A Plea for Nuclear Balance

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Soviet Dissident Andrei Sakharov joins the debate

He is confined to the drab, provincial city of Gorky, suffers from a heart condition for which the Soviet government has refused the treatment he requests, and had to stage a hunger strike 18 months ago to win permission for his daughter-in-law to leave the U.S.S.R. and join her husband in the U.S. But despite his internal exile and straitened circumstances, Physicist Andrei Sakharov, 62, wrote and somehow conveyed to American Physicist Sidney Drell a long open letter detailing his views on control of the nuclear weapons he once helped the Kremlin to develop.

As published in the current issue of the American journal Foreign Affairs, it should make a valuable--and valorous--contribution to nuclear discussions. It presents the kind of balanced and unexpected assessment that upsets and surprises many people who argue from fixed positions in the U.S. nuclear debate. Long a champion of arms control, he dismays supporters of the nuclear-freeze movement by saying in effect not yet, not now. Long a critic of new weapons systems, he confounds opponents of the MX by reluctantly finding it needed, at least for now. Lest the Reagan Administration take too much comfort from that, he pleads the urgency of serious arms negotiations.

Balance indeed is the keynote of Sakharov's stand. With impressive bravery, he condemns his government for its excessive buildup in both conventional and nuclear weapons and for aggressive actions like the invasion of Afghanistan. While expressing deep sympathy for the peace movement in the West, he chides "many of those participating" because they assail NATO's plans to install U.S. intermediate-range missiles in Western Europe and "entirely ignore" the deployment of Soviet missiles that prompted those plans. He is equally forceful in portraying as highly dangerous NATO'S strategy of relying on tactical nuclear weapons to deter Communist aggression in Europe. In Sakharov's view, the firing of a single nuclear weapon of any size anywhere would be all too likely to lead to all-out war. He urges a big Western buildup in conventional arms to offset present Soviet superiority and end the West's tacit dependence on nuclear weapons to close the conventional gap, while gloomily questioning: "Will the West's politicians be able to carry out such a restructuring?"

In particular, Sakharov insists that nuclear arms reductions, which he considers supremely important, should be used to preserve or restore "parity" at all levels of nuclear weaponry: tactical, "regional" and intercontinental. The reason: an aggressor who had an advantage in one category of weapons might be tempted to try nuclear blackmail, and "there would be little cause for joy if, ultimately, the aggressor's hopes proved false and the aggressor country perished along with the rest of mankind." Thus, Sakharov regretfully rejects the idea of a nuclear freeze because it would leave the Soviet Union with a huge lead in heavy land-based missiles.

In his most startling comment, Sakharov grudgingly endorses the Reagan Administration's decision to build 100 MX missiles. After assessing the Soviet superiority in powerful, silo-based ICBMs, Sakharov writes: "Perhaps talks about the limitation and reduction of these most destructive missiles could become easier if the United States were to have MX missiles." But he suggests that the U.S. should give them up if the Soviets, in deed and not just in word, "take significant verifiable measures for reducing the number" of their own silo-busting monsters.

These maverick opinions are likely to have more influence in the West than in the U.S.S.R., where they have so far been predictably ignored. In the U.S., leaders of the freeze movement, to whom the MX is anathema, expressed equally predictable dismay. Nonetheless, Adam Ulam, director of Harvard's Russian Research Center, predicts that Sakharov's words will weigh heavily with many arms-control advocates. Says Ulam: "Sakharov professes to be a social democrat, does not want to change socialism or even Marxism in the Soviet Union, and is a patriotic Russian. Consequently, he cannot be accused of bias."

The Reagan Administration had no official reaction, but Sakharov's views would seem to cut two ways: they support its stand on nuclear parity but not on the role of the MX. Such officials as Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Edward Rowny, chief U.S. negotiator at the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START ) in Geneva, maintain that the U.S. needs MX missiles even in the highly unlikely event that the Soviets accept the deep reductions in other land-based missiles that President Reagan has proposed.

Kenneth Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), implied last week that the MX could become a bargaining chip only in the most extreme circumstances. In a letter to Illinois Republican Charles Percy, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that became public almost simultaneously with Sakharov's missive, Adelman asserted: "The MX is the U.S. response to a massive buildup of Soviet ICBMs over the last ten years, and unless the Soviets are prepared to reverse this buildup and forgo their heavy and medium ICBMs, the U.S. will go forward with the MX." Read literally, that would imply Soviet dismantling of all or nearly all its more than 600 SS-18 and SS-19 missiles. By contrast, the formal American proposal at the START negotiations would permit the U.S.S.R. to keep 210 medium and heavy missiles.

To critics, Adelman's words confirmed the darkest suspicions--that the Administration intends only to make arms-control proposals so drastic that the Soviets are certain to refuse them. Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, called the letter "a perfect reflection of the attitude of this Administration: we will give up something if they give up everything." The comments of four former ACDA directors who testified jointly before the Foreign Relations Committee were also scathing. George Seignious, who headed the agency for Jimmy Carter, called Adelman's idea "preposterous." Eugene Rostow, Adelman's predecessor as Reagan's ACDA chief, attacked Adelman's tactics. Declared Rostow: "I think this is a terrible way to negotiate with the Soviet Union--to have public letters clarify our position."

Administration officials indeed appeared to be embarrassed by Adelman's letter and hastened to downplay it, while not exactly disavowing it. Secretary of State George Shultz insisted that the U.S. "is in a wide-ranging discussion with the Soviet Union aiming at reductions in all strategic arms." One of Adelman's lieutenants rather lamely asserted that Adelman's remarks were "an answer to a hypothetical question, never intended as a bargaining position. In the brilliance of hindsight, he would have preferred that this had been worded differently."

In any case, there have been no visible signs of progress either in the START discussions or in the separate negotiations on limitation of Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) in Western Europe. Said Rostow last week: "The Soviets are probing and testing to find out whether they can induce or force us to accept their political goal for the talks: the Soviet version of detente." Agreement will be possible, he predicted, only "when they are convinced we will never do that."

In other areas of U.S.-Soviet relations, there has been at best a tenuous turn toward somewhat softer rhetoric. While making clear that the U.S. and its allies are determined "to defend our interests," Shultz said that "we and our allies both would prefer a more constructive dialogue." The Secretary of State also professed to find some encouragement in a speech delivered by Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Said Shultz: "For the most part it is a very tough and categorical kind of speech. However, it is interlarded with comments about the desire for smoother relations." Shultz's aides noted that Gromyko has not closed the door to the idea of a summit meeting between Reagan and U.S.S.R. President Yuri Andropov. That is cold comfort indeed, since the Administration itself is not at all sure whether a summit would be useful.

--By George J. Church.

Reported by Ross H. Munro/Washington

With reporting by Ross H. Munro This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.