Launching the Great Debate

The Senators try to make up their minds on the SALT II treaty Beneath the crystal chandeliers of the Senate's majestic main Caucus Room, some of the most important congressional activities in the nation's history have taken place. Teapot Dome's sordid realities were revealed there, and Watergate's. Last week the room was once again jammed to capacity as the nine Democrats and six Republicans of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called the first witnesses in the great debate on SALT II. The issue could well become the most critical foreign policy confrontation between the White House and the Senate since the Treaty of Versailles was repudiated nearly six decades ago. Aptly capturing the gravity of the moment, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance said on opening day: "The course our country takes through this ratification process will have a profound effect on our nation's security, now and for years to come."

What that course will be is far from certain. As the hearings began, the Administration still seemed about ten votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for Senate approval of SALT II. Even veteran advocates of negotiated arms control such as Committee Chairman Frank Church of Idaho and Republican Committee Member Charles Percy of Illinois were dissatisfied with portions of the pending U.S.-Soviet accord. On only eleven occasions in U.S. history has the upper chamber rejected a treaty. A repudiation this time, after nearly seven years of painstaking negotiations, would severely strain U.S.-Soviet relations. The challenge to the Administration during the corning months will be to find a way to satisfy the concerns of enough Senators to get the treaty passed without altering it so much that Moscow will insist on reopening the talks.

Kicking off the testimony last week were two of the Administration's most important SALT-sellers: Vance and Defense Secretary Harold Brown. They presented powerful arguments on behalf of the pact. Vance stressed that the accord "will greatly assist us in maintaining a stable balance of nuclear forces. It fully protects a strong American defense." Taking aim at critics who argue that SALT II is a bad deal for the U.S., Vance emphasized that the treaty "will permit, and in fact aid, the necessary modernization of our strategic forces. And it will slow the momentum of Soviet strategic programs." He was alluding to the fact that while the U.S. will not have to cut its arsenal to meet the treaty's terms, the Soviets will have to dismantle 250 of their strategic weapons launchers.

Brown argued that "this treaty will make the people of the U.S. more secure militarily than we would be without it." It would also save them money. With the treaty, Brown maintains, preserving the nuclear balance with the Soviet Union would require increasing strategic spending, now $10 billion a year, to about $12.5 billion. But, he insists, without an accord, the Pentagon budget for strategic weapons would have to spurt to as much as $16 billion a year. Said he: "There would be more weapons, higher costs and probably less security--for both sides."

For two days, Vance, Brown and a handful of other civilian officials answered the committee's questions. On Wednesday it was the military's turn. In full uniform, with gold braid and rows of dazzling service ribbons, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, David Jones, and the four service chiefs took their places at the witness table. Behind them sat their advisers. Committee Chairman Church asked if,the chiefs were prepared to "give us your honest advice," even if it differed from their civilian bosses in the Administration. Replied Air Force General Jones: "Yes, sir. We pledge to do so." Indeed, when the chiefs appear before congressional committees, they are allowed by law to ignore instructions of their civilian bosses and speak their consciences.

Their verdict on SALT II: a qualified O.K. Said Jones: "All of us judge that the agreement... is in the U.S. national interest and merits [the committee's] support." Choosing his words carefully, he characterized the pact as "a modest but useful step" toward arms control. Chief of Naval Operations Thomas Hayward was still more cautious. Said he: "I want you to understand that I and the other chiefs are not raging enthusiasts for many features of the treaty." Among other things, they are distressed that the pact: 1) does not classify the U.S.S.R.'s new Backfire supersonic bomber as a strategic weapon; 2) fails to require the Soviets to dismantle any of their 308 monster SS-18 rockets; 3) imposes only relatively modest restraints on the overall size of the superpower arsenals.

