The Reykajavik Summit: Realism or Detente?

(Archived document, may contain errors)

THE REYKJAVIK SUMMIT: REALISM OR DETENTE?

by Representative Jack Kemp

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We meet on the eve of a U.S.-Soviet pre-summit. It is a moment of great hope and opportunities, but also an epic moment of choice regarding the central drama of the twentieth century--the struggle between democracy and totalitarianism. American must continue to step forward and lead the world toward greater freedom and a more secure peace or risk throwing away an historic chance that may not come again to make nuclear war obsolete.

Ladies and gentlemen, only a few years ago the United States was retreating in the world and the Soviets were advancing. The faith of our allies was shaken, while lesser nations were divided between following the Soviet model or simply hedging their bets. Worst of all, our own leaders sounded an uncertain note. Some even wondered whether we had not begun an irreversible decline.

Today, there is no question that President Reagan is right when he says freedom is on the march. Through a national rededication, we have begun to prove once again that, under God, we are the masters of our destiny. Across the globe, anti-communist insurgencies are spreading, Third World countries are rejecting socialism and turning to democratic capitalism, and our rebirth of freedom has borne fruit in a technological revolution that is sweeping the West, making us more productive, more prosperous, more powerful, ever more free.

High technology is also transforming the nature of warfare. How fortunate we are to have a President, Ronald Reagan, who saw that America's genius for technology could bring alive a vision of a Strategic Defense Initiative to eliminate the threat of nuclear missiles and nuclear war.

We owe Ronald Reagan an enormous debt. It was he who broke the pattern of his predecessors, exposing the falsity of moral equivalence by describing the foremost challenge of our day from a ruthless, dangerous enemy. It was he who had the courage of his conviction that

Congressman Kemp, a Republican, has represented the 31st District of New York since 1971.

He spoke at The Heritage Foundation on October 8, 1986.

our freedom., our prosperity, the very future of our Judeo-Christian civilization rest ultimately not on diplomatic accommodation, but on clear-eyed determination, not on concessions, but on courage, not on summits, but on strength--economic strength, military strength, above all, what Churchill called the strength of our liberal values.

All this we owe him. And we must stand united behind our President as he prepares to sit down with the most powerful representative of the Soviet empire. The President is preparing for a summit where he will be under pressure to reach some accommodation with the Soviets. I want to explain today why, in my view, we need a strategy of realism, and why that strategy depends less upon signing treaties than upon understanding the character, objectives and capabilities of the Soviet Union, and what we must do to ensure freedom prevails.

The problem begins in Congress. Only days before the President is to depart for Iceland, House Democrats would straitjacket him on major strategic issues, and insist on their own version of arms control: unilateral compliance with the unratified SALT II Treaty, a one-year nuclear test ban, a continued ban on anti-satellite testing, a freeze on SDI spending. The Democrats are trying to legislate in Washington what the Soviet Union would like to win at the negotiating table. The President should veto the Continuing Resolution and not accept any arrangement with the Democratic leadership that compromises his position at the Iceland summit.

A greater concern is our being constrained by a foreign policy establishment that long ago succumbed to the allure of detente: summits for the sake of summits alone and agreements that would legitimize communist powers as equal guarantors of peace, when in reality they remain the principal threat to peace.

But the notion of detente--that we can manipulate Soviet behavior through diplomatic concessions, special economic benefits and cultural and scientific exchanges--is rooted neither in historical experience nor the practice of diplomacy. Who can identify where Western generosity ever translates into Eastern restraint, for example, an end to persecution of Soviet dissidents and Jews; or explain Soviet aggressiveness# apart from some unconvincing ideas about Soviet paranoia; or show one instance where diplomacy has hindered the system Alexander Solzhenitsyn described as consumed by a malevolent desire for world domination that impels it to seize ever more lands?

Not surprising, then, that it was we, not the Soviets, who became enmeshed by the allure of detente into an ever-tightening web of unrealistic expectations, disadvantageous arms control agreements, commercial ventures that armed and modernized the Soviet war machine, shrinking defense budgets, congressional strictures on the President's authority to protect our security, and an erosion of our national will.

