Best Half a Billion We Ever Spent : Congress is on target in voting to help defang the Soviet nuclear arsenal

The Soviet Union has an arsenal of about 30,000 nuclear warheads, half of them on short-range battlefield weapons that it has promised to disarm and destroy under recent arms control agreements. There’s a big problem, however. Dismantling the devices is a slow and complex process. At best, says a Harvard study, the Soviets are thought to have the capacity to eliminate only about 2,000 weapons a year on their own.

Ordinarily that leisurely pace might not be troubling. But these are anything except ordinary times in the Soviet Union, and there’s a not unreasonable fear that as the country continues to fall apart, control over some tactical nuclear weapons could pass into the hands of terrorists or irresponsible local militias.

Congress, recognizing the dangers to international security, has to its credit acted to hasten the disarmament effort. President Bush has been given authority to divert up to $500 million from the defense budget to help the Soviets dismantle 15,000 tactical nuclear weapons. Some of the funds could be used to hire American firms to help speed the process.

The weapons are currently based in four of the Soviet republics, one of which, the Ukraine, is expected in a referendum today to vote itself independent of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian leader Leonid Kravchuk had earlier hinted at maintaining a degree of control over some or all of the nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory, as a bargaining chip to win political concessions from Moscow.

U.S. aid in dismantling nuclear weapons would go only to those republics that requested it and were themselves ready to invest in dismantling facilities. The American approach to helping speed the disarmament could thus turn out to be less than foolproof. But it’s the best that can be done under circumstances in which Soviet republics might soon proclaim themselves independent and sovereign countries.

The congressional vote marked a notable change in the political climate from just two weeks ago, when a proposal to allow up to $1 billion to be shifted from the defense budget to provide several forms of aid to the Soviet Union came under broad attack. The issue then turned on bipartisan complaints about helping a former enemy at a time when Americans are economically suffering. Last week the issue, given added emphasis by warnings from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that internal Soviet collapse may be accelerating, was properly defined as one affecting American security interests.

It helped enormously, too, that the aid plan was depoliticized under a bipartisan agreement not to use votes in its favor as a campaign issue. Could there be a welcome precedent here for taking action to further other worthwhile causes? Probably not--but it’s a pleasant thought.