Upsetting a Delicate Balance

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Moreover, according to the official American view, the President's dream of March 1983 can come true in a way that will increase the safety of both sides and diminish, if not eliminate, the threat of nuclear war altogether. The Administration hopes to convince the Soviets not only to blunt their offensive threat but to join the U.S. in the repudiation of MAD and in the embrace of strategic defenses. The superpowers, Kampelman will tell Karpov, have a mutual interest in gradually moving away from their current reliance on offensive nuclear weapons and letting their arsenals shrink under the benevolent influence of omnipotent antiweapons. That evolution, the U.S. negotiator will say, can be regulated by arms control.

Even optimists in the Administration expect it to take years to bring the Soviet Union around to the President's vision. Meanwhile the Administration will have an almost equally difficult task overcoming the skepticism of domestic critics, who doubt that Star Wars will work and who fear that the program will provoke a surge in offensive arms. Without public and congressional support for the program, U.S. negotiators in Geneva will stand no chance at all. Only if the Kremlin leaders believe that the U.S. fully and firmly intends to proceed toward deployment of Star Wars will they reconsider their opposition to the idea of moving in tandem toward the high frontier of space defenses.

In preparation for this uphill, two-front campaign to sell Star Wars, the Administration has closed ranks behind a four-sentence, 98-word distillation of its philosophy. Known as the "strategic concept," the statement was drafted during the weeks leading up to the Shultz-Gromyko meeting in January. The principal author was Paul Nitze, the Secretary of State's closest adviser on arms control.

The full statement reads: "For the next ten years, we should seek a radical reduction in the number and power of existing and planned offensive and defensive nuclear arms, whether land-based, space-based or otherwise. We should even now be looking forward to a period of transition, beginning possibly ten years from now, to effective nonnuclear defensive forces, including defenses against offensive nuclear arms. This period of transition should lead to the eventual elimination of nuclear arms, both offensive and defensive. A nuclear-free world is an ultimate objective to which we, the Soviet Union and all other nations can agree."

For Ronald Reagan, the final two sentences are crucial. His passionate commitment to Star Wars is rooted in his belief that MAD is a) immoral and b) perhaps unnecessary. During his first term he became fascinated by the idea of pure protection, a defense that defends so completely that offensive nuclear forces lose their reason for being (see box).