Time to START, Says Reagan

By Strobe Talbott

The President unveils a strategic arms reduction proposal

As a candidate for the presidency in 1980, Ronald Reagan was vocally unenthusiastic about the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). He charged that the talks had favored the Soviet Union and that the SALT II treaty, signed by Jimmy Carter but unratified by the Senate, was "fatally flawed." Yet Reagan insisted repeatedly that he was committed to the goal of "real arms control" and "equal, significant reductions." In a television ad shortly before the election, he vowed, "As President, I will make immediate preparations for negotiations on a SALT III treaty."

Those preparations have taken nearly 16 months--a third of a presidential term. In the meantime, Reagan has changed the acronym from SALT to START, substituting "reduction" for "limitation." His critics were beginning to wonder if the real name of the game was perhaps STALL. But in a speech he took to his alma mater, Eureka College in Illinois, on Sunday--his most comprehensive address on East-West relations since taking office--Reagan finally unveiled his proposal for a new round in negotiations with the Soviet Union. He suggested that the talks begin in June and reiterated his suggestion of a meeting with Leonid Brezhnev at the United Nations next month, but said he would be willing to have a summit later, as the Soviets prefer. "When we sit down, I will tell President Brezhnev that the U.S. is ready to build a new understanding," said Reagan. "I will tell him that his people and his government have nothing to fear from the U.S."

The White House hopes that the speech, which chastised the Soviets for mischief making around the globe, will also ease some of the pressure that Reagan has been feeling from both the West European antinuclear movement and domestic advocates of an arms freeze. However, the proposal is so ambitious--and so favorable to the U.S.--that it is likely to touch off a new round of debate about the feasibility, and even the sincerity, of Administration arms-control policy. At the same time, the far right is likely to criticize Reagan for proposing any diplomacy at all with the Soviets.

In a carefully worded passage that was transmitted to Moscow before delivery, Reagan said the U.S. wanted to "reduce significantly the most destabilizing systems--ballistic missiles, the number of warheads they carry, and their overall destructive potential." He added that the reductions should take place in two phases of unspecified duration. At the end of the first, he hopes for at least a 33% drawdown from current levels, with only half of each side's remaining missile warheads permitted on land. He envisions even deeper cuts at the end of the second phase--as much as 50%, according to a top presidential aide.

Thus, under Reagan's initiative, both superpowers' arsenals of nuclear missiles would be reduced dramatically, and to equal levels. But the cuts would be deepest in those categories of weapons where the Soviet Union has, over the decades, concentrated its own strength--particularly large intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). The U.S. has fewer and smaller ICBMS, with fewer and less destructive land-based MIRVs. On the other hand, it has a more diversified deterrent, with more of its nuclear firepower aboard bombers and submarines.

Under Reagan's ceilings, the U.S. would have to make considerably less of an adjustment in its strategic forces than would the Soviet Union. That feature of the proposal will almost certainly prompt the Soviets to charge that it is unfair and one-sided. No doubt some American arms-control advocates will agree, accusing the Administration of making the Kremlin an offer it cannot possibly accept--a deceptively equal-looking, deliberately nonnegotiable proposal that is part of what some suspect is the hardliners' secret agenda of sabotaging disarmament so that the U.S. can get on with the business of rearmament.

Administration officials deny that accusation. They contend that the Soviets have proliferated land-based warheads beyond any level justified by the legitimate needs of self-defense. Those warheads are now so numerous, so powerful and so accurate that they raise the specter of a pre-emptive strike against the U.S. The Soviets' monstrous ICBMs have given them a nearly 3-to-l advantage over the U.S. in "throw weight"--the cumulative power to "throw" megatons of death and destruction at the other nation. That excessive throw weight on the Soviet side of the scales has upset the strategic balance. Therefore the onus is on the U.S.S.R. to make deeper cuts. In fact, in his Eureka speech, Reagan said he wants eventually to reduce both sides' missile throw weight to "less than current American levels."

Coupled with its $1.6 trillion, five-year defense budget and its plan to push ahead with the MX, cruise missiles, the Trident II submarine program, the B-l and Stealth bombers, the Reagan START proposal in effect offers the Soviets a choice: accept a bilateral deal requiring a cutback on the weapons that may have made the U.S. vulnerable to a first strike, or the U.S. will redress the balance unilaterally by deploying an array of new weapons. In other words, make sacrifices now or face a greatly increased American threat later.

Whether the Reagan proposal can be the basis of serious negotiation depends largely on three factors: 1) whether the Soviet leadership, in the midst of its transition to the post-Brezhnev era, can absorb what may initially come as a shock, then respond with a constructive counterproposal; 2) whether the Reagan Administration is prepared to make substantial compromises in the negotiations for an eventual agreement; and 3) whether the Congress will continue to support the Administration's extremely expensive defense plans, which constitute the "or-else" inducement for the Soviets to bargain.

Meanwhile, SALT II--despite Reagan's denunciation of it and the Senate's refusal to ratify it--is still being observed informally by both sides. It imposes some limitations on the same Soviet weapons that START would reduce drastically. Given Reagan's avowed goal of achieving reductions, it is ironic that the only part of the SALT II treaty that the Soviets are not living up to is a provision that would, if the agreement were formally in force, require them to reduce 450 of their older strategic weapons. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, who have supported the treaty, worry that if informal observance breaks down, the Soviets will be in a position to add to their ICBM forces much more quickly than the U.S. can take countermeasures.

Reagan intends START as a substitute for, and improvement on, SALT. But he is taking a big chance: if START proves to be a nonstarter, the U.S. may wind up without either the benefits envisaged by Reagan's bold proposal or SALT'S more modest achievements.

--By Strobe Talbott. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett/Peoria, Ill.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/Peoria, Ill.

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