Heading Toward A 4% Solution

By Strobe Talbott

When Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze meet in Washington this week, their main objective will be to clear the way for a get-together later this year between their bosses, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The principal task for Sherpas and summiteers alike is to end an eight-year deadlock on arms control by concluding a treaty on intermediate-range nuclear forces. Under the so-called global zero option, the Soviets would have to do away with an entire class of modern, mobile multiple-warhead missiles, the SS-20s, which have threatened America's Asian and European allies for nearly a decade.

The overall effect on the balance of terror, however, would still be modest, making it little more than a first step toward more important goals that lie ahead. An INF agreement would take out of service less than 4% of the warheads the two sides have arrayed against each other. It would not apply to any of the 11,000 Soviet long-range warheads targeted against the continental U.S. Nor is there anything in the fine print of the prospective deal that would prevent the Soviets from replacing every two-stage intermediate-range SS-20 they dismantle with a three-stage intercontinental ballistic missile called the SS-25. That rocket is fired from a similar launcher and can hit not only $ Bonn and Paris but also Boston and Peoria. Substituting SS-25s for SS-20s would violate the 1979 SALT II treaty. But last year the Reagan Administration renounced SALT II and exceeded its limits. The Soviets are free to do the same whenever they choose. Says Spurgeon Keeny, president of the Washington-based Arms Control Association: "Given the U.S. repudiation of SALT II, strategic forces can grow without constraint, and they will soon negate any reductions achieved at the INF negotiations unless a new agreement is reached."

The Reagan Administration has been trying to reach such an agreement for five years in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) in Geneva. The Soviets have agreed to significant reductions in their ICBMs -- but only on condition that the U.S. accept restrictions on the development and testing of the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars. The Administration is willing to discuss a moratorium on deployment of SDI, but not constraints on testing. The President has said he is worried that the Soviets are out to "kill" the program with restrictions on research and development.

The Kremlin harbors the opposite suspicion: that R. and D. will turn out to be a smoke screen for an all-out program to deploy SDI. As Roald Sagdeyev, director of Moscow's Space Research Institute, told TIME, "We need some kind of insurance policy on SDI; otherwise, what is advertised innocently as a testing program could lead to rapid deployment of a full-scale system. Unrestrained SDI testing would confront our military planners with the requirement of more offensive systems, not less. It's that simple."

And that complicated. Even as the superpowers are moving toward unprecedented disarmament in the category of intermediate-range missiles, the Soviets are warning of a new round of the arms race in the more important arena of strategic weaponry. With that stick -- and with the carrot of the deep cuts they have conditionally agreed to in START -- the Kremlin is hoping to induce the Administration to rein in SDI.

Sometimes the Soviets have insisted on linking the various negotiations: no INF deal without a strategic offense-defense trade-off. At other times they have appeared willing not to link the issues, letting Reagan have an agreement and a summit without his having to make any concessions on SDI. Their current position is ambiguous -- and therefore flexible. Currently they are proposing an "INF-plus" summit. The plus would be a "framework agreement" on START and SDI -- not a full treaty, but an outline of its main provisions, notably including testing limits for SDI.

As so often in the past, the Reagan Administration is split between the Pentagon and the State Department. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger opposes any significant compromise on any aspect of SDI, including deployment. Colleagues say he favors an INF-only deal as a "firebreak" that will satisfy congressional yearning for arms control while leaving SDI intact. Paul Nitze, special adviser to Shultz and Reagan on arms control, is concerned that an INF-only deal could lead to a Soviet strategic buildup if there is no progress in START. The only way to break the deadlock in START, he feels, is an agreement spelling out which SDI experiments would be allowed under the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.

National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci also wants a breakthrough in START, but he is looking for a formula that will make SDI part of a bargain without impinging on R. and D. "Asking this President to accept limits on testing," Carlucci says, "is like asking him to raise taxes tomorrow: he just won't do it."

The trick is to find some way of simultaneously allaying the fear in the Kremlin that SDI will move too quickly and the fear in the Oval Office that the program will be brought to a standstill. That could be too big a dilemma for a divided Administration, as the Soviets seem to recognize. It may be why they have left themselves the option of wrapping up INF with Reagan and waiting to do a deal on strategic arms control with his successor.