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Nitze and his colleagues had expected that the zero option would run into a stone wall in Geneva. They were somewhat more surprised to discover that Washington gave them virtually no flexibility to explore compromises along the lines of what the State Department had originally favored: a reduced SS-20 force offset by a scaled-back NATO package.
Finally, last summer, Nitze took it upon himself to overcome the inertia of the American policymaking process (see box). He embarked on a secret exploratory mission with his Soviet counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky. The two men came up with a plan that might have broken the bargaining impasse. Nitze would have given up the Pershing II program altogether and had the U.S. deploy enough cruise missiles to offset a greatly reduced force of SS-20s in Europe The purely military rationale of the Pershing IIs had always been the object of debate and doubt. Their range would not permit them to reach Moscow, and the targets that they could hit in the western regions of the U.S.S.R. were also covered by American intercontinental and submarine-based missiles. Nitze was convinced that cutting the Gordian knot," as he put it last week, and reaching an agreement that both reduced the SS-20s and allowed the U.S. to introduce cruise missiles was well worth the sacrifice of the Pershing IIs. However, Perle, who was once Nitze's protégé and ally, vehemently opposed the plan. At Perle's urging, Weinberger fought the compromise and got the President to decide that the Pershing IIs could not be sacrificed after all. The Kremlin, too, rejected the Nitze-Kvitsinsky deal probably because it calculated it could do better by holding out for no American missiles at all.
Since then, the zero option has become even more of a millstone around the Administration's neck. Because zero is absolute, it does not lend itself to compromise, especially in an Administration where arms control is, at best, highly suspect The prevailing view, represented most forcefully in closed-door meetings by Perle, has remained that no agreement is better than a bad agreement and any agreement that leaves the Soviets with any SS-20s is a bad agreement.
The allies are close to the other end of the spectrum: almost any agreement is better than none and any agreement that significantly limits the SS-20s is probably a good one or at least the best that can be hoped for, given the apparent shakiness of NATO's resolve to deploy the Pershing IIs and cruise missiles. If the talks fail, the West European governments are going to have to be able to claim the U.S. negotiated in good faith and that the failure was because of Moscow.
American officials say privately that something like an interim solution—reduced, equal deployments on both sides with the vague, nonbinding espousal of zero as a long-term goal—might be possible later, but not now. They do not want to give even the hint of an official endorsement before the West German elections, lest the U.S. appear to be leaving Helmut Kohl, a strong public supporter of the zero option, out on a limb.
The reaction to that reasoning in Bonn: nonsense. Said one of Kohl's closest aides last week: "The Chancellor would be delighted if the Americans shifted to a more flexible approach in Geneva, especially if it brought the two sides close to an agreement."
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