Limiting arms

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32632, 14 June 1971, Page 12

Limiting arms

Russia’s request for a comprehensive security conference in Europe follows several hints that it will now be found in a more accommodating mood in exchanges on limiting arms. The N.A.T.O. Powers, for their part, have indicated their readiness to join the Warsaw Pact Governments in talks aimed at a balanced reduction of armed strength, covering forces and armaments, especially in Central Europe, which, in the Russian view, is the chief danger zone. The N.A.T.O. Council of Ministers, in fact, proposed such talks three years ago. The Russian party leader, Mr Brezhnev, made his first positive response last month, when he virtually repeated the N.A.T.O. proposal Mr Kosygin, in earlier talks with the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr Trudeau, had indicated Russian interest in securing some binding curb on arms. However, the Western Allies are still determined that a Berlin settlement must precede the calling of any European security conference. The reported Russian offer to arbitrate whenever disputes with East Germany arise over the exercise of West German rights in West Berlin will certainly not appeal to the Western Occupying Powers. Hitherto the Russians have openly supported the East German claim to control all the routes linking Berlin with West Germany. It is unlikely that any significant departure from that attitude would appear in Russian arbitration. It is encouraging, nevertheless, that the Russians appear to be worrying about a possible stepping-up of the arms race, which would be a logical consequence of failure to find an acceptable basis for a balanced reduction of forces.

First they disputed the right of the United States to participate in any talks that might be arranged. That objection has now been withdrawn. They had also insisted that any agreement that might emerge should be confined to defensive weapons, specifically anti-ballistic missiles, on both sides. Now they are willing to consider curbs on “ some ” offensive weapons, although the meaning of the qualification has yet to be determined. The Americans, with their continuing vast expenditure in South-East Asia and elsewhere, are understandably anxious to cut defence spending. A continuing worry, as the Defence Secretary, Mr Laird, recently pointed out, is that Russia, with its relatively negligible costs in Vietnam and a military budget almost as large as that of the United States, has presumably been able to channel most of its spending into a strategic build-up. It is clear that financial pressures on both sides are behind these tentative moves towards arms reduction. American spending on defence, including new weapons systems, is relatively little below that of 1969. The Russians, for their part, are aiming in their current five-year plan at a substantial increase in the output of consumer goods. They will not get it, apparently, unless defence spending can be cut Moscow’s desire for a scaling-down of forces in Europe may well have been quickened by increasing anxieties over the Far East Although not much is heard of Russia’s problems in protecting the thousands of miles of its frontiers with China, they may well seem, in Kremlin thinking, to be potentially more explosive than those in Europe.