There’s Still Time, and Reasons, for START

On the eve of President Reagan’s visit to Moscow last spring, the slim possibility that he might conclude a strategic arms reduction treaty with the Soviets evoked strong criticism and stern warnings to “go slow” in the negotiations.

Although the critics overestimated the likelihood of reaching an accord at the summit, the concerns of people like Sen. Robert Byrd, Sen. Dan Quayle, Rep. Les Aspin and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger revealed the depth of opposition that a START treaty would face whenever it is completed. Yet the case for concluding a START agreement remains a strong one.

For starters, a new strategic arms treaty would reverse the steady build-up in strategic weapons that has characterized the last 30 years of U.S.-Soviet superpower rivalry. In so doing, a treaty would further the rather remarkable improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations that we are now experiencing and mark a clear turning point in the hitherto unremittingly contentious superpower contest. A new treaty would also re-establish a base--which has been lacking since the United States repudiated the second strategic arms limitation treaty in 1986--upon which future arms-control commitments could be built.

A START treaty would increase the degree of “predictability” in the superpower strategic relationship by defining the future threat and creating a more balanced view of the likely growth and deployment of Soviet forces. This predictability would be of great value to U.S. policymakers and defense planners and would serve to moderate the excesses of those whose job it is to deal in worst-case analyses.

A treaty would also contribute to increased “transparency,” that is, to our ability to monitor the military activities of the Soviet Union. The verification provisions of such a treaty would make Soviet behavior more structured, observable and accessible and any attempt at non-compliant activities much more costly, difficult and infeasible. For example, the Soviet Union, in the draft treaty under discussion, has agreed to permit unimpeded access to all flight-test data--Soviet encryption of this information was a major U.S. complaint under SALT II--and to deploy mobile missiles in a predetermined, verifiable manner.

START would reduce Soviet reliance on ballistic-missile forces, particularly on the most destabilizing segment--land-based missiles. This reduction--from 9,800 warheads currently in the Soviet arsenal to 4,900--has been a strategic goal of the United States for the past two decades.

And the overall START reduction of ballistic-missile warheads and missile throwweight (lifting power) would have important secondary effects. It would decrease substantially the number of “discretionary” warheads--i.e., those remaining after essential military targets are covered--that would be available to the Soviet Union to execute exotic war-fighting scenarios. While the lower level of ballistic-missile warheads in START would not necessarily make fixed land-based missiles less vulnerable, it would make it virtually impossible to execute options such as large-scale barrage attacks against mobile missile fields, bomber escape routes or submarine patrol areas. This, in turn, would lessen the overall threat to U.S. strategic forces and increase the number of viable options to preserve these forces (such as deploying a new fixed or mobile single-warhead land-based missile system).

This last point is among the key benefits of an arms-control agreement. The combination of increased predictability, enhanced transparency and moderated threat could considerably ease the task of the next President in deciding the future makeup of U.S. strategic forces. These decisions--whether to deploy a road-mobile Midgetman missile, a rail-mobile MX, a new silo-based Minuteman, additional Trident submarines or a new, smaller boat--have been debated, postponed and revised over the past decade, subject to the winds of politics and uncertainty over the nature of the future threat and the survivability of weapons in face of it. A START treaty would enhance our ability to make those reasonable analyses, manageable decisions and affordable responses.

START would certainly not solve all our strategic problems. But those who are trashing the treaty need to explain why U.S. forces would be more survivable in an unconstrained strategic environment than in a constrained one. They need to explain how we would finance expensive new strategic systems that would be required to respond to unlimited--and unpredictable--Soviet deployments. They need to explain why an unstructured superpower confrontation would be more stable than a structured one. They need to explain why it would be easier to address strategic force modernization issues without a treaty than with one. In short, they need to explain why the United States would be better off in a world without strategic arms control than in one with START.