The Washington Post
Sunday, April 26, 1987

Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger

# An Arms Agreement—on Two Conditions

President Reagan has a historic opportunity to take a major step forward in American-Soviet relations. There is little doubt that a summit meeting will occur this year and that an arms control agreement will be signed. But whether this leads to a breakthrough toward peace depends on whether it is the right kind of a deal. That is still an open question.

How did we reach this point? There are two principal factors.

The first is Reagan's success in restoring American self-respect and military strength. He has made the United States worth negotiating with. No one can deny the decisive role of the Strategic Defense Initiative in bringing the Soviets to the negotiating table.

The second is that General Secretary Gorbachev needs a deal. He wants a relaxation of tensions with the West in order to pursue his desperately needed domestic reforms.

All attention is now focused on the possibility of an agreement on medium- and short-range missiles. With respect to medium-range missiles, Gorbachev offers to give up 922 warheads on SS-20 missiles if we give up 316 warheads on Pershing II and cruise missiles. He has also offered to destroy 142 short-range SS-12/22s and SS-23s. Each side would retain 100 warheads on medium-range missiles, with Moscow's based in Soviet Asia and ours in the United States. It seems almost too good to be true—an offer we apparently cannot refuse.

Why does a leader whose entire career was in the Communist Party with its emphasis on balance of power offer apparently unequal reductions? Gorbachev is by far the blest of all Soviet leaders since the end of World War II. He has an acute intelligence, a forceful presence and a contagious charisma. He is making some bold domestic reforms. But this does not mean he is a philanthropist. He knows that the Soviet cuts do not reduce in any significant manner the Soviet capacity to attack Europe with nuclear weapons and that they increase the Soviet conventional threat to Europe. He seeks to advance the calculated purpose of weakening the ties between the United States and Western Europe and between Germany and the Atlantic Alliance.

If we strike the wrong kind of deal, we could create the most profound crisis of the NATO alliance in its 40-year history—an alliance sustained by seven administrations of both parties. Because we are deeply concerned about this danger, we who have attended several summits and engaged in many negotiations with Soviet leaders are speaking out jointly for the first time since both of us left office.

When NATO was created, faced with Moscow's massive conventional superiority, the allies chose to confront Soviet manpower by threatening to respond to a Soviet conventional attack with nuclear weapons. So long as the United States had superiority in strategic nuclear weapons, that strategy was credible. But since the late 1970s the Soviet strategic arsenal has grown to equal, and in land-based missiles to exceed, that of the United States. This meant that a nuclear war would involve scores of millions of American casualties in a matter of hours. We need not debate whether an American president would under these circumstances initiate strategic nuclear war in response to an attack on Europe. It is enough to recognize that if the Soviets believe he might not, deterrence could fail.

That is why NATO developed a doctrine—flexible response—which would permit a graduated application of its nuclear power. Medium- and short-range missiles placed on the continent of Europe restored the credibility of the threat of nuclear retaliation, if only because the Soviets had to calculate that the United States would not permit them to be overrun without using them. This was especially important for the Federal Republic of Germany, which, unlike France and Britain, has no nuclear weapons and, unlike Italy, has large Soviet armies on its borders. Three years ago, NATO governments overcame bitter Soviet-sponsored demonstrations to deploy these medium-range missiles.

It is regrettable that in the late 1970s the deployment of those weapons was justified solely on the ground that they were needed to balance the new Soviet SS-20 missiles and that Western statesmen said a withdrawal of the SS-20s would permit us to withdraw our missiles as well. In fact, these missiles were not needed to offset their equivalents. Their real function was to discourage Soviet nuclear blackmail of Europe by whatever weapon from whatever location and to raise the risk of nuclear retaliation by NATO to Soviet conventional attack. They closed a gap in deterrence caused by the apocalyptic nature of strategic nuclear war.

The Soviets' strategy since the end of World War II has been to exploit the West's fear of nuclear weapons by calling repeatedly for their eventual abolition. If we acquiesce in this strategy, we will create a far more dangerous world. Any Western leader who indulges in the Soviets' disingenuous fantasies of a nuclear-free world courts unimaginable perils.

