Over the Top

The arrival of one more refurbished B-52 bomber at Carswell Air Force Base near Fort Worth would hardly seem an event to create diplomatic turbulence. But when the aircraft linked up with the Strategic Air Command Seventh Bomb Wing last Friday, it became the 131st B-52 to be equipped with nuclear- tipped cruise missiles -- and that sent the U.S. right through the ceiling of the SALT II agreement. The unratified 1979 arms-control treaty allows the U.S. a total of 1,320 strategic nuclear delivery systems. If the number of bombers carrying cruises passes 130, the U.S. is obliged to make a corresponding reduction in another area of its nuclear arsenal. The White House decision to field the bomber and not scrap a missile-carrying Poseidon submarine to keep within SALT II bounds amounted to the first acknowledged violation of a major arms accord by a superpower.

Though Ronald Reagan announced as far back as May that he did not feel obliged to abide by the SALT II limits, the current decision drew sharp criticism from Capitol Hill. "It is unbelievable that at a time when the Administration's foreign policy is in a shambles, they want to complicate the situation by raising another major issue," said Democratic Congressman Norman Dicks of Washington. Democratic Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee predicted that the move would strain relations in the Western alliance and termed it a "mistake in judgment every bit as serious in the long term as shipping missiles to Khomeini."

Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had long urged Reagan to break SALT II as retaliation for alleged Soviet violations, but State Department officials feared the move would bolster Soviet charges that the U.S. was intent on scuttling arms-control negotiations. Indeed, Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev hinted as much during his visit to India last week, terming the deployment of the B-52 a "major mistake" that called into question the "entire logic of the Reykjavik talks." In Moscow the Foreign Ministry warned that the Soviet Union would be forced to beef up its own nuclear arsenal.

Just what the Kremlin has in mind may become clearer this week, when U.S. Negotiator Max Kampelman and his Soviet counterpart, Victor Karpov, meet again in Geneva in an effort to push stalled arms talks forward. Some Republican supporters on the Hill hope that by breaking the unratified treaty, the White House has cleared the way for fresh negotiations between the two countries. But the Soviets could just as easily react in a dangerous way: many arms- control experts believe Moscow is capable of deploying thousands of strategic weapons more than the U.S. in the near future.