Gearing Up in Geneva

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When a beaming Ronald Reagan bid farewell to his three-man arms-negotiating team last Friday morning in the White House Roosevelt Room, he gave each a fat notebook to put in his briefcase. The papers comprised the President's instructions, just made final, on how the U.S. is to carry out its side of the deliberations in Geneva, which begin this week. Along with these marching orders, Reagan sped the negotiators forth with an exhortation to be patient during the "long and difficult" bargaining ahead. "All God's children have lived with the fear of nuclear war," declared Reagan. "Above all, we seek agreement as soon as possible on real and verifiable reductions in American and Soviet offensive nuclear arms."

The President's accent on offensive arms was no accident. It was part of a campaign to swivel attention at Geneva away from defensive innovations like the celebrated Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as Star Wars. The Soviets are determined to make SDI the centerpiece of negotiations. The U.S., by contrast, is eager to cut a deal on reducing existing nuclear stockpiles and then worry about still-to-be-perfected space weapons. Said National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane: "It will take time to establish, much less understand, our new strategic-defense concept. That understanding is what we are after in this round."

Max Kampelman, the Washington attorney who is leading the American side in the space-weapons talks, was given a dozen pages of talking points that spell out the Administration's general views on the relationship between offense and defense. He will outline "worrisome" trends in the strategic balance between the superpowers, which the U.S. feels was knocked out of kilter by increased Soviet deployments of multiwarhead land missiles. He will air American concerns about the potential upgrading of Soviet air-defense systems. He will also share U.S. ideas about how emerging weapons technologies like laser beams and other "directed energy" might be used to promote greater stability for both sides. In short, Kampelman will try to teach the Soviets to think like Ronald Reagan.

Reagan's instructions are much briefer in the two sets of discussions on offensive weapons at Geneva: the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), which deal with intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) negotiations, which cover medium-range missiles. The instructions are also broader than those given in the past in terms of bargaining flexibility, introducing a concept called "ultimate outcomes." Under it, strategists in Washington decide on the overall goals for reducing weapons levels but allow the negotiators in Geneva, under the direction of Kampelman, considerable maneuvering room on how to achieve them. Said McFarlane: "Never have I seen instructions with a greater latitude for dynamic negotiation."