ATbugher Stand for START

By Strobe Talbott

At the other Geneva arms talks, the U.S. digs in

While negotiators smiled and photographers clicked at the reopening of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) talks last week in Geneva, participants in the city's other continuing arms-control drama, the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, were themselves preparing to return to the negotiating table this week after a two-month recess. START, which deals with long-range nuclear weaponry, is already unique in the history of arms control between the superpowers. Normally, each side makes a tough, deliberately one-sided opening proposal that gradually becomes more equitable and flexible as the give-and-take proceeds. The opposite has happened with START, at least on the American side. In the course of the negotiations, the Reagan Administration's position has hardened. The chief U.S. negotiator, Ambassador Edward Rowny, 65, must now press for a list of Soviet concessions that has grown longer and more stringent than the measures he originally presented last summer.

That opening proposal, initially sketched by President Reagan in a speech last May at Eureka College, his Illinois alma mater, reflected two strongly held Administration convictions: first, that the Soviet Union had moved dangerously ahead in the nuclear arms race; second, that any START agreement must consequently cut existing Soviet forces, particularly land-based, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), while leaving the U.S. free to catch up by adding to its own arsenal.

More specifically, the U.S. opening proposal was directed at ICBMS. It was thus unabashedly designed to squeeze the mostly land-based Soviet arsenal not just into something smaller, but into a different shape. At the same time, the proposal was neatly tailored to favor a revamped American deterrent featuring the MX missile on land and the Trident II at sea, both of which are still under development. The U.S., which has put much of its missile force aboard aircraft and submarines, is already below the proposal's limit of 2,500 land-based warheads for each side. The Soviets are well above that ceiling.

Since last summer, Rowny's instructions have been amended in a way that is likely to make his job much tougher. In addition to trying to cut Soviet warheads by more than half from the level allowed by SALT in, the U.S. is now insisting that the Soviets reduce by two-thirds the number of launchers for their two most modern and powerful ICBMS, the SS-19, which can carry six warheads each, and the SS-18, which can carry ten.

This new requirement, which was inserted into the U.S. proposal last fall largely at the behest of the Pentagon, is intended to restrict Soviet strength by still another measure: ballistic missile "throw weight," the cumulative power to hurtle megatons of destruction at targets thousands of miles away in a matter of minutes. Because they have invested so heavily in large land-based ballistic missiles, the Soviets have a 3-to-1 advantage over the U.S. in throw weight. In his Eureka speech, Reagan said that in some undefined second phase of the START talks he would seek to eliminate that disparity. Those experts inside and outside the Administration who want the U.S. START proposal to become more negotiable were hoping that Reagan's second-phase requirement for limiting throw weight would fade away. If anything, however, it has become more central to Rowny's mandate in Geneva.

Rowny, a retired Army general who was a negotiator-turned-opponent of the SALT II treaty, refuses to comment on previously unpublicized details of the U.S. position, such as the restrictions on SS-18s and SS-19s. But he defends the attempt to limit Soviet throw weight. "Warheads and throw weight go hand in hand," he said in an interview with TIME on the eve of his departure for Geneva. While calling his job "one of the toughest around," Rowny is convinced that for reasons of their own military self-interest, the Soviets may yet accept an agreement based on the U.S. proposal. Says Rowny: "What we're asking them to do is pay now and buy later."

Under this theory the U.S.S.R. "pays" by cutting its land-based warheads in half, and its most potent ICBMs and its ballistic missile throw weight by two-thirds. But the Kremlin can then "buy" reductions in the menacing new weapon ry the U.S. intends to deploy later in the decade. For example, says Rowny, while the Trident II program will go forward in any event, the Soviets might face twice as many Trident II warheads without a START treaty.

Something else the Soviets can buy if they accept the American approach, says Rowny, is "the opportunity to talk further about our follow-on weapons, in which we have a technological advantage over them, such as cruise missiles and the ATB [Advanced Technology, or Stealth, radar-invisible bomber]." So far, however, the U.S. is not offering specific restrictions in those future systems to match the very specific cuts it is demanding in the existing Soviet weapons.

Moreover, the U.S. intends to begin in stalling 572 new medium-range Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe later this year. Even though these weapons are on the agenda of the stale mated INF talks, the Soviets consider them a strategic threat, since they can reach into the U.S.S.R. In that sense, INF and START are clearly linked. Thus, as the U.S. position hardens at START, the implications for INF are inauspicious.

Nor is the MX a bargaining chip, Rowny insists; with or without START, the U.S. must have the MX to "modernize" its deterrent. The principal American ICBM now in service, the Minuteman III, is "not a modern system," he says. "It's obsolescent -- a Model T Ford. Even with the Mk 12-A [its improved, highly accurate, triple warhead], it's only a Model A. Minuteman doesn't begin to match the Thunderbirds on the Soviet side, especially the SS-18 and -19."

Most government experts believe that Rowny is excessively poor-mouthing the Minuteman, which is actually a formidable weapon in its own right. Be that as it may, Rowny says, "we must have at least 100 MXs in our mix offerees." Should the MX fail to survive public and congressional opinion, he warns, "we would have to reassess our START proposal." That could only mean demanding an even higher price up front from the Soviets, making the talks even more difficult. But Rowny feels there would be no other choice: "Otherwise the result will not be equality, which is what these negotiations are all about."

Rowny notes that his very name commits him to that goal: Rowny is Polish for "equal, straight and true." He is prepared to live up to his name at Geneva, whether the straightforward pursuit of what he and the President consider equality leads to an agreement or not. -- By Strobe Talbott This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.