Arms control perverted.

Arms Control Perverted

THE SOVIETS have been trying to use arms control as awedge to break up NATO and neutralize Western Europe. They would like nothing better than to decouple the United States from our European allies.

In this atmosphere, caution and careful deliberation areessential. Instead, we seem to be caught up on an arms-control merry-go-round, where everyone likes the idea of reducing nuclear weapons in Europe, but the details are all blurry.

I agree that reducing offensive nuclear arms is a worthwhilegoal. But in order to enhance security and peace, any agreement must include effective verification measures and compliance guarantees, and must also address the conventional imbalance of forces.

In particular, I want to know what safeguards we willhave for the security of Western Europe if we agree to pull out the Pershing IIs and cruise missiles it took us years to deploy, at a high political cost. What will we do to offset the Soviets' extensive conventional superiority?

If the price of this treaty is exposing Western Europeand American troops to the overwhelming advantage of Soviet firepower, and making Europe safe for conventional war, then that price is too high.

The Soviets have an offensive military strategy. Theirmassive military buildup over the last decade is directed at negating NATO's ability to respond. Without significant Soviet conventional reductions, withdrawing NATO's nuclear forces would increase the Warsaw Pact's existing advantage.

Some say we could build up our conventional strengthin Europe to offset the Soviet advantage. This is a pipe dream. Does anyone believe Congress would be willing to appropriate the extraordinary amounts of money that would be necessary to accomplish this? (Nuclear weapons are relatively inexpensive; we won't be saving money by pulling them out.)

Meanwhile, we have over a decade of experience withSoviet cheating on arms-control agreements. Verification and compliance with a new agreement must be ironclad--and here many uncertainties remain:

--If the Soviets are permitted to retain one hundred SS-20warheads, they will also retain production facilities for those warheads. How are we to know whether the limit of a hundred has been honored?

--What will happen to Soviet short-range systems? Willthey be destroyed, or simply withdrawn so that they can be brought back at a later date?

--How will we identify the production facilities that areto be shut down? Do we have the technical ability and the resources to carry out verification?

--How do we know that our data base is correct? TheSoviets could well be hiding additional missiles in warehouses and deployment areas we don't know about. Nothing in our experience suggests that we are able to gather precise information on Soviet stockpiles.

--The SS-25--a new mobile Soviet intercontinental missile--isthe same as an SS-20 with a third-stage booster added. What is to keep the Soviets from threatening Europe with elements of their ICBM force?

The principal foreign-policy objective of the Soviet Unionhas been to split the NATO alliance at mid-Atlantic. My fear is that by concluding a treaty that would require the United States to withdraw our front-line defenses from Europe, the Soviets will edge closer to that goal.

Nuclear weapons are in NATO Europe to keep thepeace. I will support an agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) only if it will strengthen our deterrent and advance stability and peace in Europe. But we have a long way to go before we will have such an agreement in hand.