NEWS ANALYSIS : Suspicions Put Focus on Arms Control Pacts

Back during the Cold War, arms control topped the agenda of every U.S.-Russian summit and diplomatic progress was measured by the number of nuclear warheads scheduled for the junk heap.

This week, the precarious state of international arms control agreements rose anew to the top of the U.S. agenda, after a three-year lull in which it appeared that the problem of what to do with the Gargantuan U.S. and former Soviet nuclear arsenals had been solved.

Thorny disagreements have begun to re-emerge, and the progress made during President Clinton’s summit with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Wednesday was negligible.

“The arms control regime is falling apart because of total neglect for three years,” arms control expert Alexei G. Arbatov warned.

The old pacts--hard-won and precious though they are--were designed to keep peace on a different continent.

But growing mutual suspicion over Western plans to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russian brutality in Chechnya makes each country leery of tearing up the old agreements and trying to reach new ones.

Clinton and Yeltsin emerged from this summit promising to try to win ratification this year of the START II agreement, which would cut the combined U.S. and former Soviet arsenals from a Cold War total of 21,000 nuclear warheads to 3,500 warheads each by the year 2003.

But implementation of existing agreements is lagging, and prospects for approval of new ones are iffy, said Arbatov, who chairs the subcommittee on international security and arms control in the Russian Duma, or lower house of Parliament.

Russia’s military now relies more heavily on nuclear weapons to compensate for the weakness and chaos in its army and for its economic and geopolitical disadvantages. It will not be easy to persuade lawmakers who regularly give speeches accusing the West of trying to exploit Russia’s temporary weakness that they should further undermine their fading superpower status by slashing what remains of their nuclear arsenal.

And Yeltsin has shown little talent as a lobbyist.

“Deep in his heart, he still does not recognize the need to share power,” Arbatov complained. “He prefers to outflank Parliament in various ways.”

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But other analysts said prospects for Duma passage of a chemical weapons control pact look brighter. And Wednesday’s summit did produce minor concessions on each side.

The United States agreed in principle to modify the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, or CFE, which specifies the amount of weaponry that can be massed close to Russia’s sensitive borders in the Caucasus and the St. Petersburg region.

But Russia will have to wait an entire year for a review of the strict limits it inherited from the Soviet Union--and Moscow may well violate the CFE treaty in the meantime.

With the guerrilla war in Chechnya showing no signs of ending, Russian military officials have already announced plans for a base in the turbulent North Caucasus region.

According to Arbatov, Russia already has twice as many tanks in the area as are permitted under the “flank limitations” that come into effect under the CFE treaty in November.

U.S. officials made it clear Wednesday that they expect Russia to abide by the agreement--even if it hinders Moscow’s prosecution of war in Chechnya.

“Russia must come down to the flank limits by this November,” one senior Clinton Administration official said, adding that Russia will not be able to appeal the decision until an international conference on the CFE treaty in Vienna in May, 1996.

The U.S. side did not say what, if anything, will happen if Russia fails to comply.

An unnamed diplomat told the Interfax news agency Thursday that Russia will not be able to comply with the flank limitations, adding that “the Chechen problem will hardly be settled” by November.

But in a development welcomed by the United States, Russia agreed in principle to expand the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow each country to develop “theater defense weapons” to shoot down incoming missiles.

Washington is anxious to deploy theater defenses to protect against nuclear attack by a terrorist group or a rogue nation such as Iraq or North Korea.

However, Moscow, which is having trouble maintaining its current nuclear arsenal, certainly cannot afford an arms race to develop such sophisticated new weapons, said Sergei Y. Puzanov, an arms control analyst at Moscow’s U.S.A. and Canada Institute. Nor can it allow new technologies that could undermine its main remaining weapon--deterrence enforced by the menace of its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

When the Soviet Union was awash in nuclear weapons and anxious “not to look like bad boys,” it agreed to a number of arms control agreements, including START I, that sacrificed security concerns to gain goodwill, Puzanov said.

Now Russia’s sense of psychological insecurity has been heightened by the degradation of its early warning systems to detect incoming missiles, Puzanov said.

Earlier this month, Latvia took disarmament to a new height by blowing up a once-prized Soviet early warning station in Skrunda--a demolition project funded by nearly $7 million in U.S. aid.

With less ability to detect missiles heading its way--and no reliable way to shoot them down--Russia has objected to modifying the ABM treaty in ways that might permit the United States to develop systems that could shoot down ICBMs.

After a year and a half of wrangling, the two nations agreed Wednesday that theater missile defenses will be allowed--provided they do not threaten the other side’s strategic nuclear forces and are not tested. Like most of the devilish details, however, specifics of how this is to be achieved have yet to be worked out.

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Treaties in Brief

What the various arms control plans are attempting to do:

Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I): Limits each side to 1,600 strategic weapons--intercontinental ballistic missiles, bombers and submarine-launched missiles. Treaty also limits both Russian and Americans to 4,900 missile warheads. Did not come into effect until December, 1994.

START II: Would deepen the arms cuts made under START I, limiting each side to 3,500 nuclear warheads by the year 2003. Would outlaw ground-based intercontinental missiles with more than one warhead. Awaiting ratification by U.S. Senate and Russian parliament.

Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE): Limit the amount of five kinds of military equipment--tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, planes and helicopters--that the 22 members of the pact can deploy in the area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains. Ratified in 1992. Pact to be reviewed by signatories in 1996.

Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty: Limits each side to two small anti-ballistic missile systems. Signatories agreed not to develop, test or deploy ABM systems which are space-based, air-based, sea-based or mobile. Took effect in 1972. Clinton Administration seeking loose interpretation to allow special anti-terrorist weapons.