Why Moscow Stalled SALT

Carter's China deal may cause more trouble than he expected

Never had hopes for a SALT II agreement been higher. Success seemed so imminent at the pre-Christmas conference in Geneva that two key members of the U.S. delegation flew home for the holidays, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko announced plans to depart for Moscow, and arrangements were made for reporters to be briefed extensively in the U.S. on the details of the new arms control treaty. In Washington, the White House alerted the TV networks that President Carter might be making a major statement that they would want to broadcast live. There was speculation a similar statement would be made in Moscow by Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev. The two leaders, it was assumed, would announce their long awaited summit in mid-January. Would there be any fallout on SALT from Washington's decision to normalize relations with China? Absolutely not, Carter told a TV audience. Said Secretary of State Cyrus Vance: "We are close to the end of the road."

Wishful thinking. Gromyko had to delay his departure, the special press briefing was not called, and Washington and Moscow never issued their synchronized statements. Instead, Vance and Gromyko faced dozens of reporters and cameramen on the patio in front of the U.S. mission and admitted that success had eluded them again. Said Gromyko: "A lot of work has indeed been done, but there is still some work to be done." Explained Vance: "We will continue to work on those questions ... through our regular diplomatic channels."

With that, the odds for a Carter-Brezhnev summit this month dropped to zero. Said the President during a Christmas-morning chat with newsmen in Plains, Ga.: "We have an excellent chance of a fairly early meeting between myself and President Brezhnev. My guess is, though, that it will not be in January." Carter then added: "I think we will have the SALT agreement. It just takes time."

What went wrong? This question prompted intensive Washington postmortems last week. Explained a U.S. official with intimate knowledge of SALT: "We're trying to think it all through right now, to see where it went off the track."

There are two main theories. The first argues that Brezhnev has been much more upset and angered by the pace of U.S. normalization of relations with Peking than the White House expected--or revealed. As a result, Brezhnev slowed down SALT in order to delay his summit with Carter. According to this argument, the ailing Soviet leader fears that if he visits the U.S. in mid-January, he risks being overshadowed and forgotten in the excitement over the visit of China's Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing on Jan. 29.

Although Gromyko carefully avoided making an issue of U.S.-Peking relations in his 18 hours of talks with Vance, the Kremlin is very sensitive to all dealings between its Communist rival and the U.S. After Carter stated on TV that he had received a message from Brezhnev indicating that improved U.S.-Peking ties would neither hurt SALT nor "endanger our good relationship with the Soviet Union," Moscow quickly pointed out that the note had also expressed reservations about the new American policy. According to Tass, Brezhnev had in fact warned that "the Soviet Union will most closely follow what the development of American-Chinese relations will be in practice."

The second theory discounts the impact of Washington's China stroke and argues that the Geneva talks have been temporarily stalled by a familiar Soviet bargaining tactic. Said Richard Perle, an aide to Senator Henry Jackson and a stern but widely respected critic of SALT: "The Soviets bargain especially hard at the eleventh hour. They see us as pliant, and they have learned to expect that stonewalling will win further concessions from us." A senior Administration official conceded: "They sensed that we were eager for SALT. And so they introduced additional issues. It's a typical Soviet bargaining tactic."

Which of these two theories is correct? Perhaps both, in part. The Administration itself is divided over how to interpret Soviet behavior in Geneva. Some of those who strongly advocated normalization with Peking, for example, understandably minimize the impact of that move on U.S.-Soviet relations. But arguments that the China policy stalled SALT seem to have more adherents, especially at the State Department, where a number of veteran diplomats had expected some kind of reaction from Brezhnev to Carter's move.

The Kremlin, of course, subscribes to neither interpretation. In an angry commentary last week, Tass charged that "the causes of the delay should be looked for in the U.S., which has deviated from the coordinated principles of holding SALT talks." It accused Washington of, among other things, seeking "supremacy in strategic armaments, thus obtaining unilateral advantages."

So far SALT II has taken much longer than U.S. negotiators had anticipated when the talks began in late 1972. By 1976 so much progress seemed to have been made that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger insisted that the accord was 95% finished, a claim repeated since then by a number of officials. Yet that last 5% always seems just beyond reach.

Some of the delay has been due to the unique nature of the talks. Reports TIME Pentagon Correspondent Don Sider, who was at Geneva: "SALT is the most complex, confounding piece of technical negotiation attempted by man. It comprises an almost endless combination of methods of destruction. They have to be defined and conceptualized before negotiators can even start looking for formulas to restrict them. Only a handful of specialists claim to be experts, and most confess that they are frequently startled to learn what they do not know." The talks have also been slowed for political reasons, like the change of Administration in the U.S. and the Kremlin's annoyance at being criticized by Carter for human rights violations.

But none of these matters were expected to cause serious trouble in the pre-Christmas talks. The mood around the conference table was cordial, even inviting some light bantering. Gromyko jokingly asked his counterpart: "Do you have your chief of staff with you?" The Russian was referring to Vance's wife Grace. The Secretary of State replied, smiling: "I have my chief of staff. She keeps me in line."

High spirits persisted throughout Thursday and Friday, the first two days of the negotiations, and it seemed that the few unsolved technical problems would be settled promptly. Example: the U.S. had protested that the monitoring of weapons tests might become increasingly difficult because the Soviets have begun using complex new coding systems in their tests; to accommodate the U.S., the Russians agreed not to encode data needed to verify compliance with the arms treaties.

