East-West Carrot and Stick

On the eve of the resumption of dis- armament negotiations in Geneva last week, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev mixed some tough talk on the nuclear arms race with conciliatory noises about the need for East-West detente. During a meeting in Moscow with former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, Gorbachev dismissed the first round of the Geneva negotiations, completed in April, as "completely fruitless" and insisted that U.S. plans for space weapons, or Star Wars, research would "dramatically increase the threat of a truly global, all-destroying military conflict."

Two days later, in talks with another visitor, Italian Prime Minister Benedetto Craxi, Gorbachev delivered an even blunter message. U.S. refusal to halt the Star Wars program, he warned, could lead to not only "the subversion of the Geneva talks but the scrapping of every prospect for an end to the arms race."

If that represented Moscow's stick, Gorbachev also held out a carrot. At a dinner for Craxi, Gorbachev called for a revival of "the spirit, the atmosphere and the essence of detente" and promised that "the (arms reduction) proposals made by us some time ago are still standing." He renewed an offer to shrink the number of Europe-based Soviet missiles to 162, equal to that of British and French nuclear missiles; he also revived a 1983 proposal to freeze Soviet intermediate-range-missile deployment in Asia if nuclear cuts could be achieved in Europe. The U.S. has previously rejected both proposals. Gorbachev also hinted that he would like to see direct relations, presumably to facilitate commerce, between the European Community and COMECON, the East bloc trading group.

Gorbachev's overtures were clearly aimed at Western Europe. Some analysts assume that he is trying to encourage anti-Star Wars sentiment in member states of the Western alliance by linking missile reductions in Europe to abandonment of the U.S. space-weapons scheme. According to a West European diplomat in Moscow, Gorbachev may "try to separate at least parts of Europe from the U.S. on the subject of Star Wars."

A similar approach by the Soviets backfired the last time they used it, during the 1983 controversy over the deployment in Western Europe of U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles. But Moscow apparently thinks it worth another try. Brandt, whose Social Democratic Party opposes the Star Wars plan, offered Gorbachev some comfort by suggesting that the Geneva talks would go nowhere until the superpowers agree that space weapons and nuclear-missiles issues are "interrelated." Craxi, for his part, cautioned the Soviet leader against taking hard positions and proposed that the three subjects under discussion in Geneva -- space weapons, strategic nuclear arms and Europe-based intermediate-range missiles -- could be approached at differing speeds.

As the second six-week phase of the arms-control talks began in midweek, Max Kampelman, the chief U.S. negotiator, said that he had returned from Washington armed with "negotiating flexibility"; his Soviet counterpart, Viktor Karpov, described himself as a "practical optimist." Nonetheless, the prognosis for progress was gloomy. Reagan shows no inclination to back down on Star Wars. Indeed, two U.S. arms-control officials suggested last week that the 1972 antiballistic-missile treaty might have to be revised to accommodate space technologies. As Brandt said after his Moscow visit, "It will be very, very difficult to find a common denominator." At any speed.