Missing the Boat on Arms Control : U.S. Could Take Initiative, but Domestic Politics Get in Way

This is a time of some curious and tumultuous events in Soviet politics. And despite our domestic preoccupations, we ought to be thinking about what these developments mean for the United States.

Soviet politics will never be the same after the rough-and-tumble floor debates at the 19th Communist Party Conference. People in Moscow still shake their heads in disbelief at the uninhibited, emotional expression of cross-cutting criticism that built up power as it went along.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s bold gamble partly succeeded in its purpose--to ignite a grass-roots barn fire under the old-line party apparatchiki--and in the aftermath of the floor debates, a catharsis of release from years of deceit, corruption, personal accommodations and compromise has been dramatically evident.

Barring some unforeseen events, the United States may be dealing for the next decade or more with a Soviet Union that is riven by the riptide effects of historical transformation in its political system side-by-side with the problems of an intractably sluggish economy. The battle for economic reform is still only begun, and it may at best be decades--or, more likely, generations--before any substantial improvements in the Soviet economy can be expected.

Overhanging the political scene in Moscow is the question of whether the limited quick-fixes in food supply and consumer goods will buy Gorbachev the time that he needs to implement the fundamental transformations required to make the Soviet economy productive. No one knows the answer. But Gorbachev, by the strength of his personality, intelligence and driving political will and savvy, is the key to the drama.

U.S.-Soviet relations are reasonably stabilized on a plateau--better in tone than they had been in recent years, but not greatly changed on substantive issues. It is neither Cold War nor detente.

But with the marginal exception of the treaty on intermediate-range nuclear forces, arms control--the most important and urgent issue between the two countries--is on “hold.” Despite some procedural motion in the negotiations, both countries are continuing to modernize their strategic arsenals, constrained only marginally by resource and budgetary limitations on each side. The new systems being built are less stable and less verifiable than those we now have and will make any future efforts to regulate the military competition even more difficult than they have been.

There is some comfort in the fact that both countries are currently in a period of domestic preoccupation and that, barring unpredictable perturbations, foreign-policy collisions are less likely. There is also some reassurance in the fact that the military leaders of the two countries are beginning to talk directly with each other, diminishing the level of threat perception and the driving force of “worst-case” scenarios. But these atmospheric improvements should not obscure the movement toward technologically more complex weapons systems.

The issue that should claim our attention is not whether to help Gorbachev, but whether steps we should be taking would advance the interests of the United States and, at the same time, help to encourage an evolution in the Soviet system in directions we have long regarded as desirable.

But the main obstacle to such steps is to be found in American domestic politics. This is what is preventing us from probing with greater seriousness for agreements that would stabilize and moderate the strategic nuclear balance and to lower the level of competition in conventional weapons and forces.

During the past two years, President Reagan has given his support to the principle of arms-control negotiations with the Soviet Union. But within the government bureaucracy and in our domestic politics, there is not the sufficient support to translate this principle into concrete measures. Although the right wing in American politics has been somewhat isolated by the President, it still has the capability to block further progress. Prospects for the near-term future, beyond the present Administration, are not encouraging, considering that politicians in both parties appear to have concluded that the political center of gravity in the United States is still conservative. The fact is that there is not a politically effective constituency in the United States in support of security through arms control.

For those who are capable of looking beyond the level of domestic tactical expediency to the deeper interests of the United States in a world that is changing in fundamental ways, the task that confronts us is to defy the conventional political wisdom by seeking to activate the latent common sense of the American people into a politically effective constituency that would put pressure on the executive branch and Congress to act now, without further delay. A strategic arms-reduction agreement is within reach, and it presents an opportunity for the restructuring of both Soviet and American strategic forces in the direction of greater stability. Serious staff work on the limitation of conventional weapons and forces, now lacking, should be undertaken without further delay.

While we may have to live with a competitive relationship with the Soviet Union for some time to come, it makes sense to be probing the opportunities that the present Soviet situation offers for managing the relationship in ways that are less dangerous and less costly for us both--and can, in time, develop constructive cooperation toward the global economic and environmental problems in which our interests are not in conflict.

It would not be the millennium, but it would be better for us than what we had been living with for the past 40 years, to which we would return if we choose instead the course of trying to maximize Soviet troubles by confrontation and pressure.