Reagan-Gorbachev III

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1987

Summary:  Written in anticipation of the third summit and the signing of the INF treaty, concludes that Gorbachev has adopted a basically defensive strategy and seems prepared to settle for a prolonged stalemate in terms of strategic superiority to the USA. This leads him to seek arms control agreements as a means of codifying his assumptions about security and the nuclear relationship. Washington's policy of selective containment is balanced by Moscow's policy of selective commitment.

William G. Hyland is Editor of Foreign Affairs.

Arms control has had a checkered history. Agreements that seemed important have turned out to be ephemeral or misleading, and there have been some deep disillusionments. But time and again the idea of limiting or otherwise controlling nuclear weapons has returned to the forefront of East-West relations. This is not accidental; it simply reflects the imperatives of the nuclear era. Some American administrations have made arms control a centerpiece, others have become engaged more reluctantly. But a pattern seems to have been fixed: East-West relations start with the control of strategic and nuclear arms.

It was certainly not the aim of the Reagan Administration on taking office in 1981 to return arms control to the focal point of East-West relations. At that time the prevailing attitude was that arms control negotiations held little promise unless and until American power had been rebuilt and Soviet behavior had changed. Even though Washington was pressured by its European allies into early negotiations on theater nuclear forces in November 1981, the course of events seemed to bear out Washington?s basic pessimism.

The Soviets withdrew from the arms negotiations in 1983, and for over a year after there were no official or formal talks on strategic arms control?a first since such negotiations began in November 1969. In retrospect, however, it was more significant that during this interlude both sides maintained some contact and abided by the constraints of the unratified Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements and the nuclear threshold test ban. In June 1984 the Administration accepted?to Moscow?s surprise?a Soviet proposal to begin talks on preventing the militarization of space; this shrewd tactic undercut the Soviet charge that the United States was responsible for the absence of negotiations, and the Soviets then wriggled out of their own offer. In July the two sides agreed to upgrade the "hot line" between Moscow and Washington. Near the end of the 1984 election campaign the Soviets ostentatiously resumed discussions with the White House in a meeting between Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and the president. Shortly after the elections, the United States and the Soviet Union announced a new round of arms control negotiations.

One reason for this turn was that the United States and its allies had scored a major political triumph with the initial deployment of American missiles in Europe during 1983-84, without splitting the Atlantic alliance. The Soviet Union?s failure to stop that deployment was a major setback. The Soviet walkout from Geneva in late 1983 had failed, and new tactics were called for.

In the negotiations that led to the formal resumption of arms control talks in 1985, however, it was the future of President Reagan?s Strategic Defense Initiative that occupied the attention of the two powers. The tortured communiqué that announced the new talks referred to stopping an arms race on earth and preventing one in outer space. The new talks had three parts: strategic offense, strategic defense and intermediate-range weapons. For the first time since 1972 the two sides accepted a formal link between offense and defense.

Many observers?including in the White House?concluded that it was SDI that had brought the Soviets back to the bargaining table. This in turn led to the view that SDI was the ultimate bargaining chip, which could ensure the success of strategic arms control. Gradually there emerged what came to be called the "grand compromise": the United States would virtually abandon or significantly restrict SDI in return for a substantial reduction of Soviet offensive forces.

The positions of the two sides began to coincide, reinforcing the belief that there could or would be a grand compromise. Both sides made proposals for major reductions in offensive forces, varying between 30 and 50 percent. At the 1985 Geneva summit Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to work for a 50-percent reduction in strategic forces. The Soviets conditioned their position on prohibiting space-strike weapons and banning all but laboratory or basic research on such weapons. There were occasional hints, however, that the definition of "laboratory" was open to negotiation.

Washington eventually proposed that for a period of five years both sides commit themselves not to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits the deployment of the space defense system envisioned in SDI; this would be followed by a two-year interim during which negotiations would take place to determine the future course of deployment, but after which both sides would be free to deploy SDI. The United States? position was that during this seven-year period the ABM treaty would be "broadly" interpreted to allow testing and development of space-based components of an SDI system. (At Reykjavik the United States proposed that this interim period for non-withdrawal be extended to ten years.)

The Soviets rejected any automatic right to deploy the SDI system and contested the broad American interpretation of the testing provisions of the ABM treaty. But Moscow more or less agreed to the idea of establishing some interim period for a prohibition on withdrawal from the ABM treaty; this period, Moscow proposed, should be "up to" 15 years.

Meanwhile in the intermediate-range nuclear force negotiations, a compromise began to take shape. During 1986 the Soviets suggested a separate agreement on INF, not conditioned on an agreement on longer-range offensive forces or SDI. The Soviets also finally dropped their insistence on including forward-based U.S. aircraft, and then dropped their proposal to freeze British and French nuclear systems. Shortly before Reykjavik there was widespread speculation that there would be an INF agreement, including the complete elimination of intermediate-range missiles in Europe, while leaving some number of Soviet missiles in Asia and an equivalent number inside the continental United States. The American delegation approached Reykjavik anticipating this outcome.