GENEVA SUMMIT 1985

FOR THE RECORD:

U.S. *

under Reagan

The upcoming Summit between Ronald Reagan and
new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has aroused hopes
that ways may be found to halt the deterioration of the
U.S.-Soviet relationship, and perhaps to speed up

“agreement in the crucial Geneva arms talks.

The November conference will indeed be an historic
event. It will be the first time since winning the U.S.
Presidency five years ago that Ronald Reagan has con-
sented to meet face to face with his Soviet counterpart. It

_May also be the last chance to find a formula that will put
_ the brakes to a runaway global arms race, and in par-

ticular the impending militarization of space.

The possibilities for meaningful agreement, however,
must be weighed against the dismal record of the past
five years. Ronald Reagan came into office with an
agenda that included a massive $2.6-trillion military
buildup — including a planned net increase of 17,000
nuclear weapons to the U.S. strategic arsenal by 1992 —
the largest arms drive ever in peacetime.

Arms control was not on Reagan’s agenda at all. Rea-
gan has opposed every arms treaty ever signed between
the U.S. and USSR. His opposition to SALT was par-
ticularly marked, and when he became President he
allowed the SALT II agreement to lapse. The people he
Chose to make up his administration were passionate
anti-Soviet hawks, many of whom came out of the ultra-

tight Committee on the Present Danger. The people that

Reagan has put in charge of ‘‘arms control”’ over the past
years — such as Eugene Rostow, Paul Nitze, Richard
Perle and Kenneth Adelman — have been described by
Many observers as equivalent to ‘“‘putting Dracula in
Charge of the blood bank”’.

__ After assuming office, Reagan waited nearly two years
“before opening new negotiations with the USSR. The

U.S. walked out of existing negotiations, such as the
20-year effort to reach agreement on a Comprehensive
Test Ban, claiming that to continue would ‘‘not be in the
interests of the United States”’.

While it was repudiating and undermining arms con-
trol, the Reagan administration was laying in place a
frightening new strategy to wage and “‘prevail’’ in a
nuclear war against the Soviet Union. A Pentagon
five-year plan, called a ‘‘Defence Guidance’ document,
was leaked to the media in 1982. The document made it
clear that the Reagan administration was actively pre-
paeing a first-strike capability, with the intention of using

“The idea of winning a protracted nuclear war is ab-
Solutely crazy,’’ noted Paul Warnke, former top SALT
negotiator, but ‘‘what the five-year plan means is that for
the first time this utterly nutty idea is clearly spelled out
as the centrepiece of American defence strategy”’.

By mid-1982 the Reagan administration felt compelled
— mainly by the massive upsurge in the world peace
Movement — to re-open arms talks with the USSR.
What followed, however, was largely an exercise in
Public relations, a new stage in deceit and a tragedy for
the cause of peace.

e On the issue of missiles in Europe, Reagan made
Clear that his primary objective was to secure de-
Ployment of the first-strike capable Pershing II and
Cruise missiles on the territory of NATO allies. On ae
Propaganda front, he proposed the ‘‘Zero Option’,
gambit which even his former Secretary of State, Al
Haig, has described as an ‘‘absurd”’ bargaining proposal,
a “non-starter”’ and ‘not negotiable’. Although the So-
Viets became increasingly flexible in their bargaining
Position as the talks developed, Reagan stuck to the

To Option’ formula until the missiles began arriving
in Europe, and the negotiations collapsed.

e Reagan’s proposals in the Strategic Arms Reduc-
tion (START) talks were similarly deceptive and dila-
tory. Reagan offered a plan whereby the Soviets would

ave to dismantle two-thirds of their land-based missiles
— the primary Soviet deterrent — while the U.S. would
actually be able to add 200 missiles to theirs!

In late 1983, when the START talks were breaking

Material on these pages
Prepared by Fred Weir, Tribune
writer on defence and disarmament

down due to American intransigence, Reagan admitted
to a group of Congressmen that his START proposals
had been ‘‘one-sided’’ and claimed, amazingly that he
‘‘had not realized until recently that most of the Soviet
Union’s nuclear defences were concentrated in its sys-
tem of heavy land-based missiles’’.

Time magazine’s resident defence expert, Strobe Tal-
bott, analyzed Reagan’s arms control tactics in 1983, and
found them to be all propaganda and-no substance. Rea-
gan’s guiding precept toward negotiations, he said, could
be stated this way:

“If forced by political expediency to make proposals
and engage in negotiations the U.S. must insist on drastic
cutbacks in the most modern, potent Soviet weapons al-
ready deployed; no comparable reductions are required,
nor should they be considered in existing U.S. forces’’.

e Although little is known about the course of the
current Geneva talks, it is clear that they are deadlocked
on several important issues, including Star Wars. The
Soviet side has complained that U.S. negotiators are
sticking to the old, discredited START positions, and
refusing to bargain in good faith. Given the history of
arms control under the Reagan administration, these
Soviet charges seem extremely credible.

