The Road to Zero

(2 of 13)

Left to its own instincts and devices, the Reagan Administration might have abandoned both tracks of the 1979 decision. Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, the Administration's most forceful and persistent skeptic about traditional arms control, would have preferred to let the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) negotiations languish -- the same treatment that was already in store for that other unwelcome legacy with the better-known acronym SALT (for Strategic Arms Limitation Talks). Perle doubted that the negotiating track would lead anywhere and that the West Europeans would have the gumption to follow through on deployment of the U.S. missiles.

But America's European allies were aghast that the new Administration might renege on the 1979 commitment. They had a friend in court in Alexander Haig, the hard-charging Secretary of State who had been NATO commander in the Ford and Carter Administrations. He made INF a test case to prove that the new President could simultaneously stand up to the Soviets in the military competition and sit down with them at the bargaining table. Haig pushed for a negotiating position similar to that favored by the Carter Administration -- fewer Tomahawks and Pershing IIs in exchange for fewer SS-20s.

Haig and other arms-control advocates had two reasons for seeking a deal that would reduce missiles in Europe rather than eliminate them entirely: 1) such an outcome seemed realistic and "negotiable," in that the Soviets might accept it; 2) leaving a few missiles in place would reinforce the credibility of the U.S. promise to defend its allies in the event of a Soviet attack.

But the State Department plan was not good enough for the President. It smacked too much of the half-a-loaf compromises of SALT. Reagan told his National Security Adviser of the time, Richard Allen, that he wanted a proposal "that can be expressed in a single sentence and that sounds like real disarmament."

Perle had just what Reagan was looking for: the "zero option." He proposed a straightforward, all-or-nothing package -- zero American missiles in exchange for zero SS-20s. That scheme could indeed be presented in a single sentence, which was at the heart of a speech the President delivered on Nov. 18, 1981: "The United States is prepared to cancel its deployment of Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles if the Soviets will dismantle their SS- 20, SS-4 and SS-5 missiles."

Since then much has changed. Brezhnev and two successors have gone to their graves by the Kremlin wall. All three angrily denounced the zero option as patently one-sided. So did many Western strategists. The U.S. was asking the Soviets to give up real weapons, already deployed at great expense, in return for the U.S.'s tearing up a piece of paper. Washington wags said it was like the Redskins trying to persuade the hated Dallas Cowboys to trade Tony Dorsett for a future draft pick. Administration officials privately conceded that the zero option was not intended to produce an agreement before NATO deployment began in late 1983. Rather, it was a gimmick -- part of an exercise in what Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt, Haig's chief deputy for arms control and Perle's nemesis, called "alliance management" -- to make sure the nervous West Europeans kept to the self-imposed deadline.