Gearing Up in Geneva

By William R. Doerner.

When a beaming Ronald Reagan bid farewell to his three-man arms-negotiating team last Friday morning in the White House Roosevelt Room, he gave each a fat notebook to put in his briefcase. The papers comprised the President's instructions, just made final, on how the U.S. is to carry out its side of the deliberations in Geneva, which begin this week. Along with these marching orders, Reagan sped the negotiators forth with an exhortation to be patient during the "long and difficult" bargaining ahead. "All God's children have lived with the fear of nuclear war," declared Reagan. "Above all, we seek agreement as soon as possible on real and verifiable reductions in American and Soviet offensive nuclear arms."

The President's accent on offensive arms was no accident. It was part of a campaign to swivel attention at Geneva away from defensive innovations like the celebrated Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as Star Wars. The Soviets are determined to make SDI the centerpiece of negotiations. The U.S., by contrast, is eager to cut a deal on reducing existing nuclear stockpiles and then worry about still-to-be-perfected space weapons. Said National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane: "It will take time to establish, much less understand, our new strategic-defense concept. That understanding is what we are after in this round."

Max Kampelman, the Washington attorney who is leading the American side in the space-weapons talks, was given a dozen pages of talking points that spell out the Administration's general views on the relationship between offense and defense. He will outline "worrisome" trends in the strategic balance between the superpowers, which the U.S. feels was knocked out of kilter by increased Soviet deployments of multiwarhead land missiles. He will air American concerns about the potential upgrading of Soviet air-defense systems. He will also share U.S. ideas about how emerging weapons technologies like laser beams and other "directed energy" might be used to promote greater stability for both sides. In short, Kampelman will try to teach the Soviets to think like Ronald Reagan.

Reagan's instructions are much briefer in the two sets of discussions on offensive weapons at Geneva: the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), which deal with intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) negotiations, which cover medium-range missiles. The instructions are also broader than those given in the past in terms of bargaining flexibility, introducing a concept called "ultimate outcomes." Under it, strategists in Washington decide on the overall goals for reducing weapons levels but allow the negotiators in Geneva, under the direction of Kampelman, considerable maneuvering room on how to achieve them. Said McFarlane: "Never have I seen instructions with a greater latitude for dynamic negotiation."

That latitude could be mistaken for indecision. On START, for example, Reagan was presented by his aides with half a dozen negotiating options. "He chose all six," said McFarlane, "because we are willing to explore all these different avenues to reach the desired outcome." It will be up to the START negotiators to pursue whatever avenue seems most promising. Declares McFarlane: "The traditional method of moving by increment, first negotiating an answer, then coming back to Washington to change a number, prevents dynamism and inhibits the pace of negotiations."

The START negotiating team, headed by former Senator John Tower of Texas, will explore the "framework approach" that was discussed in 1983 during the previous round of arms talks. The idea is to consider more than one class of weapon at a time and trade off between areas of strength. The U.S., for example, might be willing to let the Soviets maintain an edge in land missiles, their strongest nuclear suit, in exchange for a continuing American advantage in bombers or submarine-launched missiles.

INF negotiators, led by Career Diplomat Maynard Glitman, will rely more heavily on old offers. Said McFarlane: "The past U.S. position is a satisfactory framework for our approach" this time. The basic U.S. goal has been to reach an equal level of intermediate-range weapons worldwide. The U.S. would be willing to set that level anywhere between zero and 572, the number of U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles currently scheduled to be deployed on NATO territory in Western Europe (about 100 are installed so far). Washington would prefer that the Soviets do away with intermediate-range missiles altogether. That is wishful thinking: the Soviets already have about 280 of these missiles targeted on Europe and take a dim view of dismantling their weapons in exchange for U.S. promises not to deploy similar arms in the future.

One item that will certainly be on Moscow's mind failed to appear in U.S. instructions. Washington has decided that it would be "premature" to talk about restrictions on "things we do not yet have in hand," which in addition to Star Wars include antisatellite (ASAT) weapons. The Administration thus retreated from earlier hints that it might agree to restrictions on ASATs if the U.S. were permitted to complete development of a prototype.

A preview of the Star Wars face-off in Geneva took place last week during a White House meeting between Reagan and Vladimir Shcherbitsky, 67, the first member of the ruling Soviet Politburo other than Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to visit the U.S. since the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev did so in 1973. The two leaders spent half of their 50-minute conversation debating the merits of SDI, and neither gave an inch from his dug-in position. One U.S. adviser described the episode as "two true believers talking past each other." Reagan staunchly defended the program as a research effort consistent with the terms of the antiballistic missile (ABM) treaty of 1972, and promised that should SDI technology become feasible, "we would sit down to discuss ways to deploy it in a stabilizing manner."

