The Salt II Games
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Washington - USA THE SALT II GAMES BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington It would be foolish to accept at face value the White House announcement that because the Soviet Union is not living up to its...
...Reagan's approach, however, may wind up giving the Russians a free ride...
...The international scene remains inherently unstable...
...It would have required several hundred million dollars to keep them in the undersea fleet...
...The President tells lawmakers that he needs all the maneuvering room he can muster to bargain successfully with Gorbachev...
...In the circumstances, he could hardly break up two nuclear submarines —as he was required to do in order to stay within salt ii limits—without at the same time reassuring the Right-wingers in and around the Administration that, by golly, he's one of them...
...The current White House scenario calls for the Soviet leader to cave under pressure and to make concessions ranging from Nicaragua to Afghanistan...
...Reagan would then magnanimously agree to continue abiding by salt n. Well, as the Italians say, between now and then a dozen popes could be born...
...After five years, decision-making under Ronald Reagan remains a casual and, at times, even a downright disorderly affair...
...Nevertheless, judging by past form, the Pentagon would declare that yet another missile gap crisis is at hand if and when the Soviets begin retrofitting the SS-18s...
...And they are probably correct in observing that a new arms control treaty would further deaden an already weak Congressional appetite for military outlays...
...Since the superpowers share the same planet, arrangements between them need to be constantly renewed...
...A cynic might suggest that the whole salt n exercise is merely aimed at squeezing more juice from the Congressional orange...
...For military reasons alone, another batch of Poseidon submarines (at 16 missiles a pop) will have to be decommissioned in 1987...
...Therefore, any comprehensive pact with Moscow that curbs the manufacture, testing or deployment of nuclear weapons would have the perverse effect of lulling Americans into false beliefs: namely, that the military can stand down without any real risk, and that defense outlays can consequently be cut...
...As it turns out, the decision window in the next round of the salt follies opens just as Gorbachev is supposed to trample with Reagan through the late fall underbrush at Camp David...
...The White House move caters to hardliners on Capitol Hill and to the Administration's intellectual gurus, poised in their think-tank silos...
...Moscow bumped up against the pact's numerical ceiling far sooner than did Washington, a testament to some shrewdness on the part of the Americans in negotiating what is otherwise, Reagan maintains, a "fundamentally flawed" document...
...Some of them privately contend Gorbachev's grip on power has been so shaken by the disastrous events at Chernobyl that he needs another summit to restore his stature among the Soviet elite...
...Neither were the North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies consulted...
...Max M. Kampelman, a veteran Washington lawyer, a onetime adviser to the late Hubert H. Humphrey and a man not given to cant, has been granted a little running room to strike a deal in Geneva...
...Such theories inconveniently fail to mesh with what is happening in Moscow...
...A house bereft of repairs must in time crumple...
...Yet the Reaganites remain stolid...
...They repeat their Orwellian catechism: Strength, Realism, Dialogue...
...Wiser heads might counsel that an elaborate structure of arms control limits—fashioned by five Presidents over a quarter of a century—should not be subjected to the kind of nuclear gamesmanship favofed by the Reagan White House...
...Either way, they give the President a slow burn...
...The latest in this series are the supposed massive arms shipments to Nicaragua...
...With relative speed and ease, the Soviet Union could add 5,000 or so warheads to the 308 SS-18 missiles already trained on the United States...
...In an all-out nuclear exchange, such fearsome weaponry would only serve to make the rubble bounce...
...When this happens, the United States will once more fall under existing salt n limits...
...But neither he nor anyone within his inner circle possesses the necessary political will to deal seriously with the Russians on arms control...
...Reagan comprehends the planet-sharing concept as a bottom-line truth...
...Groucho Marx used to say he would not want to join any country club that would accept him...
...The President's salt n gamesmanship is, in addition, aimed at the next summit...
...With a fatherless sai t n bargain making its last ditch patrimonial claims, though, a more convoluted Andrew .1...
...The overkill in nuclear weapons has already reached ludicrous proportions: By itself, the USS Nevada, the eighth Trident submarine to j oin the fleet, could wipe out two-thirds of the Soviet Union's population and nearly all of its industry...
...Reagan's response was that he would go along one last time—but that was it...