At least two sweeping and imaginative Soviet arms
control initiatives have been violently rejected by the
Reagan administration in the recent period. A unilateral
Soviet moratorium on testing anti-satellite (ASAT)
weapons, begun two years ago, was blown away Sept. 13
by a successful test of a sophisticated new U.S. ASAT
weapon. If the moratorium had been accepted and ad-
hered to by the U.S., the militarization of space might
well have been nipped in the bud.

The Soviet moratorium on nuclear tests, announced in
July, has likewise received a rebuff from the Reagan
administration. Many arms control experts consider a
Comprehensive Test-Ban to be the “‘necessary first step
to reducing nuclear arsenals’’ because it would prevent
the emergence of new generations of nuclear weapons,
and cast doubt on the continued serviceability of existing
ones. Reagan, however, has decided that a nuclear test

——

arms coniror=

Poresutne

PEACE

ban would ‘‘undermine the credibility of the U.S. nu-
clear deterrent’.

Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of Defence, Richard
Perle, one of the primary architects of U.S. arms control
policy and a man who has the ear of the President,
recently spelled out his view on negotiations with the
USSR. ‘“‘Cosmetic agreements’’ on arms control, he
said, ‘‘in the long run are fatal for the democracies of the
West. Democracies will not sacrifice to protect their
security in the absence of a sense of danger. And every
time we create the impression we and the Soviets are
cooperating and moderating the competition, we dimin-
ish that sense of apprehension’.

This is the view that dominates the Reagan administra-
tion’s thinking as it heads into November's Summit.
History has shown that it will take massive public pres-
sure to prevent Reagan’s participation in the upcoming
meeting from being just another deceitful exercise in
public relations.

. The Reagan administration has developed the habit
of rejecting Soviet arms control proposals out of
hand, denouncing them as mere ‘‘propaganda’’. The
White House was particularly abusive last July, when
the Soviet Union announced that it would observe a

months, beginning. Aug. 6. The Soviet invitation for
the U.S. to join in a mutual, permanent testing ban,
was dismissed by Reagan as “‘meaningless” and a
_ ‘*public relations ploy’’.
" this the way the USSR treats constructive arms.

historical record suggests that it is not:

e On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy
made a famous speech, in which he called upon the
Soviet Union to negotiate curbs on the arms race, and
in particular to end atomic testing in the atmosphere.

— that the U.S. would unilaterally refrain from such
testing itself. It is worthwhile to quote what Kennedy
said, for his words are more applicable today than
ever.

““Both the United Stowe tind ine allies: and the Soviet
Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just
and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agree-
ments to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as

_ well as ours — and even the most hostile nations can be
relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations and
oily shose weary obligations WHEN are Bt Their own
interest.

also direct attention to our common interests and to the
means by which those differences can be resolved .

all — this “small coe

How the Soviets have responded

unilateral freeze on nuclear weapons testing for five —
test?
_ immediate cessation of its own

testing,
_ and entered into negotiations. It took just 12 days,

control initiatives made by the United States? The ‘following the Kennedy initiative, for the two nations

The U.S. President then made the announcement —_
very similar to Gorbachev's announcement last July

_ first
- counterparts at SALT, that to continue building these

“So, fet usnot be blind to our differences — but let us

FON
in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we ;
- -Tespite from the mad race to Armageddon.

es make clear our good faith and solemn convictions
on this matter, I now declare that the United States does not
propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long
as other states do not do so.”’

Did. the Soviets denounce this offer as a

‘‘propaganda ploy”’? Did they react by inviting Presi-
dent Kennedy to come and witness a Soviet atomic

In fact, the Soviet government responded with an

to sign the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which ended
nuclear testing in the atmosphere, under water, and in
outer space. This treaty is still in force, although some
planned U.S. Star Wars weapons — now on the draw-
ing boards — will almost certainly violate it when they
come to be tested.
* A similar situation arose in the early 1970's,
when both sides were building anti-ballistic missile
systems. It was the American side, to its credit, which
proposed a treaty to limit such weapons. It was
Robert S. McNamara who made the case to his Soviet

weapons would result in a runaway arms race in both
offensive and. defensive systems. The Soviets ac-_
cepted this logic, and in 1972 the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty was signed between the U.S. and the USSR.

This treaty is also still in force, although the U.S.
Star Wars program will totally undermine it. = |

These U.S. initiatives were not treated by the
Soviets as *‘ propaganda”’. On the contrary, they were
received seriously, and acted upon. As a result, valu-
able treaties were signed, and the world eqjoyed souse",

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 2, 1985 « 9

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