Seize the Moment (10 page)

—In their most brazen attempt, they sought to violate the
letter of the treaty by excluding more than 5,000 pieces of equipment from agreed-upon limits by reassigning three army motorized rifle divisions to the naval infantry, to civil defense units, and to strategic forces security detachments.

—They also moved 70,000 pieces of treaty-limited equipment to depots east of the Ural Mountains—a redeployment ten times greater than Operation Desert Shield/Storm—in order to avoid counting them against treaty totals. In May 1990, Soviet negotiators indicated that 31,990 tanks, 49,300 armored personnel carriers, 51,000 artillery pieces, 6,490 combat aircraft, and 2,950 attack helicopters would come under CFE provisions. But in late 1990 they presented revised figures of 20,694 tanks, 29,348 APCs, 13,826 artillery pieces, 6,445 combat aircraft, and 1,330 attack helicopters.

—They submitted a list of 895 so-called “objects of verification”—military installations and units where treaty-limited equipment was located—after previously committing themselves informally to a 1,756 total. Meanwhile, NATO estimated 2,661 as the lowest possible count for such objects. This huge discrepancy meant the Soviets could store equipment beyond the prying eyes of CFE on-site verification teams at over a thousand sites.

Even the agreement to resolve the issue of the disputed three divisions fell short of what the West should have demanded. We must insist that the new noncommunist leaders of the former Soviet Union pledge to destroy the mountains of weaponry stashed east of the Urals.

President Bush deserves great credit for seizing the moment to press for major reductions in nuclear weaponry. But as a result of previous Soviet obstinacy, the START treaty—which calls for a 30 percent reduction in U.S. and Soviet strategic forces—is fatally flawed. Despite the additional informal arms control agreements concluded by President Bush
and President Gorbachev in the aftermath of the August 1991 revolution, planned reductions will not enhance strategic stability or be fully verifiable. In negotiation with the new leaders of the former Soviet Union, we should make the correction of the flaws in START—either through amendments or a quick follow-up accord—a test case in putting cold war issues behind us.

Arms control is part of U.S. defense policy, not vice versa. As long as the knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons exists, we cannot indulge fantasies about eliminating them from the face of the earth. A nuclear-free world would be a world safe for conventional aggression. And it would create irresistible incentives for aggressors to develop a nuclear capability covertly and thereby gain a decisive military advantage.

Our objective must be not disarmament but a stable strategic balance. The START treaty's effect on strategic stability represents the key criterion for evaluating its contribution to our security. The stability of the strategic balance turns on the incentives for each power to use or not use nuclear weapons in a crisis, and the best measure of those incentives is the ratio of first-strike warheads to first-strike targets. To be useful for a first strike, a warhead must be accurate and powerful enough to destroy a target hardened against nuclear attack, such as ICBM silos, command bunkers, or communications systems. First-strike targets are those weapons and facilities essential for launching a retaliatory attack. If Moscow possessed enough first-strike warheads to threaten credibly all first-strike targets in the United States, the Kremlin could have an incentive to threaten or actually to use nuclear weapons in a crisis.

At the same time, unless a START agreement contains airtight verification provisions, the treaty will not serve our
interests. In the past, if verification procedures fell short of this standard, we could be sure about two things: the United States would observe the treaty to the letter, and the Soviet Union would violate it to the limit. Since all of the verification issues have relatively easy solutions, we should take the time to resolve them in order to prevent suspicion from arising in the future.