On the other hand, the chiefs admitted that some of the proposed accord's provisions "operate primarily to our advantage." As examples, they cited the ceiling of 2,250 launchers, which requires Moscow to dismantle some missiles, and the ban on Soviet mobile SS-16 missiles. The chiefs' main message, however, was that with or without SALT, the U.S. must increase its spending on strategic weaponry-Declared Jones: "We will be required to undertake a series of important strategic modernization programs to maintain strategic parity."

On Thursday the committee heard its first testimony from the other side of the SALT debate. Edward Rowny, a recently retired lieutenant general who was the Joint Chiefs' representative on the SALT II delegation for six years, denounced the accord for establishing "conditions which threaten our security for years to come." During the talks, said Rowny, "we gave concession after concession." Paul Nitze, who helped negotiate the SALT 1 accord, warned that the new treaty's provisions "one-sidedly favor the Soviet Union" and that the arguments for them were full of "fallacies and implausibilities."

Convinced that SALT II would permit Moscow to gain nuclear superiority by 1985, Nitze told the Senators that substantial amendments are needed "to get you on the way to cure the problem." For one thing, he wants the U.S. to have the right (now denied by SALT II) to build missiles as large as the Soviet SS-18. Even though the Pentagon has no intention of developing such a gigantic weapon, Nitze maintained that "it would be useful to assert now an equal right" in order to improve Washington's bargaining position for SALT in. He also fears that the proposed treaty's "wholly ambiguous" language could prevent the U.S. from deploying its new MX mobile missile in the manner that would make it least vulnerable to surprise Soviet attack.

While the opening week's polite testimony probably did not change any Senator's vote, it seemed clear from the questions asked by the committee that dissatisfaction with elements of SALT II is widespread. One major area of concern is if the U.S., having lost key intelligence bases in Iran, will be able to verify whether the Soviets are abiding by the terms of the accord. Although Secretary Brown and General Jones insisted that the treaty is verifiable, Senator John Glenn, the Ohio Democrat who has become a verification expert, still questioned if "we are buying a pig in a poke."

Doubts also were raised by Senators about the restrictions on sea-and groundlaunched cruise missiles that are imposed by the SALT protocol. A number of Senators fear that Washington might bow to expected pressure from Moscow and voluntarily observe these restrictions even after the protocol expires at the end of 1981. Said New York's Jacob Javits, the ranking Republican on the committee and long a backer of arms control: "You've got to make a commitment that [protocol] will not be extended without the consent of the Senate."

To allay these concerns, the Senators are almost certain to propose that "reservations," "understandings" or "amendments" be written into the legislation approving SALT II. Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden already has a list of eight such understandings, including one covering extension of the protocol. Church, Javits and other members of the committee are drafting their own lists. If such understandings do not change SALT II's substance, they might be implicitly accepted by the Kremlin. This is the view of Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, who had returned to Washington after talks with top Soviet leaders, including Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev (see following story).

While Byrd did not receive explicit assurances from the Soviets, he believes that they would acquiesce to some reservations to help get the treaty through the Senate. What Moscow could do is make a distinction between substantial changes to the actual text of the treaty and reservations or understandings attached to the Senate's Resolution of Ratification, the parliamentary instrument by which the upper chamber approves treaties. U.S. legal practice makes no such distinction: understandings and reservations are just as binding on both parties to an accord as an amendment to the treaty itself. But the Soviets might be willing to overlook this point, provided that the understandings merely explain or repeat points in the treaty and do not actually change its provisions. In this way the Soviets would not literally be forced to accept amendments that they have publicly declared they will not tolerate. But Soviet acquiescence is certainly not to be expected for the kind of fundamental changes advocated by Nitze, Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker and other sharp critics of SALT II.

The extent to which the Senate might append its understandings to the various SALT II documents will become clearer as the ratification process progresses. The Foreign Relations Committee hearings run at least through early August; the Armed Services Committee begins its own hearings on July 23. By mid-October, the full Senate will start debating the treaty, and a vote will probably come sometime the following month.

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