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Nonetheless, officials in Washington professed not to be worried about Andropov's countermeasures. The Soviet moratorium on SS-20 deployment, they noted, was largely a fiction. Moscow had exempted more than 20 launching sites currently under construction from its self-imposed "freeze." Soviet nuclear attack submarines already patrol off U.S. coasts, and those vessels are probably equipped with short-range (up to 200-mile) nuclear cruise missiles. These subs could be equipped with long-range cruise missiles, but that is not a matter of intense concern in the Pentagon, since an attack by such weapons would trigger a general U.S. nuclear retaliation before the bulk of Soviet missile forces, based in the U.S.S.R., could reach the U.S. Similarly, older short-range nuclear weapons are already based in Czechoslovakia and East Germany; the new longer-range missiles are, in the U.S. view, part of a modernization program that would have been undertaken in any circumstances. Said a U.S. official: "Remember, when the U.S. builds the Soviets build, and when the U.S. does not build the Soviets build."
Moscow's allies were concerned, however. East German Communist Party Chief Erich Honecker declared last week that while he supported the threatened Soviet countermeasures, they would result in "no rejoicing in our country." In Ru mania, the Communist Party leadership issued a statement condemning both NATO and the U.S.S.R., declaring that the missile moves and countermoves "push Europe, the whole world, toward the precipice."
Amid the continuing rumors that Andropov was seriously ill, some Western diplomats interpreted the General Secretary's message as the result of a power struggle. Communist Party officials told TIME last week that Andropov's health had deteriorated after a vacation in the Crimea last September. The officials would not disclose the nature of the illness, or comment on whether the Soviet leader had undergone surgery. But the fact that the tough statement was issued in his name seemed to signal that whatever his present condition, Andropov was still in charge. Said Georgi Arbatov, a Central Committee member and director of Moscow's Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada: "He is feeling better, and he is taking part in all the important decisions."
Despite the tough Soviet response, the Reagan Administration remains optimistic that the NATO missile deployment will, if anything, make a negotiated arms agreement more likely. Insisted a State Department official: "There is an inevitable tendency to depict the current situation as a crisis. We do not view it in those terms." According to this thinking, the Soviets could never be expected to negotiate seriously at Geneva as long as they imagined that the NATO deployment could be stopped. On the other hand, said a White House aide, the Soviets "have told us privately that they can live with the NATO deployment. They couldn't say so publicly before deployment."