An Offer They Can Refuse

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr

The INF treaty would appear to be the Republicans' ideal arms-control pact: a conservative President stuck to his guns for six years, until the Soviet Union finally agreed to eliminate an entire category of nuclear missiles. Yet as Ronald Reagan sits down with Mikhail Gorbachev this week to sign their ) precedent-setting treaty, he has the wholehearted support of only one of the six Republican presidential candidates: Vice President George Bush.

Four others -- Jack Kemp, Pete du Pont, Pat Robertson and Alexander Haig -- have spoken out against the deal, and Bob Dole has expressed only lukewarm support. Their disapproval is all the more surprising since Republican voters overwhelmingly favor it. A CBS/New York Times poll recently reported that 62% of adult Americans, including 63% of Republicans, like the treaty. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll surveyed probable voters in Iowa and New Hampshire and found support for the INF accord among 77% of Republicans in Iowa and 74% in New Hampshire.

Why would so many G.O.P. candidates risk alienating their party's voters on a crucial issue? Because opposition to the INF treaty appeals to the hard-core conservatives, and long-shot candidates Kemp, du Pont and Robertson need their support to stay in the race. Trailing far behind Bush and Dole in name recognition, money, organization, poll support and credibility, these "flanking" candidates have little chance unless one of them becomes the sole darling of the G.O.P.'s right wing. Du Pont, a onetime moderate who is now a born-again right-winger, got a boost in this direction last week from the endorsement of the conservative Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader.

Whether or not the candidates are sincere in their disapproval of the treaty, they risk little by their saber rattling. In last week's NBC debate, Kemp lashed out at the Soviets for violating past treaties. "We should not rush into signing an agreement with the Soviet Union," he declared, "until we force them to comply with previous agreements." While Kemp called for unrealistically stringent verification procedures, Robertson's conditions for signing an arms accord seemed even more fanciful: he glibly recommended "a rollback, a decolonization, if you will, of the Soviet empire." Du Pont was a bit more temperate. Though he said the INF deal was a "bad treaty," his main concern is to forestall Soviet attempts to block the Strategic Defense Initiative.

As a former NATO commander and Reagan's first Secretary of State, Haig may be the most credible of the treaty opponents. Never a darling of the right wing, he skips anti-Communist boiler plate and stresses geopolitical concerns: that eliminating Euromissiles will heighten the Soviets' overwhelming advantage in conventional forces; that denuclearization of Western Europe , could weaken the NATO alliance; that the treaty fails to address the need for cuts in the Soviets' arsenal of ICBMs. In 1981 Haig argued for a deal that would leave each side with a reduced number of missiles. When he lost that argument, he dutifully supported the President's zero-option proposal, as George Bush likes to remind him.

Most observers believe that when the INF treaty comes before the Senate for ratification, Minority Leader Dole will vote for it. In the meantime, Dole is hedging. For weeks he has said he will reserve judgment until he has a chance to read the agreement. That evasion appears a bit specious because, as a prominent Senator, Dole could be briefed on every facet of the accord. His waiting game is intended to show voters, particularly those on the right, that he is no pushover for either Moscow or the White House.

The Republicans' leading candidate is the treaty's biggest booster, and on this issue George Bush's often criticized loyalty to Ronald Reagan could be a bonus. During the debate, he forcefully reminded his rivals that, as a top Administration official, he had read every word of the agreement. "Bush is being a knowledgeable statesman on the issue," said his campaign spokesman Peter Teeley, "while the others look like extra-chromosome types."

The caviling on the part of his would-be heirs has peeved Reagan. In his interview with television anchormen, the President said that conservative disapproval of the INF agreement was "based on a lack of knowledge." Then he offered a surprisingly harsh assessment of his opponents' motives: "Those people, basically, down in their deepest thoughts, have accepted that war is inevitable."

That brutal put-down produced angry squawks from the right at a press conference held by the hastily formed Anti-Appeasement Alliance. "If this treaty is ratified," declared Archconservative Howard Phillips, "a major battle of World War III will have been lost by default" -- a dire prediction that suggested Reagan was correct in his assessment. Phillips went on to viciously condemn the right wing's onetime standard-bearer. Reagan, he fumed, "is a very weak man with a strong wife and a strong staff. He has become a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda." Dole and other Republican Senators also lashed back: Dole chided the President in the White House, while on the Senate floor Wyoming's Malcolm Wallop called Reagan's remarks "offensive."

The Democratic candidates, who all back the INF pact, have been quick to capitalize on the Republican dissension. Albert Gore went after the G.O.P. in the opening minutes of last week's debate. "It's nothing short of appalling," he declared, "that five of six Republican candidates refuse to support the new arms-control agreement." The next night Michael Dukakis painted the treaty opponents as captives of ultraconservative ideologues: "Do we need any further proof that the radical right has a stranglehold on the Republican Party?" As conservatives snipe at the White House, Democrats can say with a smile that they stand united in support of Ronald Reagan.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett and Alessandra Stanley/Washington