Now, Super-Zero?

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"What are you afraid of?" asked Mikhail Gorbachev. Doubtless the Soviet leader knew perfectly well why his visitor, Secretary of State George Shultz, could not immediately reply to his newest arms-control bombshell: having unnerved NATO allies when Ronald Reagan traded blue-sky proposals with Gorbachev at the Reykjavik summit, the U.S. was determined this time to answer the Soviets only after fully consulting with the West Europeans. But Gorbachev and his subordinates could not resist taunting Shultz for seeming diffident about an offer that, on its face, not only met but topped American terms for a pact to take nuclear missiles out of Europe and open the way for another summit this fall in Washington. After Shultz's three-day mission to Moscow had ended last week, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov stuck the needle in deeper. If U.S. negotiators want an agreement, said he, "they must be prepared to meet their own proposals."

Actually, the needling might have been more accurately directed at America's European allies. It is they, rather than the U.S., that are most uneasy at the turn of events. After years of publicly decrying the proliferation of nuclear weapons on their soil, some Europeans may be reminded of Oscar Wilde's dictum: "When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers." To the West's discomfort, Gorbachev is zestfully playing a role no previous Soviet leader has essayed: the man who keeps saying yes. The General Secretary first astonished NATO last month by accepting Reagan's zero-option proposal to scrap all intermediate-range Soviet and American nuclear missiles in Europe, and then by agreeing, at least in principle, to on-site inspection to make sure the missiles are gone. When the Western nations pointed out that this would still leave the Soviets with a distinct advantage in shorter-range missiles, Gorbachev outmaneuvered them with yet another concession. Before Shultz's trip to Moscow, Washington's insistence on strict verification looked like a potential stumbling block to a treaty. Until Gorbachev, the Soviets had never been willing to seriously consider the idea of foreigners poking around their missile sites, and it had remained unclear how far the new leader would go. But Gorbachev not only indicated approval of American ideas, he tried last week to make them sound as if they were his own. According to the Soviet news agency TASS, he told Shultz, "We shall be demanding verification and inspection everywhere: on the sites of missiles' dismantling, on the sites of their elimination, at ranges and military bases, including third countries, at depots and plants."

Shultz went to Moscow last week to argue that an agreement on intermediate- range (600 miles to 3,400 miles) missiles must do something to redress the disparity in shorter-range launchers, those with a range of 300 miles to 600 miles. The U.S. proposal: freeze the number of Soviet missiles and let the U.S. install an equal amount in Europe.