Arrows amid the Olive Branches

By WALTER ISAACSON

Tough nuclear strategy during a week of peaceful gestures

"The U.S. nuclear capabilities must I prevail even under the condition of a prolonged war." That American planners have thought of, and even planned for, such dire contingencies is neither new nor surprising. But the fact that details of these plans were leaked to journalists at a most inappropriate time was highly disturbing. At least three news organizations obtained copies of a secret 125-page Defense Guidance report, in which the Pentagon set forth U.S. military strategy for the next five years. Its missile-rattling conclusions made front-page headlines in the New York Times just as Ronald Reagan was embarking on a European tour designed to reassure allies who are concerned about the danger of an atomic showdown and Reagan's hawkish instincts. The disclosures undercut a Memorial Day announcement about the beginning of new Soviet-American arms-control talks and served as an unwelcome counterpoint to a sobering report by an international commission on disarmament.

The Pentagon document, which is designed to aid the armed services in preparing budget requests, describes what has for some time been U.S. strategy: ensuring a second-and third-strike capability that would allow the country to continue fighting the Soviets after an initial nuclear exchange. This basic idea was included in the Defense Department's annual report to Congress in February. It is an extension of a "counterforce" strategy that evolved in the early 1970s to replace the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, in which major Soviet cities were targeted for immediate massive retaliation in the event of any nuclear strike.

The importance of the new guidelines is that they provide a definitive statement of how the Reagan Administration plans to pursue this strategy. "The U.S. [must] never emerge from a nuclear war without nuclear weapons while still threatened by enemy nuclear weapons," the report states. The U.S. should make its own communications and military control systems less vulnerable to attack, so that a war could be pursued after an initial exchange. This would theoretically allow for a limited nuclear war, in which a Soviet attack could be answered with surgical retaliations that would conceivably be halted before a full-scale missile exchange occurred. Other parts of the report recommend establishing "special operations" units (presumably saboteurs and guerrillas) for possible use in Eastern Europe during a war and greatly expanding the Rapid Deployment Force.

Did the chillingly candid discussion of nuclear options mean that the U.S. thinks a nuclear war is winnable? "This notion has no place in our strategy," insisted Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger last week at the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pa. Said he: "We see nuclear weapons only as a way of discouraging the Soviets from thinking that they could ever resort to them. That is exactly why we must have a capability for a protracted response--to demonstrate that our strategic forces could survive Soviet strikes over an extended period."

A top Pentagon official conceded that publication of the guidelines "could have a damaging effect on the President's trip" and mistakenly convey to the Soviets "that our talk of arms reduction is not sincere." The leak may have been planted for one of many reasons: to undermine U.S. planning for a protracted nuclear war, to embarrass Reagan as he softened his stance on arms control, or to make clear to the Soviets that the U.S. is serious about building up its strategic forces if arms-control talks fail.

Meanwhile, the idea that a nuclear confrontation could result in anything less than the assured destruction of much of the world was assailed last week by the report of an independent high-level commission on disarmament headed by former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Said the report: "It is dangerous for states to pursue policies based on the fallacious assumption that a nuclear war might be won." The 17-member commission, which spent almost two years on its study, included former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, former British Foreign Secretary David Owen, Tanzanian Foreign Minister Salim Salim and Soviet Central Committee Member Georgi Arbatov. Among its freshest recommendations is a call for the removal from Central Europe of all battlefield nuclear weapons; such weapons, the report said, could act as a trigger that escalates a conventional battle into an atomic war. Warned the commission: "Once the nuclear threshold has been crossed, the dynamics of escalation would inexorably propel events toward catastrophe."

Significantly, the Palme report also said that any major arms-reduction treaty must include verification procedures, including the possibility of on-site inspection of enemy facilities. The acceptance of this section by Arbatov, who is the Kremlin'.s top expert on the U.S., may reflect a Soviet desire not to let disputes over verification stall future arms talks. If so, this could be an important breakthrough.

Moscow indicated less flexibility, however, in its first comprehensive response to the proposals Reagan made last month for Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). A 2,500-word analysis in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda attacked the President's plan to allow no more than half of each side's warheads to be deployed on land-based missiles. "The so-called radical reductions favored by the U.S. President would be such only for the Soviet side," it said.

At a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington Cemetery, Reagan announced that both Moscow and Washington had agreed to begin START talks in Geneva at the end of this month. He added that while talks were under way, both sides would honor key provisions of previous accords, such as the SALT II treaty that the U.S. has yet to ratify. By dealing firmly and frankly with the Soviets, he said, the U.S. "can some day bring about a reduction in the terrible arms of destruction, arms that threaten us with war even more terrible than those that have taken the lives of the Americans we honor today." After 17 months of contradictory signals about arms control, Reagan's speech seemed to indicate that the Administration had finally settled on a clear and coherent policy for resuming negotiations with the Soviets. It was un fortunate that loose talk about ways to prolong and win a nuclear war clouded his purpose.

-- By Walter Isaacson.

Reported by Bruce W. Nelan/Washington

With reporting by Bruce W. Nelan

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.