A False START?

EUREKA

Ronald Reagan found it Sunday. His opening proposal for strategic nuclear weapon talks with the Soviets, unveiled after only 18 months (three sevenths of his presidency) of "complex and difficult study" and just plain procrastination.

The specifics of Reagan's proposal, advanced in a speech at Eureka College, his alma mater, are less important than the underlying attitudes of the Administration which produced it. Clearly, the Russians are not going to jump at a plan which would have its greatest on land based ballistic missiles, on which Moscow relies much more heavily than does the U.S. and leaves unaffected such American weapons as the Cruise missile and intercontinental bombers. Therefore, when and if the two sides get down to business in Geneva, the Administration will likely confront a Kremlin counter-proposal which it finds as unpalatable as Moscow doubtless will find Reagan's. Then the hard part will begin. The $1.5 million question is whether both sides are genuinely interested in compromising in order to find common ground in which case Reagan's program is valid as an initial hard line bargaining stance--or whether superpower relations have become so poisoned that neither regards the other as seriously interested in arms control, let alone "significant reductions." The talks may then degenerate into a facade for propaganda exchange.

Changes are that the Administration has not yet found its own soul. It remains divided between ideologues who view Moscow as so conquest-bent and hopelessly unregenerate as to make arms control efforts a waste of time, and former detente disciples who still believe that the Russians can be dealt with on such matters, given verifiability. Despite its rhetorical broadsides against Communism and the "failed" Soviet "empire." Reagan's speech contained traces of what for him qualities as conciliation. "We will negotiate seriously, in good faith, and carefully consider all proposals made by the Soviet Union. Reagan promised In a less noticed passage. Reagan generously allowed that Moscow might not, after all, think it can fight and with a nuclear war. "I do not doubt that the Soviet people, and, yes, the Soviet leaders have an overriding interest in preventing the use of nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union within the memory of its leaders has known the devastation of total conventional war, and knows that nuclear war would be even more calamitous. "While noting that detente had "yielded a severe disillusionment for those who expected a moderation of Soviet behavior." Reagan stated his willingness to "build a new understanding with the Soviets even holding the carrot West trade for "a Soviet leadership devoted to improving its peoples lives, rather than expanding its armed conquests." As observers have noted, the Administration appears to be drifting towards the "traditional center" which includes at least the appearance of an earnest attempt at arms control.

IT IS CONCEIVABLE, indeed likely, that Reagan would like nothing more than to belie his reputation for bellicosity and achieve an arms control pact which vindicates his "build-up and reduce" philosophy. As with Nixon's opening to China. Reagan is unlikely to be undercut by a fatal right-wing reaction should he begin treating U.S. Soviet relations as something other than an undeclared war.

But critics are justifiably suspicious. In several respects Reagan's policies seem directed more towards placating public opinion as towards achieving agreements, and Sunday's speech, however belatedly and begrudgingly spoken, further reflected that trend. Reagan was swept into office as the beneficiary of a general rightward shift that permeated attitudes on both domestic and foreign issues, and at a time when events--including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and U.S. insecurity induced by the hostage crisis--had chilled superpower relations. But the Administration's earlier stridency on E1 Salvador and apocalyptic pronouncements on the Soviets and nuclear war helped, if anything, to sour enthusiasm for its massive military shopping spree, and the apparent drift towards East-West confrontation of some kind was sufficiently unnerving to provoke the first large scale American public discussion of nuclear war in two decades. For whatever reason--and certainly the reliably grim economic news is a prime factor the support for increased defense spending which arose in the late '70s has almost wholly dissipated. A recent poll found that a clear majority of the respondents favored significant cuts in Reagan's military program.

The proliferating demands for a nuclear freeze and the uncertainly in establishment circles--hinted at by the recent Foreign Affairs article by four former high government officials calling for a U.S. declaration that it would not use nuclear weapons first in any future conflict have had a definite but still uncertain effect on Reagan. Put on the defensive by a debate on nuclear war that it neither expected nor welcomed, the Administration has been forced to modify the tone, and to a lesser extent the substance, of the approach to arms talks that it would probably have preferred. Several slight substantive modifications can probably be attributed to Reagan's desire to counter the negative imagery which has portrayed him as less interested in negotiations than in preparing for an "inevitable" Armageddon. Examples include his promulgation of the "zero option" in Europe over some internal Administration opposition, and the fact that he did not on Sunday demand that the first "START" (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) agreement include an equalization of throw weight (the explosive power of nuclear payloads) levels, a proposal so obviously unacceptable that it would have signalled an American unwillingness to take the negotiations seriously.

BUT EVEN as the presidency's constraints and responsibilities inevitably drive Reagan toward the mainstream, his overtures to anti-nuclear sentiment have been primarily tactical: His administration is not facing up to the challenges posed by the arms policies of his predecessors who nursed along the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks) process which he has discarded, or the more fundamental objections to the deterrence framework.

