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.

The debacle at Reykjavik need not be rehearsed again. It is obvious that the more utopian elements discussed there have been put aside. There will be no agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons or to eliminate all ballistic missiles. What remains, however, is the outline of a three-part agreement: (1) a major reduction (about 50 percent) of strategic offensive weapons; (2) an agreement not to withdraw from the ABM treaty or to deploy SDI for some defined period (say, ten years) and (3) a separate agreement eliminating all American and Soviet land-based intermediate-range missiles (the so-called zero option).

This, then, is what a "grand compromise" might entail. If such a compromise is reached in the next year it could probably only be in the form of a "framework" agreement; only the INF treaty is close to completion. Even if such a framework is agreed upon, the United States and the Soviet Union will continue for at least a decade to operate within the mainstream of arms control and strategic policies that have characterized their relationship since the late 1960s. Both sides will retain large strategic offensive forces, even after reductions of 50 percent. Deterrence will still rest on the certainty of retaliation, and there will be no significant defense against strategic attacks. Hence the populations and military targets of both sides will be vulnerable. Significant imbalances in conventional forces will remain in Europe, but there will be a new debate about America?s nuclear guarantee of NATO and how to implement it.

Standing alone, unlinked to the other components of arms control, the new INF agreement will be hostage to the outcome of further negotiations, and vulnerable to new military decisions on both sides. It is difficult to imagine an INF agreement surviving the collapse of the ABM treaty and the beginning of SDI competition. This isolation from other points at issue is a major defect of the new agreement.

Reducing or even eliminating a category of weapons cannot in itself be the basis for a durable strategic relationship. An arms control agreement must meet the broad criteria of long-term strategic stability?a formidable task if only because there is no agreement, either in the United States or between the United States and the Soviet Union, on what constitutes stability. It has become far more difficult in light of the revival of strategic defense: creating a durable balance between offense and defense is the very essence of stability.

It is still possible that no arms control agreement will be reached under the Reagan Administration. SDI remains a major issue, and it is not clear that the Soviets have given up an attempt to make the prospective INF agreement conditional on a solution of the SDI dispute, a repeat of the tactic pursued at Reykjavik. But the general trend seems to point toward the completion of a treaty on INF. Its chief benefits are that it moves the process of negotiated arms control forward, and does in fact eliminate, for the first time, an entire category of nuclear weapons.

Even if there is a limited agreement arising from a third Reagan-Gorbachev summit, major policy questions will remain, probably to be addressed by President Reagan?s successor. Is it credible for the United States to continue to rely indefinitely on the threat of strategic retaliation to maintain deterrence, even at severely reduced levels of strategic forces? A more immediate question in light of possible agreements on INF concerns the viability of extended deterrence in Europe after the elimination of all American missiles from Europe. Finally, and most critically, have we reached the point that some form of strategic defense is necessary, for strategic, political or psychological reasons? If so, is a new offensive-defensive balance possible and desirable in the 1990s? Can it be stable? What would be its content?

VI

The next Reagan-Gorbachev summit looms as a benign version of Reykjavik. It will center on arms control, and thereby confirm the decline of "linkage," of making arms control negotiations or agreements dependent in some degree on progress on political issues, for example, on progress toward an agreement on Afghanistan or Nicaragua, or even the Persian Gulf. This decline in linkage was probably inevitable: as the size and sophistication of nuclear arsenals has grown, intricate Kissingerian strategies of linkage have carried less and less conviction. President Ford did not really link arms control and geopolitical issues despite the Soviet-Cuban intervention in Angola. President Carter invoked linkage only after the invasion of Afghanistan, and Reagan formally abandoned it when he continued arms control talks after the imposition of martial law in Poland; no serious attempt was made to revive it when confronted by summit meetings.

The decoupling of arms control from geopolitical issues is bound to limit American policy, perhaps in a dangerous way. For it remains clear that the chief threats to Soviet-American relations are not only nuclear weapons but regional conflicts as well. The invasion of Afghanistan should have demonstrated the dangers of delinking arms control: President Carter had no choice but to withdraw SALT II after the invasion.

It is also true, however, that it will be difficult to tie arms control to other issues. It takes the power and authority of a strong president to insist on parallel progress on contentious political issues and to resist the pressures to settle for partial agreements. If this trend toward separate arms control agreements is not arrested, new and potentially serious disputes in Soviet-American relations are inevitable. Consider one example: Would the Administration proceed to sign and seek ratification of an INF agreement if MiGs were sent to Nicaragua?