The Public Policy/SALT II, Anyone?
Lord, Carnes
• ................................................................................................................. THE PUBLIC...
...The new Soviet leader has changed the rules of the game by the sweeping reforms he has set in motion within the Soviet Union and the dovish face he has given to Soviet foreign policy...
...Judging from the recent congressional hearings on the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) agreement and the attendant public reaction, conservatives have signed up for what bids fair to being a new national consensus on U.S: Soviet arms control...
...Indeed, the INF treaty has probably surpassed the expectations of all arms control experts: not only did the Soviets agree to dismantle a relatively modern and highly capable nuclear system (the mobile SS-20 ballistic missile), but they accepted reductions that favored the United States...
...But perhaps most worrisome is the exponential increase in the risk fromand hence the incentives for-Soviet cheating that would result from a deepcuts regime...
...Second, on-site inspection has been grossly overrated...
...inspection team to uncover direct evidence of a violation...
...As things now stand, the failure of the Administration and Congress to take any action even against a universally acknowledged violation such as the Krasnoyarsk radar renders the entire arms control enter= prise laughable...
...Three points need to be made...
...In a simpler age, a general commanding the Strategic Air Command compared arms control to an attempt to dress and undress at the same time...
...First, stringent standards of verifiability are nice in theory, but the reality is that for a variety of technical and operational reasons, strategic weapons are becoming increasingly difficult to monitor...
...Indeed, for political reasons that are not wholly its fault, the Administration has been unable to remove the arms control monkey from its own back...
...Since the Soviet Government has not admitted its responsibility for the "terror famine", the film challenges Secretary Gorbachev's purported willingness to honestly address his country's historic relationship with "minority nationaties...
...THE PUBLIC POLICY...
...Until recently, they were regarded by mainstream arms controllers as highly unrealistic positions, if not as deliberate efforts to sabotage further negotiations with the Soviets...
...In fact, we now face a situation in which the most conservative American President of our era has made himself champion of the most far-reaching disarmament measures this nation has ever seriously contemplated...
...A new treaty on strategic arms seems a good if not certain prospect in the coming months...
...An example is the INF ban on long-range conventionally armed ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs), which was included in order to enhance the verifiability of the treaty's ban on nuclear-armed GLCMs of similar range...
...Recognizing why is perhaps the most urgent step in any rethinking of attitudes and policy towards arms control...
...At this point, it is probably too late to do so before NATO is pushed into further agreement (if only in principle) on the next steps in arms control in Europe...
...On the other hand, it can be anticipated that U.S...
...and Soviet ballistic missiles not only was not discussed beforehand O N V I D E O C A S S E T T E D ocumenting this century's forgotten holocaust-the Ukrainian "terror famine" of 1932-33, which caused the deaths of 7,000,000 people VEST OF DESPAIR uses inerviews with survivors and scholars supplemented by rare photographic evidence to establish that the "terror famine" was deliberately created by the Soviet Government as part of Stalin's decades-long effort to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry, who resisted forced collectivization of their lands...
...In the absence of a plausible U.S...
...Tinkering at the margins of the strategic balance (the conservative charge against the SALT II treaty) has something to be said for it after all-if the alternative is START...
...A regime of deep cuts involves serious risks...
...response to bad Soviet arms control behavior...
...Unfortunately, the realities are otherwise...
...To the question of verification, the conservative answer has by and large been: stringent standards of verifiability, together with inspection, inspection, and more inspection...
...W hat is being suggested here is in one sense a return to a more traditional approach to arms control...
...The two most distinctive features of the agreement are the deep cuts it Carnes Lord is director of international studies at the National Institute for Public Policy in Fairfax, Virginia...
...One may reasonably doubt it...
...Unfortunately, this is the wrong answer...
...The counterintelligence problem created by a roving Soviet inspector corps in the United States should not be underestimated...
