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Moscow appeared intent on conveying its warning to West Germans through the left wing of the opposition Social Democratic Party and through East German Leader Erich Honecker. After two days of meetings with officials in Moscow, Egon Bahr, a West German defense expert and prominent Social Democrat, declared that "negotiations in Geneva will lose their meaning the minute the first new missiles are deployed." Honecker, meanwhile, sent a letter to Chancellor Kohl warning him of a "new ice age" in relations between the two Germanys unless the Bonn government strives "to put a stop to the arms escalation."
Almost simultaneously, Warsaw Pact Commander Marshal Viktor Kulikov, speaking on the eve of a Soviet bloc foreign ministers' meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, outlined the retaliatory measures Moscow is prepared to take in the event of deployment. Kulikov vowed that the Soviets would "deploy additional nuclear weapons to offset NATO'S growing nuclear might in Europe and we shall take corresponding countermeasures with regard to U.S. territory." It was another explicit warning that Moscow is prepared to introduce new missiles into Eastern Europe and mount new cruise-type missiles on refurbished submarines that could patrol U.S. coastal waters. Though Kulikov did not say so explicitly, Western analysts believe that the land-based missiles would probably be located in East Germany and Czechoslovakia.
None of the Soviet threats are entirely new, but rarely have they been so blunt Soviet diplomats in both Western Europe and the U.S. have warned for more than a year that Moscow was prepared to pull out of both sets of Geneva arms negotiations, perhaps permanently, if NATO went ahead with deployment. The reason: the Kremlin has taken the position that any new Western missiles would disrupt the nuclear balance that it insists already exists in Europe. A top Soviet official told TIME last spring that he expected suspension of the arms talks if there was no progress in Geneva, but refused to say how long such a walkout might last. Similarly, Western defense experts believe that the Soviets are developing a sea-launched cruise missile and are planning to replace older missiles in Eastern Europe with newer, short-range SS-21s, SS-22s and SS-23s.
The timing of the new barrage of threats was clearly calculated to heighten anxiety among West Germans just as the antimissile demonstrations heat up. In addition, Moscow was trying to place the blame for the stalled Geneva talks on the U.S. Says a Western diplomat: "They do not want to appear to bless any U.S. deployment before it takes place." Anticipating the Soviet tactic last week even before Zamyatin's remarks, U.S. officials publicly said that a Soviet walkout at Geneva might be imminent. The warning was an attempt to put the burden of responsibility for a breakdown in the talks squarely on the Kremlin.
In an apparent attempt to shift the blame for any failure in Geneva back to the U.S., the Warsaw Pact foreign ministers in Sofia issued a communique declaring that "if agreement is not reached by year's end, it is essential that the talks be continued." Despite the public posturing on both sides, U.S. and Soviet negotiating teams were scheduled to reconvene this week in Geneva.