Suspended Conversations

If Andrei Gromyko's meeting with President Reagan is to lead to any substantive U.S.-Soviet bargaining on nuclear arms, it presumably would involve reopening in some form two sets of negotiations that broke off in Geneva at the end of 1983:

> The INF (for Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) talks. When they began in November 1981, the U.S. planned to install in Western Europe 572 single-warhead Pershing II and Tomahawk cruise missiles to counter Soviet deployment of triple-warhead SS-20 missiles (about 270 in place then, more than 370 now) that were or could be targeted at Western Europe. The opening U.S. position was the "zero option": no U.S. deployment, scrapping of the entire Soviet SS-20 force. Later Reagan proposed an "interim solution": if the Soviets would reduce the number of SS-20s, the U.S. would deploy fewer than 572 missiles, but still match the remaining SS-20s warhead for warhead. Moscow offered varying reductions in the number of SS-20s, if the U.S. would cancel its entire deployment. One proposal was to cut back to 162 Soviet missiles, matching the number in the independent British and French nuclear forces, which the U.S. insisted should be left out of the bargaining. The Soviets painted themselves into a corner by vowing never to accept the stationing of a single Pershing II or Tomahawk in Western Europe; once the U.S. deployment actually started, just before Thanksgiving in 1983, their own proclamations left them no choice but to break off the talks.

> The START (for Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) bargaining. These negotiations, which began in June 1982, concerned the long-range nuclear weapons that the U.S. and Soviet Union would fire directly at each other in war. The U.S. proposed a formula for reductions that would have forced extra-deep cuts in the number of Moscow's heavy land-based missiles, which one Soviet official described as "the absolute mainstays of our defense." In October 1983, under heavy pressure from congressional critics, Reagan incorporated into his proposal parts of an alternative idea, the "double build-down": each side would be required to destroy two or more older nuclear weapons for every new one added to its arsenal. The Soviets objected that the formula by which such reductions would have been calculated was weighted against them.

Throughout the talks, Moscow clung to a proposal to establish ceilings on strategic "launchers" (missile silos, submarine missile-launching tubes, intercontinental bombers) lower than those set by the SALT II treaty. The U.S. complained that the Kremlin would retain a long lead in monster land-based missiles. The Reagan Administration regards these as the most "destabilizing" and dangerous nuclear weapons because they could deliver a devastating first strike. Unlike the INF talks, the START negotiations were never formally ended. But after the deployment of U.S. Pershing II and Tomahawk missiles in Europe began, the Soviets contended that they would have to reassess the global nuclear balance before proposing a date to restart START. Twenty-two months later they still show no signs of ever doing so.

Thus, while the two sets of negotiations were officially separate, they inevitably affected each other. If they are ever resumed, separately or together, agreement seems possible only on the basis of a comprehensive deal involving intermediate-range and strategic weapons, land-based and submarine-based systems, bombers, ballistic and cruise missiles--the works.