Most of the arms control measures agreed upon since the signing of START affect the least important weapons in terms of the nuclear balance. Ground-based tactical weapons, sea-based cruise missiles, and bomber-borne weapons are irrelevant or peripheral to strategic stability. To enhance stability, the focus of new arms control efforts should be on reducing the number of ICBMs carrying multiple warheads capable of destroying first-strike targets. President Bush's proposal to eliminate such missiles was on the mark, but Gorbachev rejected it. In the absence of such a comprehensive solution, we must insist on rectifying four flaws in START:

First, the permitted number of Soviet heavy ICBMs should be reduced from 154 to 77. When the Reagan administration agreed to the first figure, it assumed that the limits would apply to the SS-18 model 4, the accuracy of which required Moscow to allocate two warheads to each target. But the improved accuracy of the SS-18 model 5, which the Soviets began deploying in 1990, enabled Soviet military planners to employ one-on-one targeting. As a result, the modernized SS-18 gave the Soviet Union the same military capability with half the number of missiles.

Second, the “downloading” of missiles should be banned. In all previous strategic arms control negotiations, the number of warheads attributed to each missile was determined by the maximum number that were deployed or simulated in
test flights of that system. Since the Soviet SS-18 and the U.S. MX missiles have been tested with ten warheads, for example, each missile of these types would count for ten warheads against START limits. But both sides have been tempted to permit some systems to be downloaded to carry fewer warheads than their maximum capabilities. The limited downloading permitted under START sets a dangerous precedent. If the practice is expanded in subsequent agreements, it will significantly favor Moscow. Soviet missiles have far greater “throw weight,” which means they have the capability of carrying more warheads. If we allow downloading, we will create a situation in which Moscow's strategic forces have the ability to deliver many more warheads than START permits—which, in turn, would mean that the Kremlin could “break out” of the agreement on short notice simply by “uploading” additional warheads.

Third, the permitted number of “nondeployed” missiles should be reduced. Each side produces more missiles than are put on active duty. Most excess systems on the U.S. side are consumed in test flights. But there is substantial evidence, including statements by top Soviet military leaders, that the Soviet Union produces more missiles than needed to fulfill testing requirements. That raises concerns about the possibility of a covert Soviet strategic capability, a danger accentuated with the advent of road- and rail-mobile Soviet ICBMs. The only difference between a deployed and nondeployed mobile ICBM is whether it has been loaded onto its trucklike or railcar launchers. Without much tighter limits on nondeployed missiles, START offers no guarantees of enhanced strategic stability.

Fourth, perimeter-portal monitoring should be established around all plants producing first-stage rocket motors for mobile ICBMs. While limits on silo-based ICBMs can be verified
with a high degree of confidence through satellite reconnaissance, monitoring mobile ICBMs represents a very difficult challenge. The only way to be confident about the estimated number of such systems, both deployed and nondeployed, is to monitor at the factory gate the total output of first-stage rockets, which are the critical component that gives the missiles an intercontinental range. Moscow rejected perimeter-portal monitoring of those facilities, and the United States erred by accepting such verification only at mobile-missile final-assembly plants. But the Soviet military can—and has in the past—married the first-stage rockets to the other missile components at locations other than the assembly plants.

Until stable democracies emerge in the former Soviet Union, deterrence and strategic stability will remain critical priorities. The hysterical fears expressed by many observers about the possession of nuclear weapons by newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union are misplaced. A democratic Ukraine with nuclear weapons is less of a threat than the nuclear-armed Soviet Union was for four decades. The real danger is that former Soviet nuclear experts will be hired by states like Iraq and Libya.

As we look beyond START, we must also address the issue of the role of strategic defenses. In 1972, I signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which sharply restricted the deployment of ground-based and banned space-based defenses against ballistic missiles. While the agreement suited our interests at the time, it is time to renegotiate its terms. A comprehensive nationwide defense against nuclear attack remains unfeasible. But a limited defense of our command and control systems and nuclear forces and a “thin” defense of the country as a whole—such as President Bush's proposed Global Protection Against Limited Strikes system—would significantly strengthen strategic stability. Moreover, the United States could offer eventually to extend these defenses
to protect all nations—including the republics of the former Soviet Union—from limited ballistic missile attacks.

