Disarmament: Reaching for the Limits

As anxious Europe watches, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. begin serious arms talks

The somber faces reflected the historic importance of the event. After nearly two years in which U.S.-Soviet relations alternated between brooding silence and intercontinental recrimination, representatives of the two superpowers faced each other across a 4-ft.-wide teak table in Geneva last week. “I think perhaps they would like to see us shaking hands,” said Paul Nitze, the silver-haired American chief negotiator, referring to the throng of photographers witnessing the scene. His Soviet counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky, extended his hand and smiled affably as shutters clicked. “Once more?” the dapper Kvitsinsky inquired in unaccented English. “Yes, yes,” the photographers shouted, and the two men obliged.

Subsequent agreements may not come as easily as those opening handshakes, but the Geneva talks marked the warmest moment in U.S.-Soviet relations since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. For months, possibly years, the opposing delegations will meet every Tuesday at a modern building containing the Geneva office of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and every Friday at the Soviet mission, a 19th century villa less than one mile away. Their goal is ambitious: to reach an agreement that would reduce the number of nuclear weapons in Europe. Progress in Geneva will be followed closely by the millions of Western Europeans who have taken to the streets this autumn to express their opposition to nuclear arms, notably NATO’s. Indeed, even Eastern Europeans are taking an interest in disarmament. Last Saturday 300,000 people marched through Bucharest, the capital of Rumania, demanding the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from both Eastern and Western Europe.

By mutual agreement, the Americans played host to the first full session of the talks. Nitze and his eleven aides chose to sit on the side of the table that offers a commanding view of the snow-capped Alps. Kvitsinsky and his eleven colleagues faced a windowless wall decorated with prints by ubiquitous Sports Artist LeRoy Neiman on themes of football (the American kind), ice hockey and tennis.

At a preliminary get-together the day before, Nitze and Kvitsinsky had agreed to one ground rule: there would be a total blackout on information to the press. Nitze explained: “It is only by mutual respect for the confidentiality of these proceedings that we can hope to look at the hard issues which divide us, and to search for solutions that will assure security and reduce tensions.” When reporters tried to ask follow-up questions, the U.S. negotiator turned and walked out of the room.

Though the talks will be secret, the issues are well known. At the heart of the discussion are the approximately 600 Soviet SS-4, SS-5 and SS-20 intermediate-range missile launchers trained on Western Europe and the 572 Pershing II and land-based cruise missiles that the U.S. and its NATO allies plan to deploy in West Germany, Italy, Britain, Belgium and The Netherlands starting in December 1983. President Reagan has instructed Nitze to press for the zero option. Under that proposal, NATO would agree to cancel deployment of its new missiles if the Soviets dismantled all of their comparable systems already in place. Counting all nuclear weapons that can strike targets within Europe, Reagan claimed, the Soviet Union now enjoys a 6-to-l advantage.

The Soviets counter that a “rough balance” of nuclear forces already exists in Europe. President Leonid Brezhnev has offered to reduce—but not scrap—the arsenal of Soviet missiles aimed at Europe if NATO shelves its decision to install the Pershing IIs and cruises. In other words, Brezhnev proposes a zero option that would apply only to the West. Nitze and Kvitsinsky spent much of their first hours together last week restating their countries’ public postures.

Once the opening positions are on the table, the negotiators will have to grapple with some dauntingly complex details. They must decide, for instance, whether to limit the talks to land-based missiles, as the U.S. wants, or include sea-and air-launched nuclear weapons. The Soviets argue that the 560 U.S. fighter-bombers stationed in Western Europe and the U.S. are as threatening as missiles, and should be counted as nuclear forces in Europe. The U.S. responds that the Soviets have more than 3,000 aircraft of their own capable of raining nukes upon Western Europe.

Moscow will also press the U.S. to take into account the approximately 250 missiles and planes in the independent nuclear forces of Britain and France. “These systems are certainly not aimed at Washington,” says a Soviet diplomat. “If Poland or Hungary had nuclear weapons, you would insist on counting them.” The British and French, however, adamantly refuse to have anything to do with the negotiations. “I can conceive of no circumstances in which the present British government would agree to the independent strategic nuclear deterrent being put on the bargaining table at the Geneva talks,” British Defense Secretary John Nott told TIME’s Frank Melville. Said a French spokesman: “France’s nuclear arsenal is a matter for the French.”

The U.S. demands, Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, will include “collateral restraints,” or limits on shorter-range SS-22 and SS-23 Soviet missiles, which could take over most of the targets covered by the SS-20s. Without such limitations, Perle explained, any agreement on intermediate-range weapons would be “hopelessly vulnerable to circumvention.” Washington also wants more reliable verification procedures than have been agreed to in the past. The U.S. will probably ask for some form of on-site inspection, which the Soviets have been rejecting for two decades.

The Geneva talks are almost certain to be protracted and contentious. The U.S., for one thing, intends to make the zero option its only option. “We have learned from bitter experience that nothing would so dash our hopes for the successful negotiation of our proposal as a briefcase full of positions to which we are ready to fall back,” the Pentagon’s Perle insisted last week. He was alluding to President Jimmy Carter’s precipitous 1977 decision to back away from a dramatic new SALT II proposal only seven weeks after the Soviets had rejected it.

The U.S. position was a victory for Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. The State Department would have preferred to propose drastic reductions that would ideally, but not necessarily, cut the total number of intermediate-range missiles to zero. Such an offer would not have carried the take-it-or-leave-it finality of Reagan’s zero option. But, for the time being at least, the zero option is not just a bargaining ploy: there really is no fallback position in Nitze’s briefcase.

The Administration’s approach is not without its dangers. America’s European allies, who pushed strongly for the zero option because it was most likely to placate the Continent’s antinuclear protesters, may become impatient if a prolonged stalemate develops. West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has described both the U.S. and Soviet positions as “maximalist,” meaning that each side will eventually have to make concessions if an agreement is to be reached. At the same time, many Western experts doubt that the Soviets want to make a deal, at least now. Instead, they believe, Moscow is hoping the peace movement will continue to gain momentum, forcing NATO to withdraw its deployment decision even if no Soviet concessions are made. The U.S. is determined to resist such pressure. Any talk of a postponement, says Secretary of State Alexander Haig, is “a very serious misreading of the Western position as I understand it.” It could be a long time between handshakes. —By Henry Mutter. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Geneva and Bruce W. Nelan/Washington