TIMING AND TECHNOLOGY WORK AGAINST WEAPONS CONTROLS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85M00363R001202830032-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 19, 2007
• Sequence Number: 32
• Publication Date: June 23, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/11/19: CIA-RDP85M00363R001202830032-5
PART II`-- MAIN EDITION -- 24 JUNE 1983
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 23 JUNE
Timing and technology work
against weapons controls
By Elizabeth Pond
Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Bonn
Arms control at this stage appears more and more to be a
will-o'-the-wisp. And that increases the likelihood of the
world entering a new technological era denuded of even the
hard-won constraints of the 1970s.
This is the picture that emerges from interviews with spe-
cialists on arms control and Soviet affairs in Washington,
Cambridge. Massachusetts, London, Bonn, and elsewhere.
The reasons for pessimism include:
? The low state of overall United States-Soviet relations.
? The current timing of leadership shifts, in which both
sides deem it better to wait: Moscow to see if Ronald Reagan
really is going to get reelected, Washington to see if a phys-
ically frail Yuri Andropov is going to be replaced by a youn-
ger successor.
? The timing of technology, with Washington confident
that the current dynamic changes in computer and "stealth"
technology in particular will keep the inventive US some five
years ahead of the Soviet Union - and with Washington
therefore resistant to bilateral inhibitions at this point.
In a way the key issue is timing: the axiom that timing is
all in love and war applies 10-fold to arms control. The "win-
dow of opportunity" for arms control is a rare conjunction of
perceived equality and stalemate. Thus, however much na-
tions may realize theoretically that security in the nuclear
age must be mutual (in order to avoid joint suicide), they
instinctively trust their unilateral buildups more than bi-
lateral restraints; that is, until forced to a contrary conclu-
sion by overwhelming evidence.
A nation that believes it is ahead and will stay ahead has
little incentive to build down to equality. A nation that sees
itself as behind does not want to restrict its potential for
catching up.
For a period of perhaps nine months, between summer
(982 and spring 1983, it did look as if there might be an arms-
:ontrol window in "Euromissiles." The initial hope of the
)ptimists was that the elderly Soviet President Leonid Brezh-
nev might like to achieve a last historical triumph and have
an American-Soviet summit before passing the Kremlin
leadership on to his successors. Then, after Brezhnev's death
in November, there was a lesser hope that the new General
Secretary Yuri Andropov might want to set a quick stamp of
his own on foreign policy.
The hope centered on Brezhnev was shattered when the
June 1982 "walk in the woods" exploratory package was
never approved by the Brezhnev leadership. This package,
worked out during a summer stroll in the Swiss foothills by
the chief American and Soviet Euromissile negotiators, Paul
Nitze and Yuli Kvitsinsky, involved six basic elements.
First, the Soviet Union would reduce its 5,000-Idlometer-
range, three-warhead mobile SS-20s targeted at Western Eu-
rope from the then 250 missiles, to 75 missiles, with 225 war-
heads.
Second, NATO and the US would refrain from deploying
the planned 1,750-kilometer-range, highly accurate, Pershing
U, and would deploy no more than 75 four-unit "launchers" of
the accurate but slow 2,500-kilometer cruise missiles, with
300 warheads.
Third, the Soviet Union would deploy no more than the
then-existing 90 SS-20s in Soviet Asian territory .
Fourth, only the primarily nuclear-armed aircraft (and
not dual-capable aircraft for either nuclear or conventional
1983 (24) Pg. 1
loading) would be limited - to 150 each for American F-ills
and Soviet land-configured Backfires, Blinders, and Badgers
in Europe.
Fifth, shorter-range missiles in Europe with ranges be-
tween 500 and 1,000 kilometers would be frozen in numbers,
ranges, and warheads.
Sixth, French and British missiles capable of reaching the
Soviet Union would not be counted in the Euromissile
balance.
This exploratory package reportedly never got all the way
to the top on the Soviet side. No one in the Kremlin hierarchy
was willing to authorize negotiation on it - and since the
Soviet side wanted to do its own probing in its home capital
before the American side did the same in Washington, the
Soviet failure to proceed effectively relieved the Reagan ad-
ministration of any need to accept or reject it.