...When the Reagan Administration took office, it pledged that arms control would be pursued not for its by Carnes Lord own sake but as part of an overall national security strategy...
...can expect to do is to force the Soviets to commit breaches of procedures governing inspections...
...On the contrary, the coming debate over a START agreement offers exactly the right opportunity for a fundamental rethinking of the elements of the arms control approach championed by the Reagan Administration...
...the use of conventional GLCMs for deep strikes against Soviet conventional forces invading Western Europe...
...The best the U.S...
...T o begin with, it has long since become clear that arms control has gotten well in front of Western defense planning...
...0 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1988...
...Eight years ago, it might have been thought that two terms of conservative rule in Washington would change all this...
...Ironically, harsher judgments have come from some foreign policy traditionalists (notably Henry Kissinger) than from the certified right...
...Our most immediate need is a compliance policy acceptable to all political tendencies that includes military "safeguards" for every new treaty...
...The attempt to close off all possible avenues of cheating can therefore have the effect of denying the United States valuable options for its own military forces, without truly precluding the possibility of undetected Soviet violations...
...The U.S...
...By the time of the Reykjavik summit in the fall of 1986, such an approach had plainly been discarded, and with a vengeance...
...It is now available from International Historic Films for $4900 plus 1200 shipping and handling...
...There are certainly reasons for conservatives to be more friendly than they have been in the past to a well-conceived U.S: Soviet a reement on stra tegic arms...
...Soviet cheating on the GLCM ban could take a number of other forms, such as disguising GLCMs as permitted reconnaissance drones or testing them to less than their full range...
...These uncertainties are only compounded by the faltering momentum of the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the Administration's continuing failure to tie SDI planning to its strategic force modernization efforts...
...Legal and factual ambiguities have proved potent roadblocks in the way of effective U.S...
...Subsequently, the INF treaty and its political and military implications became a cause of some concern within NATO...
...makes in existing forces and its intrusive verification provisions...
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...strategic arsenal will be even less able than at present to pose a credible escalating threat to deter Soviet conventional aggression in Europe or elsewhere...
...strategy for restoring a balance at the conventional level, the cumulative effect of START and INF could well be to administer the coup de grace to the American "extended deterrent" in Europe and begin the unraveling of the NATO alliance...
...It has to be presumed that the Soviets will never permit a U.S...
...SALT II, ANYONE...
...Is there no alternative, then, to our current arms control consensus...
...Nor has the conservative intellectual establishment sounded a certain trumpet on the treaty...
...Another reason is the genuine shift that appears to have taken place in recent years toward a more restricted role for nuclear weapons in Soviet military doctrine...
...The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan will remove an irritant in U.S: Soviet relations that helped kill the SALT II treaty in 1980 and would have hurt any START agreement in 1988...
...What is more, he seems to have delivered the conservative flock into the arms control fold...
...Third, recent experience has shown that the U.S...
...No CODs please...
...should worry less about its verification capabilities than about its ability to respond to violations once they occur...
...Plainly, much of this has to do with the conservative paternity not only of the INF treaty itself but of the approach to arms control that it represents...
...Such homely skepticism has become profoundly unfashionable among our modern military chiefs, not to mention our academic and policy elites...
...Please send me copy(ies) of HARVEST OF DESPAIR at $490° each plus 1200 shipping and handling...
...inspectors will operate under selfimposed limitations in this regard, while their Soviet counterparts in the West will have a field day...
...One reason is the progress that has been made by the Reagan Administration in developing technologies for ballistic missile defense...
...Box 29035 Chicago, Illinois • 60629 Expiration Date TOTAL $ Please specify your video format: 11 VHS 0 Be THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1988 31 with the NATO allies, it was not even properly studied within the Defense Department...
...weapons on fewer delivery platforms mean a more lucrative and potentially more vulnerable target set for the Soviets (whose offensive forces will retain in any event a formidable capability for preemptive attack...
