Kissinger's Erratic Negativity on Arms ControlHis current advice to Reagan is tarnished by stunning about-faces andillogical skepticism NASSAU AND SUFFOLK Edition

• Published in: Newsday
• Main Author: By Edmund S. Muskie. Edmund S. Muskie served as
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 25.03.1987
• Edition: Combined editions
• Subjects: Grechko, Andrei; Kissinger, Henry A; Reagan, Ronald Wilson

In the early 1970s, after the initial SALT agreements were concluded, Secretary of State [HENRY KISSINGER] suggested that no one had told him what a world with multiple-warhead missiles (MIRVs) would be like. In fact the Senate had done so, by an overwhelming expression of concern that the negotiations must address the MIRV (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle) problem in timely fashion. But Kissinger resented that congressional recommendation and ignored it. The proponents of MIRV, including Kissinger and his frequent nemesis, Richard Perle, saw political leverage in the program. Even though the superpowers had curtailed the missile defenses that the multiple-warhead technology was designed to penetrate, its advocates chose to exploit the program without regard to the prospect that a Soviet-American competition in such technology would generate the awesome arsenals now threatening us. A decade later Kissinger was joining the call for de-MIRVing the missile forces. Kissinger's current stance is nowhere so pernicious as in his astonishing revisionism toward the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty. He acknowledges that, although he has not reviewed the documents, the administration in which he served submitted the treaty to the Senate with a "narrow interpretation." But Kissinger asserts - mistakenly, as Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) has now demonstrated authoritatively - that the Soviets adopted the "broad interpretation" from the outset, and that the U.S. should now do the same. Does this mean that he and his associates did not know what they were doing in 1972, or that they misled the Senate? Neither, one suspects. Rather, Kissinger's personal position has changed, as he has come to look fondly on the Strategic Defense Initiative, [Ronald Reagan]'s "Star Wars" defense plan; it is another of the technologies that periodically excite Kissinger's fancy. Kissinger's fluid posture on the treaty relates, of course, to his interest in SDI. While demanding that the administration devise a negotiating position that "reflects a long-range national strategy," he contends that such a strategy must include a prior commitment to proceed with SDI testing and deployment free of restrictions. As a lawyer would say, that conclusion presumes a fact not in evidence, namely, that we know how to integrate SDI into a sensible strategy. Neither Kissinger nor any other SDI advocate has explained how to do that.