The Senate and the Soviets

Baker balks on SALT II, and Byrd flies off to Moscow

Twice he had told Jimmy Carter that he would not support the SALT II treaty unless it was amended. But the Carter Administration still thought that he would eventually change his mind. Last week, however, Senate Republican Leader Howard Baker Jr. seemed to slam the door on that possibility. At a packed Capitol Hill press conference, he announced bluntly: "I shall oppose the SALT treaty." It was a serious blow to the treaty's chances of being approved by the Senate.

What prompted Baker to move so strongly against the treaty were repeated rebuffs, from both the White House and the Kremlin, to any Senate suggestions for amendments. Early last week in Moscow, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko took the unusual step of calling a press conference and declared that any changes in the treaty would be fatal. Said Gromyko: "It would be the end of negotiations. It would be impossible, whatever amendments might be added." Western diplomats were struck by the toughness of Gromyko's language, which underscored the position taken by Leonid Brezhnev at the Vienna summit.

Gromyko's warning offended many Senators' sense of their constitutional role in the ratification of treaties. Baker called it "threatening." Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater had a much stronger response. Said he: "Tell that Gromyko to go to hell."

Baker's specific objections to the treaty appeared to offer little hope of eventual compromise with the Administration. He urged, for example, that the Soviets be required to dismantle their 308 huge S59 and SS-18 missile launchers. Their firepower, said Baker, is "equal to all of our strategic ballistic missile systems put together." Drastic cuts actually had been suggested by Carter two years ago--and immediately ridiculed by the Soviets. In fact, the U.S. in the 1960s decided against building anything like the Soviets' SS-9s and SS-18s, which are liquid-fueled ICBMs, and developed instead the smaller and more accurate, solid-fueled Minuteman missiles. Moreover, the SALT I agreement, signed by President Nixon in 1972, and the Vladivostok agreement signed by President Ford in 1974, permitted the Soviets to keep the heavy missiles in exchange for dropping their longstanding demand that the U.S. nuclear force in Europe, as well as the British and French nuclear arsenals, be counted under SALT. Said Lieut. General George Seignious, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, last week: "I believe that we did very well in that tradeoff. I know our allies would agree." The arrangement was endorsed by Baker when he voted in 1972 for the SALT I treaty and supported the Vladivostok accord in 1974.

Curiously, the Senator wrongly stated last week that the heavy SS-18 missiles are the chief threat to the American Minuteman force. The U.S. land-based missiles actually are most endangered by the Soviets' more accurate SS-19s, which are smaller missiles that have six warheads apiece (to the SS-18's ten). The Soviets have deployed 200 SS-19s and are expected eventually to have 500 of them.

Baker seemed to be suggesting that the U.S. might offer to sacrifice its planned mobile MX missile for a Soviet agreement to give up the SS-18s. That would be a bad deal because the 200 superaccurate mobile MXs that the U.S. plans to build would have up to ten warheads each and would be more than a match for the stationary SS-18s.

On other SALT issues, Baker was fuzzy in a way that suggested that he was trying to allow for the possibility of having to reverse field on the treaty. He criticized, for instance, the fact that the Soviet Backfire bomber was left out of the treaty. At the same time, he seemed to suggest that he might settle for some measure short of counting Backfire under SALT, such as a Senate resolution calling on the U.S. to develop an equivalent bomber, which would be permitted under the treaty. On balance, however, Baker was so adamant about opposing the agreement that he probably would lose considerable face by changing his mind about it. Said he: "I will work diligently and, I trust, effectively to defeat this treaty."

He denied that his stand on SALT had anything to do with his plans to announce his own candidacy for President, probably this fall. While public opinion seems generally to support the SALT treaty, conservative Republicans vigorously oppose it. However, they are still angry about his votes last year for the Panama Canal treaties. Said a supporter: "We are still hearing a lot about Panama. It won't go away."

Baker's intention to work against an unamended treaty--and the Soviet promise to accept no amendments--left the treaty's fate largely in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd, who this week will spend four days in the Soviet Union talking with Kremlin officials.

Byrd has not made up his mind about the treaty, and the Carter White House badly needs him on its side if the pact is to stand any chance of passage. Thus the Administration accommodatingly lent Byrd Carter's own back-up jet, Air Force Two, a passel of State Department arms control experts as traveling companions and, as tour guide, Malcolm Toon, the testy U.S. Ambassador to Moscow. To shepherd Byrd around the Soviet Union, Toon will have to skip his embassy's July 4 celebration and his own birthday party (he will be 63).

The Kremlin is well aware of Byrd's key role in this fall's treaty debate and agreed to a private meeting between him and Brezhnev, who is vacationing in the Crimea. Byrd is expected to tell the Soviet leader that any further pronouncements like Gromyko's will only harden resistance to the treaty in the Senate. Brezhnev is likely to signal his understanding that it might be better to ease off until the Senate acts. But Western diplomats warned that if Byrd intends to lobby the Soviet leader for amendments that might make the treaty more acceptable to the Senate, he might as well have stayed home.

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