10-2-86

NEWSWEEK ARTICLE

The Daniloff-Zakharov trade will soon be forgotten.

Even those who gag at the exchange of a journalist with a spy would do well to turn to the more fundamental issue of US-Soviet relations. The Administration has needlessly complicated the issue by denying that a deal was involved. Of course there was a deal and unless the Administration rejected any negotiation until Daniloff was released there was bound to be a deal. Whether a better deal was attainable is an issue for second-guessers. The Administration would surely improve the level of our national debate if it frankly stated that in the light of its larger concerns for easing East-West tensions this was the best deal available.

We would then be able to debate the fundamental problem whether East-West relations are on the best possible course.

The same considerations apply to the timing of the

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summit in Iceland. By any previous experience a summit so hastily arranged involves a grave risk of failure.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that each leader should have some idea of what his opposite number will say if misunderstandings and disagreements are to be avoided.

Moreover it is hard to see how the agenda outlined by Secretary Shultz can possibly be covered in three meetings.

How can one expect serious progress on arms control, human rights and political relationships in the maximum of five hours of real conversation that allowing for translation is available at Reykjavik. And when heads of government disagree the consequences are likely to be serious because there is no other court of appeal.

On the other hand Secretary Shultz is a prudent and a thoughtful man. He would not ask the President to break a deadlock he has not been able to resolve unless he believed that an agreement was in fact imminent. Hence

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it is likely that major progress will be made at the pre-
summit summit.

My concern based on the public statements of
is
the principals/that this progress is not remotely equal
to the opportunity. It is progress towards agreement not
towards any substance that can be said to ease any danger
we actually face. It will be said that agreements even of
marginal consequence are important because they build
confidence. The question must be asked when do we stop
building confidence and agree on something that matters?
And to use a famous phrase of President Reagan's: If not
now, when?

I write this with great regret. Unlike some of
his erstwhile supporters I agree with the President that the
nuclear age imposes the requirement of coexistence with the
Soviet Union. The United States cannot risk waiting
passively for the crumbling of the Soviet system. I agree

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with the President's objectives. I believe, too, that his
fortitude in strengthening American defenses, his initiative
for strategic defense, his firmness on terrorism have
contributed to producing a uniquely favorable negotiating
situation. This makes it all the sadder that what seems
to be emerging is a quest for agreements almost for their
own sake. We are sliding into the danger of defining
progress by what the Soviets have said they would accept.
Arms control is on the verge of turning into an esoteric
numbers game that becomes its own end and obscures the
other issues that have produced East-West tensions. In
the process America may miss a great opportunity for a
fundamental reassessment of East-West relations.

## The Opportunity

The bargaining position vis-a-vis the Soviet
Union has never been more favorable. One does not have
to postulate a change of heart of Soviet leaders to

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recognize that they are facing unprecedented difficulties.

Even the most ideological member of the Politburo will have
to recognize the dilemmas of the Soviet governmental process
and of the Soviet economy. A system which claims to
represent scientific materialism and the advance force of
history has never managed a legitimate succession.

Discipline follows not constitutional practice as is the
case even in a modern corporation but depends on personal
loyalty to the leader. Every Soviet leader no matter how
decrepit has died in office except Khruschev who was
removed by coup-like procedures. Therefore the Soviet
governmental system oscillates between a purge at the
beginning of a new dynasty which eliminates the adherents
of the departed leader and stagnation at the end when the
disciples jockey for the succession of the failing ruler.

But some regularity, constitutionalism if you will, must
be brought to the governmental process to permit periodic

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rejuvenation--as China for example has recognized.

The Soviet economy is in a shambles. Every
article in commerce moves by allocations; there are no markets:
costs and prices are equally artificial. The Soviet
model has incentives only for quantity not quality.

The long litany of corruption, inefficiency
and malingering presented at the recent party congress are
not however as was claimed, aberrations, but the inevitable
by-products of central planning. They are an attempt to
break the crust of bureaucracy with some initiative.

