TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/100791/1007101.000

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                                                                                NATION, Page 21

COVER STORIES

Why the Details Are Sticky


As his country crumbles, Gorbachev is happy about Bush's
proposals on tactical nukes. But by keeping its submarine-
launched multiple warheads, Washington has an advantage that
will worry Moscow.

By GEORGE J. CHURCH -- Reported by Michael Duffy and Jay
Peterzell/Washington and James O. Jackson/Moscow


     "Ban land-based MIRVs" hardly has the resonance of "Ban
the Bomb," and it is impossible to imagine demonstrators
chanting "Down with nuclear SLCMs." Which proves once more that
George Bush will never be a sloganeer, and he still has not
quite mastered the vision thing. After excessive hype by White
House aides, Bush's speech Friday evening offered not a promise
of a brave new nuclear-free world but a complicated mix of ideas
old and new, unilateral actions and proposals for fresh
negotiations with Moscow. And in those negotiations, the U.S.
opening position to some extent will continue the old game of
"Let's get rid of the mainstays of your nuclear arsenal, but not
of ours."

    If the speech -- and proposals -- was not all it could
have been, it nonetheless marked a step away from the nuclear
brink that was bolder than anyone could have predicted. Bush's
initiatives implicitly recognize that a world bristling with
nuclear weapons ready for instant launch is not just menacing
but also outdated and irrelevant, the relic of a cold war that
is over against an enemy that, as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Colin Powell puts it, "has vaporized before our eyes."

    The White House also seems to recognize that the plodding,
haggle-for-years-over-every-fine-point style of arms-control
negotiation has become obsolete. The bargaining cannot be
dispensed with yet, but it is being short-circuited by
unilateral action. Discussions to get rid of tactical nuclear
weapons -- artillery shells, warheads on short-range missiles --
may bog down in minutiae. So, said Bush in effect, don't bother.
Just junk those weapons. All of them. Now. And hope that induces
the Soviets to follow. Says Michael Mandelbaum, a scholar at the
Council on Foreign Relations: "The Bush plan is a combination
of a bold stroke and bowing to the inevitable. Bush is getting
out ahead -- not a whole lot, but enough."

    Gorbachev's assessment was not much different. On Friday
morning the Kremlin leader received a letter from the White
House outlining the proposals. He talked them over with top
advisers, including arms-control negotiator Victor Karpov and
Defense Minister Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, and then took a phone
call from Bush -- all before the President went on TV. Sounding
a bit incredulous, Gorbachev asked whether some of the American
moves really were unilateral rather than conditioned on a Soviet
response; Bush assured him they were. That extensive
consultation was itself a welcome illustration of the current
civility in U.S.-Soviet relations. Not too long ago, the Kremlin
and the White House regularly irritated each other by publicly
springing major policy pronouncements with little or no advance
warning.

    Gorbachev was interviewed Saturday on Soviet TV and found
the proposals "too massive for us to be able to give an
assessment of" right away. He raised questions indicating some
sharp bargaining ahead. What about nuclear tests, which the
Soviets have long wanted an agreement to stop? Bush's reply, as
he summarized it, was, It's not part of this proposal, but maybe
we can talk about it later. Do Bush's proposals "apply to the
other nuclear countries?", Gorbachev asked, in a reference to
Britain and France, which have independent nuclear forces that
London and Paris have shown little interest in reducing. Bush,
Gorbachev indicated, had sidestepped by saying that since the
U.S. and U.S.S.R. have by far the biggest nuclear arsenals, they
should deal primarily with each other.

    The Soviet leader made a point of noting, though not
stressing, what in Moscow's eyes must surely be the big joker
in Bush's deck of proposals: while the U.S. wants to get rid of
MIRVs (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles) on
land-based missiles, it would keep those carried on
submarine-launched missiles. Bush can offer some justification.
Land-based MIRVs offer alluring targets for a first strike,
since a single hit could wipe out up to 10 warheads at once;
submarines pose less temptation since they are much harder to
find and strike than fixed silos. But the Kremlin might regard
the American proposal as an attempt to tilt the balance. The
Soviets have a huge lead in land-based MIRVs; the U.S. has an
equally large numerical advantage in submarine-fired multiple
warheads.

    On the whole, though, Gorbachev said, "our position is
positive, very positive." Asked specifically by his interviewer
-- in an obviously scripted question and answer -- whether
Bush's proposals were some sort of trick, the Soviet leader
replied, in effect, no. "These are serious steps," he said,
toward a nuclear-free world. His government would "waste no
time" in trying to "find some kind of format" for discussions.