The pointlessness of wasting the SALT II treaty--signed in 1979 after five years of negotiation but never ratified by the U.S. Senate--is becoming increasingly apparent, even to such former detractors of the treaty as Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). "START really means we've given up on SALT." Reagan said on Sunday, stating at one point. "Agreements that provide only the appearance of arms control breed dangerous illusions." In that he is quite right, as to a large extent the first two SALT treaties merely "choreographed" the continuing arms race.

Yet a stopgap is better than none, and by no means precludes (and in fact provides for) further steps aimed at reductions. Moreover, the U.S. and the Soviet Union have generally abided by SALT II's provisions anyway, although the Soviets would have been required to scrap some weapons last December if the treaty had been adopted. Since Reagan's start will not finish until after "many years of concentrated effort" at best, the appeal of a treaty to which Moscow has already agreed is not negligible; such items do not grow on trees. In trashing the SALT process, Reagan is also setting an unhealthy precedent. No long-term, step-by-step arms control or reduction is going to take place if every administration wipes out the progress that has preceded it and spends a year-and-a-half to start from scratch.

Reagan's visceral opposition to a nuclear "freeze" is also disturbing, for a halt in the nuclear arms race would seem a logical precursor to reversing it. For one thing, the "freeze" is not necessarily as fuzzy a concept as its opponents claim, and could take the form of a mutual, comprehensive and relatively easily verifiable ban on testing and deploying new weapons. For another, the Administration has yet to make a convincing argument that theoretical Soviet strategic superiority, either in Europe or in the alleged ability to hit American land-based missiles, has much meaning in the real world. Even if one accepts Reagan's assertion that Moscow possesses a nuclear "margin of superiority," there is no evidence to indicate how the Soviets could deploy that advantage in any concrete way short of proving it in an all-out nuclear strike, with undeniably significant retaliation. The U.S., despite a nuclear monopoly from 1945 to 1949 and an undisputed edge for two decades thereafter found itself unable to use that atomic stick in a way which prevented the Soviets from pursuing their interests on a global scale. (The Cuban missile crisis is a single notable exception.) During its period of "inferiority" the Soviets consolidated their hold on Eastern Europe and gained the friendship of much of the Third World, there is no reason the U.S. should not be similarly capable, even if its nuclear position is considered by some to be one of inferiority, however vague and irrelevant that concept is when the U.S. has 9000 nuclear warheads and the tried to carry them.

MORE FUNDAMENTAL than the debate between competing SALT and START adherents is the question of whether the U.S. should be seeking an alternative to the deterrence system itself. Postwar U.S. policy revolves around protecting Western Europe from conventional Soviet attack by the threat of an all-out strategic response, to leave open the "nuclear option"--and thus to avoid any arms control treaty which would outlaw nuclear war or eliminate nuclear weapons. As early as 1946, an important secret study prepared for Harry Truman concluded that the U.S. "should entertain no proposals for disarmament or limitation of armament as long as the possibility of Soviet aggression exists. Any discussion of the limitation of armaments should be pursued slowly and carefully with the knowledge constantly in mind that proposals on outlawing atomic warfare and long-range offensive weapons would greatly limit the United States' strength while only moderately affecting the Soviet Union."

Even after the Soviets' own atomic development meant that the balance of terror would be maintained by the threat of mutual rather than one-sided annihilation. American officials have refused to publicly rule out using nuclear weapons first where American interests or "global stability" were threatened Reagan reaffirmed that supposed willingness when he stated that one goal of his arms policy was "maintaining nuclear capability sufficient to deter conflict, under-write our national security and meet our commitment to allies and friends." The policy's keystone is keeping a high level of uncertainty the possibility exists that U.S. nuclear weapons would be employed to defend not only Western Europe, but the Persian Gulf. Israel, the Peoples Republic of China, Korea, or others from Soviet or "Soviet-backed" aggression.

The Bundy-Kennan-Smith-McNamara foreign affairs quartet, on the other hand, called for a renunciation of first use (after a buildup of conventional and second-strike retalitory forces) on the grounds that any nuclear conflict is likely to escalate and thus "involve unacceptable risks to the national life that military forces exist to defend." The Reagan Administration, as well as some West Europeans under the American nuclear "umbrella," strongly oppose any non-first-use declaration because it would allegedly lower the perceived risks to an aggressor contemplating attack. The problem is that declaration or no declaration, a no-first-use policy is the only rational one. The question which in the long run must be addressed by the U.S. government is whether it will rely indefinitely on nuclear deterrence to preserve its interests or will adopt a new posture which stresses non-nuclear forces. It is not an easy choice and neither answer is fully, satisfying. Where is Archimedes when we need him?