No Nukes

Ronald Reagan's yearning for a nuclear-free world had some officials in Washington and Western Europe concerned last week that the President had come close to accepting a huge Soviet advantage in conventional forces. Administration officials conceded that the Soviets had not seriously misrepresented the President's assent to a sweeping no-nukes proposal from Mikhail Gorbachev at the Reykjavik summit. Although it seemed that Reagan might have blundered into this position, White House aides insisted that he had been fully aware of the implications of his bargaining tactics.

At issue was whether the President had been willing to ban "all strategic" nuclear weapons in ten years, as the Soviet leader claimed, or only intercontinental "ballistic" nuclear missiles, as the Administration initially contended. The difference is far from academic. If ballistic missiles were eliminated, the U.S. would still retain long-range bombers and cruise missiles that could deliver nuclear blows to the Soviet Union. If all strategic nukes disappeared, the U.S. would lose its long-standing deterrent to Soviet power in Europe, where the Warsaw Pact's conventional forces outnumber NATO's.

The Soviets quoted Reagan as telling Gorbachev, "If we agree that by the end of the ten-year period all nuclear arms are to be eliminated, we can refer this to our delegations in Geneva to prepare an agreement that you could sign during your visit to the U.S." Top Reagan aides did not specifically dispute these words. They said the President, in focusing on the General Secretary's unyielding opposition to the Administration's Strategic Defense Initiative, let Gorbachev broaden the bargain to all strategic weapons. But when Gorbachev failed to budge on Star Wars, talk of banning nuclear weapons was not resumed.

Presidential aides said Reagan, during a break in the meeting, alerted his advisers to the Soviets' substitution of the phrase "all strategic forces" for "ballistic," as written in a U.S. proposal. Said one summit participant: "He knew exactly why that was not a good deal and why it couldn't be achieved in the time frame."

The Administration tried to put the controversy to rest. "Most of this is a tempest in a teapot, because our formal position is in writing and now tabled in Geneva," said a senior White House official. The U.S. proposal has two parts: start by eliminating half of all strategic warheads and delivery vehicles; scrap all ballistic missiles by 1996. The firmness of Soviet intentions to link any agreement to restrictions on SDI should become clearer this week, when Secretary of State George Shultz meets in Vienna with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.