Put simply and clearly, the question is this: Has the defense of freedom and the preservation of peace been better served by a U.S.-Soviet relationship based on detente or on realism? Examine briefly the four major phases of detente in the post-war period--1945-1948; 1953-1956; 1959-1961; 1972-1979--and we see striking parallels. Each phase began with a U.S. bid for better relations and ended with a major act of Soviet hostility. Each led to significant losses for the West; each led to significant gains for the East: Detente I opening with the summit of Yalta, and ending with the blockade of Berlin. Detente II opening with Ike's invitation after the death of Stalin and ending with the invasion of Hungary. Detente III opening with the spirit of Camp David and ending with construction of the Berlin Wall. Detente IV opening with the SALT I agreement and ending seven years and nine new pro-Soviet regimes later with the invasion of Afghanistan.

In all these periods, too many people would not listen and would not see. Today, too many in Congress and in the State Department still will not listen and will not see. In Jeane Kirkpatrick's words, they do not want us to notice that the Soviet empire has spread from Europe to all continents except North America. They do not want to talk about Soviet violations of Yalta, Helsinki, SALT I and II, and the ABK Treaty. They refuse to understand the significance of the Soviet Union's strategic buildup, and the war they are waging against their own people: the Sakharovs, Vladimir Slepak, Ida Nudel, Vladimir Feltsman, and thousands of others.

And because they will not face the truth, we have witnessed a sorry spectacle: the President having to struggle not only with Congress but with his own Administration to prevent them from abandoning the Contras; the State"Department dragging its feet on aid to Jonas Savimbi and the Afghan Freedom Fighters, but pushing for economic aid to pro-Soviet dictatorships in Africa and military aid for the communist regime of Mozambique; faltering responses to the shoot-down of KAL 007 and the murder of Major Nicholson, and the forced return by the U.S. of Seaman Medvid. And most recently, acceptance of Soviet demands that an innocent American journalist be ransomed for a high-level Soviet spy, and that Soviet KGB and GRU agents at the U.N. be permitted to stay--all for the single-minded purpose of preserving the process of diplomacy.

Lately the press has reported much about new progress in various arms control negotiations. These are hopeful words, but I am concerned that what is called progress be progress toward a stable peace, not toward an illusory detente that becomes a springboard for Soviet superiority.

The Soviets expect the meeting at Reykjavik to determine whether or not there will be a new arms control agreement. That is their definition of a summit--arms control Soviet-style. What the Soviet

Union-means when they talk about ending the arms race is to end the acquisition of arms by the United States.

But the President knows what must be a real agenda for peace. The Iceland summit should be about Soviet Jewry, about Helsinki violations, about Afghanistan, about Soviet-sponsored subversion throughout the world--and, yes, about prospects for real, equitable and verifiable reductions in offensive nuclear arms, with a clear American declaration that no limits must be placed on deployment of SDI.

But before signing any new agreements with the Soviets, they must honor the old ones. Soviet cheating, as President Reagan has reported to Congress, has been persistent, pervasive, and systematic. They have selectively violated arms control agreements to achieve significant military advantage.

I am not making a case against treaties. I am making a case against the Soviets' failure to comply with treaties.

To sign new agreements while the Soviets refuse to honor existing agreements would only demonstrate we lack the will to insist on compliance. It would only encourage the Soviets to believe they could violate new treaties with impunity.

Unfortunately some in the West have accepted the Soviets' narrow, self-serving agenda.

Yet reaching an agreement is not a necessary condition to having a summit. A summit is not a synonym for high-level arms control negotiations. Signing an arms control agreement is not a measure of a summit's success or failure.

Indeed, success in Iceland might best be achieved by the President's walking away from any arms control deal that does not measure up to his own rigorous standards. Take the recently concluded Stockholm Agreement as an example of what to avoid.

The Conference on Disarmament in Europe dealt with making sure nations understand the significance of military activity, a type of "confidence building." one element of those discussions concerned the question of how states might react if they see military activity of which they were not notified in advance. The Soviets agreed that there should be a challenge inspection provision, allowing the concerned states to go in and see for themselves what was going on. But the Soviets insisted that the challenged state provide the planes and crews that would fly the inspection team around.

