
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 24, 1990                   TAG: 9005240521
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A16   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IS ARMS CONTROL IRRELEVANT?

PRESIDENTS Bush and Gorbachev will have, their aides say, an arms-control agreement to sign when they meet later this month in Washington. That prospect, normally a cause for serious celebration, has been received in both America and the Soviet Union with something less than hoopla.

It's as if arms control had become a side issue.

To be sure, such agreements may seem less central or pressing now than years ago, when superpower confrontation prevailed and the possibility of nuclear war figured more prominently in public fears. Nevertheless, arms control remains anything but irrelevant. It indeed ought to receive more attention than it's been getting.

During intensive ministerial talks in Moscow last week, obstacles reportedly were overcome to a treaty limiting long-range nuclear missiles. Negotiators also reached agreement to ban production of chemical weapons and sharply reduce chemical stocks.

Granted, the prospective Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty harbors serious flaws, and reduces arms not nearly enough.

It would permit America and the Soviets to deploy new generations of land-, sea- and air-based strategic weapons. It would reduce current arsenals by about 30 percent, but includes insufficient provision for verification, on both sides. It also fails to ban land-based MIRV missiles, the multiple-warhead weapons that destabilize the nuclear balance.

The chemical-weapons ban is significant. But, meanwhile, little progress has been made toward a treaty limiting conventional arms in Europe.

Even so, what has been accomplished is better than nothing, especially as a platform for further progress. If nothing else, cooperation on arms control will help ease fears as the map of Europe is redrawn. It also could help promote East-West economic contacts that Mikhail Gorbachev desperately needs to revive the Soviet economy and sustain his reform efforts.

For now, arms control may have been overtaken by such events as the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. The prospect of war seems remoter than ever. But what happens if economic and nationalist pressures conspire to replace Gorbachev with a bellicose military dictatorship? What happens if the Soviet Union's breakup spills instability across Europe?

Arms control can't ensure against either threat. But, not knowing how stable the world will be or who may control Soviet missiles in five or 10 years, surely the United States has compelling cause to reduce arsenals now as much as possible, while Gorbachev remains in office.

Arms reductions proceed anyway, absent treaties. The Soviets have had to withdraw arms and armies from Eastern Europe in the wake of communism's collapse there. Budget pressures and the reduced threat are forcing cuts in U.S. military spending.

But knowing we'll be trimming defense in any case, why shouldn't we manage the cuts to stabilize the balance of arms and lock in reductions on both sides?

Dangerous weapons remain on the shelf; they grow no safer with age. Across the Third World the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons continues apace. In the amazing drama of history still unfolding, arms control is no side show.

by CNB