Agreement on Enough

The White House last week announced a "major advance" in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, which have been going on since 1969. The advance--a compromise worked out in a secret exchange of letters between President Nixon and Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev--represents an important milestone in U.S.-Soviet relations and reflects a long-term change in Washington's policy. Where once the U.S. sought to maintain overall nuclear superiority, Washington has now settled for what Nixon has called "sufficiency" --that is, enough arms to deter any Russian attack by promising a devastating retaliatory strike.

Though many difficult details must still be worked out by SALT negotiators, now meeting in Helsinki, the overall shape of the nuclear accommodation between the superpowers was beginning to emerge. The U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed to a series of ceilings and freezes in which Washington has consented to Soviet parity--and in several cases numerical superiority--in every major category of defensive and offensive strategic nuclear weaponry (see chart). In return, the Soviets made two important concessions. They agreed to place limits on the number of missile subs. But more important, they agreed to exclude from the present freeze U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and aboard the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Hence the U.S. was able to avoid unnerving its European NATO allies, who would look askance at any unilateral dealing with the Soviets over American weaponry that is committed to the defense of Western Europe.

The compromise virtually ensures that Nixon and Brezhnev will be able to have a historic signing ceremony if and when the President visits Moscow later this month. They will probably have two documents to sign. One is a full-fledged treaty, already agreed upon, limiting the number of defensive ABMS, or anti-ballistic missiles, that each side may install. The second, barring any last-minute snag, will be an executive agreement setting informal ceilings on offensive strategic missiles until the SALT negotiators can come up with a formal pact. The major points of the two documents:

ABMS. The U.S. and the Soviet Union will each be permitted to maintain only two ABM complexes of 100 missiles each. The Soviets, who have chosen to defend populated areas, will probably add new missiles to the 64 ABMS that now ring Moscow. They may also convert the Tallin Line of antiaircraft missiles near Leningrad to ABMS. The U.S., which by contrast has chosen to use the allotted ABMs to protect its land-based missile force, originally had announced its intention to build 14 Safeguard ABM complexes. Now it will complete only the two sites at Grand Forks, N. Dak., and Malmstrom, Mont.

ICBMS. Pending a formal treaty, both superpowers will freeze the number of ICBMS at the present level, which leaves the U.S. at a 2-to-3 disadvantage (1,054 v. 1,550). Both sides will be free to replace older missiles with newer ones. More important, no ceiling has been placed on nuclear megatonnage, a category in which the Soviets already have far outdistanced the U.S. and which helps them overcome their disadvantage of having less accurate missiles. In fact, some Pentagon experts expect the Russians to install new monster ICBMs in the big empty silos that have recently been detected by U.S. surveillance satellites. The U.S. has more warheads on its missiles--5,700 to the Soviets' 2,500, though Moscow will be allowed to draw even on that score. At present, the U.S. has a considerable technological lead. Its MIRV (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle) warheads can be steered to widely separated targets. By comparison, the Russian MRVs (multiple re-entry vehicles) simply fall in a prearranged cluster.

MISSILE SUBS. Under the ceiling, the Soviets, who have lagged far behind the U.S. in the development of undersea nuclear missiles, will be permitted to complete the 17 submarines now abuilding; within the next couple of years Moscow's missile-packing submarine force will outnumber by one the 41-ship U.S. undersea missile fleet.

Even though the compromise on offensive weapons allows for technological improvement--the U.S., for instance, may eventually replace its missile submarines with the undersea long-range missile system (ULMS), at $165 million per sub without armament --it nevertheless promises to bring the nuclear numbers race to a halt. It also, it is hoped, will serve as a guideline for a full-fledged treaty that will regulate offensive missiles in the same manner in which the ABMs have been brought under control. When, and if, that happens, the strategic arms pact will rank historically with the nuclear test-ban treaty (1963) and the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (1968).

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