Ever since George Bush moved into the White House, he has wanted to put his own stamp on the strategic-arms-reduction process that Ronald Reagan presided over with such dramatic flair. Last month the President finally found a way. In a secret letter to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, he proposed nothing less than the complete elimination of the most dangerous weapons in U.S. and Soviet arsenals: land-based missiles topped with multiple warheads, or MIRVs. As a first step, Bush suggested, the two superpowers should agree to ban land- based mobile missiles with MIRVs.
Not surprisingly, Gorbachev had problems with the proposal. In...