Carrington Expects NATO to Reaffirm Basic Strategy

Lord Carrington, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, says he expects the summit meeting here this week to reaffirm the alliance’s strategy of defense based on both conventional and nuclear weapons.

Carrington said he recognizes that some of the 16 member governments approach the problem from different points of view, but he discounted reports that NATO is seriously divided as a result of the U.S.-Soviet treaty, signed last December in Washington, that calls for the elimination of land-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

“I think what you are seeing now,” Carrington said in an interview at his office here, “is not so much disarray in the alliance as a quite vigorous discussion of where we go from here. And that, I don’t think, is a bad thing.”

Carrington, who will retire from the NATO post this summer and become chairman of Christie’s auction house, said he hopes the summit meeting here on Wednesday and Thursday will prepare a “comprehensive concept of arms control” for presentation to a lower-level NATO meeting in June.

The important thing, Carrington said, is to “really see the relationship between one set of arms controls and another--and make sure we don’t go in one direction along a road which would really endanger the credibility of the alliance.”

NATO’s strategy of defense and deterrence, he said, could be jeopardized by hasty movement toward the “denuclearization of Europe.”

Carrington said that the touchy question of modernizing short-range weapons, to which many West Germans object, does not “have to be answered at the present time, though ultimately it will have to be answered.”

This comment appeared to put Carrington in agreement with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who has argued that the question of modernization should not be dealt with in public now but taken up later, when upgraded weapons are available.

Basically, Carrington said, the goal of the NATO summit meeting should be to develop “a good reaffirmation of our strategy and a look ahead--not just at arms control but human rights and the rest of it--to see where are we going.”

‘A Sensible Concept’

Then, he said, NATO planners at the June meeting will have “a sensible concept of arms control and then go ahead, keeping our defense and deterrence secure, while at the same time being sensible and trying to live at a much lower level of armaments and expense than we are now.”

Carrington said the appearance of discord within the alliance stems from the rapid acceptance by Washington and Moscow of the intermediate-range missile treaty. Although the treaty was welcomed in Europe, he said, it “opened up prospects which none of us had ever dreamed were there before.”

“This has caused everyone to think very carefully about the future,” he said. “There is no doubt that a large number of people are worried about going too fast in getting rid of nuclear weapons and feel deeply disturbed about the denuclearization of Europe, because of the imbalance of conventional weapons.”

Carrington said that he and others believe that nuclear arms are necessary as a deterrent in Europe because they are such “appalling, horrible” weapons. But as nuclear arms levels are reduced in Europe, he said, this raises the priority on “conventional stability talks.”

“In terms of public perception in our own countries,” he said, “if you argue that one of the reasons why you must maintain nuclear weapons in Europe is the conventional imbalance between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, then you are not credible if you don’t make a genuine effort to do something about the imbalance.

“Therefore, we really have got to tackle the conventional stability problem, seriously and energetically. It is not very easy.” He said that problems in reducing imbalances in conventional forces “are frightfully difficult. But it’s got to be done.”

He put the East-West difference in arms at somewhere between 2 to 1 and 3 to 1, and said, “If there is aggression against us in Europe, the aggressor can chose the place and time, and that preponderance of conventional superiority makes a very great deal of difference.”

Carrington said he is pleased that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has agreed to the principle of asymmetry in weapons reductions--the Soviets are willing to make deeper cuts than NATO--and to make difficult compromises on verification.

But he warned that under the Soviet political system there is no guarantee that Gorbachev will be in power in “six months or two years,” so that NATO will always have to “look at the military potential of the Soviet Union before disarming unilaterally.”

He said that NATO should not lose sight of its goal, “to prevent another world war.”

“I am very much opposed,” he said, “to investigations by ‘wise men.’ There is only one strategy for the alliance, no matter how many wise men look at it. That is flexible response.”

In short, he believes in the principle of military uncertainty: that NATO should not renounce the first use of nuclear weapons, that the Soviets should not know exactly how and with what weapons NATO might respond in the event of attack.

Basically, he said, it is a matter of “if you don’t fire at us, we won’t fire at you, but if you do fire at us, watch out!”