delegations in Geneva to prepare an agreement which you An Administration source said that it "would not quarrel with" the Soviet rendition of the conversation; however, the Administration continued to insist that only the written position-elimination of ballistic missiles-represented the true U.S. position in the short run. The elimination of ballistic missiles was not covered in the first set of post-Reykjavik instructions sent to the U.S. negotiators in Geneva on October 21. These instructions included only the framework for strategic systems and the zero-zero INF position. Privately both the Joint Chiefs and the allies had been complaining about the lack of specific consultation on both the ballistic missile and the INF elements of the summit discussions. Only the 1,600/6,000 framework for strategic arms reduction remained uncontroversial. One week later, on October 27, JCS Chairman Admiral Crowe had the opportunity to express his apprehensions about zero ballistic missiles at the White House. In a meeting chaired by the President and attended by Secretaries Weinberger and Shultz, Crowe admitted that he had reservations about the elimination of ballistic missiles, and that both this proposal and the zero LRINF agreement required further study. These studies were only undertaken after Reykjavik. The final draft was due by the end of January 1987. Nevertheless, the President decided to go ahead with the proposals. National Security Decision Directive 250, signed the same day, October 27, established the final U.S. position in Reykjavik as the new baseline for arms control, and instructed the interagency community to implement it. It was also the basis for a new set of instructions for Geneva, including no withdrawal from the ABM Treaty for 10 years, contingent on agreement to reduce strategic weapons by 50% over the first five years and to eliminate ballistic missiles by the end of the period (with the right to withdraw reserved in cases of "supreme national interests" or "material breaches" by one side). Both sides would then be free to deploy strategic defenses in the absence of any agreement not to. The U.S. position on sublimits within the 1,600/6,000 framework was also slightly modified to allow the Soviets 300 more warheads on ballistic missiles: under the ceiling of 6,000, 4,800 warheads could be deployed on ballistic missiles. Of this 4,800, 3,300 could be land-based, and 1,650 could be on heavy missiles or missiles with more than six warheads. In addition, mobile missiles would be banned unless adequate verification could be assured. The Vienna follow-up Once the summit ended, hopes turned toward the meeting between Shultz and Shevardnadze scheduled to take place in Vienna in the wings of the Review Conference of the 1975 Helsinki Accords. Events leading up to this meeting on November 5 and 6 were not propitious. The ongoing controversy about what was or wasn't agreed to at Reykjavik, discussed above, had been accompanied by Soviet threats to make the negotiating record public, which were countered by U.S. charges of unethical diplomatic behavior. Meanwhile, both sides were caught up in multiple rounds of expulsions of diplomats, fueled by the September 17 decision of the Reagan Administration to expel 25 members of the Soviet delegation to the United Nations identified as spies. This move had been carefully overlooked by the Soviets in the immediate pre- and post-Reykjavik environment. By the third week in October, however, they were ready to respond-and did so by expelling five U.S. diplomats on October 19. On October 21, the United States retaliated by ousting 55 more Soviets. In the final move, Gorbachev announced the expulsion of five more Americans and the reassignment of 260 Soviet employees of the U.S. Embassy. He charged that the United States "does not even have a desire to maintain the atmosphere which is essential for a normal continuation of the dialogue.' The United States apparently believed that despite the exchange of rhetoric and the lack of any progress in Geneva (the Soviets had yet to table anything new in light of Reykjavik) breakthroughs might be possible in Vienna. Talking points for Shultz were developed through the interagency process, and the team that had negotiated all night in Iceland was reassembled to repeat the performance. But the Soviets came unprepared to do any real business. The highest ranking negotiator with Shevardnadze was Viktor Karpov, who had played a secondary role to Marshal Akhromeyev in Reykjavik and had already been publicly rebuked by the Kremlin for suggesting that the INF agreement was not necessarily linked to resolution of strategic defense issues. The Vienna talks ended with both sides agreeing to consider a special meeting of arms control experts in between the November 1986 and January 1987 rounds in Geneva. When the U.S. delegation in Geneva returned to Washington on November 12, it brought along a Soviet proposal for an unscheduled meeting of negotiators in early December. Although the United States agreed to this session, it was able to accomplish nothing in the absence of a willingness to compromise within the top levels of either government. Allied reaction The allied response to Reykjavik has been marked by ambivalence. In the first few days after the summit, public opinion polls showed considerable disappointment