Foreign Relations of the United States, 1989–1992, Volume XXXI, START I, 1989–1991

54. Telegram From the Delegation to the Nuclear and Space Talks in Geneva to the Department of State¹

9045.

Geneva, October 17, 1989, 1046Z

SUBJECT

• START: The First Two Weeks of Round XII

1. Secret—Entire Text.

2. We received SNP’s first O-I Saturday.² We found it very helpful, and hope you will be able to make it a regular event. We are particularly interested in progress on the work program. I don’t think we have any blinding insights at this end yet, but perhaps it is time for some observations.

3. It feels like the endgame here, with an absolutely frantic pace of meetings, both internal and with the Soviets, and an avalanche of papers every day. Under such conditions, it is easy to lose sight of the big picture. Both sides seem to sense that START has a higher priority than before Wyoming. Nazarkin told rick the other day that he thought the Treaty would be signed at the “second summit” (late 90–early 91?).

4. The Soviets, as usual, have expressed great disappointment at the lack of U.S. movement, especially after what they considered major moves in Wyoming on linkage and SLCMs. Nevertheless, they appear to have a lot of material for us and obviously were very active during the break. The general thrust of much of their activity seems to be directed at simplifying the Treaty—something I have been urging us to do for quite a while. The Soviet approach has involved tabling a whole new mobiles working paper which combines and simplifies language and accepts some U.S. positions, introducing “generic” definitions to replace the patchwork that exists now and removing extraneous cross references. The State component here is inclined toward all these goals. There are suspicions in some quarters that there must be a sinister motive behind these Soviet moves, but I think it is a genuine effort to tie things together more logically and simply avoid waiting until the end to do it, which apparently happened in INF. All these new Soviet approaches have, however, tended to take us out of our game plan and require a lot of effort to analyze. The absence of our indispensable lawyer, Marshall Brown, has been a major blow in all this, though his replacement is doing well.

5. Our biggest delegation-wide project thus far is trying to figure out how to implement the unit-of-account compromise. It is proving to be extremely complicated, but we are making progress. It was not, of course, the solution I recommended and we will pay a price in both clarity and logic in the treaty for the strange formulation OSD forced us to adopt. We will start changing treaty text to implement the new formulation this week. The changes required by unit-of-account issues provide an opportunity to clean up some inconsistencies in definitions, counting rules, etc. and we hope to do this.

SLCMs

6. Things look brighter than ever before on SLCMs. The Soviets are clearly moving toward our declaratory approach. The solution looks like it will be some sort of declarations, parallel or joint, beefed up a bit from our current position. The big issue is to what extent they will be “binding”—a concept which has more subtlety than meets the eye at first glance. For example, are the declarations legally or politically binding, for how long, with what right to revise? Verification could still be a problem, but seems to be receding as an issue.

Linkage

7. SNP’s O-I shows that you are fully engaged on this issue. I believe the Soviet bottom line, as I have said for a long time, is a unilateral statement threatening withdrawal from START if we violate/withdraw from the ABM Treaty. They clearly do not need our “approval” for this and will drop that silly part of their current position. I see no reason why that should not be a solution we can live with and would only point out one pitfall we need to avoid. We reserve the right to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, at any time we choose, without even any provocation from the other side. This is the meaning of the President’s statement that we will deploy SDI when it is ready, whether or not the Soviets agree. We have this right, of course, but we cannot at the same time claim that there is something evil in a Soviet statement that they reserve the right to withdraw from the START treaty if they determine that U.S. ABM activities jeopardize their supreme interests. We would, I assume, reject their unilateral statement when it is formally made, but that would not change the real situation.

8. The other objection one hears is that this solution will hold START hostage to the Soviet (i.e., the narrow) interpretation of the ABM Treaty. This is true and is not at all an ideal situation, but is certainly not surprising. Whose interpretation of any treaty would any country use to judge compliance?—its own, of course. The real point is that it is dangerous to allow different interpretations of key aspects of a treaty to persist. However, those who make the above objection to the emerging solution are the same people who oppose any attempt to reconcile the two interpretations.

Mobile ICBMs

9. This work continues to go well. We are inclined to go along with the new structure for expressing the constraints found in the Soviets’ October 5 rewrite of the mobiles joint working paper. From the discussion at our last working group meeting, it appears that they will accept some constraint based upon length of track for limiting the size of a rail garrison. If you see any problems with this approach, let us know right away. We may send in a recommendation soon on exactly how to do this.

Secondary Issues

10. Having plowed over the 5 biggest issues last round, Rick and Nazarkin have decided to go through some of the key secondary issues this round in their private meetings. The emerging list at this point includes “aircraft” vs. “airplane,” heavy bomber definition, non-circumvention, the SS-N-5, the Soviet position on removing missiles from canisters, the Soviet ban on new kinds of SOA, observable differences for cruise missiles, duration of the treaty and START II.

Verification/Stability Measures

11. These discussions are really taking hold now, with Brooks and Masterkov in the lead. RV counting looks feasible and important and could be worked out this round. A tagging demonstration should be possible soon. PPCMs need more work, as does data exchange. Telemetry is uncertain at this point, but will be pursued in the Burt-Nazarkin channel. The Soviets say that at least one of their ideas must be accepted. Fortunately, it looks as though something could be worked out on the trial OSI of heavy bombers. STOF and the Soviets’ proposal on verifying the presence of nuclear weapons are running last, and may well fade away.

Defense Budget

12. When the congressional observers were here, Les Aspin outlined for the Soviets with some confidence how he saw the key U.S. budget issues being resolved. On the theory that state should know at least as much as the Soviets on this subject, we pass along Aspin’s key predictions:

— full funding for both mobile systems;

— a compromise down the middle between House and Senate versions for SDI funding;

— 3 additional B–2s authorized for FY 90, with some restrictions based upon meeting certain design or performance criteria.

Burt

1. Source: Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D890896–0321. Secret.
2. October 14. See Document 53.