Starting from Zero

Reagan reassures Europe with “a simple, straightforward message”

The stakes were high, and Ronald Reagan knew it as he stepped to the lectern of the 14th-floor dining room in Washington’s National Press Club last Wednesday morning. In the restless cities of Western Europe, anti-American demonstrations on behalf of pacifism and neutralism posed a new threat to the unity of the NATO alliance (see WORLD). In part, the protests were encouraged and exploited by Moscow, which in recent months has mounted a skillful propaganda campaign to block the stationing, primarily in West Germany, of new NATO nuclear missiles. Compounding the problem was Reagan himself, whose harsh, tough talk to the Kremlin has frightened U.S. supporters abroad and given force to neutralists’ arguments that the President is a shoot-from-the-hip zealot, hell-bent on provoking nuclear war.

The moment was ripe for statesmanship. And Reagan lived up to it.

“It’s a simple, straightforward yet historic message,” he said, addressing the largest audience ever to watch a live presidential speech. (In addition to the 300 journalists who crammed the Press Club, an estimated 200 million watched the speech, which was beamed overseas by the U.S. International Communications Agency.) In an extraordinarily measured and thoughtful address, perhaps the most statesmanlike that he has ever given, the President offered a four-part proposal to free the Continent from the specter of nuclear war. It was designed both to reassure the Europeans of his Administration’s peaceful intentions and to put the Soviets on the defensive. The essence of his message was what has become known in diplomatic parlance as the “zero option.” Reagan announced that the U.S. would forgo plans to place 572 new medium-range missiles in Europe if the Soviets would scrap comparable nuclear missiles they have deployed against Western Europe in the past decade. That done, the number of medium-range missiles aimed by each foe at its potential enemy would indeed be zero.

Alternately stern and folksy, the once and present actor made his customary skillful use of props (a map of Europe, a chart comparing missile lev els) as he delivered his message. His points: the U.S. and its allies cut back on military spending while the Soviets not only built up their conventional forces but steadily added to their arsenal of SS-20 missiles. NATO’s plan to deploy new Pershing II and land-based cruise missiles was designed only to counter this threat. All programs should and would be canceled if Moscow would dismantle its own medium-range missile force. Reagan stressed that any treaty must be verifiable by both sides. Said he: “Our approach with verification will be to emphasize openness and creativity rather than the secrecy and suspicion which have undermined confidence in arms control in the past.”

Despite his Administration’s anti-Soviet posture, Reagan has carried on a correspondence—three exchanges of letters since February—with Leonid Brezhnev, and he read from a letter he had written to the Soviet President while recuperating in the hospital from the assassination attempt: “Mr. President, should we not be concerned with eliminating the obstacles which prevent our people—those you and I represent—from achieving their most cherished goals?” Responding to ploy with gambit, the Soviet embassy in Washington released Brezhnev’s letter of reply from last May. “We do not seek confrontation with the U.S.,” the Soviet leader wrote, and once again he urged a summit at “a moment acceptable to both of us.”

In addition, Reagan proposed the renewal early next year of talks on strategic arms limitations, which have been stalled since the U.S. Senate blocked ratification of SALT II, signed by Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter in 1979. To emphasize that the goal of those talks should be a substantial reduction in the number of intercontinental missiles, Reagan urged that the negotiations should be renamed START, for strategic arms reduction talks.* Reagan also called for a cut in conventional forces in Europe and for better communication about planned military maneuvers to enhance East-West stability.

The President’s description of his proposal as “simple” and “straightforward,” however honestly meant, was a trifle disingenuous. Certainly it is not simple. The Soviets will surely insist that the negotiations address items that Reagan did not mention: warheads on NATO bombers, missiles aboard submarines in the North Atlantic, the arsenals of Britain and France. Some, in fact, saw it simply as a ploy to reassure NATO allies and thus help secure the controversial deployment of the very same missiles that he was offering to scrap.