Now, as you might reasonably expect, the U.S. delegation said no, that does not make sense. There would be far too great an opportunity for the Soviets to mislead the inspection team. They could fly off

course, or they could arrange for the aircraft to break down. So the. U.S. countered that the challenging state should supply the aircraft. The Soviets refused.

Then a compromise was suggested by some of the West European participants. Why not use neutral planes and crews? We agreed. But again, the Soviets refused.

The Conference was at an impasse. So the United States accepted the Soviet position. The Soviets waited--and won.

The result is a little like issuing a search warrant, then giving the criminal control over how and where the search is conducted. It ensures you will find nothing. It tells the criminal he can safely hide anything he wants. It tells the criminal you are not serious about enforcing the law.

Verification procedures such as the Stockholm formula undercut serious verification efforts in other arms control negotiations. Already, the Soviets are suggesting that the challenge inspection procedures worked out at Stockholm might be adopted in other areas. And no wonder.

Those who take arms control seriously must be critical of these kinds of agreements. Those who do not take arms control seriously--who ignore the need for verification and enforcement--are the ones most eager for agreements, most willing to make concessions like the one that broke the impasse at Stockholm and engineered this setback.

And there is something strangely jarring in seeing free nations sign an agreement, purportedly to build confidence, at the very time an innocent American journalist was being held hostage in a Soviet prison.

Greater scrutiny will be called for in the intermediate nuclear force negotiations, where the Soviets currently have a five-to-one numerical advantage. Certainly this is what the West Germans are counseling, judging from reports that they want to include Soviet short-range nuclear forces--the SS-21s, 22s, and 23s--in any INF deal. The Soviet insistence that we keep only GLCMs and pull out all Pershing IIs is unacceptable.

Since the United States is a Pacific power as well as an Atlantic power, any INF agreement must also take into account the security interests of our Pacific allies. We need global limits,, not the artificial subdivisions the Soviets propose.

But most disquieting are reports that some in the State Department want to handle verification as a separate annex to be negotiated at a later time. What principle would the State Department

- 5 -

have us-use then? The Stockholm solution that permits the Soviets to have the final say?

Ladies and gentlemen, effective verification of any INF agreement will require on site observation of the physical destruction of the SS-20s, 21s, 22s, and 23s, to ensure they are not simply being stored away for redeployment later. And we must be certain that production lines are shut down, so that new missiles are not secretly produced to replace the old.

The single most important foreign policy objective of the Soviet Union in the President's first term was to prevent deployment of NATO's intermediate range forces. our allies stood firm in the face of Soviet active measures. our deployment of Pershing IIs and GLCMs marked a serious defeat for Soviet efforts to split the Alliance and neutralize Western Europe. It is gravely serious now to suggest that hard-won modernization should be reversed. We must be steadfast in working for offensive force reductions, but we must never accept any agreement that would have the effect of decoupling the security of our allies from the security of the U.S.

As Prime Minister Thatcher courageously reminded us in a Joint Session of Congress, nuclear weapons in the hands of the West have been guarantors of freedom and peace. It serves us nothing to reduce nuclear weapons if in so doing we make the world safe for conventional war.

Finally, there is room for healthy skepticism about the course of the strategic arms reductions talks as well. My principal concern is that we not repeat the mistakes made earlier in SALT.

We started arms control negotiations with the Soviets with the idea of limiting both offense and defense. We ended up with a treaty banning defense, with very high ceilings on offensive forces. Now the course of negotiations seems to be moving toward smaller reductions in offensive forces and greater restrictions on defensive weapons--the opposite of what we should be doing.

At the summit in November of last year, the Soviets finally agreed to the principle of 50 percent reductions in offensive forces. It took us five years to get them to agree to 50 percent reductions; but we abandoned that in just five months. I am concerned because, once we start making concessions of this sort, we may find ourselves with the choice of accepting only cosmetic offensive reductions in order to get any agreement.