Total planning has not been able to solve the problems of
technological innovation even less of computerization.

A state in which control of information is considered
the key to political control will find it very difficult
to be hospitable to the rapid growth of knowledge required
by the modern economy.

Even the top leadership faces the near impossibility

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of finding out what is going on. The disaster at Chernobyl
is a case in point. The West condemned Moscow for not
sharing its knowledge of the risks in a timely fashion in
my view unfairly. It is probable that the Kremlin did not
know of the extent of the disaster until a relatively
short time before the nuclear fall-out reached Sweden; the
authorities in the Ukraine must have desperately sought
to cover up their debacle.

Gorbachev is not the first leader to recognize
these dilemmas; indeed every reign since Stalin has begun
with an attempt to find incentives for efficiency other
than state terror. Each attempt to encourage genuine
innovation has failed on the inherent dilemma of Communist
societies. Technological progress on a broad front is
unachievable by central planning. But it is yet to be
shown that a Communist--or at any rate a Leninist--
society can be run without central planning. For central

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planning is the special preserve of the Communist party
and a Communist state without a dominant Communist party
is a contradiction in terms--at least in the Soviet model.

This is why despite the many internal criticisms
of Soviet performance--usually at party congresses inaugurating
a new reign--each new Soviet leader has in the end returned
to confirming the political status quo. (Khruschev was a
partial exception and he was also the only Soviet leader
removed from office.) Gorbachev has been no exception.
Last May's party congress committed the new Soviet leadership
to rapid material progress within the existing political
framework. This is likely to prove a contradiction in terms.

But until that becomes evident Gorbachev faces a
consuming task of restoring discipline to the bureaucracy,
rejuvenating it and seeking to shake it from its stagnation.
Inevitably this means that he cannot wish to compound his
domestic problems with international tensions which at a

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minimum will deflect him from the task of modernizing
Soviet society. One does not need to postulate a conversion
to the rejection of military force or expansionism to see
why a prudent Soviet leader would seek a respite from
international risk-taking. And it would not be a sign of
particular aggressiveness--indeed it would be another symptom
of prudence--to seek this respite at a price that preserves
to the greatest extent possible all Soviet options. At a
minimum Gorbachev faces enough domestic obstacles in
carrying out his reform program for him not to want to
compound them by mobilizing the foreign policy bureaucracy
against himself.

Such a policy does not necessarily imply future
aggressive designs; it would not be the first time that a
government chose a course of maximum convenience from a
domestic point of view. But in the end history will judge
results not intentions. And the danger is that if the

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present opportunity is not used to bring about an actual
change in the conditions that have caused the tensions,
the free world will be at the mercy of unpredictable Soviet
developments surely more difficult to control than the
current state of affairs. If against all expectations
Gorbachev succeeds in his efforts to modernize the
existing structure, the Soviet Union will gain in power
without having modified the conditions which favored
previous periods of expansionism. And these will be given
impetus because the West's strategic dilemmas will have
been compounded by its inhibitions and--as I shall explain--
by some of the agreements now being discussed.

But if--as is likely--Gorbachev's domestic
program fails the Soviet Union will then face the nightmare
that 300 years after Peter the Great, all the dilemmas
from which he sought to escape will have returned. After
centuries of suffering at the hands of Tsars and

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commissars, the Russian people will have arrived once again at their starting point: a huge territory with disproportionately large military forces indifferent to the well-being of its people and irrelevant to the outside world.

It is highly possible that then the Soviet Union will grow technologically at a slower rate than any of its major neighbors including China and India. At that point will the Soviet leadership give up the effort of carrying water on its shoulders and devote itself exclusively to domestic reform? Or will it use its most efficient instrument, the military, to obtain breathing room for itself by pressures on China or the Middle East or Berlin before turning to its internal rejuvenation? It is impossible to predict this today; but wise statesmanship would do its utmost to reduce the temptations for the military course.

