SALT: SIGNS OF A NEW SAVOR

IN almost total secrecy, President Nixon made contact with "highest-level" Soviet officials last January, among them Premier Aleksei Kosygin. The talks continued until last week, when Nixon--and the Soviets--finally broke silence. Appearing briefly on TV, the President announced a "significant development" in ending the deadlock in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. After 18 months of probing, the U.S. and Russia had reached an agreement on how to proceed toward limiting nuclear weapons. It was, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

By its announcement, the White House intended--as one aide put it --to administer a "kick in the tail" to negotiators at the fourth round of SALT talks in Vienna. The diplomats, who are to recess shortly, were only too happy to get the boot; when they reconvene in Helsinki this summer, they will at last have something solid to discuss. One serious obstacle to an arms-limitation treaty had been overcome. In past talks, the U.S. had insisted upon putting a ceiling on both offensive and defensive nuclear weapons; it was especially fearful of the huge, 25-megaton Soviet S59 intercontinental ballistic missile, which is capable of destroying U.S. Minuteman sites. The Soviets, on the other hand, wanted to concentrate on a reduction of defensive weapons only--anti-ballistic missiles that would protect U.S. ICBMs against Russian attack. Now Washington and Moscow linked the two types of weapons; the U.S. agreed to concentrate on the ABMs, while the Russians agreed to work (although, it would seem, more slowly) on some limitation of offensive weapons. Which side had made the bigger concession? Some congressional skeptics think that it was the U.S., but that simply is not clear yet. Both countries are running certain risks for peace. But those risks seem far smaller than the dangers of an ever-spiraling, ever more costly arms race.

Penetrating Galosh. To be sure, the U.S. and the Soviet Union have arrived at little more than a modus operandi for further talks. Nixon said as much: "Intensive negotiations will be required to translate this understanding into a concrete agreement." If a step has been taken that may reduce the quantity of nuclear weapons, their quality is still beyond control; both nations are free to continue improving the deadly efficacy of their nuclear armory. The Soviets underlined the tentative nature of the accord by announcing it with considerably less fanfare than Nixon did. Though it was read by a Soviet newscaster at the same time that the President appeared on TV, the news was omitted from subsequent Soviet broadcasts.

No details of the agreement can be hammered out until the SALT negotiations resume. The U.S. is willing to allow the ABM protection of Moscow to expand slightly; in return, it expects to retain some of the four Safeguard sites currently under way to protect American ICBM silos. Now in its initial stages, after barely gaining congressional approval, the ABM program can be modified to fit any possible agreement. Until an accord is reached, the U.S. intends to go ahead with additional ABM sites as well as with the deployment of MIRV, multiwarhead missiles designed to penetrate the Soviet Galosh (ABM) network. Said Defense Secretary Melvin Laird: "It is clear that our strength has made possible the hope for success at SALT."

All this took place against the background of the battle over Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's proposal to cut U.S. troops in Europe by one-halt. It was an ill-advised and ill-timed proposal, but some Nixon critics feel that the President greatly overreacted. As part of the counterattack on Mansfield, the Administration sought to link the arms limitation issue with the troop reduction issue. During the talks, the Russians have insisted that American nuclear weapons in Europe--aboard Sixth Fleet carriers in the Mediterranean, for example--must be included in any arms-limitation agreement. The U.S. has argued that these weapons should be reduced only if the Soviets shave their armaments in Europe as well, including medium-range nuclear missiles. These questions may be taken up in multilateral negotiations among the NATO and Warsaw Pact nations. A unilateral withdrawal of troops would obviously weaken the position of the U.S. in striking a bargain with Russia.

Happily for Nixon, Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev inadvertently came to the rescue of the Administration. He made a speech calling for serious discussion of mutual reduction of forces in Europe. Then he hit the point even harder when Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau went to Moscow last week to sign a pact of mutual cooperation with the Soviets. Both Brezhnev and Kosygin suggested to Trudeau that they wanted to pare their swollen defense budget and put the money into sorely needed housing. Thus they helped kill whatever chance the Mansfield amendment may once have had. It was handily defeated in the Senate, 61 to 36, and compromise amendments were voted down as well.* In the process, however, Nixon used up a lot of his credit with Congress. "I'll say they overreacted," Republican Senator George Aiken complained of the Administration. "All they were missing was Hannibal saying that we needed more elephants to cross the Alps for NATO."

For that matter, even some of the venerable pachyderms Nixon herded to Washington to defend his foreign policy quickly wearied of the hard sell. John J. McCloy, who was once considered unofficial president of the Eastern Establishment, grew so restless during a long lecture by Nixon that he started flipping his pencil into the air. Finally, by one participant's account, he blurted out to Dean Acheson: "Why, this man is telling us things that we all knew when he was still in those dreadful California suits." When Nixon called for a break to have a group picture taken, Acheson added to the snobbery of the occasion: "No, Mr. President," he commanded, "we will not have our picture taken." Glancing at the bristling Acheson mustache, Nixon gave up.

Some Democratic Senators were so nettled by the President's secretiveness that they suspected that the whole agreement was merely a ruse to gain support for continued spending on ABM. Their rebellion is explained less by neo-isolationism than by their growing sense of impotence in foreign policy making (see TIME ESSAY). Nixon might have spared himself considerable trouble if he had let a few key Senators know what he was up to. Mansfield, for example, was rather vaguely informed only hours before the Senate vote.

No Euphoria. All in all, Nixon had staged quite a glittering display of presidential power. While taking obvious pride in what he had achieved, the President and his men were careful not to overstate it. "We have no false sense of euphoria and no jubilant sense of victory," cautioned a White House aide. Yet by its optimistic plan, the White House hopes to reach an agreement by the end of this year that will definitely put some limit on ABMs and SS-9s. After that, who can say? Maybe a triumphant pre-election trip to Moscow to sign a historic disarmament treaty with Brezhnev and Kosygin.

This dream will be put to the test when the SALT talks resume in July. Then it will soon become evident whether the Soviets are negotiating in good faith, and whether at last the two superpowers can begin to limit the nuclear weaponry that has threatened the survival of the world for more than a generation.

* The Administration was handed one defeat last week when the Senate voted 58 to 37 to reject an $85 million House appropriation for the SST. Helping persuade the Senate to take this action was none other than Boeing's board chairman, William M. Allen, who candidly admitted that it would cost between $500 million and $1 billion to revive the project.

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