In a Well-Timed Gamble, Gorbachev Has Baited a Hook for NATO Concessions

Once past the fancy wrapping paper, Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s much-heralded Christmas present to the world has turned out to be a fully baited fish hook for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The Soviet president’s dramatic unilateral offer to withdraw and disband six tank divisions by 1991 from East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, made Wednesday at the United Nations, represents a carefully calibrated move to sow dissension within NATO and reinforce his peacemaker image in the Western media.

For months NATO and the Warsaw Pact have been laboriously negotiating the format and agenda for comprehensive conventional-arms-reduction talks in Vienna. The agreed-on objectives of these negotiations are to strengthen stability and security in Europe through the elimination of capacities to launch surprise attacks and initiate large-scale offensive operations.

These objectives translate into potential reductions in offensive weaponry--particularly tank units, generally regarded as the most destabilizing element in the European conventional-force balance.

Unfortunately, the European conventional-force balance does not exist. The Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies remain far superior quantitatively, and often qualitatively, in nearly every category of weaponry.

According to recently released NATO figures, the Soviets alone maintain more than twice as many tanks in the Atlantic-to-the-Urals region as do all the NATO allies combined.

Given this overwhelming numerical edge, Gorbachev has plenty of politico-strategic room to maneuver in preparing the groundwork for the conventional-arms negotiations. His military can afford to sacrifice six tank divisions, most likely with outdated equipment, with no real loss of firepower and sustainability. Such a reduction would not significantly diminish the military threat to NATO.

It does increase the political threat to NATO, and this consideration largely explains Gorbachev’s well-timed gamble. Lately the Western alliance has been riddled by internal squabbles over the modernization of its own nuclear-deterrent forces and inequitable distribution of burdens and responsibilities among its members. Furthermore, NATO--plagued by its snail-like consultative process--has been unable to agree on an initial negotiating position for the Vienna talks, set for early next year.

Recognizing this opportunity, Gorbachev has deliberately designed his offer to drive a deeper wedge between the perceived security interests of the United States and West Germany, the European keystone of the alliance.

Confronting the most awesome concentration of military force in the world, the West Germans are highly sensitive to such a regional arms-control initiative. Any proposed reduction in East-West military tensions also means greater possibilities for Bonn to cement its ties with East Germany.

Recent events like the Ramstein air-show disaster have led many thoughtful West Germans to question whether they remain masters of their own destiny. The steady stream of Gorbachev disarmament declarations has struck a sympathetic chord among those who have begun to doubt the viability of the NATO collective-security system.

The center-right coalition of Chancellor Helmut Kohl will come under intense domestic political and public pressure to respond positively to Gorbachev’s limited tank pullout. But the West German government’s hands are bound by its formal commitments to NATO.

Still, the public-relations fallout of Gorbachev’s tank-reduction scheme will improve his negotiating position in Vienna immensely. The onus will be on NATO, and most directly on the United States, to make serious (and painful) concessions.

One of Gorbachev’s favorite themes in his discourses is the need to reduce tensions and increase cooperation within “a common European house.” The underlying implication of this political metaphor is that such a “house” would necessarily include the Soviet Union and exclude the United States.

Western European allies have reacted warily toward these proposals. But Gorbachev’s cunning manipulation of Soviet arms-control strategy to multiply the differences between the United States and its European partners in NATO could achieve in the long run what thousands of Soviet tanks have never accomplished--the disengagement of American troops from Europe.

One of the first orders of business for the Bush Administration will be to respond to Gorbachev’s initiative. The President-elect would be well advised to look at the long-range repercussions of conventional-force withdrawals from Europe. Arms-reductions agreements can cut both ways. Western Europe cannot afford a precipitous or ill-considered abandonment of America’s security commitments.