This is why the negotiations which are about to

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start are so crucial. There are many Soviet incentives for
an agreement. What is less clear is whether the Soviet
system permits a real significant change in course. What
the West must do is to translate its yearning for peace
into a concrete program. It must avoid the escapism of
seeking to solve its problems by assuming the most favorable
trends in the Soviet Union. It must avoid the opposite
danger of demanding a complete change in the Soviet system
before making any agreement. And it must have the fortitude
to withstand the Soviet strategy to obfuscate this choice.

## Soviet Strategy

Gorbachev's strategy has had four components all
designed at least in part to prevent that choice.

A. **The new man.** Gorbachev has been extraordinarily
skillful in presenting himself as a new type of Soviet leader.
His use of the media has been unprecedented; his demeanor
has avoided the heavyhanded dullness of most previous

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Soviet leaders. All this has encouraged the perennial
Western nostalgia to seek salvation in conversion. The
argument that Soviet leaders have changed is not new.
It has in fact been made about every Soviet leader except
Breszhnev and then only because President Nixon dubious
about the perfectibility of his compatriots was even
warier about staking American foreign policy on a presumed
change of heart of a Soviet leader.

I do not know Gorbachev's personal convictions;
maybe he does not know himself how much he wishes to change.
But it is well to remember that he was a protege of Andropov
then head of the KGB and Suslov then chief party ideologue--
neither of these men were likely to have been closet doves.
Gorbachev's entire career was in the Communist party. It
would be reckless to base policy on the assumption of a
change of heart. The test of his peaceful intentions should
be Gorbachev's actions, not his demeanor.

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B. **Emphasis on summitry.** Gorbachev has been relentless in his pursuit of summitry. As a participant in four summit conferences I recognize their utility. But when they become the court of first resort they have the paradoxical result of trivializing all issues. The impression is created that tensions result from a conflict of personalities rather than underlying causes. Failure will be blamed by many on the President; success becomes a personal tour de force. In the process atmosphere too easily replaces substance; agreement becomes its own objective.

C. **The rejection of a political dialogue.** A case can be made for the proposition that the threat to peace resides in the paradoxical combination of Soviet expansionism and the instability of the Soviet system. Soviet troops are in Afghanistan. Soviet bases are creeping down the cost of Indo-China; Cuban troops are in

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Angola, Ethiopia and Nicaragua. Soviet arms fuel many assaults on the established order; Soviet intelligence services support too many guerilla movements and too many terrorist groups. Yet none of these issues is the subject of a dialogue even approximating in intensity the negotiations on arms control. There are, to be sure, meetings of experts, and regional conflicts find their way on the agenda of foreign ministers' and summit meetings.

But the impression is unavoidable that the leaders go through the motions; I am not aware of any proposal or looming agreement to avoid or to ease these causes of tension. One reason is that the Soviet Union is not eager to discuss these topics. Another is that in the United States the proponents of arms control are so afraid that their cherished goal will be jeopardized by discussing political crises in tandem, that they have to all practical purposes focused all concern on the arms race.

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D. <u>Making arms control the centerpiece of East-West relations.</u> Conventional wisdom holds that the threat to peace resides in the arms race and that the opportunity for peace resides in the mutual recognition of the devastating consequences of nuclear war. There is of course merit in this argument. But unlinking the arms race from political conditions gives arms control talks an esoteric, almost ethereal character. It also plays into the hands of the Soviet strategy of establishing the moral equivalence between the two sides and focuses the debate on issues on which various peace groups can concentrate demagogic pressures of Western governments without ever dealing with the issue of Soviet expansionism. On an operational level this emphasis also focuses the agenda of the forthcoming summit on issues in which neither of the two leaders can have any particular competence. The various arms control schemes now on the table have become so arcane that with respect to them a

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phrase of Lord Palmerston's of a century ago seems
particularly apt. He said about the Schlesweig-Holstein
question then agitating the chancelleries of Europe that
only three people had ever understood it: one was dead;
the second was in a lunatic asylum; he was the third and
he had forgotten it. Confronted by the clashing advice
of experts, without the technical background for an
independent judgment, leaders become referees of their
own bureaucratic disputes rather than designers of a long-
term strategy. Indeed they become prisoners of the process
that has created the diplomatic deadlock in the first place.