Above all, I feel compelled to speak out, in loyalty to the President, against any proposed limits on SDI deployment. It was President Reagan's courage and conviction that pierced the dark of our strategic dilemma and gave us a glimpse of a new vision for a more hopeful and peaceful future. Without President Reagan, we would have

no SDI. We-would not be approaching the horizon of exciting technological expansion. We would have little hope of denying the Soviets strategic superiority.

Place the whole record of arms control efforts on the scales of freedom and peace, and it is miniscule beside the giant possibilities opened up by the President's commanding vision.

But when Mr. Reagan travels to Iceland, he will confront an implacable foe who has set as his highest priority to paralyze SDI through an American pledge of non-deployment. A failure to issue a strong declaration of America's determination to begin immediate deployment, especially if followed by the euphoria of a hastily negotiated INF agreement, could only leave SDI even more vulnerable--vulnerable to further congressional budget cuts and to the Soviets' anti-SDI campaign.

The President has stated, clearly and correctly in my view, in both his October 1985 speech to the United Nations and his 1986 State of the Union Address, that SDI must not become a bargaining chip--verifiable reductions in offensive weapons must be negotiated on their own terms; work on defensive systems must go forward.

How do we threaten the Soviet Union by defending the United States? What is wrong with a defense that can save our lives and not kill a single Russian? It is preposterous for Soviet scientists, who have been feverishly working on their defense technologies for two decades, to condemn our SDI program in its infancy, lest it become provocative and destabilizing.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the core question: to deploy or not to deploy. It isr I believe, the single most important national security decision of the Reagan Presidency. I am convinced we must not only research, test, and develop SDI, we must deploy it as soon as possible.

First, by reason of their unprecedented military buildup, the Soviets have left us no alternative. Prudence dictates action.

Second, we have the knowledge, the technology and the resources to begin deployment now. If we allow SDI to become endlessly postponed by arms control negotiations, if we do not commit ourselves to begin near-term deployment now, I fear we may not have SDI when we need it. An SDI research program with no definite consequences for defending America and its allies within the next ten years will not be politically sustainable.

For many years, the United States embraced a doctrine of mutual assured destruction; and it was widely believed in the intelligence and policy communities that the Soviet Union@ subscribed-to this idea as well. MAD proponents were afflicted by mirror-imaging, which held

.. .. ......

that Soviet forces, like U.S. forces,, were built for strictly defensive purposes, and therefore did not present a true offensive threat to the United States. Such a strategic weltanschauung spawned the SALT talks, the ABM Treaty, and detente.

But the advocates of MAD were wrong. The 1976 Competitive Intelligence Review conducted by Team B, appointed by President Ford, laid bare the CIA"s repeated underestimate of Soviet strength. And it documented what has now become accepted wisdom. The Soviet Union rejects the concept of nuclear vulnerability. It builds and maintains nuclear forces for the purpose of exerting its will. And its resources have been devoted to attaining strategic superiority.

In the words of its chairman, Richard Pipes, Team B concluded that "The Soviet leadership did not subscribe to MAD but regarded nuclear weapons as tools of war whose proper employment, in offensive as well as defensive modes, promised victory."

Never before in history has a nation agreed to willingly constrain its defenses in order to allow its principal adversary to catch up. This we did in the last period of detente, only to find the Soviets had no intention of stopping at parity.

The Soviets have a true first-strike strategy to destroy our military sites and America's ability to retaliate. We know this is so. Soviet generals have candidly admitted they believe a nuclear war is winnable. And their force structure reflects that strategy.

According to the most recent NIE, by the mid-1990s nearly all of the Soviets' currently deployed intercontinental nuclear attack forces--on land, sea, and air--will be replaced by new and improved systems. They have violated arms control agreements at will--and have greeted our protests with contempt. Indices of comparative strategic capability continue to favor the Soviet Union--and the disparities are growing.

It is sobering to note that the Soviet investment in strategic defensive forces has equalled their investment in strategic offensive forces for the past 20 years. Their laser weapon program began in the 1960s. Their particle beam research has been ongoing since the early 1970s. They already have a ground-based laser that can be used to interfere with U.S. satellites. The Soviets are outspending us in laser research by a factor of five. And they are expected to have prototypes of ground- and space-based laser weapons for use against satellites and ballistic missiles in the next few years, with deployment likely in the 1990s.

