Arms Control Surprises Ahead? : Bureaucracy Must Show It Is Up to, and Open to, Negotiations

LONDON —  For the past six years, arms control has faced innumerable turning points, crossroads and moments of opportunity. Each has been presented as a time for critical decisions, the choices rarely less than stark.

Either the arms race would continue with the inevitably disastrous end or we could seize the opportunity for a period of peace and harmony. At one moment the whole process appeared doomed, and could be written off as a grand but ultimately futile gesture that could never overcome the fundamental hostility and rivalry that divides nations; at the next we were on the verge of a historic breakthrough that would usher in the age of international cooperation and disarmament.

It is now hard to take seriously any new claims that a turning point has been reached. There have been too many before, each accompanied by overblown rhetoric. They have all passed without the process ever grinding completely to a halt, but also without ever reaching a conclusion. As a result, these claims now tend to be judged not in terms of their essential truth but in terms of what they reveal about the state of international affairs. Warmth in language is believed to signify improved East-West relations, as if a turn of phrase moves us nearer to or further from war.

So long as Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and President Reagan are still talking to one another and their officials are still negotiating, things cannot be too bad. As Winston Churchill put it, “jaw-jaw” is better than “war-war.” The presumption that these two are clear alternatives has given people a high tolerance of inconclusive jawing ever since. This rather cynical attitude toward the process has reduced expectations with regard to substance, which now takes second place to the spectacle of negotiating and summitry. As a result, should something important actually emerge we could well be taken by surprise.

We may be about to be surprised. The reports of the latest Soviet proposals that prompted the President’s optimism last week at Glassboro are incomplete. But from what is known it is clear that there is much yet to be decided. And, as the President noted, there has been a genuine attempt to meet American objections to past Soviet positions.

This conciliatory Soviet stance may be less a response to the recent tough U.S. stance on such matters as strategic defenses, SALT II and Libyan terrorism than to the failure of the hard Soviet line of three years ago. For most of 1984, the Soviets’ arms-control policy was petulant. They refused to talk, saying that there was no longer a basis for negotiation once new intermediate-range missiles had been introduced into Europe (a development that they had been trying to stop for four years).

By visibly accepting the blame for a lack of negotiations, the Kremlin ensured that Reagan was under no pressure on the arms-control issue in an election year. The hard line began to be reversed, but only grudgingly, once it was clear that the President was going to win a second term. Then, in 1985, it was argued that progress was wholly dependent on the United States’ abandoning the Strategic Defense Initiative. As before, everything was made to depend on the United States’ giving up its most provocative weapons program of the time.

However, when the moment of truth arrived at the summit meeting last November, Gorbachev did not walk out when he realized that SDI could not be stopped by this method. Perhaps he sensed that, unlike the Euromissiles, this program would probably die as a result of natural causes. At any rate, this year his approach became one of demonstrating an eagerness for arms control that Reagan was challenged to match. This began in grand style on Jan. 15 with a schedule for complete nuclear disarmament by the end of the century. He has not let up since. U.S. doubts as well as moves in the opposite direction, such as the abandonment of SALT II, have been greeted more in sorrow than in anger. Care has been taken to never completely rule out a summit; the Kremlin only asks one to wonder how anything useful can be expected to emerge from a summit, given Washington’s wholly negative attitude.

The Americans in turn have complained that all this has been so much posturing designed to turn Western public opinion against the Administration. The Soviet proposals are vague, they point out; U.S. proposals are ignored; there has not always been the follow-through at the actual negotiations in Geneva.

Hence the significance of the latest Soviet moves. They are a direct response to previous American proposals, and they have been communicated privately before being made public. The concessions are significant. By not counting forward-based systems in Europe in the American total, Gorbachev has removed the most unacceptable aspect of his proposals on strategic arms. He appears to have recognized that little can be done on intermediate forces if progress is made dependent on British and French restraint. Finally, he appears to have followed the line on SDI that Western arms controllers have suggested all along: The best way to stop it is not to attempt to ban the research but to strengthen the constraints on further development contained in the 1972 ABM treaty.

Though much of this remains to be clarified, and many of the remaining conditions in the Soviet proposal are unacceptable as they stand, the gap has been narrowed substantially to the point where it might be bridged by a serious negotiating effort.

Perhaps then we have at last reached a genuine moment of opportunity. But before we get too optimistic, we need to recognize the difficulties of transforming the broad agreement in principle, should they be reached, into a practical agreement.

There is, after all, an unfortunate precedent. In 1974 President Gerald R. Ford and Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev agreed on the broad outlines of SALT II. Yet it took almost five additional years for this to be turned into a treaty, which by that time was seen to be unduly complex and controversial. The reason is that the detail in arms control is extremely important when it comes to signing agreements that will have to be verified in the future. The whole furor over Soviet compliance indicates the problems that could be caused by a loosely worded treaty. For those people who are anxious to hold things up, there will be opportunities for quibbling over the details and for sending awkward issues back into the bureaucracy for further study.

The question is therefore raised as to whether the bureaucracy of the United States is capable of handling the demands of a serious negotiation. It will not be good enough for the White House to seek a compromise interagency position. If the negotiations are to be moved forward, difficult decisions will have to be taken.

This leads one to question whether the full significance of what is now being proposed has been fully taken on board by those who would be responsible for implementing any eventual agreement. The years of cynicism, of turning points passed and moments of opportunity missed, may have taken their toll.

The sort of measures now being actively discussed by the United States and the Soviet Union would make a substantial difference in strategic doctrine and the ability to carry out targeting plans. After the years of no progress, it may be possible to achieve rather dramatic changes in the strategic relationship.

It may be that the recognition of this fact will jolt the bureaucracy into action. Unfortunately, there is also the risk that those who have the most to lose by the successful completion of an agreement will be encouraged to dig in their heels and look for measures of delay.