In addition, as more third world states acquire ballistic missile capabilities, the United States cannot afford to remain defenseless against them. Today, fifteen developing nations have such capability, with three more expected to join the club before the year 2000. It is only a matter of time before rogue states such as Iraq or Libya acquire missiles with intercontinental ranges. Iraq has already developed a ballistic missile with a range of 1,250 miles—enough to reach Stavropol, Gorbachev's original Communist party base. While Gorbachev showed some signs of flexibility on renegotiating the ABM Treaty, the new noncommunist governments in the former Soviet Union might be more interested, especially since those countries technologically closest to acquiring nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles are geographically closer to their territories than to the United States.

Some observers contend that because of the democratic revolution in the Soviet Union, arms control has become passé. After all, they argue, democratic nations have seldom waged aggressive wars. While we welcome the democratic revolution in the former Soviet Union, we must recognize that its success has been partial and its longevity is far from certain. We must base our defense policies on a potential adversary's capabilities, not his presumed intentions. We have had an era of new thinking in military policy under Gorbachev. We now need an era of new actions in defense policy under the new noncommunist leadership.

We must seize the moment to reduce the burden of arms in a way that will serve the interests of the newly independent Soviet republics as well as ours. It is obscene that the former Soviet Union should be spending so much on arms even when it faces absolutely no threat from a major power abroad.

Bludgeoning Eastern Europe's economies.
Since the anticommunist
revolutions of 1989, Gorbachev retaliated by waging economic war against the new Eastern European democracies. He orchestrated a two-pronged assault—extorting high prices for Soviet raw materials and shutting off Soviet markets to East European exports. He inflicted more damage through his policies than we could offset through our aid programs. With the new leadership in Moscow and the former Soviet republics, we should find ways to reverse this destructive process, increasing trade and stimulating both economies.

During its forty-five years of domination, Moscow made Eastern Europe dependent on Soviet raw materials, particularly energy. In 1988, Poland bought 80 percent of its energy resources from Moscow, while Czechoslovakia imported 95 percent and Hungary 90 percent. These imports were purchased at negotiated prices well below world market levels and paid for in the soft currencies of the Soviet bloc. When the East Europeans won independence, that changed. Gorbachev demanded payment in hard currencies for goods, thereby adding $20 billion to Eastern Europe's energy bill overnight, an increase four times greater than the one the United States experienced in the 1973 oil shock.

At the same time, the Soviet Union canceled thousands of orders for East European goods as economic retaliation for the political break with Moscow. Since the Kremlin had forced the East Europeans to meet its requirements since World War II, all were acutely dependent on Soviet markets. After the revolutions in 1989, Soviet trade officials made the rounds of Eastern European capitals canceling long-standing export orders, unceremoniously telling the Czechoslovakians, for example, that Moscow no longer wanted any more of “your damn tram cars.” Gorbachev's overnight cancellations and refusal to pay for goods under contract—causing
East European exports to fall to one-quarter of their previous level—severely undercut their ability to earn the funds needed to purchase raw materials, as well as triggering massive unemployment in districts geared for production for the Soviet Union.

Backing third world totalitarian regimes.
Before we consider helping the former Soviet Union, its leaders should help themselves by terminating their aid to their brutal client regimes abroad. In 1990, Gorbachev budgeted $6 billion for Cuba, $2.5 billion for Vietnam, $3.5 billion for Afghanistan, $1.5 billion for Syria, $1 billion each for North Korea, Angola, and Libya, $500 million for Ethiopia, and $50 million for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua—a total of over $17 billion, which could have bought 22 million tons of grain or retrained 11 million workers with skills needed in a market economy.

The case of Afghanistan is particularly galling. For thirteen years, the Kremlin has propped up the cruelest tin-pot totalitarians in the third world. When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he authorized an escalation of the brutality of the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan and gave the go-ahead for a terrorist campaign in Pakistan, which eventually killed 5,000 civilians in 4,500 bombings. In addition, strong circumstantial evidence implicated Moscow in the August 1988 assassination of Pakistani president Zia ul-Haq.