Holier-Than-Thou on Star Wars

By Strobe Talbott

There is an Ivan-One-Note quality to Soviet propaganda against the U.S. these days. Whatever the issue at hand -- trade, ideology, Third World instability -- Soviet spokesmen routinely find some way of working in a denunciation of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Part of the Soviet complaint is that SDI, commonly called Star Wars, has the potential of drastically changing the rules whereby the superpowers deter each other from starting a nuclear war.

For decades deterrence has rested on the threat of retaliation. Thus, for both sides, the ultimate defense has been the ultimate offense. Large-scale defenses on one side would make the other side less certain of being able to pose a credible threat of retaliation. That would undermine deterrence. In 1972 this principle was codified in the first treaty produced by the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), which severely limited the antiballistic- missile defenses of both sides. When Reagan unveiled Star Wars in 1983, he was challenging the assumption that the human race is condemned to rely for its survival on a suicide pact between two hostile states. He envisioned a comprehensive, impregnable system of exotic, space-based missile killers that would, in his phrase, render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." Some advocates of the program, however, would settle for a more modest shield designed to protect American missile sites.

SDI has been immensely controversial, and justifiably so. The old logic underlying "offense-dominated deterrence" has yet to be disproved. Conversely, the technical feasibility and strategic wisdom of substituting defenses for offenses has yet to be proved. Says former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, an early proponent of restrictions on ABMs: "The human mind has yet to conceive of a way to limit offense while at the same time permitting unlimited defense."

In an article published last week in the quarterly Foreign Affairs, another former Pentagon chief, James Schlesinger, criticized the Reagan Administration for prejudging what SDI scientists will find: "In an R&D effort, the normal behavior is to allow the technical uncertainties to be resolved before one reaches conclusions about force structures or strategy. In this case, the results are being announced in advance: a revolutionary change in strategic doctrine and the strategic relationships between the superpowers."

The Soviets treat SDI with a mixture of ridicule and alarmism and would like to see the Reagan Administration pressured by Congress and the NATO allies into abandoning the scheme altogether. They want the world to believe that the idea of strategic defense is something new under the sun, and that it emanates exclusively from the diabolical brains of American warmongers. In fact, the U.S.S.R. bears a large share of the blame for the renewed American interest in defenses. The Soviets have built up their offensive forces to a level that is difficult to justify as purely retaliatory. They have prompted concern that if present trends continue, the American deterrent may someday be vulnerable to a pre-emptive attack.

Moreover, the Soviets have invested as heavily in strategic defenses during the past 20 years as in strategic offenses. They have a network of antiaircraft defenses much more extensive than that of the U.S. The city of Moscow is protected by the world's only operational ABM system (permitted under SALT I). Washington, by contrast, is completely defenseless to missile attack, in keeping with the spirit of Mutual Assured Destruction.

Only now is the U.S. getting around to testing an antisatellite system, which might be a precursor to Star Wars; the Soviets already have an operational, albeit more primitive, ASAT. The Soviets are also experimenting with lasers that might be deployed in space. Challenged on that activity, they say, rather implausibly, that it is for "medical applications."

So much for the self-righteousness of the Soviet line on Star Wars. Equally phony is Moscow's insistence, at Geneva and elsewhere, that the U.S. must agree to a ban not just on the testing and deployment of high-tech defenses but on research as well. Such a prohibition cannot be monitored and enforced, since spy satellites cannot see what is going on in laboratories on the other side.

During SALT I, Soviet negotiators not only acknowledged the verification problem but were the ones who actively resisted restrictions on research. When the Defense Minister at the time, Andrei Grechko, testified on behalf of Soviet ratification of the ABM treaty in 1972, he stressed, approvingly, that the pact "imposes no limitations on the performance of research and experimental work aimed at resolving the problem of defending the country against nuclear missile attack."

The Kremlin's newfound desire to forbid research is almost surely a cynical bargaining ploy that the U.S.S.R. will abandon if the negotiations in Geneva ever turn serious. Privately, some Soviet officials are already hinting that , their side might settle for a moratorium on the testing and deployment of new defensive technologies, or perhaps an updated version of the 1972 ABM treaty that would set new limits on permissible levels of defense. Those are among the alternatives advocated by the more reasonable American critics of Star Wars, as long as the moratorium or updated ABM treaty is accompanied by significant reductions in Soviet offensive weapons. That outcome might enhance traditional deterrence, since it would reduce the vulnerability of American forces and avoid an escalation of competition in offensive and defensive systems alike.

To accept such a deal, the Reagan Administration would have to scale back considerably on its grandiose expectations for Star Wars. At the same time, however, the Soviets would have to stop making propaganda out of strategic defense and treat it instead as a serious issue for negotiation, which has arisen largely because of their military programs.