Objections to the package were registered in Washington
(on some points, and arms control and disarmament director
Eugene Rostow was fired over the attempt), but the initial
refusal to take the package as a basis of negotiation was
Soviet.
In the West there remained some faint hope - based on
the change in West Germany from a Social-Democratic to a
conservative chancellor - that Soviet interest in a compro-
mise might be rekindled as it became clear that West Euro-
pean missile deployments would go ahead If there were no
arms-control agreement.
The continuing incentive to the Kremlin was thought to
arise from a technological and political combination. It was
assumed the Russians were far less worried about the slow
cruises than about the Pershing II ballistic missiles, which
shared with the cruises an accuracy far surpassing Soviet
accuracy but also could reach targets in the western Soviet
Union within some 12 minutes of launch.
Therefore, the reasoning continued, Moscow would want
to negotiate a deal with the West that would at least put a low
ceiling on new NATO deployments (and might bar the Per-
shing II altogether). Such a deal could better be negotiated
before the first stationing - and so the Kremlin was expected
by some Westerners to make a new compromise offer some-
time between the March 1983 German election and the sum-
mer recess of the Euromissile arms-control talks.
Since the Western goal was moving to parity from Soviet
land-based Euromissile superiority (or even monopoly. it
France's 18 SSBS land-based missiles are'discounted), such a
deal would have required an unprecedented step: Soviet dis-
mantling of expensive, modern, already deployed Soviet mis-
Wes even as the West was installing new missiles. Yet West?
erners hoped the Soviets would in the end deem this a better
alternative than a costly arms race in new technology.
Spring and summer of 1983 turned out to be an
unpropitious time for such a radical Soviet decision, how-
ever.
Andropov had his hands full consolidating his power and
overcoming suspicion of him by party apparatchiks. More-
over, the wind-down period of Reagan's first term was ap-
proaching. Given Reagan's deliberate confrontation with the
Soviet Union, Moscow was not eager to hand the American
President an arms control agreement that could help reelect
him.
Various Soviet specialists began signaling to American
contacts that the Kremlin would be unlikely to move on arms
control until Reagan's reelection was clearly in the bag. Then
the Kremlin might figure it would get better terms with the
man it would have to deal with for the next four years before
that reelection. But his reelection would first have to be a
sure thine.
WEAPONS CONTROLS...Pg. 12-F
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 Approved For Release 2007/11/19: CIA-RDP85M00363R001202830032-5
AIR FORCE TIMES 13 JUNE 1983 (24) Pg.3
Korb Wants Boost in Strength
To Stop Losing Good Recruits
WASHINGTON - Congress
should boost the military's man-
power strength to take advantage
3f a bumper crop of potential re
2ruits whom recruiters now must
turn away. the Pentagon's man-
power chief has said.
Reenlistments are up despite a
four percent cap on military pay
last October and a threatened
freeze on pay this October. said
Lawrence J. Korb. assistant see-
retar of Defense for Manpower.
Reserve Affairs and Logistics.
told reporters. Recuiters are tell-
ing applicants who can't be enlist-
ed now to come back in the new
fiscal year.
The Reagan administration's
budget for FY 1984 calls for sub-
stantial strength increases but
Congress has threatened to freeze
strength at FY 1983 levels. Korb
said Congress should approve the
increase -so the services can enlist
the applicants it is turning away
now
Korb also predicted that Con-
gress would approve a four per-
cent pay raise despite the admin-
istration's request for a pay
freeze.
WEAPONS CONTROLS-Continued
Against this background the Soviet Union hardened its po-
sition in 1983 (at least relative to the "walk in the woods."1
Beyond ignoring the w...& s specific numbers and non-cir-
cumvention clause for shorter-range missiles. it went back to
insisting that the French and British longer-range missiles
be included in the Euromissile balance And although it
agreed to move from missiles to warheads as the counting
unit, this quickly turned out not to compensate for the three-
warhead SS-20 as against the single-warhead Pershings and
cruises - but rather to lead to an increased Soviet tally of
existing British and French warheads that would preclude
any new NATO missiles whatsoever.
In addition. Moscow backed off from limiting its Asian-
based SS-20s and from destroying all SS-20s in excess of any
agreed ceiling (rather than just moving them beyond the
Urals, where they could quickly be moved back again to
within European target range).
