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Once again, Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative may be playing a central role in the Kremlin's thinking. Gorbachev has a history of performing deft flip-flops on whether to demand SDI restrictions as a condition for other arms-control agreements. A year ago, he indicated that an INF deal could be cut separately. That led to October's Reykjavik summit. There the Soviets proposed a package deal, including acceptance of Reagan's zero option on INF in Europe along with deep cuts in strategic weapons and restrictions on SDI. The deal fell apart because Reagan felt Gorbachev...
Last February Gorbachev reversed field again, proclaiming that he was willing to unlink an INF treaty from SDI. But now that such an agreement seems close and summit fever is rising, there are signs that the Soviets are preparing to relink SDI to the package -- and perhaps even attempt a repeat of their Reykjavik public relations sandbag...
Today members of the European Economic Community can resist some American economic pressures, such as our recent demands for tariff reductions and coordination of fiscal and monetary policies, but they remain at the beck and call of U.S. military planners. U.S. pressure to "share" SDI technology has left many European leaders, who remember the Maginot Line, frustrated at the extravagence and rigidity of American planners. At the same time, Reagan's wild unilateralism at the Reykjavik summit has raised fears that defense plans for Europe are too little dependent on European consent--and too much on American caprice...
Lieut. General James Abrahamson, director of the Strategic Defense Initiative, has confirmed that such a weapon, which he calls a "kind of nuclear shotgun with little pellets," is being developed under the code name Prometheus, despite SDI's supposedly nonnuclear status. It is only one among several new approaches to nuclear weaponry secretly under study in the nation's bomb-design shops, including the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories...
...call this the "comprehensive compromise." It's simply not going to work to tell this President to give up SDI. What I'm proposing is that SDI should go forward, concentrating on defense of our missile sites. Then you'll be able to have negotiations with the Soviets on offense...