GRAND COMPROMISE

By Strobe Talbott

President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative has had a stunningly paradoxical effect on arms control. The American effort to create a shield against enemy missiles has given the Soviets a fresh incentive to develop new offensive weapons that would burst the remaining bonds of the arms-control process, which has been in stalemate. Yet it has also given the Soviets an incentive to return to the bargaining table and offer serious proposals in the hope of tightening the bonds of arms control around SDI itself. If there is a summit in November or December, Reagan the Star Warrior might be able to extract from Mikhail Gorbachev an agreement-in-principle for a trade-off between existing Soviet offensive forces and the American SDI while it is still only a gleam in the President's eye. Since there are reasons to question whether SDI is scientifically feasible or strategically wise, restricting the program to research in exchange for significant reductions in the most threatening Soviet weapons could be the deal of the century. Because of his awesome political strength, Reagan is in a unique position to cut that deal with the Kremlin and win the approval of Congress. But to do so, he will require not only the luck and acumen he has already demonstrated in such abundance but a clearer understanding than he has shown to date of both the risks and opportunities he faces as a result of SDI. He will also need a firmer ability to control the unruly, ideologically divided bureaucracy over which he presides. Both the case against SDI and the considerable leverage it gives the U.S. in arms control stem from the peculiar nature of nuclear weapons. Because they are too powerful to use and too powerful to defend against, nuclear weapons are selfdeterring. The two nations that possess such huge arsenals of last resort dare not go to war against each other. As Stanford Physicist Sidney Drell put it during the TIME conference, mutual assured destruction (MAD) ''is not a policy but a condition.'' There is something almost poetic in the concept: for the first time in history, two major enemies have kept the peace by keeping themselves vulnerable. Not that either is comfortable with that vulnerability. But previous attempts to seek defensive protection from nuclear delivery systems have merely spawned new types of such systems. In the 1950s and '60s, the superpowers threatened each other with bombers and defended themselves with antiaircraft installations. But air defenses only stimulated the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Then both sides developed antiballistic missiles, but they soon learned that these could be overwhelmed by missiles with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles, known as MIRVs. The way in which ABMs provoked MIRVs is the classic paradigm of an ''offense-defense spiral.'' The resulting proliferation of MIRVs has been one of the most disruptive factors in both the preservation of strategic stability and the quest for arms control. Today the stockpiles of the superpowers are roughly comparable in overall size, and the U.S. has an edge in some weapons (such as cruise missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles). But the Soviets have an advantage in a key category: accurate, destructive warheads on ICBMs. They have more than 6,000, compared with some 2,000 for the U.S. Those are the ''silo busters,'' the instruments of a hypothetical first-strike threat against America's 1,000 ICBM launchers. This Soviet preponderance in ICBM warheads contributed to Reagan's disenchantment with Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) as well as to his enthusiasm for SDI. For years he had questioned the efficacy and morality of MAD. Was not there a better way to keep the nuclear peace than through a suicide pact? Wasn't there some way to mount a defense that really would defend against all those Soviet weapons? This was a legitimate question, one that has gnawed since the dawn of the nuclear age. But more than three years and $4.7 billion after Reagan's Star Wars speech of March 1983, there is no evidence that the answer this time is yes. Even if SDI could theoretically create a system that is survivable (i.e., invulnerable to a crippling pre-emptive attack) and cost-effective at the margin (cheaper to maintain than the enemy's offensive countermeasures)--and there is no evidence yet that this is possible--the situation would not last long. While one side is perfecting its defenses, the other is working feverishly on countermeasures--and very likely nuclear countermeasures, precisely because those are probably going to be the most cost-effective. It may be a permanent fact of the nuclear age that offense wins. No matter what SDI produces in the way of lasers and particle beams, the Soviets' nuclear offense--unless it is constrained by arms-control agreements--will eventually be able to ''beat'' Reagan's ray guns just as it beat Ike's antiaircraft system and Nixon's ABMs. In an attempt to deal with that dilemma, some officials have linked SDI to arms control: the superpowers should agree to an orderly, regulated transition from the MAD world of ''offense-dominant'' deterrence to one of ''defense-dominant'' deterrence; while developing and phasing in their defenses, they would reduce their offenses. That scheme, however, leads straight into another dilemma. One side's defenses are virtually certain to appear more ominous to the other side than they are intended. How can the Soviets be expected to reduce their offensive weapons when they need those weapons--and more-- to overcome burgeoning American defenses? Says former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger: ''By