Putting It on the Table

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Washington reverberated last week with varying assessments of the negotiations, few of them hopeful, as a long line of Administration officials appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees. Paul Nitze, Shultz's senior arms-control adviser, predicted cautiously that "it will be difficult to move rapidly toward radical reductions" of offensive weapons, "but not impossible." As for the Soviet aim of restricting the development of space-based weapons, Nitze declared that there is little room for bargaining. Said Nitze: "S.D.I. as a research program cannot logically be limited by agreement because there is no way you can identify or verify it."

The atmosphere around the negotiating table is not likely to be improved by the Administration's determination to "get satisfaction," as one official put it, on apparent Soviet violations of past Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) treaties. One example: the construction of a huge radar facility at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia that could be used as a defensive warning system, in violation of the 1972 antiballistic missile (ABM) treaty. Richard Perle, a critic of past arms-control measures, charged last week that the U.S. has allowed the Soviets to "think they could play fast and loose with these accords."

Another potential side issue that arose was a White House campaign linking progress in Geneva to the MX missile. Attacked by critics for its high cost and questionable basing mode, the missile is scheduled for a series of crucial funding votes in Congress in the weeks after the arms talks resume in Geneva. Without congressional approval of the MX, argued Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, "the Soviets have little incentive to negotiate seriously." Complains Georgi Arbatov, director of Moscow's Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada: "It looks more and more as if the new negotiations are being used by the Reagan Administration merely to get more money from Congress for its military programs."

There was one sign of U.S. conciliation. The Defense Department, citing "technical reasons," announced that the U.S. will postpone until June tests scheduled to begin this month on a new antisatellite weapon (ASAT). The ASAT device will probably be the subject of early discussions in Geneva, since it is the only space weapon that both sides agree is immediately negotiable.

Nor was the Soviets' pre-Geneva rhetoric calculated to create soaring expectations. Having promised that his nation would campaign against Star Wars "at the top of its voice," Gromyko did precisely that in person in Western Europe. During a three-day visit to Rome, he reportedly warned Giulio Andreotti, his Italian counterpart, that U.S. renunciation of its space defense plan was "absolutely essential." Moreover, Gromyko's performance in Rome was merely the opening shot in a propaganda campaign against Star Wars that seems likely to grow even shriller than the "peace" campaign of the early '80s, which was aimed at preventing U.S. deployment of medium-range missiles in Western Europe. Said a leading West German defense analyst: "I have never seen Soviet officials so emotional as they are over Star Wars."