231. Telegram From the Delegation to the Nuclear and Space Talks in Geneva to the Department of State1
12442. Subject: START at the end of Round VIII.
1. Secret—entire text.
Results of Round VIII
2. The atmosphere here has continued businesslike and a new JDT will be issued on November 23.2 Both sides are scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as finding additional places when text can be merged is concerned. A certain weariness is evident and there has been little effort to discuss major substantive issues in recent weeks. Progress [Page 1004] from here on will depend upon narrowing of differences on major issues and upon tabling the various protocols. The sudden departure of Ron Lehman is obviously a major discontinuity, presenting both opportunities and dangers. State must do some hard thinking about this.
Summit Document on START
3. We do not have a clear idea here of either the form or the scope of the summit document Washington (and Moscow) have in mind for START. Ron seems to be uneasy with the direction in which he sees things headed. He has the impression that a framework or key elements is likely, but under another name. In the past, he has advocated “guidance to negotiators” as the result of the summit. As you know, I have never fully understood or shared his opposition to an agreed framework, but his objections will be less if the document is focused on what new aspects of START have been agreed, rather than attempting to provide the entire START framework. Such a more narrowly drawn statement would be logical and helpful, but would also conflict with the desire to produce something that can stand on its own and be comprehensible to the public. The Soviets have been silent here recently on this subject, but will probably push for a relatively more comprehensive statement, as well as wanting a reference to Reykjavik. In any case, I note that we briefed the allies after the October Shultz-Shevardnadze meeting to the effect that we do not envision a “Vladivostok-like” or “key provisions” agreement.
4. Whatever the form and scope of the statement, we obviously should try hard for a breakthrough on as many of the remaining issues as possible. Foremost among these would be sublimits and mobiles, which should be settled as a package. If specific numerical levels cannot be agreed, the summit should at least establish exactly which categories of systems should be subject to sublimits, with precise levels to be agreed later. In any case, Roslyakov told me that the sides should regard INF as a thing of the past at the summit and concentrate on START and space issues. He said that Gorbachev wants very much to have serious discussions with the President on these issues.
5. We have tabled the new U.S. position on non-deployed ballistic missiles. The Soviets received it rather glumly. If this position stands, regardless of the number eventually put into the blank, I believe it will go down as one of the gravest mistakes made by the USG in the entire history of SALT/START. If accepted by the Soviets, we will have an impossible verification situation. If the Soviets reject it or counter with even more far-reaching constraints on other non-deployed weapons, we will have a messy negotiating situation (they already have in the JDT placeholder language on non-deployed ALCMs). However, if the [Page 1005] outcome is that we fall back to some sort of numerical constraints on non-deployed mobile ICBMs only, perhaps the situation could still be saved.
Schedule
6. The question of scheduling is on everyone’s mind here, largely because of the INF experience. On the one hand, fixing an end date for START (presumably a summit in Moscow) is probably the only way in which a START treaty can be concluded. On the other hand, announcing a date which is unrealistic might not be wise in the long run. In the view of most people here, including myself, any date earlier than next June would be wildly optimistic (Roslyakov told me that Moscow has already decided to seek April as the date for the next summit). Of course, ratification and other important political considerations are also crucial factors. One variation of the “deadline” idea could be to agree now with the Soviets informally on an end date for the START negotiations (for this administration), with or without a completed treaty. This might be a way to allow the sides to nail down the next summit if desired, and plan the path to a treaty efficiently, but make us a bit less vulnerable to the charge that we had set an artificial deadline and were prepared to pay any price in the rush to conclude a treaty. I suspect that the INF experience will make people especially sensitive to such a charge, whether justified or not.
Linkage
7. The interesting Lehman-Obukhov conversation of November 10 (Geneva 11928),3 basically confirmed in Roslyakov’s conversation with me on November 19 (Geneva 12411),4 shows how far the Soviets have fallen back on offense-defense linkage. It is even possible that they have in a sense fallen back too far. I take it as a given that there will be some sort of nonwithdrawal commitment plus a statement establishing some sort of linkage between the START and ABM treaties. As I said in a previous message, it is conceivable that this could be in the form of a Soviet unilateral statement and we could not push them back any further than that. Alternatively, a milder form of such a linkage could be included in the START Treaty itself. I would think we could live with this if the words were carefully formulated. The current U.S. version of the JDT has no linkage at all and not even a reference to the ABM Treaty. The Soviet version, on the other hand, has language in the preamble referring to the ABM Treaty and repeating the agreed NST mandate of terminating the arms race on Earth and [Page 1006] preventing an arms race in space, both of which we should be able to accept. It also contains a provision which would trigger automatic termination of the START Treaty if either side proceeded with “practical development and deployment” of an ABM system beyond that allowed by the ABM Treaty. This we should not accept. However, I think it would be possible for us in the end to accept a provision which established the fact that abrogation of the ABM Treaty by one side could be grounds for withdrawal from the START Treaty by the other side, which is quite different than automatic termination.
8. Two questions about what is apparently the emerging Soviet position on linkage arise:
—(A) Do we want a new treaty along the lines being discussed in the Defense and Space group, or would it be a victory for the U.S. position if this idea simply faded away and the linkage issue were resolved as suggested above? The Soviets no longer require such a treaty and are even suggesting informally that the D&S negotiations should be discontinued altogether.
—(B) Is it in our interest to allow the broad vs. narrow interpretation controversy to remain unsettled? On the one hand it is an attractive idea to be able to kick this can down the road and not have to resolve it now. The Soviets are suggesting that such interpretation issues should be resolved as they arise in the SCC, which does not seem like a good idea. On the other hand, I do not see how the two sides can undertake a legal commitment not to withdraw from the ABM Treaty for some agreed period, without knowing which ABM Treaty (broad, narrow or otherwise) they are not withdrawing from. As I have said before, to undertake new commitments with regard to a treaty whose central provisions are manifestly viewed differently by the two sides is a prescription for disaster. However, this problem does look less serious if we are dealing only with the original ABM Treaty, rather than a new agreement which must be ratified.
- Source: Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D870962-0305. Secret; Priority; Stadis.↩
- The Delegation transmitted the Joint Draft Treaty in telegram 12483 from NST Geneva, November 23. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D870963–0649)↩
- See Document 225.↩
- See Document 229.↩