Reading the Geneva Barometer

As the U.S. and the Soviets warily size up each other's weaponry, the overriding question of whether those arms will ever be the tools of Armageddon depends, of course, on how the two superpowers get along. Increasingly, the SALT negotiations have taken on a meaning beyond their direct purpose of curtailing a nuclear weapons race. They have become the most telling barometer of the future of U.S.-Soviet relations.

A new round in those 7 1/2 years of talks opened with preliminary discussions in Geneva last week. The outcome, once Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko sit down at the conference table, could well cause the atmospheric pressure between the two nations to rise rapidly or fall. The surface winds out of the East are blustery. Writing in Pravda, Soviet Defense Minister Marshal Dmitri Ustinov charged that "aggressive imperialist forces are speeding up the arms race" and trying to "impede positive changes in international relations."

Iron Pants. Progress will not be easy. The chill that developed between Washington and Moscow when Jimmy Carter criticized repression of Soviet dissidents deepened in March with Party Chairman Leonid Brezhnev's brusque refusal to consider the new Administration's pioneering proposals for a sweeping reduction of nuclear weapons. Brezhnev's "nyet," however, put the Soviet Union on the defensive, and Moscow has since been working hard at trying to show it is not stonewalling on arms limitation. Earlier this month, three top Soviet Americanologists visited the U.S. in hopes of convincing Congressmen and Administration officials that Russia was not being obstinate. Publicly, Brezhnev says he thinks that "a reasonable accommodation is possible" at Geneva.

It was in this atmosphere last week that Paul Warnke, the chief U.S. SALT negotiator, sat down with his opposite number from Moscow, Vladimir Semyonov, a veteran of the talks whose past bargaining-table obstinacy has gained him the nickname "Iron Pants."

The Kremlin seems intent on formally concluding the provisional SALT II agreement reached by Gerald Ford and Brezhnev at Vladivostok in 1974.

It placed a relatively high ceiling on the number of various nuclear weapons each side could deploy and did not call for significant dismantling of any existing arms. The U.S. would prefer to cut those limits further and ban various types of technological improvements on permissible systems. Some accord is urgent since the SALT I agreement of 1972, which limited defensive nuclear weapons systems (antiballistic missiles), will run out in October.

The initial talks were concerned with each side's fear that the other might find ways to cheat on any new agreement. The U.S. seeks some on-site means of detecting whether a missile is MIRVed -- equipped to carry more than one independently targetable warhead --and wants the Russians to provide more information on its weapons generally and to agree to ban the deliberate concealment of launch sites. The Soviet negotiators seek assurance that the U.S. will not evade SALT limits by shipping weapons to its NATO allies.

The proposals on the table:

1) Ratification of Vladivostok and acceptance of the Soviet claim that the U.S. cruise missile must be counted as a system to be limited;

2) A so-called quick fix, in which Vladivostok would be ratified and the sticky cruise problem would be deferred;

3) Something approximating the "deep cuts" proposed by Carter but summarily opposed by Russia.

Probably the best that can be expected at Geneva is what Warnke calls "some sort of a synthesis" of these positions. He told TIME that the Soviets have floated an idea to limit the testing of new missiles and that this would "make a big difference" in the bargaining. If some such accord is reached, more drastic limitations could be reserved for an anticipated SALT III agreement--and U.S.-Soviet relations would be back on a closer course. A stalemate at Geneva, however, would signal a deep and not easily repairable disintegration of that troubled experiment known as detente.

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