Decade of decision:
Hehir, J Bryan
DECADE OF DECISION POSSIBILITIES FOR THE NINETIES The month of May, in foreign policy terms, appeared to belong to Mikhail S. Gorbachev. On abroad range of issues-announcing unilateral arms cuts...
...a near equality of importance between conventional and nuclear negotiations...
...The two premises of arms control negotiations over the past thirty years have been: (1) that basic political agreement between the superpowers was not possible, so hostility and conflict were the reasonable assumptions for the relationship...
...How relate conventional force reductions to strategic arsenals...
...First, the most important and potentially significant shift is the move from strategic to political issues in the U.S.Soviet relationship...
...In the 1990s, nuclear negotiations (which begin this month) will share center stage with conventional force talks...
...Gorbachev's announced objectives for a new international agenda is that the political relationship of the superpowers can be fundamentally changed...
...The shift of emphasis and focus, from strategic to political relations, will not, of course, dispense with the need for arms control negotiations...
...The second change, toward conventional and nuclear negotiations, will shape the content of arms control in the 1990s...
...The U.S...
...How measure the forces on each side...
...The possibility arising from Mr...
...Then things changed...
...President Bush went to the NATO summit in Brussels at the end of the month on the defensive...
...The contrast inevitably generated a spate of commentary on the substance and style of the Bush administration and its ability to address the Gorbachev phenomenon...
...Since its signing in 1968, the NPT has bound over nations to the obligation of not expanding the number of nuclear weapons states in the world...
...The third change of the 1990s will be the requirement to join a systemic (or global) concern for arms control with the traditional superpower agenda...
...But it should also be clearer within another year that the transition from the 1980s to the 1990s does signal deeper and broader shifts in international relations that must be defined and addressed...
...The treaty has been remarkably successful in spite of the fact that key states remain outside its ambit...
...The catalyst that will push attention to the systemic level is the need in 1995 to renegotiate the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT...
...The questions do not yield quick answers...
...Two established scholars of U.S.-Soviet relations, George Kennan and Marshall Shulman, have both described the possible outcome as a return to classical big power competition: less ideological and less dangerous than the standard Cold War pattern...
...It is reasonable to assume that a year from now, many of the events of May will be judged to be the beginning of a long process which will take much of the next decade to work out...
...The degree of improvement possible, the nature of the new relationship, is more difficult to describe than the simple recognition that basic rather than marginal changes are now possible...
...Where do stability and security lie-in continuing reliance on nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent, in a new mix which "lengthens the nuclear fuse," or in an effort to shift purely and simply to conventional deterrence in the European theater...
...Specifically, while there will be continuity on the topic of arms control, there will also be three changes in the way the superpowers address that topic in the 1990s...
...response initially swung from stodgy (resurrecting "open skies," a 1950s proposal, as an initiative in the 1980s) to silly (Marlin Fitzwater's characterization of Gorbachev as a "drugstore cowboy...
...The 1990s will see, I believe, a primacy of the political over the strategic...
...If political relations can be set on a new course, however, they will open the way to a much broader range of arms control choices than the first thirty years of these negotiations presumed possible...
...The new "dual track"-partly a product of improved political relations, partly the result of strategic necessity-raises a set of conceptual, tactical, and technical choices that are now being addressed with new enthusiasm in the arms control literature...
...These premises have yielded limited but significant agreements designed to stabilize the strategic balance...
...and a need to address the systemic as well as the superpower dimension of arms control...
...Bush helped to fashion a new consensus within the NATO alliance and he regained center stage with Mr...
...On abroad range of issues-announcing unilateral arms cuts to Secretary of State James Baker, declaring a cutback of military aid to Nicaragua, and providing statesmanlike advice to his beleaguered Chinese hosts-the Soviet leader dominated the global stage...
...allies in NATO for progress on force reductions in the European theater-all point to the rising significance of the negotiations on conventional forces in Europe that opened in March...
...and (2) in spite of political conflict, it was still possible to define a narrow area of strategic issues where both powers could find a common interest in stabilizing the nuclear relationship...
...In each of those three shifts one finds a full agenda of empirical and ethical questions...
...A combination of factors-the consequences of the INF Treaty, the two Gorbachev proposals on conventional force reductions (in December and in May), the desire of U.S...
...The requirement to renegotiate theenegotiate the...
...by setting forth a set of bold proposals for the negotiations, troop reductions, and a vision of a united Europe, Mr...
Vol. 116 • June 1989 • No. 12