...Now that the East-West hullabaloo over the U.S...
...Abreach of the salt n agreement, besides potentially leaving the summit on ice, would give the Kremlin an easy opening for a quick-and-dirty fix of its ICBM force...
...Some of these reports are purposefully leaked...
...The President appears to be so reasonable and pragmatic in his approach to the art of governance that it is difficult to view his Administration as one constantly steering into heavy ideological seas...
...Reagan campaigned for office on the proposition that salt n was " fundamentally flawed," a phrase that reappears in his statement on so-called interim restraint...
...After 20 years of hard service, both of the junked Poseidon boats were not running properly (one of them had been in a major collision...
...At a minimum, it will give him something to talk about when, as is assumed here, General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev comes to Washington in early December...
...Soviet officials say that Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze will not meet with Secretary of State George P. Shultz until the Kremlin receives private assurances from the President that he is serious about pursuing arms control...
...That, in turn, would compel the President to plead for extra funds to revive the military spending blitz of the early Reagan years...
...Gt ass, a frequent contributor to The New Leader, is head of the Cox Newspapers bureau in H ashington...
...A mandatory rider to the 1987 defense spending authorization bill is cooking in the Congressional kettle, too...
...By that time, it is safe to assume, the President will have gotten his fill of resolutions from Congress urging that the salt n limits be preserved...
...Actually, the salt games mask an underlying failure to make any real progress in controlling the deployment of nuclear weapons, Kampelman's efforts notwithstanding...
...Washington - USA THE SALT II GAMES BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington It would be foolish to accept at face value the White House announcement that because the Soviet Union is not living up to its side of the bargain, the United States no longer feels obliged to abide by the 1979 accord known as salt ii—which limits both the number and character of strategic nuclear weapons either nation may deploy...
...Reagan's salt announcement prompted Gorbachev to instruct his emissaries to once more suspend their discussions about the summit, just at the point when the discussions were at long last beginning to bear fruit...
...Reagan, who has been suspicious of Communist motives since his Hollywood years, meanwhile gets fed a steady diet of briefings highlighting one alleged Soviet dirty trick after another...
...Similarly, these Reaganites are loath to sign any arms agreement that the Russians would sign...
...maneuver was required...
...others are not...
...Even i f salt n had never been negotiated, Reagan would have been fully justified in scrapping them...
...air raid on Libya has subsided, White House officials believe the superpower meeting is on again...
...A Reagan-Gorbachev meeting cannot take place unless Shevardnadze and Shultz first prepare the way...
...In the present case, the National Security Council staff wrote the initial paper calling for a halt to all salt constraints later this year, without requesting an assessment from the Central Intelligence Agency on the probable Soviet reaction to such a policy change...
...The best bet there has always been a treaty calling for deep cuts in Euromissiles...
...The Soviets' true aim, they argue, is still world domination...
...Any one of a dozen trouble spots may erupt and throw such calculations off stride...
...To the Administration's hard-liners this is the grave danger...
...His policies, if not reversed through Congressional action or at the summit, will aid Moscow to the detriment of American interests...
...From the start, these Right-wingers have held that genuine arms control is a snare and a delusion...
...Some genuine Republican conservatives, however, including Nevada's Senator Paul Laxalt and Arizona's Senator Barry Goldwa-ter, are privately appalled that Reagan hasn't done anything to stem the arms race...
...Their influence is often underestimated...
...Any deal originally negotiated in the early 1970s makes decreasingly less sense as technology creates weapons whose destructive potential could not be envisioned when the salt accords were first signed...
...Soviet-bashing advisers like the Pentagon's Richard Perle have had a cumulative impact on what—with or without them—is a poor policymaking process...
...All in all, the chances are good that when the crunch comes Reagan will refrain from adding more than 130 airborne cruise missiles to the B-52 force (thereby converting these bombers into effective launching platforms for a retaliatory strike...
...After the next batch of Poseidons are decommissioned in 1987, the air cruise program can resume...
...But American negotiators in Geneva, for all their ability and earnestness, have been undercut from the start by a powerful salient in the Administration that falsely regards arms control—when it regards it at all—as a favor to be bestowed upon Moscow for good behavior...
Vol. 69 • May 1986 • No. 8