Gorbachev has pursued all four strands of his
policy with great skill and American policy has in my view
fallen in excessively with this design. And regrettably I
see no great breakthroughs in the arms control field partly
because the American domestic debate has elevated concepts like
reduction and verifiability into icons which threaten to

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destroy their meaning. It is too often forgotten that
reductions are meaningful only if they ease the twin dangers
of surprise attack and mass extermination of the population.
And verification is significant only if the subject matter
of an agreement makes a difference. Neither of these
conditions is being met.

## Arms Control Issues

Two agreements appear from what is available to the public to be making progress: a limitation of intermediate range missiles in Europe and a strategic arms agreement combining a reduction of warheads with a moratorium on defensive weapons.

### Intermediate Range Missiles.
The United States agreed to deploy intermediate range missiles in Europe after the Soviet Union had in fact deployed over three hundred of a mobile missile called SS-20 in the NATO parlance. The American missiles included 108 Pershing rockets and some

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400 cruise missiles. From the beginning the Soviet Union subjected this deployment to violent criticism. Massive demonstrations followed in the five recipient countries--Britain, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. In 1983 the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations in protest against the deployment. President Reagan and the allies held firm.

The issue was always more than strategic. From a purely military point of view there was no need to answer the Soviet deployment by stationing missiles on the ground in Europe. The retaliation to Soviet attack could have been launched from the sea or from the continental United States. The problem was the declining credibility of the nuclear deterrent. Our allies feared that the United States *might* not respond to an attack on Europe with US strategic weapons and would surely not do so if the Soviets confined the aggression to conventional forces.

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Stationing American missiles in Europe would in-
crease the automaticity of the response. The Soviets would
not be able to threaten nuclear blackmail or conventional
attack on Europe without considering the European-based
American missiles. If that force attained a certain
critical size they would not be able to destroy it without
receiving an extremely damaging counterblow. The Soviets
would not be able to accept this level of devastation
while the United States was a sanctuary and unimpaired.

Therefore the Soviets would not attack the European missiles
without attacking the US strategic forces and they would be
deterred from that course by the fear of US nuclear retaliation. In this concept European based missiles linked the
nuclear defense of Europe to that of America.

The second political issue raised by the
violence of the Soviet response was whether the Soviet
Union should be granted a veto over NATO deployments.

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Now that the missile deployment is well advanced
and the Soviet bluff of leaving the conference table has
failed it is important that the Soviets not achieve via arms
control what they sought to accomplish by political warfare.
The proposal apparently being discussed is to limit the
deployment of intermediate range missiles in Europe to 100
warheads on each side. The Soviet Union could retain 100
intermediate range warheads in Asia; the US could station
100 in the United States.

The following aspects of this projected agreement
raise profound concerns:

A. The 100 intermediate range missiles retained in America are meaningless. They can reach no target relevant either to the security situation in Europe or in Asia. They are likely to disappear under budgetary pressure over a period of time.

B. The essentially unimpaired Soviet deployment

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in Asia will be extremely unpalatable to Asian nations
especially to Japan and China.

C. The number of missiles left in Europe may be
too small to provide a link to the nuclear forces of the
United States. If one assumes that the missiles retained
would be of the type now stationed in the countries
concerned the proposed total would leave 20 Pershing
launchers each in Germany and Italy and 4 cruise missile
launchers each in Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain (since
each launcher has four cruise missiles.) These numbers may
appear to the Soviets capable of being wiped out in a first
strike. They may seem to the governments concerned not to
warrant the domestic cost of maintaining them. In other
words there could be a serious risk of agreeing uninten-
tionally to the irrelevancy or abandonment of the missile
deployment in Europe.

