Confusion abounding.

Confusion Abounding

PERCEIVING THE Reagan Administration as weak and desperate for a summit meeting, Gorbachev reneged, temporarily perhaps, on his commitment to visit America this fall. Predictably, Soviet opposition to SDI was the ultimate motive for Gorbachev's crude attempt to extract yet another pound of flesh from his American interlocutors. The Kremlin knows it cannot compete credibly in the high-tech competition that SDI will force upon it. And the Soviet leadership is quite naturally loathe to see decades of investment toward achieving Soviet strategic nuclear superiority wiped off the slate by a successful U.S. SDI program. This is why Soviet negotiators have been so fixated on a military program that remains years away from deployment. It is why the President has been right to refuse to negotiate on SDI. His stubbornness on this issue has been a national asset and the only reason Moscow has made any arms control concessions at all.

The entire Western world suffers from an incurable case of acute collective amnesia when it comes to recalling past Soviet behavior. Time and again, when the United States has appeared vulnerably eager for a Summit meeting or arms-control agreement, the Soviet leadership has played a trick similar to what Gorbachev did to George Shultz: bait the Yankee country bumpkin with an "agreement in principle' that appears to resolve all but the details, then stiffarm him on the eve of the victory celebration. In this manner the Soviets have managed to extract numerous last-minute concessions from their country cousins who never seem to learn that beneath the Soviet smile there is not one iota of genuine good will, but only the cold and calculating shrewdness of men who know precisely what the ultimate battle is all about.

Then there is the INF treaty itself, the proposed centerpiece of the proposed summit meeting. The treaty as it now stands will make Western Europe marginally more secure against Soviet nuclear forces while making the Soviet Union absolutely invulnerable to any land-based U.S. nuclear forces based in Western Europe, since there will be none capable of reaching Soviet territory. No cause for worry, however, since this effect will be of little significance compared to the vastly increased significance of Soviet superiority in conventional forces. The INF treaty makes Europe safe for conventional war while insuring that any nuclear fireworks that should occur will take place almost entirely on German soil (both West and East), thus compounding the schizophrenic paranoia of Europe's most neurotic country. The Administration has actually succeeded in disheartening the right wing of German politics, while making the name of Ronald Reagan speakable (barely) on the Left. Agreements like this one give a bad name to arms control, which is about the only thing we can say in its favor.