WHEN CRUISE missiles arrive in Europe in the coming weeks Soviet response. One aspect may might.
Forces) discussions in Geneva. If his allies will express deep regret. The event will be presented as a serious setback for the 'mutually agreement' these talks are supBut the outcome of previous ture. Whilst several treaties have 50s, none of these have actually stemmed the arms race, let alone produced mutually agreed reduc"management' were agreed early '70s but things have got decisively worse.
tions.
Treaty7, 1976 (The Peacetul Nuclear Expulsions Treaty) and 1979 (The SALT II Treaty) remain unratified by the US Senate. The last of these The reason for this is straightforward. In the mid '70s the economic perialism took a turn for the worse power in Africa and the final victory in Vietman indicated a shift in the global balance of forces against US interests. This was borne out by a rise in anti-imperialist struggles in the 'third' world. The response of the US was to reassert its military Part of this was to strenthen US nuclear superiority through the deployment of new 'counterforce' nuclear missiles in Europe — Cruise and Pershing Il — and the development of a new series of ICBMs -the MX missile system.
The INF talks and their couterpart START (Strategic Arms Reduc tion Talks) were to provide the diplomatic smokescreen for this new escalation. The approach was dubbed 'two track' by Reagan and his NATO allies. They would announce the decision to build these new missiles, whilst stating that neither systems would be deployed if con. cessions could be extracted from the Soviet Union in bilateral negotiaPresident Reagan's negotiating team reflects this approach. Edward Rowny, his chief delegate in the STARt talks helped shape NATO's 'flexible response' policy and oppos ed the US adopting a 'no first use postion'. He resigned from the negotiating team in the SALT II talks because he felt they gave too much to the Soviets His couterpart in the INF talks, Paul Nitze, was also a critic of
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