INF: invitation to cheat?

INF: INVITATION TO CHEAT?

AMONG THE key questions to be debated by the Senate during its hearings on the INF treaty are the related issues of verification and compliance. The Administration has expressed pride in the fact that the INF treaty contains the most extensive and comprehensive verification regimen ever agreed to by the Soviets. Unfortunately, the nature of this treaty may actually encourage the Soviet Union to violate its terms.

The list of previous Soviet arms-control violations is long and includes breaches of SALT 2, SALT 22, and the ABM treaty. The President has reported to Congress on no fewer than seven occasions that Soviet violations continue. In his March 1987 report to Congress on Soviet non-compliance President Reagan declared, "Compliance with past arms-control commitments is an essential prerequisite for future arms-control agreements." Yet the INF agreement was signed in spite of the President's certification, expressed in the same report, that "the Soviet Union has failed to correct its non-compliant activities; neither [has it] privided explanations sufficient to alleviate our concerns on other compliance issues." The President's independent General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Diarmament concluded in 1984 that not only was the pattern of Soviet arms-control violations expanding, but the Soviets actually signed agreements with the intention of violating them. Administration spokesmen, however, have never publicly come to terms with the troubling possibility that this was the Soviets' intent in signing the INF treaty. Nor is the issue addressed in the President's December report on Soviet non-compliance, which notes perfunctorily that "a double standard of compliance with arms-control obligations is unacceptable."

The United States has never satisfactorily resolved the issue of how to respond to Soviet violations. Previous Administrations ignored, downplayed, or dismissed the problem. During the Reagan Administration, officials have drawn attention to it, but have taken no action. This Administration has proposed no new strategic programs to offset the deleterious effects of Soviet cheating, and, in fact, it seeks to defer for at least seven years the right to withdraw from the ABM treaty. Congress remains ill-disposed toward defense programs that would exceed the unratified and expired SALT II limits, and favors strict U.S. adherence to the ABM treaty.

WHEN ASKED how Soviet compliance with any arms-control accord will be guaranteed, U.S. officials invariably answer that the United States will not accept a treaty that is unverifiable. Such a response begs the question. Better verification procedures only make it more likely that we will know when the Soviets, cheat. Then what?

Unlike the SALT agreements, which dealt with strategic forces on both sides, the INF treaty deals with systems that are small, mobile, and easy to conceal, even in the face of on-site inspections. This gives the Soviets a big incentive to cheat, surrepitiously deploying covertly produced missiles at a time of crisis.

It would be easy to do so within the vast expanse of Soviet or Soviet-controlled territory, especially since the United States does not even know how many SS-20s the Soviets have produced. Discrepancies between the number of intermediate-range nuclear missiles the Soviets told us they have and the number that U.S. intelligence agencies estimate they have suggest either that the U.S. can't accurately verify Soviet intermediate-range-weapons totals, or that the Soviets are lying. Neither possibility is reassuring.

Unlike SALT, the emerging INF agreement directly involves the security of our European Allies. Any response to Soviet cheating involving the deployment or redeployment of countervailing forces in Europe would need to be an Allied decision, not an American one. Allied reservations over the removal of U.S. intermediate-range weapons notwithstanding, redeployment of these systems seems politically almost impossible. And given the Allies' historical reluctance to upset the arms-control apple cart, an effective alternative response would be difficult to achieve.

The United States must work with its Allies to help them do so. Response options or "safeguards" against Soviet cheating must be set up. For example, if the Kremlin violates the INF treaty the Allies could decide to deploy a weapon originally intended to counter Soviet conventional-force superiority but later abandoned for political reasons--the enhanced-radiation warhead or "neutron bomb."

An agreement to deploy an antitactical-ballistic-missile defense (ATBM) system is another, perhaps preferable, option. Such a defense is technically feasible, would protect Europe from both nuclear and non-nuclear ballistic-missile attack, would not rely upon Soviet treaty compliance, and would add to the West's operational knowledge of strategic-defense possibilities.

Withtout such agreed safeguards as part of a comprehensive policy, the INF treaty will be an exercise in self-deception. If the West is not to find itself in a dangerously weak and exposed position, there must be a clearly spelled-out cost to the Soviets for cheating--a cost that would be exacted with the full backing of the NATO Alliance.