Better Late Than Never

By JAY PETERZELL

Ever since George Bush moved into the White House, he has wanted to put his own stamp on the strategic-arms-reduction process that Ronald Reagan presided over with such dramatic flair. Last month the President finally found a way. In a secret letter to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, he proposed nothing less than the complete elimination of the most dangerous weapons in U.S. and Soviet arsenals: land-based missiles topped with multiple warheads, or MIRVs. As a first step, Bush suggested, the two superpowers should agree to ban land- based mobile missiles with MIRVs.

Not surprisingly, Gorbachev had problems with the proposal. In a letter hand delivered to Bush during Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze's visit to Washington, Gorbachev replied that any MIRV ban should not be limited to land-based weapons, where the Soviets have a heavy numerical advantage, but should also include those aboard submarines, where the U.S. has the edge.

Resolving that larger disagreement will probably keep arms-control negotiators busy for years to come. But for now U.S. officials say Bush's first step -- a ban on mobile land-based MIRVs -- has become an active issue of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. A treaty outline is being rushed to completion in time for the May 30 summit in Washington. If Bush's proposal makes it into the START agreement, the U.S. will scrap its plan for moving 50 MX missiles, with ten warheads apiece, from silos onto railroad cars, while ! the Soviets will demobilize 20 of their new, mobile SS-24s, each of which also packs a ten-warhead punch. But will the Soviets, who have recently taken a tougher line on START, trade a mobile weapon they already have for one that is still a gleam in Uncle Sam's eye?

A complete ban on MIRVed missiles would give both nations a chance to reverse what many defense experts consider a classic case of shortsightedness: the Nixon Administration's decision to deploy MIRVs in the first place during the 1970s, which prompted the Soviets to follow suit rapidly. Multiple warheads seemed an inexpensive way to expand the U.S. nuclear force. But what strategists overlooked was the fact that the large number of warheads packed onto a small number of missiles make them a tempting target for a first strike. In a surprise attack, an aggressor could knock out as many as ten or more warheads by hitting a single silo. Says Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sam Nunn, who strongly supports the Bush proposal: "I can see a regime on both sides where we have single-warhead missiles in silos. There is no reason to go first ((with a nuclear attack)) in that situation."

Getting MIRVs onto the Administration's agenda, however, has not been easy. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft has persistently championed a ban on mobile MIRVs, but Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney fiercely opposed it, largely because he saw the rail-based MX as the best way to reduce the vulnerability of the U.S. missiles. Cheney blocked the Scowcroft proposal from being presented to the Soviets on at least three occasions, officials say. The first was last September, prior to a meeting between Shevardnadze and Secretary of State James Baker in Wyoming. At the Malta summit last December, the plan made it as far as a briefing book prepared for Bush; a line had to be drawn through the proposal on the President's copy. The ban was blocked again when Baker visited Moscow in February. Finally, Cheney relented when he realized that Congress was no longer likely to give him the $6 billion needed to put the MX's on rails. "The driving force," says one White House official, "is a reflection of political realities."

Cheney is not the only one to raise questions about Bush's proposal. Even some experts who like the idea of banning MIRVs have reservations. Among them:

-- Why delay the nearly completed START treaty to take up a new issue? Bush waited too long to get his ducks in a row, say some critics, apparently including the Soviets; MIRVs would be better addressed in a later round of negotiations. But Nunn and other advocates reply that the time for the U.S. to trade away the rail-based MX is now, before it is deployed. "I have never seen the military very willing to give up things that have just been built," says Nunn. "If a ban does not come in START I, it's going to be at least ten times more difficult."

-- The best reason for banning mobile MIRVs is as a first step toward eliminating all land-based multiple-warhead missiles. But what if the U.S. and Soviets never take that second step? With most U.S. MIRVs on submarines and most Soviet MIRVs on land, each side will be trying to limit weapons the other deems essential; a stalemate could easily be reached. The two sides would then be left in a more dangerous situation than now, with land-based MIRVs sitting in vulnerable silos.

Perhaps the greatest danger today is to assume that anything is beyond negotiation. At least the Bush Administration is thinking seriously about a nuclear future that is more stable than the hair-trigger past.

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington