Why The Details Are Sticky

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

* "Ban land-based MIRVs" hardly has the resonance of "Ban the Bomb," and it is impossible to imagine demonstrators chanting "Down with nuclear SLCMs." Which proves once more that George Bush will never be a sloganeer, and he still has not quite mastered the vision thing. After excessive hype by White House aides, Bush's speech Friday evening offered not a promise of a brave new nuclear-free world but a complicated mix of ideas old and new, unilateral actions and proposals for fresh negotiations with Moscow. And in those negotiations, the U.S. opening position to some extent will continue the old game of "Let's get rid of the mainstays of your nuclear arsenal, but not of ours."

If the speech -- and proposals -- was not all it could have been, it nonetheless marked a step away from the nuclear brink that was bolder than anyone could have predicted. Bush's initiatives implicitly recognize that a world bristling with nuclear weapons ready for instant launch is not just menacing but also outdated and irrelevant, the relic of a cold war that is over against an enemy that, as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell puts it, "has vaporized before our eyes."

The White House also seems to recognize that the plodding, haggle-for-years- o ver-every-fine-point style of arms-control negotiation has become obsolete. The bargaining cannot be dispensed with yet, but it is being short- circuited by unilateral action. Discussions to get rid of tactical nuclear weapons -- artillery shells, warheads on short-range missiles -- may bog down in minutiae. So, said Bush in effect, don't bother. Just junk those weapons. All of them. Now. And hope that induces the Soviets to follow. Says Michael Mandelbaum, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations: "The Bush plan is a combination of a bold stroke and bowing to the inevitable. Bush is getting out ahead -- not a whole lot, but enough."

Gorbachev's assessment was not much different. On Friday morning the Kremlin leader received a letter from the White House outlining the proposals. He talked them over with top advisers, including arms-control negotiator Victor Karpov and Defense Minister Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, and then took a phone call from Bush -- all before the President went on TV. Sounding a bit incredulous, Gorbachev asked whether some of the American moves really were unilateral rather than conditioned on a Soviet response; Bush assured him they were. That extensive consultation was itself a welcome illustration of the current ; civility in U.S.-Soviet relations. Not too long ago, the Kremlin and the White House regularly irritated each other by publicly springing major policy pronouncements with little or no advance warning.

Gorbachev was interviewed Saturday on Soviet TV and found the proposals "too massive for us to be able to give an assessment of" right away. He raised questions indicating some sharp bargaining ahead. What about nuclear tests, which the Soviets have long wanted an agreement to stop? Bush's reply, as he summarized it, was, It's not part of this proposal, but maybe we can talk about it later. Do Bush's proposals "apply to the other nuclear countries?", Gorbachev asked, in a reference to Britain and France, which have independent nuclear forces that London and Paris have shown little interest in reducing. Bush, Gorbachev indicated, had sidestepped by saying that since the U.S. and U.S.S.R. have by far the biggest nuclear arsenals, they should deal primarily with each other.

The Soviet leader made a point of noting, though not stressing, what in Moscow's eyes must surely be the big joker in Bush's deck of proposals: while the U.S. wants to get rid of MIRVs (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles) on land-based missiles, it would keep those carried on submarine- launched missiles. Bush can offer some justification. Land-based MIRVs offer alluring targets for a first strike, since a single hit could wipe out up to 10 warheads at once; submarines pose less temptation since they are much harder to find and strike than fixed silos. But the Kremlin might regard the American proposal as an attempt to tilt the balance. The Soviets have a huge lead in land-based MIRVs; the U.S. has an equally large numerical advantage in submarine-fired multiple warheads.

On the whole, though, Gorbachev said, "our position is positive, very positive." Asked specifically by his interviewer -- in an obviously scripted question and answer -- whether Bush's proposals were some sort of trick, the Soviet leader replied, in effect, no. "These are serious steps," he said, toward a nuclear-free world. His government would "waste no time" in trying to "find some kind of format" for discussions.

Other Soviet officials were even more optimistic. While Gorbachev was noncommittal about whether the U.S.S.R. will follow the U.S. in destroying tactical nuclear weapons, one of his advisers volunteered that "it is my understanding that there will be reciprocity." Another Kremlin official said that in the Soviet view "the heart of ((the Bush initiative)) is tactical. De-MIRVing is somewhat peripheral."

Despite official denials, Gorbachev and Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin -- who received a three-minute phone call from Bush to discuss the proposals in advance -- have been as worried as the White House that if the U.S.S.R. continues to disintegrate, some of the thousands of tactical nukes scattered outside Russia in three Soviet republics could wind up in irresponsible hands -- a local dictator, say, or a terrorist gang. The Moscow leaders might welcome an excuse to destroy the weapons. Many of the generals who would have fought against such a move have been dismissed in the wake of the failed August coup.

More generally, Bush's proposals might bolster Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's chances to cut military spending and devote more resources to the crippled civilian economy. The nuclear cutbacks Bush envisions will not save much money for either the U.S. or the Soviets; some of them indirectly increase costs. "Disarmament is sometimes costly," admits Pavel Palashenko, a Gorbachev aide. But the proposals do give Gorbachev and Yeltsin a chance to argue that the U.S. is not taking advantage of Soviet economic weakness to seek military advantage.

Initial appraisals of arms-control plans must always be tempered by the thought, endlessly intoned by negotiators, that "the devil is in the details." Even plans like Bush's that attempt to cut through confusion get into some fearsome complexities. A closer look at the main elements:

TACTICAL WEAPONS Nuclear artillery shells and warheads for short-range missiles in both Europe and Asia will simply be destroyed, period. But aircraft will continue to carry nuclear bombs to maintain a deterrent against a ground invasion of U.S. allies. At sea, submarines will continue to carry MIRVed ballistic missiles, which are considered strategic weapons. But nuclear SLCMs (sea-launched cruise missiles) will be taken off attack subs and surface ships, and nuclear bombs will be removed from aircraft carriers, to be stored for possible redeployment. Nonetheless, this action unilaterally satisfies a long-standing Soviet demand that naval forces be involved in any nuclear cutbacks -- a demand that American admirals had resisted fiercely and, until now, successfully.

The land-based tactical weapons were deployed primarily to deter a Soviet- led invasion of Western Europe by offsetting the Warsaw Pact's heavy superiority in troops, tanks and artillery pieces. The need for that U.S. arsenal disappeared with the Warsaw Pact itself. Today the only targets for the weapons are in areas that have become friendly (Poland, Czechoslovakia, what was formerly East Germany). European allies supposedly protected by the weapons -- in particular, West Germans, who are understandably nervous about living amid the world's heaviest concentration of nuclear weapons -- will be delighted to get rid of them.

South Koreans will also be happy. The Seoul government's top priority is to stop the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea. Pyongyang has signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty but refused to open its facilities to international inspection until American nukes are removed from South Korea. Bush's move will go a long way to deprive North Korea of that excuse.

RELAXING ALERTS Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney signed an order over the weekend returning to hangars long-range bombers that had been poised on runways to hit the Soviet Union. Bush announced that he is taking off alert those nuclear-tipped missiles scheduled to be destroyed eventually under the START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) agreement signed by Washington and Moscow in July but not yet ratified. As Bush noted in his speech, under that treaty some of the missiles could be kept ready to launch on short notice for an additional seven years -- but if they are going to be scrapped anyway, why wait so long? These moves are relatively minor but should contribute to a welcome easing of tension. Not long ago, one favorite nightmare of cataclysmic thinkers was of nuclear annihilation resulting from some accidental slip -- a wayward blip on a radar screen, perhaps -- that would precipitate the launch of weapons kept on hair-trigger alert. Any move further dimming that already fading scenario is good news.

MIRVS Ever since MIRVs were excluded from the first nuclear arms-control agreement in the early 1970s, critics have been complaining that the omission was a terrible mistake. The U.S. was first to develop MIRV technology, and by exploiting its edge could increase the number of warheads aimed at the U.S.S.R. even while holding down the number of launchers. But the Soviets caught up soon enough, and the result was an enormous upward ratcheting of the arms race, with ever more warheads aimed at ever more targets. Experts note that largely because of MIRVing, the supposedly deep reductions in strategic warheads provided in the START agreement would only restore the levels of 1981; there would be a long, long way to go before the powers got back to the numbers of, say, pre-MIRV 1969. Worse still, as Bush noted, because of their vulnerability to a first strike, land-based MIRVed missiles are the "most destabilizing" element in the nuclear equation. He unilaterally scrapped plans to develop a mobile version of the 10-warhead MX that would be carried aboard railroad cars. It was a costless gesture -- Congress has resisted funding the rail-mobile missile -- but nevertheless a meaningful signal.

NEW SYSTEMS Bush invited the Soviets to join in developing a "non- nuclear," scaled-down version of the old Strategic Defense Initiative antimissile system. Rather than emphasizing the space-based, laser-beam Star Wars system once touted by Ronald Reagan to provide a shield against a full- scale nuclear onslaught, the new SDI would focus on interceptor rockets fired from the ground to ward off a penny-ante attack -- from superpower missiles launched accidentally, perhaps, or by a Third World dictator who had somehow managed to get his hands on an intercontinental rocket. Bush also continued funding of the B-2 Stealth bomber, though presumably not for its original mission of penetrating Soviet radar defenses during a nuclear war; the Pentagon lately has been talking up the B-2 as a weapon in regional conflicts like the Persian Gulf war. These moves are defensible, if at all, only as sops to hard-liners, who might otherwise oppose the new initiatives. On the other hand, though the Kremlin fought fiercely to limit or preferably ban the old Star Wars scheme, the Soviets appear to be less exercised by Bush's more modest SDI. Says a Soviet official: "I don't think this creates a big problem, though it will, of course, have to be addressed."

Opposition at home appears to be the least of Bush's worries. The President strengthened his hand against Democratic presidential contenders by calling attention once again to his greatest asset, his claimed mastery of foreign policy. One jubilant aide, asked to assess the likely domestic political impact of the plan, described it as "a nuclear missile aimed at the Democrats."

If so, the Democrats have no SDI with which to deflect it. They were reduced to complaining that Bush had appropriated, without credit, some old Democratic ideas; that he could have moved sooner and further; and -- telling point < -- that he should devote to domestic affairs more of the effort and imagination he has lavished on foreign policy. Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Congress has been urging the White House "for two decades" to stop MIRVs. "With the President's leadership, we have now come to our senses," he remarked. House majority whip David Bonior of Michigan took a similar line: "They were welcome initiatives that were long overdue. Now the President must turn his attention from weapons of destruction to this destructive recession."

Domestic politics, however, were far from uppermost in Bush's mind in formulating the new initiatives. Some of them had been under discussion for months, but the planning was greatly revved up after the collapse of the Soviet putsch in August. Bush and his aides saw an opportunity, with the removal of military hard-liners, to nudge the new Soviet and Russian governments further toward de-emphasizing military strength and building a more democratic society. But it was an opportunity that needed to be capitalized on fast, both to avert the danger of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands and to get new negotiations started while there was still a central government to deal with. By last week the plans were well enough developed to check out the final version with Britain, France, Germany and other allies -- at which point they started to leak, causing Bush to hurry up his speech. The haste in part accounted for the disappointingly flat tone of his talk.

Only in part, though. Complicated proposals by their nature are difficult to dramatize -- and nuclear arms-control proposals tend to be either complex or unrealistic. Bush's initiatives could have come earlier, could have been bolder, could have been more comprehensive, could have been less angled toward preserving American advantages. But they could not have been much less Utopian. BAN THE BOMB is simple, easily grasped and easily chanted. Largely for those reasons the slogan is also no guide for policy. BAN LAND-BASED MIRVs is an obscure tongue twister. But it states an important, achievable aim, and it is as worthy an objective as it is a clunker of a slogan.

With reporting by Michael Duffy and Jay Peterzell/Washington and James O. Jackson/Moscow