Once More to Geneva

By Evan Thomas

Given the chill of the past four years, it comes as a relief that the two sides are willing to sit down to talk at all. President Reagan had to ignore some of his own harsh rhetoric; the Soviets had to abandon their vow not to return to the negotiating table until the U.S. pulled its missiles out of Europe. Thus, it is no wonder that the world will be watching, and hoping, when Secretary of State George Shultz joins Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Geneva next week to renew nuclear arms-control talks after a yearlong hiatus.

But the Geneva talks set for next Monday and Tuesday may raise unreasonable expectations. Shultz and Gromyko will not actually negotiate reductions in the vast nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers. Rather, they will try to decide what to negotiate about. That task will be difficult enough. Both sides have amassed such a varied array of arms--medium-range and long-range missiles, single and multiple warheads, land-based, sea-based and air-based weapons --that it is hard to know where and how to begin bargaining. Yet the choice of which weapons to lay on the table is critical: it may go a long way toward deciding whether a meaningful arms-control deal can ever be struck.

So far, the U.S. arms-control advisers cannot agree among themselves on what to offer the Soviets, much less on what to accept in return. The principal source of contention is a weapon that is still only a concept: the Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as Star Wars. Proposed by Ronald Reagan ! almost two years ago as an impenetrable shield against incoming missiles, the SDI is at least a decade and untold billions of dollars away from deployment. Many experts doubt that it can ever be made to work, at least as well as it is supposed to--and would have to.

Even so, it is in large part the fear of Star Wars that brought the Kremlin back to the bargaining table. The Soviets are afraid that U.S. computer wizardry and advances in laser and particle-beam research will leave them far behind in a space arms race. For the past six months Moscow has conducted a deft propaganda campaign of mir i druzhba--peace and friendship--designed to put the onus on the U.S. to avoid what the Soviets call the militarization of space. "It is especially important to avoid the transfer of the arms race to outer space," warned Mikhail Gorbachev, the Kremlin's No. 2 man, in talks with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. "If it is not done, then it would be unreal to hope to stop the nuclear arms race." Recognizing that Britain and other allies are leery of Star Wars, Gorbachev hoped to exploit their misgivings. Thatcher publicly stuck by the U.S., but was careful to endorse only research into space weapons, not their deployment.

State Department moderates are advocating a giant swap with the Soviets. They would use Star Wars as a bargaining chip, offering to shelve it in return for deep cuts in the Soviets' heavy land-based missiles. They maintain that the U.S. cannot hope to build a defense that would knock out every Soviet missile before it struck the U.S. The Soviets, they fear, would simply rush to build more and more sophisticated missiles to saturate U.S. defenses, pushing the arms race into a volatile new phase. For the moment, the superpowers have informally agreed to practice "interim restraint" while groping for a compre- hensive arms-control agreement. Many arms-control advocates fear that Star Wars will lead to what military planners call breakout, when one side unilaterally declares itself no longer bound by past agreements and suddenly fields large numbers of new and more lethal weapons.

The President, however, remains a true believer in a Star Wars program that would render nuclear weapons "obsolete." When Administration officials hinted obliquely that Star Wars could be bargained away in Geneva, Reagan quickly ordered them to set the record straight. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane declared that the U.S. had no intention of trading Star Wars for reductions in Soviet offensive missiles.

The Reaganauts see Star Wars as opening the door to a new, more hopeful form of deterrence. At present, nuclear peace paradoxically depends on "mutually assured destruction" (MAD): an attack by one side guarantees a devastating counterattack. Star Wars, argues McFarlane, would obviate the need for this balance of terror. Says he: "You would move away from a strategy based on the ability to threaten with offensive power to greater reliance upon systems that don't threaten anybody." A switch from offensive to defensive deterrence would indeed be a radical change, but not necessarily for the better. Since it is hard to imagine a leakproof nuclear umbrella, each side would still be vulnerable to a first strike. Moreover, each would have to worry about the other's achieving a decisive advantage in defensive weapons. The attraction of MAD, by contrast, is its grim certainty.

While President Reagan believes in Star Wars, he also appears sincerely committed to meaningful arms control. The problem is how he can have both, since the Soviet Union may walk away from any negotiations that leave Star Wars off the table. Warns Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser under Gerald Ford and sometime consultant on arms control to the Reagan Administration: "The Geneva talks won't get far. If the U.S. refuses to put SDI (the Strategic Defense Initiative) on the table, the Soviets have the option of making a scene or agreeing to a minor, second-rate treaty."

For its part, the Administration is trying to downplay expectations. At most, officials anticipate that Shultz will emerge from the talks with a new format and agenda for resuming formal arms negotiations. That could be the "umbrella" scheme suggested by the U.S., or a return to separate tables for such items as intermediate and long-range offensive missiles. Shultz will probably make a show of good faith to the Soviets to build negotiating momentum. For example, the U.S. is prepared to impose a moratorium on the testing of antisatellite weapons. The U.S. is also prepared to switch to Moscow's preferred method of counting launchers instead of warheads, in hopes of winning quick agreement on reducing strategic missile arsenals.

While the President mulls his options--the U.S. negotiating position may not be settled until a few days before the Geneva meeting--the Administration's intramural struggle over arms control rages unabated. State Department aides urge maximum flexibility at the negotiating table; Pentagon counterparts oppose any agreement now on the grounds that it would freeze the U.S. into a position of inferiority. Some Kremlinologists say that American indecision may actually prove to be "the right position for the wrong reasons." The U.S. still does not know if the Soviets are serious about negotiating; it may be premature to take a concrete stand before the two sides finish feeling each other out. Whatever negotiating stance does finally emerge, U.S. officials are bound by a White House gag order not to leak the internal deliberations. The players are, for once, airing their differences behind closed doors and not in the press.

It is a movable feud: the dozen or so members of the Administration's arms- control policy group--from the State Department, the Pentagon, the White House and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency--have all been invited to attend the Geneva talks. Since only Shultz and his chief arms-control adviser, Paul Nitze, will actually sit down with the Soviets, some players are talking about staying home rather than being seen walking aimlessly around the halls. But the Pentagon's point man against arms control, Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle, sees an opportunity to taunt the Kremlin. He has arranged for Soviet dissidents, including Avital Shcharansky, wife of the imprisoned human rights agitator Anatoli Shcharansky, to come to Geneva to denounce Soviet repression.

The Shultz-Gromyko main event, with all its attendant sideshows, has aroused such anticipation in the press that all three television networks will originate their evening news programs from Geneva next week. Not only Anchormen Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings but Morning Show Hosts David Hartman and Bryant Gumbel will be offering the arcane jargon of arms control as they vie for exclusive interviews with Shultz and Gromyko. The hoopla threatens to turn a sober and delicate exercise into a noisy carnival. But it could also help produce some progress. With so many cameras and microphones on hand, neither side will want to seem intransigent.

With reporting by Johanna McGeary and Bruce van Voorst/Washington