Arms Control and the Liberals' Dilemma

ARMS CONTROL AND THE LIBERALS' DILEMMA D. Geoffrey Peck D'uring the closing weeks of the 1984 Presidential campaign as Americans argued among themselves about the prospects for a successful strategic defense and its implications for arms control with the Soviets, there emerged a historic and progressive change in Soviet and American approaches to negotiations. This change, the "umbrella" concept, has defined the present negotiations as a "complex of questions concerning space, nuclear arms both strategic and intermediate-range, with all questions considered and resolved in their interrelationship."1 Despite the formal, procedural nature of this adjustment, the umbrella holds the potential to break down two of the most intractable and decisive issues of arms control: the relationship between the nuclear balance in Europe and the bilateral "strategic" balance, and the relationship between offense and defense in deterrence. Meanwhile, as the negotiating environment has improved, the political environment in the United States has turned bitter. The liberal arms control community has become obstructionist and cynical. This once creative political force, now self-absorbed in discussions of the personalities within the Reagan administration, seems to be more interested in an arms control failure, and has grown indifferent to noteworthy progress and changes in the political and diplomatic landscape. From the perspective of a proponent of arms control and a liberal, this reaction is tragic. 1. Joint communique from Geneva 8 January 1985 announcing agreement to reconvene arms control negotiations. David Geoffrey Peck is a Ph.D. candidate at SAIS. 91 92 SAIS REVIEW For despite the new opportunities presented by the umbrella concept, staggering complexities and uncertainties remain that may prove unsurmountable. Political and intellectual contributions from liberals would be useful, yet liberals face an ironic dilemma: whether to support the arms control process and the administration, or oppose them both. The toughest issues in arms control continue to be the oldest. The traditional contest between the United States and the Soviet Union over influence and presence in Europe remains a fundamental political conflict with profound implications. The Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties (salt I and II) were based explicitly on the principle of parity in strategic nuclear forces, but divergent definitions of this concept reflected the political conflict and dogged salt through the 1970s. For the Americans parity has meant an "essential equivalence" in strategic systems. Strategic systems, according to the American view, are those capable of striking one superpower from the other's bases.2 This definition is both logical in its simplicity and self-serving in its exclusion of all U.S. systems based in nato countries. For the Soviets parity has meant "equal security," a vague and similarly self-serving concept that implied that any fair balance of U.S. and Soviet forces would provide the Soviets with a numerical advantage.3 This advantage, the Soviets have argued, would be to compensate for Soviet disadvantages caused by British and French nuclear forces, and the vulnerable sea lines of communication of its strategic missile submarines . Strategic systems are defined broadly by the Soviets to include U.S. systems assigned to nato capable of striking targets in the Soviet Union. These forward-based systems (fbs) consist of U.S. planes capable of delivering conventional or nuclear weapons. For the Soviets they are strategic because they may deliver nuclear weapons to Soviet targets. For the United States they are irrelevant to the U.S.-Soviet strategic balance because they are committed to defending nato, and because they have conventional missions to offset Warsaw pact superiority on the ground.4 At stake in this dispute is the credibility of the U.S. commitment to defend Western Europe with nuclear weapons if necessary, the foundation of nato, and the U.S. presence in Europe. The Soviet definition of parity, if ratified by treaty, would tend to undermine the credibility of that commmitment. American forces and influence may then be seen by Europeans as a provocation rather than a keeper of peace. The American definition represents an attempt to buttress this fragile credibility, 2.For a thoughtful discussion of these definitions, see Thomas Wolfe, The SALT Experience, Cambridge, Mass: Ballinger Publishing Co. (1979): 30. 3.Strobe Talbott, Deadly Gambits, New York: Alfred A. Knopf...