Now the Great Debate

The normally restrained Cyrus Vance allowed himself a small half-smile as he faced a packed, steamy White House press room last week. He knew that he was about to make one of the most important announcements of the Carter Administration. But it had been so long in coming that instead of elation | and high drama, the final declaration was something of an anticlimax. Reading from a prepared text, the Secretary of State ! said simply that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. "have concluded our negotiations on SALT."

What these few words meant | was that after more than six 1 years of frustrating bargaining, Washington and Moscow were finally ready to sign the Strategic Arms Limitation treaty known as SALT II. That night, at a Democratic congressional dinner in Washington, Jimmy Carter said that "a SALT treaty will lessen the danger of nucleIar destruction, while safeguarding our military security in a more stable, predictable and peaceful world." The treaty will be signed by Carter and Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev when they meet in Vienna, June 15 through 18, for their first summit conference.

The time it has taken to negotiate the new accord indicates the sensitivity and complexity of arms control. At stake is the national security of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. SALT is not a disarmament treaty, and there are large elements of military force that it does not cover at all.

What it does seek to do is maintain a strategic balance that deters nuclear war by allowing each superpower a force that could suffer a surprise atomic strike and still be capable of launching a devastating, unacceptably destructive counterattack. Eventually the SALT process is supposed to enable both sides to maintain the strategic balance at a lower level of armaments, but that still lies far in the future.

It is this basic notion of disarmament that gives the SALT process its fundamental popular appeal as a worthwhile enterprise. To date, however, arms-control efforts have not had much success. While the 1972 SALT I accord has halted deployment of an antimissile system, it only managed to freeze intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched missiles at existing high levels. The treaty ignored bombers and did not deal effectively with weapon modernization. Disappointed arms-control advocates hoped that subsequent agreements would slash superpower nuclear stockpiles. The achievements of last week's accord remain relatively modest, but they do go beyond SALT I. For the first time, a few aging nuclear weapons actually will have to be dismantled, and some technology will be restricted.

More important, perhaps, the new treaty establishes a psychological climate for better relations between Moscow and Washington. That, in any case, is the view of the Administration and its supporters, but they now face a great national debate and a fierce battle in the Senate for ratification. The fight will be fierce because SALT'S opponents, who believe the treaty concedes a perilous degree of Soviet superiority, are determined and well organized. They number almost one-quarter of the Senate, and need only one-third to block ratification and inflict a disastrous defeat on Carter's presidency.

The SALT II agreement announced by Vance is still only a working document. U.S. and Soviet negotiators in Geneva will resolve a few technical differences and prepare the final formal wording. The SALT II draft is 76 pages. It contains a preamble, treaty, protocol, statement of principles and several appendices. The treaty itself, which will run until the end of 1985, generally follows the outline set in 1974 at Vladivostok by Brezhnev and Gerald Ford and imposes equal numerical limits on the two strategic arsenals. Using weapon launchers as the basis for measuring these arsenals (it would be almost impossible to identify each warhead accurately), the treaty will limit each side to a combined total of 2,250 ICBM launchers, long-range bombers and submarine tubes capable of firing strategic ballistic missiles by the start of 1982.

This actually is below the ceiling of 2,400 launchers set by the Vladivostok summit. Despite long arguments, the treaty will not limit the Soviet Backfire bomber, because Washington reluctantly accepts Moscow's contention that the new warplane, which is in production, is not being deployed in a manner that would enable it to attack the U.S.

Under the overall ceiling of 2,250, SALT II places a subceiling of 1,320 on those weapons regarded as the most destabilizing to the strategic balance (see chart following page). These mainly are the multiwarheads known as MIRVs, the acronym for multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles. By enabling several weapons to be fired from a single launcher, MlRVing has led to the rapid expansion of atomic arsenals even though the number of launchers was frozen by SALT I. The 1,320 subceiling covers not only land-based launchers and submarine tubes, but also long-range bombers fitted to carry cruise missiles, the highly accurate drones that the U.S. is still testing.

Some types of MlRVs face special restrictions. For example, MlRVed ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles together cannot exceed 1,200. And under that ceiling, MlRVed ICBMs are limited to 820. The reason for this stricter limit is that the land-based ICBMs, by combining enormous thrust with deadly accuracy, pose an especially great threat to the U.S.-Soviet balance. Neither side, moreover, can test or deploy an ICBM armed with more than ten MIRVs or a submarine-launched missile with more than 14 MIRVs. To prevent several missiles from being fired from the same launcher, the treaty forbids testing of rapid reloading techniques or the storing of extra missiles near launchers.

In addition to limiting the numbers of strategic arms, SALT II places restrictions on missile size. Both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. are prohibited from developing new land-based ICBMS larger than the Soviet SS-19. Since only the Soviets already have larger rockets (mainly the SS-18), and they will be allowed to keep them, the new limit in effect confirms Moscow's monopoly of giant missiles. But the U.S.S.R. cannot add to the 308 huge launchers now deployed.

To slow the introduction of new strategic weapons, each side will be permitted to test and deploy only one new land-based ICBM. A missile must be counted as new if there is a 5% increase or decrease in some of its key characteristics, such as length, payload and launch weight. The U.S. is expected to concentrate its effort on developing the MX missile, which probably will have a mobile launcher. Carter is under pressure to okay development of this system and is expected to make his decision soon.

To ensure that both sides comply with the treaty, Moscow and Washington will depend heavily on space satellites and electronic monitoring. They therefore agree not to interfere with each other's use of satellite photography and electronic devices. Specifically banned is the encoding of radio transmissions (telemetry) beamed from missiles to ground stations during tests, if that information is related to verification of the SALT terms.

The protocol part of SALT II is in force only until the end of 1981 and deals primarily with new systems. During the protocol period, there is a ban on testing or deploying (but not developing) mobile ICBMS like the MX. Although no restrictions (in addition to those in the treaty) are placed on cruise missiles launched from airplanes, there can be no deployment of ground-or sea-launched cruise missiles with a range exceeding 372 miles. These weapons, however, can be developed and test-fired.

The final integral part of SALT II is the statement of principles. In it, the two countries set guidelines for SALT III and pledge to begin it "promptly" after the SALT II agreement takes effect.

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