America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

James Baker's visit to Moscow this week is a throwback to those bygone days when strategic nuclear-arms control was the main event in U.S.-Soviet relations. Unfortunately, the Secretary of State has less room to maneuver than he needs to make the most of the mission.

Until the mid-'80s, the root cause of East-West tension -- the repressive, predatory nature of Soviet communism -- was nonnegotiable. The old men in the Kremlin refused to brook "interference in the internal affairs of the U.S.S.R.," and they would not accept meaningful constraints on Soviet international behavior. That left little to talk about, except how many warheads should be allowed to dance on the head of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power five years ago, the U.S.-Soviet agenda broadened and deepened. During their four meetings in 1989, Baker and Eduard Shevardnadze spent so much time on the ideological and geopolitical issues at the core of the relationship that arms control was largely relegated to "working groups" manned by deputies. But the current leaders in Washington have come to realize that they are limited in what they can do to help Gorbachev succeed with perestroika. And the U.S. and the Soviet Union are nowhere near jointly managing the emergence of a new international order. George Bush is still groping for "the vision thing," and Gorbachev has his hands full keeping his own country in one piece. Therefore it's back to basics, and that means arms control.

So far the Administration's position in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) is, in one key respect, still mired in the past. It is designed to preserve, in its redundant entirety, Ronald Reagan's so-called strategic modernization program. "Modernization" is a euphemism for breeding a whole aviary of brand-new weapon systems: not one but two long-range bombers (the B- 1 and B-2 "Stealth"), not one but two ICBMs (the ten-warhead MX and the Midgetman), not one but two species of cruise missiles (air launched and sea launched), plus a submarine missile. The cost: nearly $100 billion over the next five years.

The kind of military overinsurance that the public was willing to pay for a decade ago looks like wretched excess now. Baker and the presidential National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft would like to reduce the price tag on modernization, put a "Bush stamp" on START, and eliminate from both superpowers' arsenals weapons that are as dangerous as they are expensive. Just before the Malta summit last year they suggested scrapping the MX in - exchange for a similar monster missile on the Soviet side, but the Pentagon squelched the idea -- for the time being.

Baker might get more flexibility in a follow-up round of nuclear diplomacy, START II, after the current talks produce a treaty later this year. However, hawks in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the Government are questioning whether there should even be a START II. All this is reminiscent of the bureaucratic factionalism that so often made for an unedifying subplot of arms control in the past.

Either Baker, Scowcroft & Co. will start winning the intramural arguments and trade away some of the bigger-ticket items in the strategic-modernization program for Soviet concessions, or Congress will impose cuts of its own -- in return for nothing but a thank-you from Moscow. In which case the legacy of the Reagan buildup could come to be called the Bush folly.