A Reply to Nixon and Kissinger

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The arms-control deal that Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev are expected to sign at a summit later this year was sharply criticized by Richard Nixon in an interview two weeks ago in TIME and in a syndicated article he co-authored with Henry Kissinger. The Secretary of State offered this reply for TIME:

The U.S. and the Soviet Union appear to be nearing an agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF). Such an agreement is not assured -- our negotiators still have important work before them -- but if it is concluded, it would constitute the first time in 25 years of U.S.-Soviet arms- control talks that significant and verifiable reductions in any category of offensive nuclear weapons had taken place. Now some are questioning whether an agreement along the lines emerging would be in our interest. The Administration's judgment is that it would be decidedly so.

In the mid-1970s Moscow began to deploy the SS-20, a highly accurate missile with three nuclear warheads that could reach London in twelve minutes. The U.S. had withdrawn its last INF missile from Europe more than a decade earlier. In 1979 we and our NATO allies agreed that our objective in response to the SS-20s was to get the Soviets to pull them out. Failing that, we should counter these missiles with NATO deployments.

When, in 1981, President Reagan first proposed the zero option, a plan to eliminate longer-range INF (LRINF) missiles, we had not yet deployed a single weapon of this type. The Soviets were not willing to bargain. In 1983 we proposed an interim agreement: equal U.S. and Soviet levels worldwide below NATO's planned deployment of 572 LRINF warheads. The Soviets still said no. By last October a sizable number of the U.S. missiles was in place.

At his meeting with the President in Reykjavik, General Secretary Gorbachev said he was now prepared for an interim agreement -- a limit of 100 LRINF missile warheads for each side, all deployed outside Europe. This was consistent with the U.S. interim proposal, although key issues remained. Thus NATO's resolve may have brought us to the point of success.

To reach the equal levels, the Soviet arsenal would be reduced by more than 1,300 LRINF missile warheads and ours by some 200. For the first time since the 1950s no Soviet LRINF missiles would be deployed in Europe. In Asia, Soviet LRINF warheads would be reduced by more than 80%.

Former President Nixon and former Secretary of State Kissinger are concerned that such an outcome would render our overall deterrent capabilities more vulnerable. Others have expressed concern that it would lead to the "denuclearization" of Europe or the "decoupling" of the U.S. from its security commitments to the Continent. These are avowedly the objectives of Soviet policy. We are not going to accede to them. But it is not necessary to abandon the quest for nuclear arms cuts to defeat these Soviet aims.

For two decades NATO's strategy of flexible response has depended on three elements: strong conventional forces in place in Europe, balanced nuclear forces deployed in support of allied forces on the Continent, and U.S. strategic systems as the ultimate deterrent force. Today this doctrine is firmly established among Western allies, and we are determined to sustain it.