PEACE How far do Gorbachov's proposals go? DO GORBACHOV'S spectacular proposals, which will be on the table in a summit meeting in Geneva on November 19-20, offer a new thaw? If you read the European press, it would seem so. In Western Europe, the powers that be are skeptical about the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), because Europe does not have a great deal to gain out of it.
So, hardly a day goes by without admonitions to Reagan to make deals with the Soviet Union. Agreements are in fact possible. This time also the US has an interest in keeping the negotiations from blowing up. However, this is no reason to breathe easy. This round of negotiations in Geneva promises to open a new cycle in the arms race.
ANGELA KLEIN
After the collapse of the 1983 negotiations on the US intermediate-range missiles and their deployment in Europe, the Soviet Union is interested today in stopping the reinforcement of the US's firststrike capacity in general and in particular in blocking the acceleration of the arms race in space.
As for the US, what it wants is to underwrite its previous initiatives in the area of arms control and make a deal with the Soviet Union for "controlled" antisatellite and antimissile defense in space, in order to avoid the accusation that its SDI program violates the ABM [AntiBallistic Missile] treaty of 1972, which bans the use of space for military purposes. Not the least consideration in this is to allay European misgivings about participating in the SDI.
The nub of the Soviet proposals concern three areas of the arms buildup in which the US could inflict a decisive nuclear blow on the Soviet Union without itself being crippled by Soviet missiles.
- The deployment of an anti-
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most they are concerned that for the sake of public opinion there should be no formal violation at least of the ABM treaty. And at the same time, the West European powers are setting up their own little European SDI -the European Defense Initiative (EDI), which is to be a complement to the EUREKA agency for research and development.
The advocates of West Europe as a third space power - for example, Mitterrand and Strauss - point out that, like the US, Europe can only make a qualitative technological leap forward, thereby also benefiting the civilian economy, if the state lays out civilian economy if the state lavs out the money in the form of military projects.
What they have in mind, in part, are programs like those included in the framework of the SDI - ultrahighspeed circuitry, computers that can solve problems on their own, intelligent sensors, a new generation of robots, laser technology, and the new biotechnology.
All of these technologies can be applied within the framework of an integrated air defense; or in the development of "intelligent weapons," as called for by the new NATO doctrines for waging war; or in the construction of the multisensor observation satellite that is to be built by France and West Germany, which is to serve both military and civilian purposes.
Thus, the Soviet Union is coming under the combined pressure of US and West European acceleration of the arms race. There is no doubt about the danger that it is facing. Unlike at the end of the 1950s, the Soviet economy, now enmeshed in crisis, can hardly manage the effort needed to overcome its enormous technological lag and to achieve military "equality."
The Soviet Union's policy up till now of trying to restrain the arms spiral through negotiations and at the same time to preserve military parity with the US is thus coming into a total blind alley. Gorbachov's generous unilateral steps are limited in time. His spectacular disarmament proposals are accompanied by an implicit threat: "If the SDI is not stopped, strategic weapons limitations are off." In other words, then there would be an unrestrained arms race in offensive nuclear weapons. This shatters the hopes about the ability of the Soviet leadership not only to reject the arms race but block it.
It would be cheaper and politically far more effective if the Soviet Union stuck to its unilateral disarmament proposals, even if the Geneva negotiations fail. That would give great assistance to all of those in the West who are fighting against the SDI and EUREKA. International Viewpoint 28 October 1985 missile system in space. The Soviet Union is willing to permit research but not tests. Deployment is to be banned. To this end it proposes that half of the offensive nuclear arms on both sides should be destroyed. But there is no binding link between the two.
- There should be a ban on deploying new nuclear weapons systems. This concerns, above all, the new generation of US intercontinental MX missiles, the Midgetman missiles, which are highly accurate and suitable for a first strike. On Hiroshima Day, the Soviet Union announced that it would observe a unilateral cessation of testing new nuclear weapons systems until the end of the year.
- Finally, the Soviet Union still wants the withdrawal of US intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles. In this area also, the Soviet Union has announced a unilateral step. The number of SS20s deployed in the European part of the Soviet Union is to be reduced to 243. This corresponds to the number of British and French nuclear missiles.
Since the US refuses to include the French and British missiles in the Geneva negotiations, and since France has declared that there cannot be any negotiations over its missiles without its participation - and therefore, they cannot be diseussed in Geneva - the Soviet Union has proposed to France and Great Britain separate negotiations on the intermediate-range missiles. Thereby, it has dropped its original position that it was willing to discuss intermediate-range weapons only if there were also discussions on the SDI.
The US negotiating proposal dates back to March of this year and focuses on a reduction of the big land-based Soviet missiles, which the American authorities suppose could crack their silos.
Washington's response to the Soviet proposals has so far been mainly negative. It considers a ban on the deployment of new missiles systems as unnegotiable. The US would accept a significant reduction in its nuclear missiles but not in the systems that give them a qualitative superiority over the Soviet Union.
On the question of the intermediate range missiles, Mitterrand has given Gorbachov the run around. There will be no bilateral negotiations. Only on the SDI might a compromise be possible, which would let the US pursue its program in peace. The Soviet Union says that it is not against space research. That comes within the realm of the "peaceful use" of space.
Since deployment is conceivable only in 15 to twenty years, it is possible to use formulas making a future decision to deploy dependent on the behaviour of the Soviet Union. There is no way to get the US to agree to a ban on testing. That would make the research itself worthless. But here also it is possible to find compromise formulas. Thus, the US has the possibility to come to an apparent understanding with the Soviet Union to renounce starting the SDI program, without thereby having to make a single concession. The motives of European capitalists
The Soviet Union had indeed hoped to be able to link up with the West European criticism of the SDI. Thus, it eagerly praised EUREKA as a "civilian alternative." It got totally lost here, because the criticism of the West European governments and businesspeople is not politically but rather economically motivated.
The rulers of West Europe reckon that out of the SDI research program, for which the US will spend 26 billion dollars, 100 million dollars will go to West European firms in research contracts. The most important results of this research are to be kept in the US, which now, along with its trade protectionism, is practising a kind of technological protectionism.
Out of "loyalty to the alliance," the West Europeans are not doing anything to counter the SDI. At