D. The reduction of the West's intermediate

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range capability will not significantly reduce the Soviet
nuclear threat to Europe. The SS-20 has in recent years been
supplemented and can be replaced by short and medium range
missiles. The danger exists that this withdrawal will
undermine any future European willingness to deploy
especially nuclear forces against Soviet opposition.
Governments that paid a heavy price for deploying the
missiles may find what is left too paltry to justify the
domestic turmoil. But since Italy, the Federal Republic and
Britain face elections within fifteen months no leader will
want to face the domestic uproar of having opposed the
proposed measure.

The Strategic Issues

The President's UN speech contained the following
elements of a complex proposal. Strategic warheads would
be reduced; it was later revealed to be to 8000 from 11,000.
At the same time the United States would agree to a

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moratorium on the deployment and systems testing of strategic
defense for seven years. Gorbachev has demanded that this
period be fifteen years.

The offensive limitations illustrate how slogans
can take on a life of their own. Administration spokesmen
have invoked the desirability of reductions so often that
the essential irrelevance of this cut may be submerged in
paeans of congratulations over the supposed "breakthrough."
By definition 8000 warheads do not reduce in any measurable
way the risks of nuclear war to the civilian population.
There are not 8000 targets worth attacking in the United
States with nuclear weapons and the absence of a defense
guarantees the attacker against any attrition.

Nor does the proposed level reduce the danger
of a first strike. With respect to landbased forces since
there are no additional restrictions on multiple warheads
the ratio of warheads to launchers will remain the same as

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now even while numbers are reduced. With respect to submarine
based forces their vulnerability will increase. Under the
proposed scheme the number of submarines would be reduced to
around 15 from the present 42. But anti-submarine forces
are not part of the agreement. Hence an unallotted defensive
force will have a submarine force reduced by 66%.

Technicians will have to determine whether this
increased vulnerability is strategically significant. For
present purposes it is enough to point out that whatever
importance the reductions have is largely symbolic. They
may do no damage; they cannot be said to improve the strategic
situation in any measurable way. I would see no reason not
to go ahead with them standing alone.

They surely do not justify the abandonment of the
Strategic Defense Initiative which in my view most likely
will be the consequence of the proposed moratorium.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with President Reagan's

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strong views on this subject will know that this is the last
result he is seeking. He appears to believe that a moratorium
with an agreed time limit would represent a Soviet approval
of deployment. He therefore is giving up little for an end
to Soviet harassment. I believe this view not to be supported
by any expression. President Reagan will have been out of
office for two terms when the moratorium ends. He cannot
possibly predict the reaction of his successor twice removed
under the certain pressures. The domestic opposition to
missile defense has remained consistent for two decades; so
has Soviet pressure against it. If the most popular
President of this century could not proceed with deployment
surely should one believe that a successor would not extend
the moratorium. After all no moratorium has ever been ended
by the United States--not even Salt II though we had refused
to ratify it and though it would lapse at the end of this
year even had it been ratified.

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Moreover the opponents of Strategic Defense will certainly work to avoid the contingency of deployment by seeking to reduce its budget. The military services will have little incentive to pursue a program that has no deployment schedule and which already is handicapped by the anomaly that being autonomous it has no service to defend it against public and Congressional pressures. The Soviets obviously having no such inhibitions are likely to make much more rapid progress on missile defense during a moratorium.

de facto
Whether the/abandonment of Strategic Defense is a misfortune depends of course on one's assessment of its significance. Many dedicated opponents of it agree that it is all a mirage anyway--though they fail to explain why the Soviets are so passionate about thwarting an irrelevant program. And they concentrate their activism on the straw-man of a leak-proof defense. There are many important objectives for strategic defense other than

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a perfect protection of the population: complicating the
calculations of an aggressor; protection against attacks
by third countries; protection against limited nuclear
blackmail. Above all I cannot believe that a democratic
public will indefinitely sustain a defense policy which
claims that security is based on the capacity for total
civilian devastation.

