The danger in the nuclear arms control talks beginning this week in Geneva is not that the United States expects too little from an agreement. Both the administration and the American public may expect too much.
Arms control in the foreseeable future cannot deliver the planet from the dreadful balance of nuclear terror. Even from the point of view of pure U.S. self-interest, an elimination of nuclear weapons would make the world safe for conventional war, and that would put the United States at a great disadvantage just now.
Moreover, the danger of cheating becomes enormous in a paper state of nuclear disarmament. The cheater would have a decisive advantage over the noncheater if it could deploy even a small number of strategic nuclear weapons in a hurry.
The idea of a complete defense against strategic weapons is also an impossible dream. Defense always gives rise to offensive innovation. There is no total security in any fortress, no matter how thick the walls. Invention will find a way to breach the battlements.
As former Defense Secretary Harold Brown argued on the Perspective page last week, the best defensive weapons can reasonably be expected to do is to protect offensive weapons before they are fired. Reducing offensive weapons can accomplish the same purpose at a much smaller cost. And again, disarmament to zero is an elusive and possibly dangerous goal. Restrictions on offensive systems are the best step for now, even if it means continuing the strict limitation on defensive weapons now embodied in the antiballistic missile treaty.
The administration has often talked publicly as if it believes the development of missile defenses is non-negotiable. That, like the money it is putting into defensive research, is wise at this stage. But it ought not prevent the sacrifice of defensive arms in return for a significant, mutual reduction in offensive weapons. The yearning for absolute safety must not be allowed to obscure a realistic assessment of what might be accomplished short of perfection.
The goal of arms control should be to eliminate any risk that either side will see an advantage in firing its weapons first; to maintain a balance of arms so that neither side can use its edge to play the international bully;
and to establish a process that gives both sides confidence that they know what the other is up to and that the balance is not in peril.
These are modest goals, but they ought to be achievable. They will not eliminate the threat of nuclear war entirely, but they ought to reduce the risk by a significant degree. The simple, tragic and unavoidable fact is that no one has come up with a way of making mankind forget how to make and deploy nuclear weapons. And because that is the case, the noble aspiration of perfect security can actually lead to greater risk than humbler efforts to keep these awful machines under some kind of acceptable control.