Nation: High-Level Lobbying for SALT

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And a Soviet ploy to keep NATO from deploying new weapons

In a rare display of solidarity, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are conducting one of the most intensive lobbying efforts in the 30-year history of the alliance. Their collective aim: to persuade the U.S. Senate to ratify the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the Soviet Union, a pact they consider essential for their own security.

Speaking publicly and privately with undecided Senators last week, leading statesmen of the member nations kept emphasizing that it will be politically possible to deploy new medium-range theater missiles in Europe only if SALT is approved. Without the pact, jittery West Europeans living only a few hundred miles from the Iron Curtain would not consent to the nuclear weaponry that nato so urgently needs, notably 1,000-mile range Pershing II and ground-based Cruise missiles capable of striking Soviet cities and military targets.

Though the Carter Administration lad earlier claimed that SALT should be judged on its own merits, the White House was clearly linking the pact to NATO concerns last week. If the treaty is rejected, Administration spokesmen declared, Western Europe might face the breakdown of NATO and eventual "Finlandization," as its members seek private accommodations with the Soviet Union. Warned Delaware Democrat Joe Biden, a leading pro-SALT Senator: "Our NATO allies have had their confidence shaken by our slow response to the energy crisis, by the decline of the dollar, and by what they perceive as American foreign policy setbacks. For the U.S. to repudiate SALT would send through Europe the most profound and far-reaching doubts about the U.S. as leader of the Western alliance."

Trying to reassure Europeans who worry whether the U.S. would come to their assistance in case of a Soviet attack, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told a meeting of the Atlantic Treaty Association in Washington: "Let there be no question about our commitment and our determination to help defend Europe by all means necessary—nuclear and conventional. There are no conceivable circumstances in which we would not react to a security threat directed at our allies in Europe."

The need for maintaining Western unity was underscored after Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev delivered a speech in East Berlin marking the 30th anniversary of the founding of East Germany. Brezhnev warned that the new NATO weapons would "radically alter the strategic situation on the Continent," and "poison the international atmosphere." He singled out West Germany for a special threat: "It would not be difficult to imagine what consequences would await her if this weaponry was ever put to use by its owners."

After brandishing the stick, Brezhnev proffered a meager carrot. He said that the number of Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles aimed at Europe would be reduced if the NATO weapons were not deployed. He added that the U.S.S.R. would unilaterally withdraw up to 20,000 Soviet troops plus 1,000 tanks and other military hardware from East Germany within the next twelve months.