Whatever one's view of strategic defense if in
the early '90's the strategic forces of both sides comprise
8000 warheads and no strategic defenses (assuming the Soviets
do not cheat) the United States will be in a precarious
position. It must be assumed that under the relaxation of
tensions induced by the projected agreements there will be
little increase in conventional forces; there has after all
been very little in decades. The United States and its
allies will increasingly find themselves in a position
where they can extricate themselves from crises only

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by the use of nuclear weapons which they are afraid to use
because of their apocalyptic consequences. They may then
look back to this period with bafflement and regret about
letting slip the occasion for a more radical approach.

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Causes and Directions

It would be a mistake to blame this state of
affairs on particular individuals. It has organic roots
of long standing. One is the failure to develop a
machinery for developing national strategy. American
negotiating positions emerge from interdepartmental
contests; the relations between the State and Defense
Departments, rarely cordial in any Administration, are at
their nadir. More energy is spent in defending entrenched
positions than on defining national goals. The Pentagon
has developed a genius in the art of making proposals the
Soviets cannot accept and to state unfulfillable criteria;
in response or maybe in pursuit of underlying tendencies
the State Department has focused on negotiability, in other
on
words/what the other side has said it would accept. In
the vortex of these passions the President has to make
tactical decisions driven often by the imminence of a

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deadline and distilled out of arcane bureaucratic proposals designed to let each agency do what it wanted in the first place.

Congressional initiatives compound pressures.

The Congress has long since abandoned its historic oversight role and has moved towards legislating its tactical preferences especially in the House of Representatives. The conviction is widespread that arms control is best achieved by cutting the President's program or by gutting programs the Soviets have declared objectionable. In the '70's the then ABM program was reduced from twelve sites to two. The MX missile program was cut by President Reagan from 200 to 100 and by the Congress to 45--a number for which no military rationale is possible. The Strategic Defense Initiative is at this moment being emasculated in the Congress.

Two tendencies result: The Soviets may decide that they need not negotiate because the Congress will hand it its preferences for nothing. The Administration

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may make excessive concessions to get at least some quid pro quo for what otherwise will be abandoned for domestic reasons.

But however we reached this point the President can still turn the pre-summit and later summit to the benefit of peace if he imposes on Gorbachev the following principles:

A. Progress must be made on some of the political causes of tension. At a minimum the superpowers should assume specific restraints on their conduct in particular areas. Africa and Afghanistan could prove good starting points.

B. On arms control a linear numerical reduction of warheads is nearly irrelevant. To reduce the danger of surprise attack it is necessary to reduce and then eliminate heavy missiles.

C. A start must be made towards the eventual elimination of multiple warheads. This would enable

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significant reductions in planned defense deployments.

D. With respect to strategic defense the proposals should be reworked to keep the proposed moratorium from becoming a way to kill the program. The best solution would be not a moratorium but an agreement on limits to deployment in relation to drastically lowered offensive ceilings.

E. The current formula for the intermediate range missiles will mark the beginning of the end of a serious US strategic deployment in Europe--thus achieving a major goal. The proposal for 100 intermediate range missiles stationed in the United States is absurd. It should be reworked to provide for equality on the Eurasian land mass-- in other words to have the American warheads in Europe equal the entire Soviet intermediate range force. And the ceiling should probably be raised to a level in which the linkage between the nuclear defense of Europe and the US

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is maintained.

F. The heads of government are better advised to discuss their longterm purposes than to read arcane arms control numbers from papers prepared by technical staffs.

The forthcoming meeting can be of major importance.

But they must be tested not by the fact but by the content of agreements. It will be said--and not without merit--that agreements even of marginal consequence build confidence.

But at some point "confidence building" must lead to agreements that change reality rather than atmosphere. And to use a famous phrase of President Reagan's: If not now, when?