Edward L. Rowny
A ..
Yes. The START treaty was signed in Moscow on July 31, 1991. It received
relatively little attention in the public media because most of the attention was paid
to Gorbachev's attempts to build support for his economic goals.
In their press
conference following the signing of the START treaty, President Bush hailed it as
the first agreement to call for the actual reduction of strategic arms. Gorbachev
also praised the treaty but predicted-accurately I believe-that the treaty would
encounter difficulties in the ratification process.
Public sentiment in the United States was mixed. In a McNeil-Lehrer broadcast
on July 31, 1991, the commentators accurately expressed the views of three groups.
The first group was represented by Paul Warnke, President Carter's chief
negotiator of SALT II, who hailed START as a significant beginning to the
reduction of additional weapons. Max Kampelman, who had taken over the
START negotiations after Senator Tower's resignation, also praised the agreement.
However, he saw its value in political rather than military terms. I represented a
third and more skeptical group. I said that President Reagan had charged me with
achieving a 50 percent reduction of weapons, and that while I welcomed any
reduction of nuclear weapons, the treaty only accomplished half of Reagan's goals.
It would reduce weapons by only 30 percent. Moreover, it was not verifiable in
many of its most important aspects. I said that in view of the Soviets' having
violated every agreement it entered into: the ABM treaty, the INF agreement, the
CFE agreement, and the chemical/biological convention, the Senate had its work
cut out for it and would have to make the treaty more watertight. I added that the
Senate also had a great deal of work to do to assure that we had an insurance
policy by developing our strategic defenses.
A week before the START treaty was signed, Senators Nunn and Warner reached
an agreement which was approved by a vote of 14-4 in the Senate Armed Services
Committee. They proposed that the administration deploy 100 ground-based
defensive missiles, as permitted by the ABM treaty. They -also called upon the ad-
ministration to attempt to renegotiate the ABM treaty, as called for in its
provisions. Importantly, they proposed the continuation of research on space-based
sensors. On the McNeil-Lehrer program I praised the Nunn-Warner proposal as
a positive step in the right direction and was pleased that Max Kampelman agreed.
Wamke was predictably against the Senate action; he called strategic defenses "pie
in the sky."
Within 24 hours after its signing, the START story dropped off the front pages of
the newspapers. Most editorial writers praised the agreement for reducing
weapons, but several said that so many nuclear weapons would still remain in the
arsenals of both sides that the treaty had little military significance. We shall have
to wait and see how the Senate approaches the treaty during the ratification process.
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