REAGAN'S INNER CONFLICTS MAY BE KEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402860016-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: January 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
I Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402860016-8
ARTIr E APP ARED 1
Gil PA
-Even a totally unified administra-
tion would be challenged ' by the
RConflicts MKey-
By Fred
When Secretary of State George
P. Shultz sits down with Soviet For-
eign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko '
Monday, much of Washington will .
focus on another high-level confron-
tation: the battle between Ronald
Reagan, anticommunist, and Ronald
Reagan, peacemaker. -
According to many insiders, the
latter -private negotiations could
prove decisive to the prospects for
arms control in President Reagan's
second term.
With senior aides divided into
two groups on either side of the
imaginary table, the politics of the
second administration again will be
colored by a struggle between mod-
erates and hard-liners-or, as some
would say, naive dreamers and
skeptical realists.
But such a portrayal is too simple
to fit the facts. The' arms control
issues are more complex, the inter-
nal alliances more shifting and the
J outcome far more dependent on'
outside factors-such as Soviet in-
- tentions and the stability of Soviet
leadership-than such a picture
would suggest.
Yet the contrast between the
Reagan who described the Soviet ? I
Union as "the Evil Empire" in 1983
and the Reagan who held out an
olive branch at the United Nations
last fall is real. So is the bitter split
within the administration, exempli-
fied by the curious phenomenon of
every top arms control aide troop-
ing off to Geneva with Shultz, as if
each camp wanted to keep an eye
on the other, even during a two-day
preliminary session.
"Reagan would like to achieve the
kind of success in arms reductions
that would make him known as ?a
peace president in a second term,"
one administration official in the
"moderate-naive" school said. i
Officials in both countries - ac-
knowledge that such vast arsenals
problems: do not make sense. Beyond that
^ A new generation of mobile, eas- : agreement, however, they have not
-ily hidden nuclear weapons, such as found a way to reduce their stock-
sea-based, low-flying cruise missiles : piles while trusting-their counter- =
or -truck-mounted intercontinental : parts to do the.same. _
missiles such as the U.S. Midget- Sta writers Lou Cannon, David
man now being developed. These wwill be more difficult orv inE - Hoffman, Don Oberdorferand-
- fore. more difficult for treaties to this report
limit.
;:m Ai increasing emphasis in both
countries on the defensive arms
that were limited by the 1972 Anti-
Ballistic Missile Treaty, until re- -
cently considered - one of the few
successes of U.S.-Soviet negotia-
tion. This emphasis has injected
complicated issues into the talks
.and could prompt both sides to look
for.new offensive weapons to over-
come prospective defense, some
experts believe.
^ Widely divergent views in the
two nations of who is "'ahead,"
whose weapons are more danger-
ous and who is the aggressor in
world affairs. One result is that in
the United States, and probably in
the Soviet Union, there are few if
any weapons systems that the mil-
itary is prepared to forgo.
^ The conviction in the - Reagan
administration, and probably in the
Politburo, that the other side is un-
trustworthy and likely to use arms
control talks only-as a cover for
building or retaining military supe-
riority. The deep suspicion of So-
viet intentions is shared by Reagan
and his top advisers, including those
who are considered "moderate."
"The problem is that the Soviets
seek absolute security in a way that
.guarantees insecurity for everyone
lelse,"Shultz said in a recent speech,.
adding that they "can be -expected
periodically to do something abhor-
rent to us or threaten our inter-
ests."
WASHINGTON POST
6 January 1985
The United States has 26,000
nuclear warheads, according to the
respected Nuclear Weapons Da-
tabook, ranging from nuclear land
mines to the destructive and accu-
rate warheads of the Minuteman 3
missile. The Soviets' stockpile is
be 21,000 and 42,000, ac-
cording to Arms Control Today.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402860016-8