asking the Soviets to reduce offense while we pose to them the possibility of greatly increased American defense, the Administration has created a situation in which the Soviets cannot accommodate the U.S. even if they wanted to.'' The question of the hour--and of the coming months--is to what extent the Soviets might be willing to accommodate the U.S. in order to head off SDI. This possibility is sometimes called the ''grand compromise.'' Such a deal could accomplish what Reagan proclaimed as his goal when he sought to replace SALT with the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks during his first term. The Soviets would be required to cut back drastically on their ICBM warheads in a way that reduced or, better yet, eliminated the theoretical possibility of a first strike against American ICBMs and the danger of political intimidation and blackmail that they might derive from that capability. During his first term, Reagan proposed drastic reductions in Soviet offensive forces, especially in ICBM warheads. But his only leverage then was the prospect of an American offensive buildup, which included plans for the ten-warhead MX missile and the highly accurate Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The Soviets were willing to risk an offense-offense arms race and were not prepared to bargain away their existing weapons for future American ones. But the prospect of an offense-defense race is another matter. If SDI goes ahead, the Soviets will have to spend vast amounts of money expanding and transforming their offensive and defensive systems to cope with the new American threat. It would be cold comfort to the Kremlin that SDI would probably end up costing the U.S. more than the countermeasures would cost the U.S.S.R. Faced with an offense-defense arms race, the Kremlin might choose instead to pay a sizable price in Soviet offense in order to curtail SDI. That choice did not come into focus until late in the first Reagan term, after the Soviets had walked out of the Geneva talks. SDI was a factor in luring them back to the bargaining table last year. For that Reagan deserves credit, and his critics owed him some patient support as the negotiations have proceeded during the past year. SDI helped elicit from the Soviets a dizzying barrage of proposals--some largely propagandistic headline grabbers, some formal treaty language put forward in diplomatic channels and some sotto voce feelers. Sorting out the tricks, traps and teasers from the genuine offers is complicated, but the contours of what Moscow might be willing to offer to reach a grand compromise are now emerging. Most important, the U.S.S.R. has said in earlier versions of its proposal that it would be willing to reduce its ICBM warheads from the 6,000-plus level allowed by SALT II to 3,600--a dramatic cut, nearly as deep as the one sought - by Reagan and rejected by the Kremlin during the first term. For that reduction to improve the strategic balance, the Soviets would also have to give up what has been palpably the most unacceptable aspect of their position over the past year: an insistence on counting as ''strategic'' weapons those American shorterrange systems that can reach the territory of the U.S.S.R. If the U.S. had to reduce its carrier-based aircraft and Europe-based missiles along with its intercontinental weapons, it would have to get rid of so many ICBM silos that the resulting ratio of Soviet warheads to American targets would be more disadvantageous to the U.S. than the current worrisome equation. But in a new version of their proposal presented in Geneva last week, the Soviets showed flexibility on a number of points, and they took a big step toward dropping their ''reach criterion'' and counting only genuinely strategic weapons as defined by SALT (ICBMs, SLBMs and heavy bombers). What was not immediately clear, however, is whether the new formula they are using to count ''nuclear charges'' (warheads, bombs, cruise missiles) will include the earlier ''force-concentration'' rule, which limits them to no more than 3,600 ICBM warheads. If that old feature is carried over into their new proposal, the arithmetic of the Soviet position would be much more attractive. This would especially be true if the Soviets eventually make good on other hints that they might give up their largest MIRVed ICBMs, restrict new missile types to single-warhead ones and accept an explicit limit on ballistic-missile throw weight (another index of strategic power in which they have a disconcerting edge). A package of Soviet reductions along these lines would be particularly welcome because it would be relatively easy to verify. Verification is a critical issue, one on which the Administration has shed more heat than light by overstating the case against Soviet cheating on SALT. Words like ''massive,'' ''wholesale'' and ''flagrant'' have been bandied about. But the more accurate description is that the Soviets, who are Philadelphia lawyers at heart, have been chiseling at the fuzzy margins of pacts to see what they can get away with. That combination of effrontery and ingenuity has allowed them to build a huge ABM radar and say it is for tracking satellites in space; it has allowed them to sneak in a formidable new type of ICBM and say it is just an improved model of a lemon they halfheartedly deployed nearly 20 years ago. But they have not cheated on the numerical ceilings of SALT, because those are clear-cut. The limits on the number of ICBM silo launchers and on the number of MIRV loadings on each type of ICBM are clearly defined in the treaty. More important, they are readily monitored by U.S. spy satellites. At the heart of the grand compromise would be a lowering of precisely these verifiable limits.

