuclear forces would confine any possible future nuclear war to European soil. He cited President Reagan’s 1981 declaration that “European borders are our borders.”

The Georgia lawmaker, respected in the Senate for his expertise in defense matters, said that next month’s scheduled NATO summit meeting “should be the occasion for a solemn reaffirmation of the U.S. commitment to the alliance in both its nuclear and conventional components.”

Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D.-W. Va.), who headed the delegation of senators, told the conference:

“The most immediate challenge for the NATO alliance is to take the initiative on conventional forces negotiations by presenting a full-fledged reduction and constraints proposal to the Soviets this year. No other agreement would so bolster NATO’s security interests.”

Byrd pressed the view that some sort of agreement should be reached on reducing the conventional weapons of both sides in Europe before any accord is reached in the current talks in Geneva, where U.S. and Soviet negotiators are seeking a formula for a reduction of 50% in the superpowers’ strategic nuclear arsenals.

Highly Unpopular View

Conventional arms reduction accords are a “natural preface to any agreement on long-range missile reduction,” Byrd said.

During the conference, conservative state Premier Franz Josef Strauss of Bavaria, of which Munich is the capital, went out of his way to stress that proposals to retain and to upgrade and modernize the short-range nuclear weapons in NATO’s arsenals represent a highly unpopular point of view in West Germany nowadays.

Strauss told the meeting plaintively: “Let me tell my American friends that with this modernization (of short-range nuclear weapons), we will have a major difficulty on the domestic front.”