(5 of 5)
Reagan recognized that prospect in his Baltimore speech last week, appealing to voters not to elect "liberals" who would "chop up" SDI and thus, in effect, hand Gorbachev, free of charge, what he could not buy at a very high price in Reykjavik. Speakes later conceded that the speech had been "too shrill." Yet those in Congress who believe SDI should be a bargaining chip do face a dilemma: if they cut back funding for the program, which has so far been valuable in wangling serious concessions from the Soviets, it loses its value as a bargaining chip.
To head off cuts in SDI, Reagan needs to demonstrate continued progress toward the kind of deal he and Gorbachev could not bring off in Iceland. That in turn raises the most pressing question left hanging at the summit: which, if any, pieces of the package that fell apart in Reykjavik can be salvaged in lower-level negotiations? When arms-control talks resumed last week in Geneva, the U.S. immediately began probing. Said Chief of Staff Regan: "Right now, Max Kampelman is saying (to the Soviets), 'Our notes from Reykjavik show that we could agree on this. How do we get there?' " Secretary of State Shultz presumably will ask the same kind of questions of his frequent negotiating partner, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, when they meet again in Vienna in early November.
The Soviets so far have given contradictory answers. Negotiator Karpov told journalists in London last week that the West could still get a deal on Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces weapons without a settlement on SDI. But Gorbachev told Argentine President Raul Alfonsin, who was visiting Moscow, that all his proposals at Reykjavik -- on INF, strategic weapons and SDI -- still constitute an "inseparable" package.
Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, the hardest-lining of all Pentagon hawks, still insists "there's the possibility of a compromise" on SDI. Presumably it would involve something between Gorbachev's demand for tight restrictions on testing and development and Reagan's insistence that the program not be "killed." That might involve finding some definition of "research" that allows testing of Star Wars components outside the lab yet does not constitute the development of an actual SDI system.
An important and substantive issue is involved in such distinctions. But as is the case with other issues in arms control, the difficulty of the problem may depend to a great extent on whether both sides perceive it to be difficult. That is why last week's concerted efforts by both sides to change perceptions about the arms control impasse at Reykjavik was so important: sometimes perceptions determine what is reality, instead of the other way around.