PERSPECTIVE ON ARMS REDUCTION : How to Sour a Hopeful Deal

Perhaps the most important aspect of the arms-reduction announcement made by President Bush is the unilateral quality of it. Accustomed to years of reactive caution, many Americans couldn’t envision their government taking the initiative and making the sacrifice to reduce our irrational nuclear overkill capability. Last week’s announcement was a self-affirming move, and the President made Americans stand a little taller.

Two things, however, complicate this historic moment.

First, mixed signals have subsequently been heard from Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, calling into question the very nature of the President’s announcement. Cheney said in a Times interview Thursday that the reduction in U.S. nuclear arms depended on the Soviets’ making similar cuts, and that such reciprocity was a “prerequisite” for large-scale U.S. economic aid. This has caused consternation among Soviet officials, particularly in the military. And rightly so.

Even the suggestion that the United States might renege nearly eliminates, in one stroke, the positive psychological benefits that Bush’s announcement evoked last weekend. His decision to reduce weapons unilaterally amounted to a huge confidence-building measure in our relations with the Soviet Union, particularly given the string of humiliations the Soviets have had to endure as a superpower. There was the asymmetrical dismantlement of the Soviet military and economic bloc in Eastern Europe. In addition, the terms of the three treaties on intermediate and strategic nuclear weapons and conventional-force reduction were perceived by many in the Soviet Union as unfair. The actual cuts on the Soviet side were substantially greater numerically than those required by the Americans; conservatives in the Soviet Union called them “unilateral concessions.”

America’s willingness to engage in unilateral cuts promised to take the wind out of the conservatives’ sails. Bush’s announcement made it harder for them to argue the case that only the Soviets were expected to sacrifice for the cause of arms reduction. The initiative also had the potential to soften the image of the United States after the short but devastating war against Iraq.

Cheney’s remarks now threaten to give Soviet conservatives new fertile ground. They have already begun raising the issue of trust and the credibility of America’s word. This is a dangerous rhetorical weapon to give them, considering the level of technical and intellectual assistance the Soviet people were led to expect from the United States during their economic and democratic transition.

The other complicating element in the President’s announcement of unilateral cuts was his inclusion of bilateral issues--first, calling for negotiation on the elimination of land-based ICBMs with multiple warheads. If the Soviets agree to that, they will be assuring themselves further asymmetry of forces. The Soviet Union is strong in land-based ICBMs, and any elimination of them would further emphasize American superiority in naval nuclear forces. To agree to that configuration would again put Mikhail Gorbachev in direct opposition to the military as well as conservative political forces.

Bush also suggested U.S.-Soviet cooperation on limited technology for SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative. Such a proposal, with the Soviet economy in shambles, might be interpreted as a warning that America will continue its advanced defense spending, with or without the Soviets.

Are they capable of paying the ransom that would ensure that here, too, they would not be left behind? Probably not in the short term. The tank men of Kantemirovskaya Division, after being withdrawn from Moscow streets after the coup, were sent to harvest potatoes. The survival of the country’s fragile democracy this winter is clearly a higher priority than joining the Americans in SDI research.

With Bush’s speech now history, it would appear that the power of its psychological impact was reduced because the United States felt the need to complicate the simplicity of a unilateral concession to world peace. The inclusion of highly controversial bilateral issues threatens to offset the benefit the United States would have realized from the unilateral decision. Also, the stirring of old doubts about American intentions gives a bittersweet dimension to what could have been an unqualified boost to the United States’ image with the troubled and struggling (former) Soviet nation.