A Mix of Hope and Hokum

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Still, President Reagan appeared to welcome the Soviet proposal, sounding even a bit more optimistic than some of his advisers. "Everything they are saying represents a change in their position," the President declared expansively to reporters at an impromptu press conference held in a soap factory near Cincinnati, where he had flown last week as part of his lonely crusade on behalf of tax reform. The President, in fact, has seemed somewhat more detached than usual from the details of foreign policy while making repeated forays on behalf of a tax plan most people appear to have forgotten. He also found himself slightly out of step with his advisers on Israel's attack last week on P.L.O. headquarters in Tunisia. After initially characterizing the reprisal raid as "legitimate," he later sent "condolences" to the Tunisian government.

After presenting his plan, Karpov, in an unusual gesture, welcomed reporters to the Soviet delegation's spacious Geneva headquarters with some pointed banter. The Kremlin's offer "is balanced," the Soviet negotiator proclaimed, "as balanced as I am, standing on both my feet." He insisted that the Soviets were doing their part to ensure the success of the upcoming Geneva summit, but the U.S. had been "dragging its feet from the very start" on arms control. Quipped Karpov in the kind of Western cliche that seems to spill effortlessly from publicity-conscious Soviet diplomats these days: "It takes two to tango." His American counterpart, Max Kampelman, said the U.S. was "hopeful" that the proposal would provide the basis for "serious negotiation." But, he added, "it is important to pay close attention to the fine print."

In one critical area, the proposal tabled by the Soviets last week goes a long way toward meeting U.S. demands. It would significantly reduce the total number of warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which have always formed the backbone of the Soviet Union's offensive capacity. The Soviets now have 6,400 such warheads, while the U.S. has 2,125. Moscow's new formula, TIME Washington Bureau Chief Strobe Talbott learned, would allow each of the superpowers no more than 3,600 ICBM warheads. More specifically, the Soviet proposal would limit what Moscow calls "nuclear charges" (bombs, cruise missiles and ballistic-missile warheads) to 6,000 per side. No more than 60% of that figure, or 3,600, would be allowed on any one category of weapons system, such as ICBMs. In 1982 Reagan had proposed that each side be allowed 2,500 ICBM warheads.

The concessions are significant because the Reagan Administration has long feared that the Soviets' land-based forces give them the capacity to launch a pre-emptive attack. The Kremlin's 3-to-1 edge in ICBM warheads--which because of their size, speed and accuracy are called "prompt hard-target killers" or "silo busters"--could conceivably wipe out American land-based missiles in a first strike, making it hard for Washington to retaliate. Though many U.S. submarine- and bomber-based warheads would survive, most of these weapons are too slow or inaccurate to be effective against the Soviets' super-hardened military targets. In this grisly war-game scenario, an American President's only options would be to surrender or use his remaining weapons in a suicide attack on the "soft targets" of Soviet cities, knowing that the Kremlin could retaliate by destroying American ones.