The Freeze Debate Heats Up

...NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL The Freeze Debate Heats Up BY STEVEN E. MILLER THE EMERGENCE of a movement to challenge the Reagan Administration's assertion that there is a national consensus skeptical of arms control and in favor of rearmament has set off a struggle for the domination of public opinion on nucleai weapons policies The Administration now appears to be on the defensive, in the past several weeks it has been more concerned about repudiating its critics If the White House does not prevail in this clash, it could be dragged into strategic arms control talks with the Soviet Union much sooner than it would prefer—perhaps before it is really ready?just as the strong antinuclear sentiment on the continent compelled an early (November 19, 1981) beginning to the bilateral discussions in Geneva concerning intermediate nuclear f orces (INF) in Europe The Reagan Administration's predicament is to a considerable extent of its own making Its bellicose rhetoric on East-West issues, and its heightened advocacy of nuclear warfighting doctrines laced with new civil defense preparations, have invigorated the opposition in Europe and the United States On this side ot the Atlantic, there has been rapidly growing support for a freeze on all nuclear weapons and their delivery systems The idea antedates the Reagan Presidency, but it has caught hie in the last vear as the Administration has put ott arms control negotiations while undertaking a buildup ot nuclear lon.es The recent upsurge ol backing tor the freeze has been dramatic More than 200 New England towns have voted to endorse it Legislative bodies in seven states have given it their approval Church groups of every faith, and especially the Catholic Church, have begun to take up the cause as their own Major newspapers have voiced their editorial blessings In California, 500,000 signatures have been collected to place a freeze initiative on the November ballot, and 500,000 more have signed petitions in similar efforts in Michigan, New Jersey and Delaware...

...This is a frail point The resolution introduced in Congress clearly identifies the freeze as simply a first step toward reductions It is aimed squarely at the Reagan logic of building up in order to eventually cut down Critics insist that the President's reasoning would require years of arming before enough new systems were deployed to allow bargaining with the leverage this Administration desires Further, Reagan's course would result in cuts being made from larger (and more expensive) arsenals than the ones now existing The present campaign probably never would have acquired momentum had the Administration shown any tangible movement toward its goal of reductions That has not been the case, talks have not begun, although Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger hints that they may get under way this summer 3 Would a freeze eliminate the Soviet incentive to negotiate seriously in additional arms control talks...

...arsenal, have fueled the fires of antinuclear public opinion Not only has the Administration positioned itself awkwardly in the domestic debate Its criticism of the freeze, and its general approach to arms control, have provided propaganda opportunities for the USSR that the Soviet leaders have been quick to capitalize on Brezhnev's March 16 speech announcing a unilateral halt to the deployment of new intermediate range missiles in Sov let Europe is the most recent sample ol this But a change in White House thinking is not inconceivable As the nuclear Ireeze debate heats up, pressure at home and abroad mas ?ell persuade the Administration to pursue arms control differently than it has until now STEVEN E. MILLER, a new contributor, is assistant direi tor of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, and managing editor of the quarterly...

...International Security...

...To argue thus is to assume that stopping American rearmament is the sole reason the Soviets have for participating in arms talks That may be true Still, the Soviets may have other incentives the staggering cost of maintaining their current levels, the political benefits (for instance, in terms of West European opinion) of sitting down .it the bargaining table in good faith, even a sharing of the same fear of horrifying destruction that underlies much ol the Western interest in arms control So while the Administration's position cannot be entirely discounted, its correctness is hardly certain Nor should it be forgotten that in a mutual freeze the Soviets would be denied the leverage otherwise provided by their ongoing arsenal productions If the White House has not been particularly persuasive, it must also be said that its opponents have not made what their proposal entails entirely clear The freeze notion has a deceptive simplicity that obscures the complications of actually implementing it There is, at the outset, the question of negotiability Notwithstanding Party Secretary Leonid I Brezhnev's stated sympathy with the idea of a comprehensive nuclear freeze, it could raise in Moscow the same sort of objections that are bothering the Reagan Administration that Soviet weaknesses would be frozen, that needed or desired systems would be suspended And in the Soviet Union there will be no public opinion to compel the Kremlin's attention and to influence its behavior Problems emerge, too, from the extraordinary range of the Joint Resolution Some of its ambitious recommendations are not really feasible Preventing, say, unobserved production of warheads and delivery systems is very difficult, the shutting down of known production plants does not mean that others do not exist or cannot be constructed Similarly, where tests of full systems can be limited, tests of important components in research laboratones are hard to control As if sufficient complication did not exist, many conventional svstems can be outfitted with nuclear weapons ALL OF WHICH brings us to one of the key elements of any arms control scheme—verification To be sure, proponents of the reciprocal halt have been careful to insist on verifiability Unfortunately, neither superpower has been willing to tolerate the sorts of intrusiv e inspection required tor a high-confidence monitoring ot compliance As tor eventualK eliminating the worrisome imbalances on both sides in the course of negotiatmg arms cuts, the protracted history of salt is not an encouraging precedent A final drawback A freeze would forbid the deployment of highly desirable stabilizing systems such as invulnerable strategic submarines The workability and desirability of the Joint Resolution, in other words, will depend on the specific content given to its sweeping recommendations And this would involve a process as long and tangled as salt Indeed, perhaps the only way to achieve some form of nuclear freeze in the short term is to rely on salt n, the as yet unratified treaty that both sides are currently adhering to m any case For the moment, however, substance has been taking second billing to the public relations contest, with the advocates of a freeze seeking to rebuild a public coalition in favor of negotiated nuclear arms control and the Administration trying to thwart the effort To date, the Reagan camp has made all the mistakes Dailv attacks by the President and the Secretary of State have kept the freeze in the headlines and on the evening news A parade of Pentagon officials testifying before Congress that $1.6 trillion in military spending over five years is not enough, and the Defense Department's expression of alarm over shortages of plutonium inhibiting plans to add a reported 17,000 warheads to the U.S...

