East-West War of Words

By William E. Smith

Some loose talk triggers an avalanche of anxiety and accusation

The mood was easy, the conversation relaxed, as Ronald Reagan lunched at the White House with a small group of out-of-town newspaper editors. Was it possible, wondered one of the visitors, to have a limited exchange of nuclear weapons without setting off a nuclear war?

The President casually replied, "I don't honestly know." He went on to say that as long as you have "that kind of a stalemate" in which "the only defense is, well, you shoot yours and we'll shoot ours," then "I could see where you could have the exchange of tactical weapons against troops in the field without its bringing either one of the major powers to pushing the button."

The President then added: "I do have to point out that everything that has been said and everything in their manuals indicates that unlike us, the Soviet Union believes that a nuclear war is possible, and they believe it is winnable."

For about 48 hours after the President made these remarks, nobody paid much attention. In the first place, they were embargoed for two days in order to give the visiting editors a chance to write their stories. But besides that, the reporters who regularly cover the President were used to hearing him muse vaguely about policy matters, and, more to the point, his remarks represented no change in U.S. military policy. However carelessly he may have spoken, Reagan was simply restating a tenet of the doctrine of "flexible response" that both the U.S. and its European allies accepted years ago: the use of tactical nuclear weapons would not necessarily lead to nuclear holocaust. If the Soviets were to attack in Europe with their overwhelming superiority in conventional arms, NATO could choose to respond on the battlefield with tactical nuclear weapons, a threat meant to deter any invasion in the first place.

But all last week, as the President's words were reported, misreported and exaggerated, they detonated on the other side of the Atlantic. Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev seized upon Reagan's remarks to try to show that the U.S. was willing to use weapons that would inevitably bring on the holocaust. Said Brezhnev:

"Only he who has decided to commit suicide can start a nuclear war in the hope of emerging a victor from it. No matter what might the attacker possesses, no matter what method of unleashing nuclear war he chooses, he will not attain his aims. Retribution will ensue ineluctably."

The next day, TASS, the official Soviet news agency, used Reagan's remarks to exploit the swelling movement of neutralism and pacifism in Europe that is suspicious of U.S. intentions. Declared TASS: "The U.S. would like Western Europe to face all the risks of a thermonuclear catastrophe while the U.S. keeps away from it."

In West Germany, Reagan's comments came at a particularly bad time. Only a fortnight ago, 250,000 people marched on Bonn protesting nuclear weapons. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt favors the deployment of 108 U.S.-made Pershing II and 96 cruise missiles by 1983 in order to counterbalance Soviet SS-20s targeted at Europe. But he is strongly opposed on this issue by an important faction of his Social Democratic Party. Indeed, growing popular opposition to Schmidt's endorsement of the medium-range missiles threatens to push him into early retirement. Willi Piecyk, chairman of the S.P.D. Young Socialists, warned that Reagan's ideas of nuclear strategy have reached "the level of danger to us all."

After Reagan's remarks, some of Schmidt's Cabinet members told him that they were concerned about the matter, and the Chancellor acknowledged that Reagan's statements had been "possibly ambiguous." But Schmidt then reaffirmed his belief that the President's interpretation of NATO strategy "did not call the slightest detail into question."

In France, the Communist daily L'Humanite took the opportunity to attack Reagan and to attract attention to the peace march held in Paris last Sunday. Beneath a front-page photograph of Reagan before a mushroom cloud, the paper ran the giant headline: NO EUROSHIMA! But the government of President Franc,ois Mitterrand supported its American ally.

At Gleneagles, Scotland, NATO defense ministers endorsed the doctrine of "flexible response" and the NATO plan for deployment of the theater nuclear weapons. But implicitly recognizing the growing power of the neutralists, the NATO ministers' communique also supported a plan favored by the peace movement, the so-called "zero solution" under which both Soviet and American theater nuclear weapons would be removed.

At midweek, the White House decided to try to set the record straight on what the President had meant. While not flatly reiterating the point that the U.S. and its NATO allies could try to stem a Soviet conventional attack on Europe by the use of tactical nuclear weapons, Reagan did say, "Our strategy remains one of flexible response: maintaining an assured military capability to deter the use of force, conventional or nuclear, by the Warsaw Pact, at the lowest possible level." Reagan went on to say: "In a nuclear war, all mankind would lose." And he warned the Soviets that "no aggressor should believe that the use of nuclear weapons in Europe could reasonably be limited to Europe."

Taking issue with the TASS statement, Reagan also declared: "The suggestion that the U.S. could even consider fighting a nuclear war at Europe's expense is an outright deception. We regard any military threat to Europe as a threat to the U.S. itself; 375,000 U.S. servicemen [stationed in Europe] provide the living guarantee of this unshakable U.S. commitment to the peace and security of Europe."

While the furor over Reagan's remarks was heating up, Major General Robert Schweitzer, the top defense specialist for the National Security Council, added to the confusion about U.S. views when he said in a speech that the Soviets are "on the move" and "are going to strike" against Poland and the oilfields of the Persian Gulf. The White House immediately disavowed Schweitzer's remarks as being "off the wall." National Security Adviser Richard Allen, who had not cleared the speech, quickly removed Schweitzer from the council and sent him back to the Pentagon for reassignment.

Although they were wildly misinterpreted and overplayed, Reagan's remarks showed again that he has not learned to be careful about what he says in order to save the nation, its allies and himself unnecessary problems. Said one British Cabinet minister last week: "The President has a special responsibility to weigh his words more carefully than anyone else. You simply cannot afford, if you are the President, to make off-the-cuff statements in that most dangerous of all areas, the doctrines of nuclear war."

Late last week in London, U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger warned Western Europeans of the dangers of appeasement, asking whether the alliance still had the will to meet a military challenge from the Soviet Union. But perhaps the most distressing aspect of the force-fed controversy over Reagan's remarks was that it showed how willing so many Europeans were to think so badly of U.S. intentions. One of the fundamental tasks of the Administration is to convince Europe of its basic faith in the alliance so that tiny tempests, like the one that boiled up last week, stay in the teapot. --By William E. Smith.

Reported by Bruce W. Nelan/Gleneagles and Gregory H. Wierzynski/Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Bruce W. Nelan, Gregory H. Wierzynski, other bureaus

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