Hands Beneath the Sea

As an arms-control milestone, the seabed treaty proposed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union in Geneva last week hardly ranks in importance with 1963's partial nuclear test ban and the nuclear nonproliferation pact of 1968. Nor is it any substitute for the long-delayed strategic arms limitation talk (SALT), which Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko last month promised to consider "soon." Still, like the treaties denuclearizing Antarctica and outer space, the seabed proposal at least offers the hope that one more area may be closed to the arms race.

The treaty, which now must be ratified by 22 nations including the U.S. and Russia, would ban nuclear weapons and other means of "mass destruction" from the ocean floor more than twelve miles offshore. The pact would not beach missile-carrying submarines. But it would place the seabed off limits to fixed installations, including nuclear mines, silos that could house nuclear missiles, and chemical-and biological-warfare devices.

Sea Snooping. The Soviets sprang an initial draft on the nascent Nixon Administration last March. At first, the Russians proposed outlawing everything "of a military nature." That was unacceptable to the U.S., which would have had to unplug the underseas devices it uses to track Soviet subs. Washington, in turn, wanted the weapon-free area to begin at the three-mile limit, not at twelve miles, as the Soviets insisted. Finally, the two sides compromised: the U.S. went along with the twelve-mile proposal, and the Russians agreed to ban only offensive weapons.

Canada and Italy, among others, complained that the treaty leaves the difficult task of inspection mainly to the superpowers, who alone have the resources to snoop along the sea floor. Then, too, the negotiators left unresolved some technical questions of geography. Will those Latin American countries that claim territorial waters up to 200 miles beyond their shores accept a twelve mile limit? Should the Gulf of Riga, the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Siberian Sea and parts of the Black and White Seas, all of which Moscow claims as its own waters, come under the treaty?

In Geneva, the negotiators declared that the treaty rescues "two-thirds of the surface of the earth from the sphere of the arms race." Obviously, the big concern is the other third, where the world's 3.5 billion people live. Heartening as the seabed treaty may be, a more valid test of the Soviets' eagerness to make real progress in arms control is how soon they will move from the seas to SALT.