It is the judgment of our intelligence community that the Soviets are on the verge of a nationwide breakout capability for strategic defense. With the completion of the Krasnoyarsk facility, the Soviets will have a network of battle-management radars for nationwide

defense.- Their SA-12 mobile.missile forces can readily be made ABM capable. They have the world's only operational BMD system (at Moscow). They have the world's only operational ASAT system. They have constructed 1,500 superhardened command bunkers built to protect the Soviet elite, deep underground. In short, the Soviet Union has defensive protection far exceeding anything contemplated in the West.

SDI, then, is not a strategic defense initiative--it is a strategic defense resRonse. Yet while the Soviets are readying a good strategic defense against our missiles, Congress is cutting deeply--and dangerously--into the President's SDI request.

We know beyond doubt that strategic defenses are integral to Soviet war-fighting strategy and their drive for nuclear superiority. If we learned anything from our experience with detente in the 1970s, it should be the folly of relying on arms control as a substitute for defense.

Yet the same ill-counsel that resulted in the unequal, unverifiable SALT agreements now threatens to kill America's SDI by precluding deployment for seven and a half years or more--while the Soviet effort continues full speed ahead.

Ladies and gentlemen, the facts are stark and the implications are chilling. We have just lived through the agony of seeing an American held hostage by a regime armed with nuclear weapons that snatches innocent people at will. But now our entire nation and the democracies of the West could soon find themselves held hostage to Soviet nuclear blackmail, defenseless against Soviet weapons of mass destruction.

our surest shield is the decision to deploy our actual defenses as soon as possible. On this decision will hinge our strategic fate, and ironically our hopes of reaching a genuine arms reduction agreement. For the simple truth is, we can negotiate successfully with the Soviet Union--but only when that nation understands it cannot bully or threaten us.

Ladies and gentlemen, the good news is we have the knowledge and capability to begin deploying SDI. We just need the courage and commitment to begin.

We can thank President Reagan, Secretary Weinberger, and General Abrahamson for putting in place a highly successful research program from which we have learned two things of supreme importance. It will be possible to protect ourselves from Soviet missiles. The debate on that question is over. But we will not be able to get where we want to go, we will not be able to deploy an integrated, sophisticated successful system of defense technologies by waiting 10 to 15 years, and then attempting to put it all together in one single stroke.

How-have we.-fought the long, lonely war against the enemy of cancer and begun to raise the survival rates of victims of leukemia, breast, colon, and lung cancer, and others? Not by waiting and waiting and waiting for the magical cure to appear.

We have done it day by day, month by month, marshalling our energies, accumulating our knowledge, using our resources as best we can, all the while learning from every gain and every defeat.

So, too, must we fight the threat of nuclear attack. The time is now to decide, to move, to act. By summoning America's finest minds, by drawing deep from our well of patriotism, we can press forward together, and inch by inch, piece by piece, deploy the defensive shield that will finally free the American people and our allies from the nightmare of nuclear attack.

And ladies and gentlemen, the SDI Office needs a new mission: not just to research and test SDI technologies, but to deploy.

I know some in the Administration would have us believe that near-term deployment is not feasible. I would respectfully suggest that is not correct. Distinguished members of the scientific community ranging from Dr. Edward Teller to Professor Robert Jastrow have set forth a number of options for near-term deployment. To mention a few, ERIS-type midcourse interceptors are a tested, effective upgrade of proven technology. We are very close to developing space-based kinetic kill vehicles which could be deployed once our launch capacity is improved. And according to Dr. Teller, we may be able to produce, in the near-term, x-ray lasers deployed on submarine missiles or on interceptor rockets.

As my colleague, Senator Malcolm Wallop has said, "SDI is not now, and cannot claim to be, technology limited; it is only policy limited."

But we must begin. As expressed in a recent letter to President Reagan, "Even within the ABM Treaty, we could and should deploy 100 defense launchers at a single site in the U.S. What is to be carried on these launchers should continually express the latest advances in ongoing SDI research.... 11 Signatories to that letter, in addition to myself, included Jim Courter, Rudy Boschwitz, Ed Teller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Dan Quayle, Pete Wilson, Malcolm Wallop, Al Haig, and Jeane Kirkpatrick.

