The Road to Zero

Monday, Dec. 14, 1987 By STROBE TALBOTT
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The chief Sovietologist on the staff of the National Security Council, Jack Matlock (who is now U.S. Ambassador to Moscow), favored the zero option but cautioned against euphoria. Gorbachev's latest tactic, he told colleagues, "might be a breakthrough in the negotiations, but it would also achieve & the elimination of American INF missiles in Europe."

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As so often happened within the Administration, Gorbachev's offer produced an outbreak of guerrilla warfare. The State Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency lined up behind a counterproposal that accepted elimination of INF missiles in Europe but insisted further on a 50% reduction of SS-20s in Asia. The Pentagon, represented in a series of heated meetings by Perle, wanted to hang tough on "global zero" (zero SS-20s in Asia as well as Europe) and also to force Soviet concessions on their "shorter-range" SS-12/ 22 and SS-23 missiles.

Nitze, who had become special adviser to Shultz and Reagan on arms control, had never liked the zero option, but he now did his best to sell it to U.S. allies in Europe. During one of his frequent missions, European leaders told Nitze that they had invested considerable political capital in accepting the American missiles. They had withstood domestic opposition by arguing that the missiles were necessary to assure "coupling" between America's nuclear forces and its defense of NATO. It would be awkward to justify the removal of all the U.S. missiles, even as part of a deal that eliminated the threat of the SS-20s. NATO strategy still required an American nuclear "trip wire" to deter a Soviet conventional attack.

As an aide to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher put it, "We would have preferred to leave a token deployment of American missiles in Europe. Nitze's own walk-in-the-woods scheme would have been a far better outcome than the zero option from a strategic point of view. If, however, the U.S. allowed itself to be snookered by the Soviets into the damn-fool zero option, then we told Nitze in no uncertain terms that we wanted it to be a version of the zero option that extracted the maximum price from the Kremlin."

Yet the Reagan Administration was reluctant to back away from the zero option, partly because it had been Reagan's proposal to begin with. Glitman instead proposed a modification of the interim solution: an immediate reduction of INF missiles on both sides combined with a schedule for achieving the "global" elimination of INF missiles by the end of 1989. Obukhov replied dryly: "We'll study this more carefully, but on initial consideration, it looks like the zero option."

Meanwhile, there had been a shake-up in the delegation. Kvitsinsky, a specialist on Germany, was transferred to Bonn as Ambassador so he could argue the Soviet case in fluent German against U.S. Envoy Richard Burt. Obukhov moved from INF to START, and his deputy, Lev Masterkov, moved up to be chief INF negotiator. Masterkov had a reputation as an "iron-pants" negotiator of the old school. There was debate among the Americans over whether his appointment meant the Kremlin was indeed ready to move to closure in INF and wanted someone who would get the best possible deal in the final stages, or whether his assignment would be to stall the talks.

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