with the lack of progress in Iceland, and many put the blame on the United States. In one poll conducted for the U.S. Government, 46% of those questioned in Great Britain and 42% of those in West Germany believed the Soviet Union was doing more to further arms control than the United States. At the same time, senior military officers at NATO were complaining. General Hans Mack, the West German officer who is the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, expressed his own apprehension early and publicly. "We have complained to the United States before about the lack of consultation," he said in explaining his doubts about the wisdom of eliminating LRINF missiles in Europe. A previously scheduled meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Nuclear Planning Group provided a ready-made forum for discussion of the Reykjavik outcome. The meeting on October 21-22 in Gleneagles, Scotland, focused on arms control. All of the allies were supportive of the President in public, and the NATO statement concluding the session "fully endorsed his [Reagan's] bold attempt to seek far-reaching arms control agreements.' Beneath this show of support ran an undercurrent of strong dissatisfaction. Britain, West Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands had just gone through five years of wrenching debate over whether to deploy LRINF missiles on their territory. Just when each country had made the final, politically risky decision to go ahead, the United States was negotiating an agreement which said all that wasn't necessary. But the alliance had been on record since 1981 as supporting the "zero option" in Europe: no U.S. Pershing II or ground-launched cruise missiles in exchange for no Soviet SS20s. Despite the fact that the reality of such an agreement was less tantalizing than the political appeal (General Bernard Rogers, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, warned that it carried "considerable risk"), the Europeans had no choice after Reykjavik but to applaud U.S. efforts in this area. The U.S. proposal to eliminate all ballistic missiles was another matter entirely. British Minister of Defense George Younger spoke out about some of the European concerns: "We would be very concerned at any attempt to abolish ballistic missiles altogether, if there were not at the same time a very effective, appropriate reduction in chemical and conventional forces." On October 28, Younger went even further in his criticism, calling the U.S.-Soviet negotiations a "hastily patched together and superficially attractive deal. . . which would be disastrous for us all.' During the Gleneagles meeting, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl conferred with President Reagan at the White House. While he, too, was broadly supportive of the President's efforts, Kohl emphasized his concern about Soviet conventional force superiority, reminding Reagan that "NATO's strategy would be deprived of its credibility" if sharp reductions in nuclear weapons were taken in isolation. The French, usually aloof from both superpower and NATO arms control movements, made clear their own unhappiness with the ballistic missile proposal. On his way back from Vienna on November 7, Shultz stopped off in Paris to consult with President Mitterrand and Premier Chirac. Shultz characterized the French response by saying that "a world without ballistic missiles is something the French have their reservations about." Two days earlier, the French cabinet had shown just how much it counts on a world in which ballistic missiles are a prominent feature by approving a five-year defense budget that puts heavy emphasis on modernization of their submarine ballistic missile force. The development of the allied positions reached a critical turning point with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's visit to the United States on November 15. In a private meeting with President Reagan at Camp David, Thatcher so successfully presented European concerns as to bring about a shift in the U.S. position. As a result of the meeting, Reagan reordered the U.S. proposal to "deemphasize" the zero ballistic missile idea, while giving "priority" to the 50% cuts in strategic forces, "sweeping" reductions in INF, ban on chemical weapons, and a renewed focus on conventional force balances. At the same time, Reagan reconfirmed his support a for Britain's program of strategic modernization, including Trident submarines to launch advanced ballistic missiles. In a joint press conference held November 21, Prime Minister Thatcher and President Mitterrand warned that the next time the United States wanted to go "so far" in negotiating arms control with the Soviets, it ought to undertake much more serious and extensive consultations. Although the unsuspecting allies were informed by telephone from Reykjavik about the agreement to eliminate LRINF missiles in Europe, they were taken completely by surprise as was the U.S. bureaucracy-by the proposal to eliminate all ballistic missiles. Consequently, they reacted negatively to the idea and were then successful in weakening Reagan's own enthusiasm. If the United States is indeed now considering, as Shultz has suggested, "an agreed-upon retention of a small nuclear ballistic force," the United States is back to its pre-summit position. Conclusions While specific analysis of the