Downing Street muddle.

THE RECENT "major" speech by British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe about the Strategic Defense Initiative has caused deep distress among Reagan Administration policymakers. Howe said nothing that has not been said before about the SDI--and that has not been answered. Accordingly, his speech is seen as a political act on the part of the Thatcher government, an ill-advised and potentially dangerous political act committed on the eve of the Geneva negotiations. Sir Geoffrey strengthened Gorbachev's hand on his two primary goals: the current Soviet goal of blocking the SDI politically, and the permanent Soviet goal of "decoupling" the NATO alliance.

In his speech Sir Geoffrey viewed the SDI as a threat to the stability of deterrence, as if deterrence were a static challenge, and as if--given the present arithmetic and Soviet policy--deterrence in fact were stable. He spoke in Luddite terms, basking in Mutual Assured Destruction, as if high technology stood still, and as if the Soviets, under the cover of their ICBM threat, did not wage continuous aggressive warfare on a variety of levels below an all-out ICBM exchange. In its principal arguments, Sir Geoffrey's "major" speech was piffle.

But the illusions lurking behind it are chilling indeed. In her visits to Moscow and to Hungary, Mrs. Thatcher gave some indications that she wishes to function as a political bridge between Moscow and Washington, and she seemed, at least for the moment, smitten by the Gorbachevs when they visited London. She could "do business" with Gorbachev, she opined, the 414 MIRVed SS-20s pointing at her notwithstanding. After her conversation at Camp David with President Reagan and his science advisors and after her speech to the two Houses of Congress, the Administration had a right to believe that Mrs. Thatcher supported the essentials of the SDI and was prepared to help bring the alliance together behind it. With Sir Geoffrey's speech, all of that has now been thrown into question.

One of Mrs. Thatcher's Conservative predecessors as prime minister persuaded himself that he could "do business" with Hitler, and her probably unconscious echoing of that phraseology is ominous. Of course Chamberlain could "do business" with Hitler. He succeeded brilliantly in removing 25 Czech divisions from Hitler's flank, changing the balance of power in Central Europe, guaranteeing the defeat of France and the destruction of the European order east of the Elbe. Just another day of "business." Sir Geoffrey's speech comes out of the same apparently inexhaustible supply of illusion.