Missile Politics

All military planning assumes the worst. For Europe, strategists say, the worst case is clearing the continent of U.S. nuclear missiles and leaving the smaller armies and air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at the mercy of much larger Soviet forces. Even if the Soviets never attacked, they could bully Europe into docility. Yet a plan to remove the missiles is what Secretary of State George P. Shultz took to Santa Barbara on Thursday to brief President Reagan on his Moscow visit. So the worst case bears inspection.

Militarily, the worst-case argument against removing all Soviet and American medium-range missiles, with ranges of 1,000 to 3,400 miles, and all shorter-range missiles, which can hit targets 300 miles to 600 miles away, does not stand up. NATO submarines carrying nuclear missiles lurk off Europe’s shores, all capable of doing anything that the Pershing 2 missiles that would be destroyed under such an agreement can do. American F-111 fighter-bombers, with nuclear weapons in their racks, are based in Europe, on 24-hour alert. Britain and France would keep their missiles, so Europe would not be nuclear-free.

The real significance of the missiles is political, with a small p. They form a highly visible security blanket for the European allies who worry that the United States would not risk having its own territory devastated in a major nuclear war just to keep Europe from being overrun by Soviet troops.

On his way home from Moscow, Shultz briefed Europe’s foreign ministers. They are pondering the proposal, but were not enthusiastic, and the United States is not likely to risk weakening its bonds with Europe by ramming an arms-control agreement down Europe’s throat.

One reason that arms-control agreements have been so hard to negotiate is that someone can always find, at the last minute, what seems to be a good reason not to sign. Washington insists on procedures that would allow U.S. inspectors to verify, on the spot, that the Soviets actually were dismantling missiles under any European agreement. But the Pentagon already has misgivings about letting Soviet inspectors snoop around U.S. installations for the same purpose.

Europe’s decision is crucial to future arms cuts of any kind. Compared to the really hard cases of negotiating thousands of intercontinental missiles out of existence, agreeing to terms for the development of missile-defense systems and getting Soviet ground forces closer to parity with NATO, the Euromissile problem is a piece of cake.

Thus Washington has no choice but to persuade its allies that the agreement would not mean the end of Europe as we know it, and it has good arguments at hand. There are 350,000 Americans in Europe with NATO forces--surely a demonstration every bit as strong as missiles of this country’s resolve to stand by the alliance. Europe has understood from the outset that Pershing 2s were deployed for political, not military, reasons. Finally, Washington can argue that if arms with no clear defense purpose cannot be reduced, the chances of agreeing to cut fleets of more menacing missiles would certainly be hurt.