Nor was the proposal straightforward, at least from the Soviet perspective. A few hours before Reagan delivered his speech, Ambassador to Moscow Arthur Hartman visited Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to present an hour-long preview. The Kremlin’s official response was predictably brusque and negative. “A mere propaganda action,” scoffed Pravda. But there were a few small signs that the Kremlin might be willing to discuss some of the U.S. proposals at the long-stalled talks on reducing nuclear forces in Europe, which are scheduled to begin in Geneva next week. A leading Soviet military specialist, Radomir Bogdanov, told TIME: “I know we are going to Geneva with a sincere desire to negotiate.” And Central Committee Member Vadim Zagladin, a foreign policy adviser to Brezhnev, said in a Moscow press conference that Reagan’s speech was an agreeable change from the U.S. President’s past “bellicose” statements. Said Zagladin: “If in fact he now wants to be a peacemaker, then we can welcome this as a turn for the better.”

In European capitals, the official reaction to Reagan’s gambit was all but euphoric. Uncertain of the President’s true intentions, Western leaders were eager for a signal that he was seriously committed to the “two-track” decision reached by NATO in 1979, which linked the stationing of new nuclear weapons in Europe to a renewed effort by the U.S. to negotiate realistic arms limits with the Soviets. The President helped dispel some of those doubts. In Bonn, where Brezhnev was scheduled to start a four-day visit on Sunday, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had just concluded talks with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. “Reagan has set forth a comprehensive concept for the stabilization of peace,” said Schmidt. Added Thatcher: “It will receive a warm welcome not only in political circles but in the hearts and minds of people across Europe.”

Italian Premier Giovanni Spadolini was visiting French President Francois Mitterrand when the speech was given. Said Spadolini, upon emerging from the Elysee Palace: “The Italian and French reactions are both favorable.” Concurred French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson: “The zero solution is obviously advisable.” Skeptics, however, dismissed the speech as a cynical attempt to score off the Soviets by making Moscow an offer it could not accept.

The European applause was no great surprise: over the past months, allied leaders have been pressing Washington hard to accept the zero option. In fact, success seemed to have the usual number of fathers. Officials in West Germany and Italy, the countries where most of the planned new missiles are to be based, claimed partial credit for devising the plan. The most notable claimant was Chancellor Schmidt, who likes to see himself as a useful mediator between the superpowers. Reagan’s speech, said Schmidt, “gives me a broad base for the talks” he will have this week with Brezhnev. For once in the East-West war of words, the Soviets will be forced to react to an American peace initiative.

There was another reason for European satisfaction with Reagan’s speech. Though long used to being confronted with Washington faits accomplis, the NATO leaders this time had been kept informed on the evolution of the policy decision. The zero option was discussed in a meeting of allied defense ministers in Gleneagles, Scotland, in October. Three weeks ago, a draft of the final negotiating proposal was approved by a special NATO consultative group in Brussels chaired by Assistant Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. He carefully briefed top European officials on the speech days before Reagan delivered it.

The concord could hardly have come at a more propitious moment. Relations between the U.S. and its European allies have been particularly strained by worries that Reagan’s simplistic East-West world view would never translate into a coherent foreign policy. Compounding the problem were conflicting statements from Washington on sensitive nuclear policy issues. Hawkishly, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger announced that the U.S. would build a neutron warhead; Secretary of State Alexander Haig immediately noted that no decision had been made to deploy it. Reagan mused aloud to a group of newspaper editors at the White House about a possibility that Western allies dread: a limited nuclear war fought on European territory. Said he: “I could see where you could have the exchange of tactical weapons against troops in the field without its bringing either one of the major powers to pushing the button.” Haig set off a demonstration bombshell of his own by announcing that NATO had a contingency plan to fire a warning nuclear “shot across the bow,” if needed, to deter a Soviet conventional attack in Europe; Weinberger said he knew of no such policy.

Under pressure from the Europeans, and largely at Haig’s urging, the Administration agreed in May to resume INF talks by the end of the year. But Reagan’s men had trouble deciding on a bargaining strategy. Weinberger and his Pentagon colleagues tended to favor the zero option. They maintained that it would be the best way to please the Europeans and put the Soviets in a bind. Haig, however, argued that the zero option would both raise false hopes in Europe and hinder serious arms-limitation negotiations with Moscow.