Moscow also returned to insisting that the extremely com-
plex issue of dual-capable aircraft be a part of any
Euromissile agreement - and that negotiation in this area
be based on skewed Soviet figures that excluded the Soviet
equivalents of whole categories of American "forward-
based" planes. And it adopted a more threatening tone at the
Euromissile negotiations in Geneva.
The upshot, as one veteran European diplomat analyzes
it. is that Moscow will not want to negotiate seriously on
Euromissiles until NATO deployments have built up to a
point - in perhaps three years or so - at which any agree-
ment on approximate parity could be sweetened with sym-
bolic Western as well as Soviet dismantling of already exist-
ing weapons.
In the meantime Moscow has no interest in "legitimizing"
the forthcoming NATO deployments by reaching any under-
standing that would permit even some Western stationing.
The Kremlin would much rather make the British and espe-
cially the West German governments pay the full politica,
price of massive domestic demonstrations against tie
missiles
As this evolution i or ossification) was apparently going n
in the Kremlin's thinking about Euroini.stles. a somewhat
contrary evolution was going on in 'i%dsnington's thinking
about the ctratecic ha lance
' nls w t r Igort'. ,I ni i?t'?u(t:?ul r''- ~ ..,:a lw~.it :?:.La.
of the freeze movement in the US and from President
Reagan's consulting on missile issues for the first time not
just hard line Reagan loyalists but professional. nonpartisan
advisers in the Scowcroft Commission.
The freeze movement and its supporters in Congress
threatened to kill the MX program unless Reagan showed
more interest in arms control and stabilization of the arms
race. And the Scowcroft Commission came up with a report
that endorsed 100 MX missiles - but at the same time recom-
mended a move toward a more negotiable US position at the
strategic arms reduction talks (START i in Geneva.
The commission also called for a move back to single-
warhead missiles to reverse the instability induced by multi-
ple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV i war-
heads. MIRVs, an American invention that pulled the US well
ahead of the Soviet Union in strategic warheads in the 1970s.
have come back to haunt the US since the Soviet Union devel-
oped them too and put more of them on the far heavier and
more numerous Soviet land-based missiles.
It was this MIRV balance that opened a theoretical '-win-
dow of vulnerability." since in any surprise attack a very few
Soviet missiles could wipe out a high percentage of American
land-based missiles - a potentially dangerous temptation in
time of crisis.
In return for funding the MX. Congress demanded that the
Reagan administration liberalize its START position in the
direction suggested by the Scowcroft Commission.
The administration did so, increasing its proposed ceiling
on land- and sea-based missiles from 850 to approximately
1.200. (This was more negotiable, since the higher figure
would not require the Soviet Union to destroy as many of its
workhorse land-based missiles as the lower figure would.
The disparity arises from the Soviet allocation of three-
fourths of its strategic warheads to land-based missiles, as
against American allocation of only a fourth to land-based
missiles).
The hope of Western arms control advocates now is that in
the long run the Soviet Union too will find it advantageous to
move away from the present destabilizing MIRV regime to-
ward a more stable single-warhead regime. Logically, the
Soviet incentive to do so should be strong, since America's
theoretical window of vulnerability in the early '80s will be-
come the Soviet Union's theoretical window of vulnerability
in the late '80s as America's highly accurate Trident subma-
rine and presumably the MX constitute a "first-strike"
threat to the Soviet Union.
This is a very long-range hope. however. It is two Ameri-
can presidential elections - and probably one Soviet succes-
sion - away. It provides little incentive for immediate
moves toward arms control; even the tangential area of
"confidence-building measures' in which the two sides are
fairly close is probably unattractive to the Kremlin at this
point, since it could give an aura of East-West cooperation
that Moscow wants to av"'td in this period of NATO
Euromissile deployment.
Nor is there any overarch.. s superpower desire for politi-
cal cooperation in other areas at the moment that could Ic' ?i-
cate arms control. On the contras. confrontation is the order
of the day. with the Reagan and Kremlin leaderships radiat-
ing hostility toward each other.
In the meantime -- before the two presidential elections.
one further Kremlin succession. and potential arms control
convergence have all transpired, we are entering a new tech-
nological era. without any perceived restraints.
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