In other words, we should use ABM deployment at Grand Forks as both a true defense site and as a laboratory for learning how to integrate the components of a.strategic defense system.

Technology for anti-tactical ballistic missile defense is even more advanced. Israel urgently needs to deploy defenses against Soviet surface-to-ground missiles stationed in Syria and elsewhere in

- 10 -

the reglow. As a part of our growing strategic relationship with Israel, we are expanding our mutual SDI work to meet this threat in the near-term--and I believe we will see early and impressive fruits of that work.

Our NATO allies are facing a growing threat from Soviet intermediate and tactical ballistic missile forces that can only be offset by anti-missile deployments in Europe. NATO strategy relies on defense at every level of engagement save one. We have anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft batteries, and so forth. Why should not NATO also have a defense against ballistic missiles? Drawing on our cumulative talent, ATBM employment is possible in the very near-term--and we should make it an imperative in defense of our allies.

The same basic ATBM technology may be used to defend the U.S. against sea-launched Soviet ballistic missiles before this decade is out.

Ladies and gentlemen, until our skies are protected, 11 ... we are no longer the same kind of independent country that we used to be, that any of you were born into. We lie, with all our wealth and civilization, exposed to the ferocious hatreds which tear the continent of Europe."

Those words, spoken by Winston Churchill from the back benches of the House of Commons in 1934, are as applicable today. Churchill's tireless advocacy of military preparation proved ultimately,to be England's salvation against the Nazi juggernaut, just as Ronald Reagan's vision and realism have infused the West with new hope.

Churchill was considered shrill and alarmist in his time, for championing exotic technologies such as radar and air defense systems. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin dismissed his views, saying simply "The bomber will always get through." But Churchill was a man of many strengths: unerringly realistic about the nature of totalitarianism, intellectually inquisitive about the latest advances in science and techology, and ever tenacious in his leadership on the great issues of his day. And so he prevailed--but only after Europe paid a terrible price.

We have seen it happen time and again. Truman counseled by most of his advisors not to build the hydrogen bomb because we might provoke the Russians. Truman made his own decision. Today Sakharov reports the Soviets had already begun working on the hydrogen bomb, and were it not for Truman's foresight and realism, they would have had a nuclear monopoly for the 1950s. If John F. Kennedy's advisors had had their way, we would have spent 10 years researching whether America should go to the moon. But Kennedy did not rest until he met a man named Werner von Braun, who convinced him it could be done. And so America went to the moon.

Each time, political leadership made the difference. Lead4rs who knew in their hearts--it can be done. Leaders who understood peace is not threatened by what we do, but by what the enemies of freedom'do.

Today I am appealing to my President. I want to say, Mr. Reagan, hold fast to your magnificent vision and your realism. SDI is the greatest investment in peace we could ever make. Without SDI, we will become prisoners of peril. With SDI, we can wage war against nuclear war. With SDI, we can win a victory to make nuclear weapons and nuclear war obsolete. And that victory will not only be your victory, Mr. President, but a victory for generations to follow.

Ladies and gentlemen, the character and objectives of the Soviet Union have not changed. But Soviet capabilities have changed. The Soviet Union is today more heavily armed, more bent on intimidation, brute force, and subversion that at any time since Stalin. Forty years of seeking agreements to ease Soviet anxieties and to enhance Soviet confidence, forty years of ignoring Soviet violations of agreements reached, have not left the world safer, nor freedom more secure.

Solzhenitsyn's warning must be heeded: communism stops only when it encounters a wall, even if it is only a wall of resolve.

We have that resolve, because America is a brave nation; Americans are a brave people. And America holds one weapon more powerful than all the Soviet armies combined. Freedom.

Freedom is the most dynamic, progressive, and successful idea the world has ever known. If freedom's defenders are strong, there is no challenge we cannot meet. The dream of human dignity and peace for all God's children will prevail. This is our heritage.

}}

Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

Sign Up For Our Mailing Lists