The President approved the zero option as Weinberger was preparing to leave for last month’s NATO meeting in Gleneagles. Buried in the communique issued by the defense ministers was a clause that “the zero level remains a possible option.” A Pentagon team led by Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle drafted a version of the proposal; State Department opposition lessened as it became clear that the volatile new mood in Europe made an attention-grabbing offer more important than staking out a bargaining position that would be credible to the Soviets. Haig, Eagleburger and other State officials successfully argued that the U.S. should remain flexible in its approach and that the President’s speech be as conciliatory as possible.

Reagan agreed. Ironically, he put the finishing touches on his speech while flying home from a weekend in Texas aboard the “Doomsday Plane,” the airborne war room designed for use by top officials in the event of a nuclear attack.

Reagan tried to distinguish his proposal from a similar but ill-fated attempt by his predecessor to offer something novel to the Soviets. In March 1977, Jimmy Carter sent Cyrus Vance to Moscow with an ambitious scheme to redirect the SALT talks by asking the Soviets to make deep cuts in their existing arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Like Reagan, Carter had outlined his proposals in public before submitting them formally to the Soviets. Also like Reagan, Carter hoped that the Soviets could be persuaded to dismantle existing weaponry in exchange for U.S. promises not to deploy a planned system. In the strongest language, Moscow rejected the Carter-Vance proposals as absurd.

Unlike Reagan, Carter also declared that the U.S. had a fallback position: he remained willing to negotiate SALT II along the lines set out previously by Gerald Ford. Reagan’s advisers feel that Carter abandoned his radical initiative too early and undercut himself by having a fallback position already stated. “There is a strong feeling here that we should have stuck to our guns in 1977,” says one State policymaker. Thus the Administration refuses to talk about any other options or compromise positions. The instructions that have been given to Paul Nitze, the veteran negotiator who heads the U.S. team, are to “hang tough” when he gets to Geneva.

At the same time, U.S. diplomats point out that the American position is not welded in titanium.

They note that Reagan said, “We go to Geneva willing to listen to and consider the proposals of our Soviet counterparts.” Defending the Administration’s flexibility, one top official observes that “there is nothing to prevent us, in the future, from revising our objectives.” For example, the U.S. might be willing to phase in the reductions—or as a senior State Department official puts it, “to reach zero without doing so in one fell swoop.”

There are plenty of particulars that will require some fancy footwork by Nitze & Co. If the Soviets do not simply slam the door on negotiations, they are likely to insist that any accounting of weapons in Europe include the French and British nuclear arsenals, as well as such “forward based” nuclear delivery systems as the U.S. F-111 fighter-bombers based in Britain and submarines on patrol in the North Atlantic. Although the U.S. would prefer to see the discussions focus solely on intermediate-range ground missiles such as the Pershing II and SS-20, one top U.S. policymaker admits that “there’s no sense dealing exclusively with ground weapons if it leaves other systems unrestrained.”

All of these issues will be confronted in Geneva. Up until now, the principal purpose of the public debate over nuclear missiles has been to secure political and propaganda advantages in Europe. Even after the talks begin in earnest, each side will continue to try to score points with the European audience that is caught precariously in the balance. But Reagan’s initiative deserves to be taken by the Soviets, as well as by the U.S. and the Europeans, as more than a public relations ploy. If treated seriously by both sides, it could indeed be, as he suggested, a “giant step” toward peace. The dream it embodies, the hope it nourishes, is shared by not only the Western Europeans but by the Soviet and American people as well: to reduce the world’s awesome arsenals of nuclear weapons and the frightful tensions they create.

—By Walter Isaacson. Reported by Johanna McGeary and Bruce W. Nelan/Washington

* Not only has SALT been STARTed, but the Administration now refers to Theater Nuclear Forces (TNF) as Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF). One reason: European complaints that their continent was clearly designated as the theater in which a nuclear war would most probably take place.