...Onsite inspection may offer opportunities for the collection of useful intelligence in the Soviet Union...
...and they agreed to on-site and other cooperative monitoring far beyond what even the most optimistic arms control supporters thought possible even a few years ago...
...Republican voices that questioned the wisdom of the INF pact during the early presidential primaries (Kemp, Robertson, du Pont, Haig) have since faded, while George Bush's injunction to his rivals to support the treaty and "give peace a chance" does not seem to have hurt him, even with many conservatives...
...Soviet strategic arms agreements of the 1970s...
...At the same time, there is a distinct danger that the Soviets will take advantage of STARTas they have of INF-to limit or to delegitimize Western conventional weapon systems that are difficult to distinguish from their nuclear counterparts...
...But no attempt was made to put the treaty in a strategic perspective and mark out a course for NATO's arms control and force modernization policies...
...On the other hand, what is also needed is a greater prudence, realism, and honesty than American policy elites have yet been able to muster...
...On-site inspection is no substitute for improving our technical intelligence capabilities for verification (something conservatives have shown little interest in...
...If we are not willing to live with avowedly lower verification standards, we should not enter into new treaties...
...And the sweep and sophistication of current Soviet proposals in virtually every area of arms control have placed heavy pressure on both the United States and its European allies to reach further agreements that would impose yet more radical constraints on the military forces of the Western alliance...
...In the second place, whatever one's interpretation of the Gorbachev phenomenon, it would be imprudent to make wishful assumptions either about the benignity of Gorbachev's "new thinking" or about its permanence...
...serious strategic defenses would lessen our requirements for offensive systems and at the same time provide essential protection against Soviet cheating...
...Fewer U.S...
...A re we all arms controllers now...
...Both features were key components of the conservative critique of the U.S...
...If all this sounds too good to be true, there's a reason: it probably is...
...The Administration's success with INF has forced its liberal critics to eat these words...
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...The Reagan-Gorbachev agreement on the elimination within ten years of all U.S...
...Since its original release, HARVEST OF DESPAIR has received many international awards ncluding an Academy Award nomination) and has been featured on William Buckley's "Firing Line" television show...
...There is every reason for the United States to demand concrete proof of fundamental change in the Soviets' approach to arms control or their security requirements generally, and to insist that any further radical reductions be contingent on such proof...
...But above all, honesty is needed-for if we cannot tell the truth about the dilemmas of verification or the military and political risks and liabilities of arms control generally, we become mere accomplices in the unilat eral disarmament of the West...
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...In understanding the current national mood on arms control, one must also consider the Gorbachev revolution...
...A renewed effort needs to be made to subordinate arms control to our defense requirements and strategy...
...But is the United States really ready to live under a START agreement that imposes a 50 percent cut in our strategic forces...
...But violations of this sort are not likely to bear the political freight of a firm response...
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...The result of this provision is merely to deny the U.S...
...In the Senate, Jesse Helms has led a charge with few visible troops, and immolated himself to no effect...
...In the meantime, momentum continues to build for agreements that would eliminate chemical and shorter-range nuclear weapons, ban nuclear testing, and drastically reduce conventional forces in Europe...
...Lower standards of verifiability could be tolerated if the threshold of our response to evidence of possible violations were also lowered...
...This, combined with the truly daunting verification problems we will face in any comprehensive strategic arms agreement and the discouraging record of Soviet noncompliance with previous agreements, must give pause to anyone not already convinced that the verification issue is merely a bogeyman of the anti-arms control lobby...
...A good beginning would be to designate sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) as a treaty-insurance weapon system that would not be subject to formal limitations but would be deployed in numbers commensurate with actual Soviet behavior under the INF-START regime...
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...Prudence is needed more than ever as we attempt to compete in the political war with Gorbachev's virtuosi of glasnost without losing in advance the real war we may someday face with a different and more menacing Soviet leadership...
Vol. 21 • June 1988 • No. 6