If the Soviets do offer to give up their largest missiles, they would probably demand that the U.S. give up the MX and the Trident II as well. That would be difficult to accept. There are widespread questions about how to base the MX and about Congress's willingness to fund it fully. But the Pentagon sees the Trident II as a crucial component of the U.S. arsenal for the 1990s because, like its predecessors, its submarine basing makes it invulnerable to a Soviet pre-emptive attack (assuming, of course, that the Soviets do not achieve a breakthrough in antisubmarine warfare). But the stickiest and most controversial part of the trade-off would be the limits the Soviets would demand on SDI. Here their position has been evolving. A year ago they wanted to ban not only development and testing but also research on ''space-strike arms,'' a term they defined in a way that was so comprehensive and one-sided it might have meant the cancellation of the space shuttle. Then, in an interview last August with TIME, Gorbachev said that what he called fundamental research would not be covered by the ban. But Soviet officials subsequently explained that ''purposeful'' research on strategic defenses would still be forbidden. Since purpose would be a matter of declared intention, the American SDI would be outlawed, while the Soviets could continue testing huge high-energy lasers in Central Asia by claiming that they were for medical purposes. Even SDI skeptics like Sidney Drell believe that the U.S. should maintain a vigorous--and very purposeful--research program in strategic defense for two reasons: as insurance against breakthroughs that the Soviets might come up with in their program and as a hedge against the remote possibility that someone, someday, really does discover a defensive technology that diminishes the advantage of offense. A serious, sustained research program is not a bargaining chip and should not be used as one. However, a research program that is driven by good science rather than high-pressure politics would not hold out false hopes for large-scale population defense; and yet it still could pave the way for a grand compromise by inducing the Soviets to agree to significant cuts in offensive weapons in return for reinforcing old agreements that limit the development of defensive systems. Indeed, the Soviets have recently begun exploring ways to restrict SDI by reaffirming the ABM treaty of 1972. That approach has considerable promise since it is potentially compatible with Reagan's own public statements on SDI. Largely as a result of the quiet urging of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Secretary of State George Shultz, Reagan has said repeatedly that SDI is a research program being conducted within the bounds of the ABM treaty. The nub of the American end of an offense-defense deal would be for Reagan to repeat that statement once again, only this time in a document co-signed by Gorbachev. Thus, even though the devil would be in the details and a full treaty would probably take many months if not years to negotiate, there is no mystery about the basic ingredients of a framework agreement that Reagan and Gorbachev could sign this year or next. They are evident to both advocates and opponents of arms control within the Administration. That is why the opponents, led by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Richard Perle, have been waging a fierce but largely invisible campaign to put the kibosh on the arms-control agreements of the past lest they provide the basis for new agreements in the future. Last month this faction won a major victory against Shultz and the State Department by persuading Reagan to declare his intent to end American compliance with the offensive limits of SALT II at the end of the year. The next battle could be more important and more intense. Administration hawks are laying the ground for a breakout from the defensive limits of the ABM treaty. The terms call for the signatories to review its viability every five years, and it is up for review next year. The Pentagon and its allies elsewhere in the Administration are pushing for a looser interpretation that would exempt the development and testing of an SDI system from the treaty's restrictions. The result, as fully intended, would be to render the ABM treaty worthless as the basis for a new deal with the Soviets. Sooner or later, Reagan is going to have to decide these issues. As in the past, his Administration is too sharply divided for the bureaucracy to produce anything more than cumbersome, half-a-loaf truces among its own warring factions. Like SDI, the grand compromise with Gorbachev would have to be a very personal initiative on the part of the President. For Reagan, the hardest part will be deferring indefinitely the fulfillment of his dream of a nuclear-free world in which ballistic missiles have rusted away in their silos and launching tubes. But his lieutenants, notably Perle, are talking about SDI not as an alternative to offensive nuclear weapons but as a supplement to a steadily upgraded American arsenal that will face a steadily expanding Soviet one. That, in fact, is what SDI would likely become, and such a prospect ought to be just as unappealing to the President as it is to many strategic experts and to the body politic in general. Once Reagan realizes what SDI has become, perhaps he will use it for the best purpose it can serve: a goad to bring about the first genuine reversal in the nuclear arms race since it began 40 years ago. That would be a historic legacy of which Ronald Reagan--and his countrymen--could be proud.