The Soviets understand these risks. Nuclear bombs and artillery shells, unfortunately, are quite durable and portable, and not very difficult to arm. Last week we learned that the commander of Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces withdrew mobile nuclear missiles from their launch positions because he feared some errant commander would try to fire them. Now Yevgeny Velikhov, science adviser to Soviet President Gorbachev, has called for “the international community to play a role in controlling the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal while the country faces the possibility of political collapse.”
A political collapse is all too possible. It wouldn’t be the first time. After the successful Bolshevik coup of 1917, internecine warfare raged on until 1922. With rifles and machine guns, then. What, Velikhov asks, would it be like this time with tactical nuclear weapons?
A political collapse could easily be brought on by the economic disaster that beckons this winter. Anders Aslund reported in last week’s NEWSWEEK that it already seems certain that the Soviet economy will suffer a 20 percent slump in 1991-the worst economic crisis in Europe since World War II–indeed, surpassing the Great Depression in the United States. In view of the current collapse, he predicts, “it would be quite possible to see a decline to half the former level of production…before the end of the year.”
It seems obvious to me that we have to help the Soviet Union avoid this catastrophe. It is in our national interest. I would propose a Grand Bargain: give the Soviets aid on the strict condition that they dismantle all or most of the nuclear forces that now threaten them as much as us.
To achieve this, we must convene an international peace conference-and fast. Obviously, the United States would have to agree to further reduce its nuclear arsenals, beyond the limits already called for in the START treaty. START went a long way, cutting back the Soviet arsenal by a third. But both sides are still poised for a first strike, and both still have the power to make the rubble bounce. One simple approach would be to declare a nuclear-free zone from the Urals to the English Channel, with deep cuts in strategic systems and intrusive inspection systems on both sides.
It will be said that we can’t afford to aid the Soviet Union. To be sure, we wasted trillions building up our defenses against the Soviet Union under the false impression that its empire was expanding. Now that the empire has imploded, we have fewer resources left to ease the transition toward stability and safety. But surely we can afford to seize this chance to avoid Armageddon. I am not proposing that we seek to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether. Too late for that. But we could surely reduce the number of warheads in the world by one half to three quarters and build in greater safeguards against the risk that they would ever be used. Just think. We will have escaped the 20th century with our lives.