...It is not too much to say that the crusade has suddenly become the rage As they are wont to do, politicians have begun to notice On March 10, 17 Senators and 122 Congressmen, led by Senators Mark Hattield (R -Ore) and Edward M. kennedy (D -Mass ), intro-duced a Joint Resolution urging that the United States and the Soviet Union seek a "mutual and verifiable freeze on the testing, production and tin I her deployment of nuclear warheads, missiles and other delivery systems," to be followed by reductions in the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers This shift from the local to the Congressional arena recognizes and solidifies the rising status of arms control on the national agenda The resolution already has attracted prominent friends outside of Congress, including notably former Vice President Walter Mondale Despite its surprisingly bipartisan character, the campaign could become a rallying center for opponents of the current government Politics aside, the burgeoning popularity of the freeze jeopardizes the Administration's push to accelerate the procurement of nuclear forces, as well as its slow and deliberate approach to arms control Faced with this threat to its intentions, it responded to the Joint Resolution by immediately launching a spirited counterattack Secretary of State Alexander M Haig Jr fired the first salvo In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on March 10, he declared that the freeze is "not only bad defense and security policy, it is bad arms control policy " According to Haig, it would have "devastating" consequences because it would lock the United States into an inferior position—particularly in Europe where, he claimed, the USSR has a 6-1 advantage He also argued that the freeze would disrupt the ongoing Geneva INF parleys, and would compromise the White House's aim of ultimately curtailing strategic forces by eliminating the Soviet incentive to seriously entertain such a move The next day the State Department took the usual step of replying formally to the Congressional resolution, reiterating the themes raised by Haig Director of Politico-Military Affairs Richard Burt announced that the State Department was against the scheme because it would "freeze the United States into a position of military disadvantage and dangerous vulnerability" Lawrence Eagleburger, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, hastened to add that the Administration has nearly completed its own preparations for new arms reduction talks The implication, of course, was that there is no need for a stance that is less ambitious than the President's Reagan himself then joined the battle By mid-March he had twice gone out of his way in public speeches to reject the freeze On March 15 in Nashville, he stated that it is "not good enough because it doesn't go far enough " He, too, insisted that the resolution "at this time would legitimate a condition of great advantage for the Soviets " And he concluded "A freeze would leave us and our allies on very thin ice and as President I will never permit that " Now that the administration's arguments are known we can begin to assess their merits The three elements of its position must be examined in turn 1. Would a freeze lock the United States into a position of inferiority7 That is not easy to gauge, since both superpowers have so many nuclear devices deployed in so many different ways, and each is ahead in some types of weaponry and behind in others The Administration has sought to bolster its claim by focusing on U S weaknesses, especially on intermediate range nuclear systems in Europe This imbalance is a legitimate source of worry Yet even there, where most agree that the numbers do favor the Soviet Union, one can quarrel with the Administration's addition The 6-1 disadvantage cited by Haig, for example, carefully excludes several intermediate range systems, including American submarine-based missiles allocated to nato and French nuclear forces It is possible to make the European equilibrium seem relatively better or worse depending on how one counts More important is the fact that intermediate forces are only a small part of the superpowers' nuclear arsenals In the larger context, the Administration would be correct to say that the Soviet Union has a lead in a number of measures of nuclear capability But the points of American ascendancy—the overall total of strategic warheads (9,000-7,000), to name just one-should not be overlooked Insum,itis an overstatement to maintain that the United States would be stuck in second place Moreover, in the short run a suspension would prevent America's situation from becoming worse, for most of our new systems will not be substantially in place until the mid-to-late 1980s, whereas the Soviet Union is at present deploying the SS-20 intermediate-range missile and the SS-N-18 submarine-launched missile 2. What of the Reagan allegation that the freeze proposal does not go far enough, that it is unsatisfactory compared to the Administration's emphasis on reductions...