If we eliminate American medium- and short-range forces in Europe without redressing the conventional imbalance, the Soviet nuclear threat to Europe will remain, and the

gap in deterrence to conventional attack will be reopened. Even after the proposed reductions the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal of 19,000 warheads can, if the Soviet Union chooses, be aimed at Western Europe from the Soviet Union a few hundred miles away. But given the catastrophic consequences of general nuclear war, the credibility of the strategic U.S. threat is eroding, all the more so if it must be initiated on behalf of distant

> "We must demand that the zero option eliminate all intermediate-range missiles worldwide."

allies and after we have just withdrawn our strategic missiles across an ocean.

Deterrence cannot be based on either U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons, because their range is too short, or on tactical bombers, because of the formidable Soviet air defenses. Reliance on battlefield nuclear weapons has two other disadvantages. It stakes the nuclear threat on the nuclear weapons most difficult to control by civilian leaders. Above all it would confine the use of nuclear weapons in effect to German soil.

Faced with such prospects no German government will be able to resist for long the siren song of denuclearization, on the one hand, or the acquisition of nuclear weapons, on the other. And this in turn would leave American forces in Europe without adequate nuclear protection.

In retrospect, NATO should not have offered the zero option in the late 1970s. But we have crossed that bridge. The Soviets have accepted our offer. But it would be a profound mistake to conclude the agreement in its present form. We must insist on at least two conditions:

1. No missiles in Asia. We must demand that the zero option eliminate all intermediate-range missiles worldwide. From just beyond the Ural Mountains, Soviet SS-20 missiles could still reach Germany and, being mobile, could quickly be moved into positions that threaten all of Europe. Also, given the enormous Soviet nuclear arsenal, the sole Soviet purpose in retaining 100 warheads in Asia is to intimidate China, Japan and Korea with American acquiescence. Finally, by permitting 100 warheads in Asia, the verification problem becomes enormous because that would allow Moscow to maintain its production lines and test firings.

(continued)

2. Linkage to conventional balance. Since the missiles reductions are slated to take place over five years, we should link the final phase of withdrawals to the elimination of the huge Soviet conventional superiority. The agreement must provide that negotiations to this end begin immediately and be concluded before the final phase of missile withdrawal begins. In particular, we must insist on the right of equal numbers of short-range missiles until the conventional balance is established. Otherwise, removing medium- and short-range nuclear weapons would simply make Europe safe for conventional war.

Our negotiators must hold their ground on these points. No deal is better than a bad deal. But that is not our choice. We can reach a good deal, for both sides, if we always keep in mind that Gorbachev needs a deal as much as we do. Indeed, if he is genuinely interested in peace, he should want an agreement that increases the security of both sides. Unilateral concessions now may bring a temporary respite but only at the cost of grave risks later.

In addition to arms control, it is vital that a summit convened to sign a missile agreement deal with the major political U.S.-Soviet issues. If summitry is to promote the chances of peace, the superpowers must address the potential causes of war. It is not weapons that cause war, but rather the political differences that lead to the use of those weapons. Therefore, when Reagan and Gorbachev meet, there must be significant progress toward resolving key political issues, such as the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Soviet arms shipments to Nicaragua and Soviet-sponsored subversion in Central America. Gorbachev has taken the first steps toward reform at home but has not retreated one inch from Moscow's posture abroad. Indeed, his policy can be said to be a subtler implementation of historic Soviet patterns. He has criticized Brezhnev's Doctrine.

Every president has an understandable desire to ensure his place in history as a peacemaker. But he must always remember, that however he may be hailed in today's headlines, the judgment of tomorrow's history would severely condemn a false peace. If President Reagan stands firm for the principles that he has maintained so steadfastly throughout his career, he will be able to sign the right agreement and make a significant step toward real peace in the world.

©1987, Los Angeles Times Syndicate