It’s Still Uphill to the Next Summit : ‘Star Wars’ Shadows Reagan’s Gesture at Glassboro

Nineteen years ago a ruler and a road map placed a superpower summit in Glassboro, N.J. That was halfway between Washington (the home of Lyndon B. Johnson) and the United Nations (neutral ground for Alexei N. Kosygin). Now Ronald Reagan has paid a symbolic return visit. But he will need both luck and pluck for it to symbolize the start of the Reagan era in arms control.

Since Reagan became a public convert to arms control two years ago, the superpowers have maneuvered for advantage in their propaganda struggle. The President outfoxed Mikhail S. Gorbachev at last November’s summit by getting the Soviet leader to smile for the cameras, even though the Strategic Defensive Initiative remained a barrier to practical progress. Later, Gorbachev challenged Reagan to meet in Hiroshima to ban nuclear testing. Both have intoned insincere or ill-informed pledges to eliminate nuclear weapons.

With another summit envisioned for sometime this year, the game continued. The Soviets canceled a foreign ministers’ meeting to prepare for the meeting. Reagan affected that Gorbachev was affronting American hospitality. The focus has been not on substance but on which side would gain, which lose, in public relations.

In recent weeks, however, the game has shifted. The Soviet Union has continued a flurry of arms-control proposals, but with a difference. Voices have been heard in the Administration murmuring that Soviet proposals are beginning to make some sense. Moscow says that it will negotiate deep cuts in offensive nuclear weapons if SDI is put on hold for a decade or two; it will agree not to count so-called forward-based nuclear systems in Europe and on aircraft carriers. And, following a Western proposal last December on limiting armies in Europe, the Warsaw Pact has countered with ideas worth pondering.

At Glassboro on Thursday, Reagan responded with what, in an Administration dominated by officials averse to arms control, was rampant optimism. He concluded, “It appears that the Soviets have begun to make a serious effort.” This “could represent a turning point . . . possibly an atmosphere does indeed exist that will allow for serious discussion.” On such comments, however guarded, relations between states can begin to change.

Pundits will speculate whether summit gamesmanship forced Reagan to respond to Soviet overtures that have attracted serious attention. Perhaps this is just his way of offsetting unseemly squabbling and confusion among his subordinates over the future of the SALT II treaty. Perhaps he believes that being tough with the Soviets has paid off, and wants to capitalize on it.

For once the President didn’t mention the Soviets’ alleged cheating on the SALT II and anti-ballistic missile treaties. No one who held that matter so dear could have shown such appetite for a new agreement. Reagan wants a summit, now, and doesn’t care where it takes place.

In response to such clarity, it will be hard for Gorbachev to refuse a serious engagement on the issues. It will be hard, as well, for Reagan to avoid decisions about the future of U.S. strategic programs, doctrines and arms control.

Aye, there’s the rub. Despite the apparent break with his naysaying advisers, Reagan has no coherent strategic concept to pursue with Moscow in the months ahead. Ever stodgy, the Soviets took years to catch up with Western thinking that underpinned the strategic arms limitation talks of the 1970s. Now they seem to have caught up with the President’s desire for deep reductions in offensive nuclear weapons. For the first time in the nuclear age they even threaten to take the lead in fashioning ideas that make sense for both parties. Thus, if summit talk persists, the President and his Administration must finally get their goals in order.

That was clearly evident in Reagan’s Glassboro speech. He made the case for reducing rather than just limiting offensive nuclear weapons. This was his major point last week in explaining why the SALT II treaty will no longer govern U.S. strategic planning. But in the next breath he repeated his adherence to SDI. Again he called for abolishing of mutual assured destruction, although his effort to tamper with the reality of nuclear deterrence has no serious proponents. And again he held out the vision of a “shield that could protect us from nuclear missiles just as a roof protects a family from rain.”

Enmeshed with the President’s other remarks on strategic policy, this renewed emphasis on SDI cannot be dismissed as a poker player’s preparation to cut a deal. It was not idle for the Soviet Union to link its new willingness to trade reductions in offensive weapons with the long-term shelving of SDI. Forswearing defenses against nuclear attack is the essence of the strategic concept that alone can make those reductions possible.

Thus the President’s pitch for SDI is renewed evidence of his unwillingness to chart a realistic course for American strategic policy. Unless he makes the historic choice to forgo SDI, no bright hopes can rescue arms control from its enemies.