Putting It on the Table

By William R. Doerner

When Max Kampelman of the U.S. and Victor Karpov of the Soviet Union take their seats at a table in Geneva next week, they will be marking the end of a superpower standoff that has lasted for 15 uneasy months. The possessors of the world's two mightiest arsenals of doomsday weapons will once again be formally seeking agreement on ways to control their destructive power. No miracles are expected: nuclear negotiations over the past 22 years have occasionally resulted in limits on future stockpiles, but never in deep reductions of current ones. Yet the U.S. is convinced that the new round of talks is not just necessary but urgent. Said Secretary of State George Shultz last week: "This may be the last time to really address some of these issues with any prospect of success."

Though there is no shortage of unresolved business from prior attempts at arms control, the Geneva negotiations seem certain to be dominated by a major new issue, one that could profoundly alter the nature of the arms race. That issue is Star Wars, Ronald Reagan's cherished plan to render offensive nuclear missiles "impotent and obsolete" by constructing a defensive shield based in outer space. Officially termed the Strategic Defense Initiative, Star Wars would employ a variety of still emerging technologies, including laser beams and high-energy particles, to shoot down attacking warheads before they reach their targets in the U.S.

Ironically, even though the Soviets are as devout in their opposition to Star Wars as Reagan is in his support, it was S.D.I. that evidently prompted Moscow to return to the bargaining table. The Soviets walked away from negotiations in late 1983 to protest U.S. deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles on NATO territory in Western Europe. Moscow vowed that it would not resume the talks until Washington withdrew the offending weapons, even though the Soviets maintain a similar stockpile of their own. Later, increasingly alarmed by the Reagan Administration's deepening commitment to a space-based defense system, the Soviets proposed convening a separate round of talks aimed at controlling these weapons alone. The Soviets are more worried about strategic defenses than about new American offensive weapons like the MX. They already have in their arsenal counterparts to the MX, while an all-out competition in defensive systems would require vast new expenditures and a drastic restructuring of their forces. The U.S. refused to negotiate on space alone. The Administration pointed out that the Soviet buildup in offensive weapons and ground-based defenses has upset the superpower relationship, and therefore those systems must be addressed in new talks.

At a meeting between Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in January, the Soviets agreed to a broader agenda. In addition to addressing the Star Wars issue, the new arms negotiations will reopen the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and negotiations on Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF), which centered on Europe-based nuclear missiles. While not ruling out Star Wars as a matter for discussion, Reagan has said publicly that it is not a bargaining chip to be traded away for progress on other issues. That is an understandable stipulation: whether or not Reagan would be willing to negotiate Star Wars, it would make no sense to do so before sitting down at the bargaining table.

Washington reverberated last week with varying assessments of the negotiations, few of them hopeful, as a long line of Administration officials appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees. Paul Nitze, Shultz's senior arms-control adviser, predicted cautiously that "it will be difficult to move rapidly toward radical reductions" of offensive weapons, "but not impossible." As for the Soviet aim of restricting the development of space-based weapons, Nitze declared that there is little room for bargaining. Said Nitze: "S.D.I. as a research program cannot logically be limited by agreement because there is no way you can identify or verify it."

The atmosphere around the negotiating table is not likely to be improved by the Administration's determination to "get satisfaction," as one official put it, on apparent Soviet violations of past Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) treaties. One example: the construction of a huge radar facility at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia that could be used as a defensive warning system, in violation of the 1972 antiballistic missile (ABM) treaty. Richard Perle, a critic of past arms-control measures, charged last week that the U.S. has allowed the Soviets to "think they could play fast and loose with these accords."

Another potential side issue that arose was a White House campaign linking progress in Geneva to the MX missile. Attacked by critics for its high cost and questionable basing mode, the missile is scheduled for a series of crucial funding votes in Congress in the weeks after the arms talks resume in Geneva. Without congressional approval of the MX, argued Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, "the Soviets have little incentive to negotiate seriously." Complains Georgi Arbatov, director of Moscow's Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada: "It looks more and more as if the new negotiations are being used by the Reagan Administration merely to get more money from Congress for its military programs."

There was one sign of U.S. conciliation. The Defense Department, citing "technical reasons," announced that the U.S. will postpone until June tests scheduled to begin this month on a new antisatellite weapon (ASAT). The ASAT device will probably be the subject of early discussions in Geneva, since it is the only space weapon that both sides agree is immediately negotiable.

Nor was the Soviets' pre-Geneva rhetoric calculated to create soaring expectations. Having promised that his nation would campaign against Star Wars "at the top of its voice," Gromyko did precisely that in person in Western Europe. During a three-day visit to Rome, he reportedly warned Giulio Andreotti, his Italian counterpart, that U.S. renunciation of its space defense plan was "absolutely essential." Moreover, Gromyko's performance in Rome was merely the opening shot in a propaganda campaign against Star Wars that seems likely to grow even shriller than the "peace" campaign of the early '80s, which was aimed at preventing U.S. deployment of medium-range missiles in Western Europe. Said a leading West German defense analyst: "I have never seen Soviet officials so emotional as they are over Star Wars."

But the idea of a nonnuclear defense, practicable or not, has an appeal that will make it difficult for the Kremlin to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its allies. Though Andreotti told Gromyko that Italy shares Soviet concern about the presence of military weapons in space, he firmly defended the U.S. right to proceed with research on Star Wars technology. Britain and West Germany, while still harboring strong doubts about eventual deployment, have independently grown more interested in the research program's industrial potential; one key West German defense official predicts that it will lead to "a third technological revolution." French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas proclaimed that the S.D.I. contains "an element of seduction."

Clouding the arms talks was the continuing leadership muddle in the Kremlin. President Konstantin Chernenko was seen twice on Soviet television last week, ending a public disappearance that lasted nearly two months, but the taped glimpses only served to heighten concern about his poor health. Chernenko, who is believed to suffer from emphysema, looked wan and frail in both appearances; in one, he seemed to be breathing with difficulty. Though he had professed to be hopeful about the outlook for arms negotiations in a speech that was read in his name a few days earlier, the TV footage made his ability to supply day-to-day direction seem more questionable than ever.

The U.S. delegation in Geneva will number more than 70 aides and advisers, divided into a trio of subgroups coinciding with the three negotiating areas. Besides Kampelman, who will be chief negotiator and preside at the U.S. side on Star Wars discussions, the other key arms envoys are former Senator John Tower (START) and Career Diplomat Maynard Glitman (INF). Kampelman declined to estimate the length of the new negotiations. His view: "We must be prepared to stay at the negotiating table one day longer than the Soviets."

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow and Johanna McGeary/Washington