(9 of 12)
The purpose, as some Soviet officials have admitted in private, is to come as close as possible to driving the U.S. nuclear presence off the Continent. "We're Europeans," said one Soviet official. "You Americans are not. You have no business being here with your nuclear weapons."
Soviet negotiators had also been hinting in Geneva that if the NATO deployments went ahead as planned, they might walk out of not only the INF talks but the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), which are proceeding in parallel. The Soviet proposal in START is for reductions well below the ceilings established by SALT II. But that proposal is contingent on there being no new missiles in NATO. Last fall the Soviets seemed to be backing away from their threat of a walkout, since it conflicted with the image of infinite patience they were trying to convey.
In a televised speech on Dec. 21, Andropov offered to reduce the number of SS-20s aimed at Western Europe from the current level of 250 to somewhere around 162, equal to the number of British and French missiles. He also implied that the U.S.S.R. would take out of commission its old SS-4sand SS-5s.
The proposal was deceptive and vague. The SS-4s and SS-5s were overdue for the scrap heap anyway. The Soviets may have deployed excess SS-20s precisely so that they could negotiate away some of the surplus to prove their reasonableness. Moreover, Andropov left open the possibility of merely moving the excess SS-20s so that they were east of the Urals; from there the missiles could be put on trains and brought back within range of Europe in a day.
But Andropov's overtures were pitched perfectly to the European public. Now the Soviets could claim to be removing from Europe as many SS-4, SS-5 and SS-20 warheads as the U.S. was planning to introduce on its cruise missiles and Pershing Us. Even better, the U.S.S.R. was conveying the impression of flexibility, in marked contrast to the U.S., which was still stuck on zero.
Andropov's performance to date has demonstrated that the West may be dealing with a new type of Soviet leader—a poker player who handles his cards with subtlety and prestidigitation. He has been remarkably quick and shrewd in taking advantage of openings that circumstance, allied anxieties and American missteps have given him. Brezhnev was in office for a number of years before he had the confidence and the backing within the collective leadership to assume a forceful, prominent role in foreign policy. In the European nuclear debate, Brezhnev attempted a number of personal, high-visibility ploys to head off NATO decisions, but none were as successful as the way Andropov has played his hand these past two months—first, with his televised speech in December, then with tantalizing but carefully hedged hints of additional concessions to visiting West German Opposition Leader Hans-Jochen Vogel earlier this month.
All this has made it possible for Andropov to give a resounding nyet to the American zero proposal while at the same time seeming to say da to the West Europeans in their eagerness for a return to détente.