TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042390/0423108.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.4 KB | 122 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 25

Better Late Than Never


Bush springs a proposal to ban MIRVed missiles

By JAY PETERZELL -- With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington


    Ever since George Bush moved into the White House, he has
wanted to put his own stamp on the strategic-arms-reduction
process that Ronald Reagan presided over with such dramatic
flair. Last month the President finally found a way. In a secret
letter to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, he proposed
nothing less than the complete elimination of the most dangerous
weapons in U.S. and Soviet arsenals: land-based missiles topped
with multiple warheads, or MIRVs. As a first step, Bush
suggested, the two superpowers should agree to ban land-based
mobile missiles with MIRVs.

    Not surprisingly, Gorbachev had problems with the proposal.
In a letter hand delivered to Bush during Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze's visit to Washington, Gorbachev
replied that any MIRV ban should not be limited to land-based
weapons, where the Soviets have a heavy numerical advantage, but
should also include those aboard submarines, where the U.S. has
the edge.

    Resolving that larger disagreement will probably keep
arms-control negotiators busy for years to come. But for now
U.S. officials say Bush's first step -- a ban on mobile
land-based MIRVs -- has become an active issue of the Strategic
Arms Reduction Talks. A treaty outline is being rushed to
completion in time for the May 30 summit in Washington. If
Bush's proposal makes it into the START agreement, the U.S.
will scrap its plan for moving 50 MX missiles, with ten
warheads apiece, from silos onto railroad cars, while the
Soviets will demobilize 20 of their new, mobile SS-24s, each of
which also packs a ten-warhead punch. But will the Soviets, who
have recently taken a tougher line on START, trade a mobile
weapon they already have for one that is still a gleam in Uncle
Sam's eye?

    A complete ban on MIRVed missiles would give both nations a
chance to reverse what many defense experts consider a classic
case of shortsightedness: the Nixon Administration's decision
to deploy MIRVs in the first place during the 1970s, which
prompted the Soviets to follow suit rapidly. Multiple warheads
seemed an inexpensive way to expand the U.S. nuclear force. But
what strategists overlooked was the fact that the large number
of warheads packed onto a small number of missiles make them a
tempting target for a first strike. In a surprise attack, an
aggressor could knock out as many as ten or more warheads by
hitting a single silo. Says Senate Armed Services Committee
chairman Sam Nunn, who strongly supports the Bush proposal: "I
can see a regime on both sides where we have single-warhead
missiles in silos. There is no reason to go first [with a
nuclear attack] in that situation."

    Getting MIRVs onto the Administration's agenda, however,
has not been easy. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft
has persistently championed a ban on mobile MIRVs, but
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney fiercely opposed it, largely
because he saw the rail-based MX as the best way to reduce the
vulnerability of the U.S. missiles. Cheney blocked the Scowcroft
proposal from being presented to the Soviets on at least three
occasions, officials say. The first was last September, prior
to a meeting between Shevardnadze and Secretary of State James
Baker in Wyoming. At the Malta summit last December, the plan
made it as far as a briefing book prepared for Bush; a line had
to be drawn through the proposal on the President's copy. The
ban was blocked again when Baker visited Moscow in February.
Finally, Cheney relented when he realized that Congress was no
longer likely to give him the $6 billion needed to put the MX's
on rails. "The driving force," says one White House official,
"is a reflection of political realities."

    Cheney is not the only one to raise questions about Bush's
proposal. Even some experts who like the idea of banning MIRVs
have reservations. Among them:

    -- Why delay the nearly completed START treaty to take up a
new issue? Bush waited too long to get his ducks in a row, say
some critics, apparently including the Soviets; MIRVs would be
better addressed in a later round of negotiations. But Nunn and
other advocates reply that the time for the U.S. to trade away
the rail-based MX is now, before it is deployed. "I have never
seen the military very willing to give up things that have just
been built," says Nunn. "If a ban does not come in START I, it's
going to be at least ten times more difficult."

    -- The best reason for banning mobile MIRVs is as a first
step toward eliminating all land-based multiple-warhead
missiles. But what if the U.S. and Soviets never take that
second step? With most U.S. MIRVs on submarines and most Soviet
MIRVs on land, each side will be trying to limit weapons the
other deems essential; a stalemate could easily be reached. The
two sides would then be left in a more dangerous situation than
now, with land-based MIRVs sitting in vulnerable silos.

    Perhaps the greatest danger today is to assume that
anything is beyond negotiation. At least the Bush Administration
is thinking seriously about a nuclear future that is more
stable than the hair-trigger past.