    Other Soviet officials were even more optimistic. While
Gorbachev was noncommittal about whether the U.S.S.R. will
follow the U.S. in destroying tactical nuclear weapons, one of
his advisers volunteered that "it is my understanding that there
will be reciprocity." Another Kremlin official said that in the
Soviet view "the heart of [the Bush initiative] is tactical.
De-MIRVing is somewhat peripheral."

    Despite official denials, Gorbachev and Russian Federation
President Boris Yeltsin -- who received a three-minute phone
call from Bush to discuss the proposals in advance -- have been
as worried as the White House that if the U.S.S.R. continues to
disintegrate, some of the thousands of tactical nukes scattered
outside Russia in three Soviet republics could wind up in
irresponsible hands -- a local dictator, say, or a terrorist
gang. The Moscow leaders might welcome an excuse to destroy the
weapons. Many of the generals who would have fought against such
a move have been dismissed in the wake of the failed August
coup.

    More generally, Bush's proposals might bolster Gorbachev's
and Yeltsin's chances to cut military spending and devote more
resources to the crippled civilian economy. The nuclear cutbacks
Bush envisions will not save much money for either the U.S. or
the Soviets; some of them indirectly increase costs.
"Disarmament is sometimes costly," admits Pavel Palashenko, a
Gorbachev aide. But the proposals do give Gorbachev and Yeltsin
a chance to argue that the U.S. is not taking advantage of
Soviet economic weakness to seek military advantage.

    Initial appraisals of arms-control plans must always be
tempered by the thought, endlessly intoned by negotiators, that
"the devil is in the details." Even plans like Bush's that
attempt to cut through confusion get into some fearsome
complexities. A closer look at the main elements:

    TACTICAL WEAPONS Nuclear artillery shells and warheads for
short-range missiles in both Europe and Asia will simply be
destroyed, period. But aircraft will continue to carry nuclear
bombs to maintain a deterrent against a ground invasion of U.S.
allies. At sea, submarines will continue to carry MIRVed
ballistic missiles, which are considered strategic weapons. But
nuclear SLCMs (sea-launched cruise missiles) will be taken off
attack subs and surface ships, and nuclear bombs will be removed
from aircraft carriers, to be stored for possible redeployment.
Nonetheless, this action unilaterally satisfies a long-standing
Soviet demand that naval forces be involved in any nuclear
cutbacks -- a demand that American admirals had resisted
fiercely and, until now, successfully.

    The land-based tactical weapons were deployed primarily to
deter a Soviet-led invasion of Western Europe by offsetting the
Warsaw Pact's heavy superiority in troops, tanks and artillery
pieces. The need for that U.S. arsenal disappeared with the
Warsaw Pact itself. Today the only targets for the weapons are
in areas that have become friendly (Poland, Czechoslovakia, what
was formerly East Germany). European allies supposedly
protected by the weapons -- in particular, West Germans, who are
understandably nervous about living amid the world's heaviest
concentration of nuclear weapons -- will be delighted to get rid
of them.

    South Koreans will also be happy. The Seoul government's
top priority is to stop the development of nuclear weapons by
North Korea. Pyongyang has signed the nuclear nonproliferation
treaty but refused to open its facilities to international
inspection until American nukes are removed from South Korea.
Bush's move will go a long way to deprive North Korea of that
excuse.

    RELAXING ALERTS Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney signed an
order over the weekend returning to hangars long-range bombers
that had been poised on runways to hit the Soviet Union. Bush
announced that he is taking off alert those nuclear-tipped
missiles scheduled to be destroyed eventually under the START
(Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) agreement signed by Washington
and Moscow in July but not yet ratified. As Bush noted in his
speech, under that treaty some of the missiles could be kept
ready to launch on short notice for an additional seven years
-- but if they are going to be scrapped anyway, why wait so
long? These moves are relatively minor but should contribute to
a welcome easing of tension. Not long ago, one favorite
nightmare of cataclysmic thinkers was of nuclear annihilation
resulting from some accidental slip -- a wayward blip on a radar
screen, perhaps -- that would precipitate the launch of weapons
kept on hair-trigger alert. Any move further dimming that
already fading scenario is good news.