content of the proposals made by both sides is the subject of another report by this panel, it is fair to ask in the context of this review whether the Reagan Administration positioned itself at Reykjavik in a manner that ensured the best interests of the United States and its allies. With the value of hindsight, it is possible to draw several conclusions about the process that suggest the Reagan Administration was ill-prepared for the negotiations it participated in, and consequently, would have been ill-served had its product been accepted. The process The arms control process has been captured by a small group of people not representative of the interagency community. From the drafting of the July 25 letter through the Vienna followup to Reykjavik, most aspects of arms control have been monopolized by a group that has often excluded the military, the Secretary of Defense and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from real decision-making. Evidence includes the exclusive committee that drafted the July letter, the makeup of the Reykjavik delegation which consisted of 67 State Department officials and two Defense Department representatives, and the composition of the inner working group in Reykjavik, which included the civilian DOD representative, but not the military. The most critical decision taken by this group of insiders-which in this case excluded Secretary Weinberger-was the one to support the Gorbachev invitation to the mini-summit. This decision was made under some duress: simultaneous negotiations were underway with the Soviets over Nicholas Daniloff and with the U.S. Congress over defense spending and arms control policy, and elections for control of the Senate were imminent. Despite_repeated statements of his opposition to unprepared summits, President Reagan not only took the advice of this small group and agreed to a summit, but did so in a way that linked it to the already questionable resolution of the Daniloff case. Preparation for the summit was necessarily limited by the 10 days between announcement and commencement. Whatever preparation could have been undertaken during that time was not made, due to expectations-both within the bureacuracy and at the highest level of the White House-that the summit's scope would be limited. No new ideas were developed; no fall-back positions were discussed. Consultation with the allies before the summit was perfunctory, limited to U.S. proposals already on the table in Geneva. Conduct of the summit itself and its aftermath raises more concerns. U.S. military involvement at several critical junctures was notable for its absence. In Iceland, the JCS representative was not a member of the inner group doing the real negotiating, in stark contrast to the leading role played by Soviet Marshal Akhromeyev. The resulting impression is that the Reagan Administration was focused solely on the political implications of the arms control deals they were discussing, ignoring the military and strategic ramifications. When the JCS finally had a chance after the summit to consider the implications of all that had been proposed, the Administration ignored the JCS warnings and went ahead with negotiating instructions to Geneva. A thorough JCS study was commissioned after Reykjavik-a full three months after the proposals were tabled. NATO military authorities began a study of the effect of the entire package of proposals on the NATO-Warsaw Pact military equation. That study will not be completed until May 1987. Similarly, the concerns of U.S. allies were not an important consideration. Consultation after the mini-summit presented them with little short of a fait accompli. The Reykjavik negotiators agreed to a Soviet INF framework that they knew was not favored in NATO. Furthermore, they proposed a strategic environment for the United States, zero ballistic missiles, which, when combined with zero INF, would have grave consequences for NATO strategy and the concept of extended deterrence. There were also strong hints, most notably from Secretary of State Shultz, of the pressure the British and French could expect in the future to eliminate their own ballistic missile deterrents. As a result, the Administration was forced by allied displeasure after the fact to recede, at least in emphasis, from its Reykjavik position. Finally, in the rush to put a positive "spin" on events in Reykjavik, the Administration succeeded only in contradicting itself and spreading the impression of confusion and disarray. Differences between the two sides over what was agreed upon were spurred by an inability of the United States to present a coherent picture of the summit events. Administration officials directly contradicted one another over such important issues as what they had agreed to eliminate in 10 years-ballistic missiles, all strategic systems, all nuclear weapons-and whether or not they anticipated the breakdown over SDI or the ultimate decision by Gorbachev to link all elements of the proposals discussed.8 In the process of changing the characterization of the summit from "failure" to "partial success," the Administration raised questions it has yet to answer about why it was unable to generate simple "success." Why, for example, was there no written, initialed record of the agreements that were reached? Why was there no dis 8 See endnotes on p. 22. |