But on Saturday morning the mood changed abruptly. Gromyko suddenly began disputing points that seemed minor and bringing up issues that Vance thought had been settled. Gromyko raised two key questions about the cruise missile, the highly accurate drone that the Pentagon is counting on to begin providing much of the nation's strategic strength in the 1980s. The Soviets insisted that cruise missiles outfitted with multiple warheads be formally banned until 1985, or for the duration of the SALT II treaty. Although this had come up in previous rounds of the arms talks, Vance thought that the matter had been closed. The U.S. had explained that it had no intention of deploying cruise missiles before 1985, but that it did not want a formal ban that might set a precedent for SALT Ill.

The Russians also returned to the question of the duration of the protocol that is to accompany the main SALT II treaty. This separate document limits technological advances in strategic weaponry. Because technology is one of the few areas in which the U.S. has maintained a significant lead over the U.S.S.R., the Kremlin would like the protocol to last as long as possible. For the same reason, Washington wants to keep it short. While both sides have agreed that the protocol will run for three years, they cannot agree on when the three-year period should begin. The Soviets argue that the protocol should run for three years from the date SALT II is ratified, i.e., until, presumably, some time in 1982. The U.S. argues that when it first proposed this protocol, it expected that the treaty would be signed in 1977, and so the protocol would lapse in 1980, a deadline that would not raise too many objections at the Pentagon. The U.S. has offered a compromise, June 30, 1981, but the matter remains unresolved. Unable to settle these and a few other issues, Vance and Gromyko had no choice but to recess the talks.

Whatever the reason for the Soviet stalling, the U.S. was not planning further concessions. Though the issues raised by the Russians were minor, any softening at this late stage of the talks could make it more difficult for Carter to obtain the two-thirds Senate support required for SALT'S ratification. As it is, Carter is being criticized for demanding too little from Peking in exchange for normalization and for not warning Moscow strongly enough against meddling in Iran.

Opposition to SALT already is impassioned and very well organized. Leading the attack is the Committee on the Present Danger, a blue-ribbon nonprofit think tank that was formed two years ago. Though it has only four full-time employees, its clout lies in the respect enjoyed by its 162 members, such as former Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Lane Kirkland. Its principal SALT spokesman, Paul Nitze, Deputy Secretary of Defense under Lyndon Johnson and a SALT negotiator under Nixon, has an intimidating expertise on defense matters, and has been stumping the country expressing his reservations about SALT II. A cool, persuasive debater, he argues that the pact that seems to be taking shape would leave U.S. land missiles vulnerable to a Soviet first strike.

The 325,000-member American Conservative Union, meanwhile, has been mobilizing grass-roots opposition. It has produced a 30-minute anti-SALT film that so far has been shown on 209 television stations. ACU plans to commit far more to fighting SALT than the $1 million it spent in vain on the Panama Canal struggle. Says one Administration official: "Compared with SALT II, passing the Panama Canal treaties was playing tiddlywinks."

Operating under the aegis of the conservative American Security Council, the Coalition for Peace Through Strength is poised to swing into action the minute signatures are dry on a SALT accord. Full-page ads are ready to be inserted in newspapers around the country. The coalition, which counts 175 Senators and Congressmen among its sponsors, has already lined up 89 special-interest organizations to support its antitreaty drive. Included are the American Federation of Small Business, the Reserve Officers Association, Americans for a Safe Israel and the National Alliance of Senior Citizens. Eventually, the coalition expects to spend $10 million in its efforts to defeat SALT II.

Opposition in the Senate, where the fate of the treaty would be decided, will probably be led by Democrat Jackson. Before it reaches the floor, the pact has to pass through his Subcommittee on Arms Control. He argues that while the pact establishes numerical equality in weaponry, it fails to take into account the greater size and power of Soviet missiles.

An Administration count indicates that 29 Senators are either against the pact or leaning that way--just five short of the number needed to sink it. Moreover, among the 35 Senators expected to favor the treaty, at least eight are shaky. Senate supporters fume that the White House has not begun to match the lobbying effort of the opposition.

Carter, however, has been seeking other ways to allay one of the major fears of SALT's critics: that the strategic balance is tilting toward the U.S.S.R. To demonstrate that he wants to counter Moscow's military buildup, the President has become a forceful advocate of bigger Pentagon budgets. This is a sharp reversal from his position during the 1976 election campaign when he created the impression that he wanted to trim defense spending by $5 billion. For fiscal 1980, Carter is pushing for almost $123 billion in defense outlays, a $10 billion increase. After discounting for inflation, this is a boost of 3%, a rate of increase endorsed by the President and other NATO leaders at their Washington summit last May.

Much of the extra money is for modern conventional arms to strengthen U.S. forces assigned to NATO. But Carter is also earmarking added funds for projects that bolster the strategic arsenal. Among the new weapons being built or developed: a fleet of twelve Trident nuclear-powered submarines, capable of firing their missiles more than 4,000 miles (see previous pages); the MX, a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile that could eventually replace the Minuteman; cruise missiles designed to be launched from B-52 bombers and capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

How quickly the U.S. builds and deploys these weapons and in what numbers could well depend on the outcome of the arms talks. Major cutbacks, for example, could be negotiated in a SALT III accord. But first Washington and Moscow must conclude SALT lI. Last week the American and Soviet negotiators who are semipermanently based in Geneva were already back at the conference table, trying to iron out the technical differences. The stickier problems, involving the cruise missile and the duration of the protocol, will have to be handled at a higher level, probably by Vance and Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin in Washington. Enough work remains to keep the diplomats busy through mid-February, and hence delay at least until then a Carter-Brezhnev summit. As the SALT lI process continues well into its seventh year, a senior U.S. official, directly involved in the Geneva round of the talks, advises: "You've got to be patient. You've got to persevere."

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