    MIRVS Ever since MIRVs were excluded from the first
nuclear arms-control agreement in the early 1970s, critics have
been complaining that the omission was a terrible mistake. The
U.S. was first to develop MIRV technology, and by exploiting
its edge could increase the number of warheads aimed at the
U.S.S.R. even while holding down the number of launchers. But
the Soviets caught up soon enough, and the result was an
enormous upward ratcheting of the arms race, with ever more
warheads aimed at ever more targets. Experts note that largely
because of MIRVing, the supposedly deep reductions in strategic
warheads provided in the START agreement would only restore the
levels of 1981; there would be a long, long way to go before the
powers got back to the numbers of, say, pre-MIRV 1969. Worse
still, as Bush noted, because of their vulnerability to a first
strike, land-based MIRVed missiles are the "most destabilizing"
element in the nuclear equation. He unilaterally scrapped plans
to develop a mobile version of the 10-warhead MX that would be
carried aboard railroad cars. It was a costless gesture --
Congress has resisted funding the rail-mobile missile -- but
nevertheless a meaningful signal.

    NEW SYSTEMS Bush invited the Soviets to join in developing
a "non-nuclear," scaled-down version of the old Strategic
Defense Initiative antimissile system. Rather than emphasizing
the space-based, laser-beam Star Wars system once touted by
Ronald Reagan to provide a shield against a full-scale nuclear
onslaught, the new SDI would focus on interceptor rockets fired
from the ground to ward off a penny-ante attack -- from
superpower missiles launched accidentally, perhaps, or by a
Third World dictator who had somehow managed to get his hands
on an intercontinental rocket. Bush also continued funding of
the B-2 Stealth bomber, though presumably not for its original
mission of penetrating Soviet radar defenses during a nuclear
war; the Pentagon lately has been talking up the B-2 as a weapon
in regional conflicts like the Persian Gulf war. These moves are
defensible, if at all, only as sops to hard-liners, who might
otherwise oppose the new initiatives. On the other hand, though
the Kremlin fought fiercely to limit or preferably ban the old
Star Wars scheme, the Soviets appear to be less exercised by
Bush's more modest SDI. Says a Soviet official: "I don't think
this creates a big problem, though it will, of course, have to
be addressed."

    Opposition at home appears to be the least of Bush's
worries. The President strengthened his hand against Democratic
presidential contenders by calling attention once again to his
greatest asset, his claimed mastery of foreign policy. One
jubilant aide, asked to assess the likely domestic political
impact of the plan, described it as "a nuclear missile aimed at
the Democrats."

    If so, the Democrats have no SDI with which to deflect it.
They were reduced to complaining that Bush had appropriated,
without credit, some old Democratic ideas; that he could have
moved sooner and further; and -- telling point -- that he should
devote to domestic affairs more of the effort and imagination
he has lavished on foreign policy. Claiborne Pell of Rhode
Island, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said
that Congress has been urging the White House "for two decades"
to stop MIRVs. "With the President's leadership, we have now
come to our senses," he remarked. House majority whip David
Bonior of Michigan took a similar line: "They were welcome
initiatives that were long overdue. Now the President must turn
his attention from weapons of destruction to this destructive
recession."

    Domestic politics, however, were far from uppermost in
Bush's mind in formulating the new initiatives. Some of them had
been under discussion for months, but the planning was greatly
revved up after the collapse of the Soviet putsch in August.
Bush and his aides saw an opportunity, with the removal of
military hard-liners, to nudge the new Soviet and Russian
governments further toward de-emphasizing military strength and
building a more democratic society. But it was an opportunity
that needed to be capitalized on fast, both to avert the danger
of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands and to get new
negotiations started while there was still a central government
to deal with. By last week the plans were well enough developed
to check out the final version with Britain, France, Germany and
other allies -- at which point they started to leak, causing
Bush to hurry up his speech. The haste in part accounted for the
disappointingly flat tone of his talk.

    Only in part, though. Complicated proposals by their
nature are difficult to dramatize -- and nuclear arms-control
proposals tend to be either complex or unrealistic. Bush's
initiatives could have come earlier, could have been bolder,
could have been more comprehensive, could have been less angled
toward preserving American advantages. But they could not have
been much less Utopian. BAN THE BOMB is simple, easily grasped
and easily chanted. Largely for those reasons the slogan is
also no guide for policy. BAN LAND-BASED MIRVs is an obscure
tongue twister. But it states an important, achievable aim, and
it is as worthy an objective as it is a clunker of a slogan.