Shcherbitsky remained profoundly unconvinced. The research project, he said, threatens to cause "an undermining of the whole process of arms limitation," and actual deployment of Star Wars weapons would "nullify all the positive things" achieved during the detente of the '70s, including the ABM treaty. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Shcherbitsky summarized the Soviet response to Star Wars that he presented to Reagan. "If the U.S pursues this line," he warned, "the Soviet Union would have to take adequate defensive and offensive measures." One probable step would be a buildup in offensive weapons with the aim of overwhelming any Star Wars system.

The Soviet visitor also urged Reagan to abandon his effort to build the MX missile, scheduled for deployment beginning next year as a replacement for the aging U.S. arsenal of Minuteman ICBMs. Pointing out that long-range missiles are one of the matters to be negotiated in Geneva. Reagan declared, "If we can't get reductions, we will have to continue modernization of our defense programs. We are not going to allow ourselves to drift into inferiority." The President would not even let his guest have the last word on the subject of their two nations' shared desire for peace. While agreeing with Shcherbitsky that the Soviet people do not want to start a war, Reagan said with remarkable bluntness: "But people don't start wars, governments do. Unfortunately, the people in the Soviet Union don't have much to say about what their government does."

Reagan is keenly aware that his Administration enjoys no such immunity from public opinion, either in Congress or among America's allies. It has thus been careful to keep both of those groups informed about its controversial defense moves. Both houses of Congress are sending bipartisan observer groups to Geneva for the opening session, and a Senate representative will remain there indefinitely on the chance that an accord requiring Senate ratification might emerge. Last week Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, on a visit to Washington, became the latest NATO leader to bestow his support on SDI as a "research program" from which "we will draw mutual advantages in the scientific and technological fields." This has become a standard allied formulation of approval of SDI, providing surface support while masking widespread doubts about its technical feasibility and possible deployment.

Those doubts are hardly limited to Europeans. Several major U.S. scientists' organizations and think tanks have expressed sweeping reservations about SDI's technological merits; last week a panel at Washington's prestigious Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies issued a 64-page report on U.S. nuclear policy that raised doubts about Star Wars: "Despite advances in technology, a ballistic-missile defense that could protect American and allied populations with tolerably low leak rates does not now appear to be a realistic possibility."

Geneva figured heavily in another pending U.S. weapon decision, namely the fate of the MX in Congress. Reagan seemed on the verge last week of rescuing the controversial missile yet again from a funding cutoff by the Legislative Branch. In a highly polished lobbying campaign, he spoke to 150 members of Congress in small groups at the White House, constantly stressing that the U.S. would lose vital leverage in Geneva without the MX, which is scheduled to come up for a series of funding votes in the next few weeks. Using his favorite name for the missile, the President pleaded with one group: "Let us not unilaterally weaken our position as we begin the talks. The worst signal we could send the Soviets would be to halt the production of the MX Peacekeeper program." Amplifying on that theme in his regular Saturday radio message, Reagan said such a signal would tell the Soviets that "they can gain more through propaganda and stonewalling than through serious negotiations."

This "heavy-duty brainwashing," as one Administration official called it, showed every sign of working. Majority Leader Jim Wright, a Democrat, expressed a widely held view that the arms-talk link "enhances the likelihood" that Congress will release funds for production of an additional 21 MX missiles, bringing the total to 42. One key backer was Democratic Congressman Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who told several colleagues that he planned to vote in favor of the MX, though he declined to make his position public. Democratic Congressman Norman Sisisky of Virginia, who moved from opposing the MX to an undecided position, admitted, "Geneva has changed the balance." Some MX detractors said privately that they will postpone their campaign against the many-lived missile until it comes up for its next funding vote well after the atmosphere in Geneva has been established.

The U.S. negotiating team arrived in Geneva aboard a military jet early Saturday, and in brief arrival remarks, Kampelman pledged that Washington is ready to "help build a bridge" across the arms chasm. Observers expect the & first meetings in the new round of arms negotiations to last several weeks, followed by several more of recess for home consultations in Washington and Moscow. Few observers dared to speculate much beyond that. Predicted Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt: "Geneva is really going to test the patience of the American people." Reagan sounded the same cautionary note, but then, typically, the Gipper found a way of rephrasing the words to make them sound more like a pregame challenge. Said he: "The one who loses is the one who gets tired first."

With reporting by Johanna McGeary and Alessandra Stanley/Washington