Arms control
Hehir, J. Bryan
WORLD WATCH J. Bryan Hehir ARMS CONTROL A WORLD CLASS PLAY As the 100th Congress convenes, the most discussed foreign policy topics are Iran and Nicaragua. But the eruption of this...
...Act Three, therefore, involves sorting out Reykjavik and determining whether Congress will renew its assertive style of last summer or maintain its passive role of autumn...
...Analysts in and out of Washington will be part of the larger discussion...
...strategic policy...
...In August the House of Representatives, led belatedly but effectively by Les Aspin (D-Wis...
...The core of the Reykjavik discussions can be reduced to three topics: On SDI: an agreement to abide by the ABM Treaty for ten years...
...and (4) to continue the moratorium on testing antisatellite weapons (ASATs) against objects in space...
...And Ambassador Gerard Smith, who negotiated SALT I, sees Reykjavik as a watershed, but of a different kind than either Shultz or Kissinger depicts: "We came out of Iceland with a clearer vision of the starkness of the alternative: we can have either arms control or we can have a crash program to deploy defenses...
...Is the product of Reykjavik creative opportunities or simply mass confusion...
...But this was not the focus of discussion post-Reykjavik...
...We can't have both...
...This already complicated task was stymied by the Iran-Nicaragua revelations in November...
...2) to prohibit nuclear testing for one year...
...had voted: (1) to require the U.S...
...Yet the results of Reykjavik require attention, for 1987 finds the superpowers with fifteen years of negotiations and not a single armscontrol achievement, and with both sides prepared to move into a new stage of nuclear development...
...competing proposals to eliminate all ballistic missiles in ten years (the U.S...
...As Congress begins its work, therefore, it is clear that it must address the meaning of Reykjavik: Was it a breakthrough to a discussion of real reductions in nuclear arms or a breakdown of competent analysis of the dilemma of living with nuclear weapons...
...On intermediate range nuclear weapons: an agreement to reduce them to 100 warheads in the Soviet Union and 100 in the United States, thereby withdrawing these weapons from the European theater...
...Conservative voices hail the president's refusal to bend on SDI...
...Henry Kissinger, however, sees "the Reykjavik revolution" in starkly different terms: "The me'lange of agreements, near-agreements, and contradictory proposals that emerged at the Reykjavik prc-summit run the risk of undermining deterrence and the cohesion of the Western alliance...
...But Congress can return to its strategy of last summer, to use the purse of funding to influence the direction of U.S...
...30 January 1987: 39...
...Public opinion may again move ahead of both Congress and the president, as it did in the early 1980s...
...The larger debate of the legacy of Reykjavik and the possibility of any arms-control agreements in the Reagan presidency are topics which go beyond the Congress...
...No agreements were planned for Reykjavik and none were made...
...but disagreement about the use of sub-limits to restrict certain forms of weapons (e.g., Soviet SS-18s...
...On strategic nuclear forces: an agreement to reduce these forces to 1,600 delivery vehicles and 6,000 warheads (a cut of about 30-50 percent...
...If the IranNicaragua debacle had not occurred, arms control would have been the central congressional concern for this session...
...The sudden announcement of a "mini-summit" at Reykjavik provided President Reagan with leverage to take the initiative on arms control away from Congress...
...Faced with huge budgetary deficits, defense spending becomes an issue of economics as well as strategic choices...
...What kind of negotiations could produce such strikingly different views from informed observers...
...3) to freeze spending for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) at last year's level plus inflation...
...From one perspective, Congress had given away the store...
...Arms-control advocates are intrigued by specific proposals for deep cuts or the elimination of ballistic missiles, but skeptical of the overall design and suspicious that in the end the president's most cherished goal is to proceed with SDI...
...Congress can set limits on how SDI will go, whether testing of nuclear weapons should be supported, and what the future of the MX will be...
...In a last minute agreement negotiated by phone...
...to abide by the limits of the SALT II Treaty...
...By October, Aspin and others had brought the Senate substantially on board on SALT, ASATs, and SDI...
...Essen38: Commonweal tially, the president came home with no concrete gains and with the congressional efforts of restraint now eviscerated...
...The dominant question was whether the president had given away the store (by proposing the elimination of all ballistic missiles or by considering the Gorbachev proposal for the elimination of all strategic weapons), or had doomed arms control in the 1980s by refusing to negotiate on SDI...
...or all strategic weapons (the Soviets) in ten years...
...The relationship of the Reagan administration and Congress on arms control is entering the third act of a play which began last summer...
...But the eruption of this political volcano last November should not be allowed to shunt aside the even more persisting problem of nuclear arms control...
...What framework should be used to interpret tfie possibilities and problems of the nuclear relationship in the 1980s and 1990s...
...Both the substance and the style of the Reykjavik meeting have fractured the normal categories of the strategic debate between the superpowers, within the NATO alliance, and in the United States...
...The varied evaluations of Reykjavik manifest enormous confusion and division...
...Congress dropped its major demands lest they be perceived as impeding the president's freedom of action at the summit...
...Act Two continued through November and December as journalists, analysts, and administration representatives tried to define what had happened at Reykjavik...
...Congress does not have the corner on the market for shaping this framework...
...but radical disagreement on what kind of testing is permissible within the limits of the treaty and whether deployment of defenses is expected after the decade...
...Act Two began over the Columbus Day weekend...
...A world without nuclear weapons is a Utopian dream...
...James Schlesinger states the case: "For Western security the nuclear deterrent continues to represent the ultimate reality...
...Secretary Shultz for example, said on October 31: "My own judgment is that in a few years we will look back at the meeting at Hofdi House as something of a watershed, a potential turning point in our strategy for deterring war and encouraging peace...
...Strategic analysts find the proposals for eliminating nuclear weapons and/or deterrence Utopian, deceptive, or plain incompetent...
...But Congress can be a player in the drama if it faces up to the question of Act Three by reasserting the style it was using in Act One...
Vol. 114 • January 1987 • No. 2
