WHY GORBACHEV NEEDS AN ARMS AGREEMENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201730005-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: April 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201730005-7
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Why Gorbachev
Needs an Arms
Agreement
It's a tough dilemma for the
Kremlin's new leader-strike
a deal in Geneva or face
fresh dangers at home.
More than any Soviet leader in the
past decade, Mikhail Gorbachev
must be acutely aware of what his
country stands to gain-or lose-in
the Geneva arms talks.
Gorbachev is taking power at a time
when the Soviet Union faces mount-
ing difficulties in keeping up in an
escalating superpower arms race. So-
viet-affairs 'analysts say that stiffer
competition with Wash-
ington involves serious
risks for Gorbachev eco-
nomically, politically and
militarily-particularly if
it extends into space as a
consequence of President
Reagan's Star Wars plan.
Even if the new Kremlin
leader accepts the eco-
nomic and political dan-
gers of a stepped-up arms
race, most experts believe
that the Soviet Union
would compete at a sharp
disadvantage because of
the country's -lag in tech-
nology. This prospect,
maintains Arnold Hore-
lick, a former top Soviet specialist at
the Central Intelligence Agency,
gives the Kremlin an incentive to
strike a deal at Geneva to gain much-
needed breathing space.
Now an analyst at the Rand Corpo-
ration, a California think tank, he
says: "They will be very anxious to
stop a new competition, at our pace,
in very high-tech weapons."
Does all this mean that the Soviets
will be willing to pay a high. price at
Geneva to get an agreement? Most
experts believe that over the next
year or so Gorbachev will wage psy-
chological warfare, hoping to force
the U.S. to give up its massive military
challenge in space without significant
concessions on the part of Moscow.
Only if Gorbachev is convinced that
this propaganda campaign is a failure
will he feel compelled to make the
hard choice: Pay the price necessary
U c ''T',rc F 1,'0PL') AFPoPT
1 April 1.985
to get an arms pact at Geneva or
accept the risks of an accelerated
weapons race.
The top concern of Soviet
policymakers is the widening
gap in technology, with the
U.S.S.R. lagging far behind the
United States. Even with an all-
out drive, analysts say, Moscow
still would need a decade to catch up.
These experts note that the Soviet
Union comes nowhere close to the
U.S. in computers, microelectronics,
lasers, robotics and other areas that
critically affect the future arms race.
As Marshall Goldman, associate direc-
tor of Harvard's Russian Research
Center, puts it: "Technologically, the
Soviets are out of it, and they feel
they'll be out of it a long time."
What makes Soviet backwardness
especially worrisome for the Kremlin
is a revolutionary Pentagon strategy
embracing supertechnologies in its
conventional-war planning as well as
20-year struggle to get ahead ... they
find themselves confronted with an
analogous struggle to stay ahead."
Military implications aside. Rea-
gan's challenge may worsen the
U.S.S.R.'s already acute economic
woes by forcing the Kremlin into
even higher defense outlays.
The Soviet Union is grappling with
a host of crucial issues-one of its
worst crop failures in recent years,
stagnant oil output, a rickety indus-
trial plant and a shrinking labor pool.
In this situation, expanded arms
outlays can be financed only by put-
ting a tighter squeeze on Soviet con-
sumers, a development the Kremlin is
loath to contemplate at this time.
High risk. With the arms budget
now absorbing 13 percent or more of
Soviet gross nationa product, the CIA
claims that the U.S.S.R. could hike
military spending only at the risk of
heightening political tensions at
home. Over time, in the CIA view, t is
"could even provo ke a cri-
sis between the regime
and Soviet societv.'
space research. Of greatest concern to
Moscow is Reagan's 26-billion-dollar
proposal to develop a Star Wars de-
fense shield against nuclear attack.
The Soviets suffer three major
handicaps in efforts to meet the
American challenge in space-
Computers. The U.S.S.R. has not
built even a so-called fourth-genera-
tion computer that the U.S. has dis-
carded as too primitive.
Space vehicles. Soviet space op-
erations still experience major mal-
functions of automated equipment.
Surveillance. The Kremlin suffers
repeated failures of sensors needed
to detect and track missiles in flight.
Because of such shortcomings, the
Soviets fear that the U.S. may regain a
strategic edge. "These dilemmas
must seem cruel to the Soviet leader-
ship," notes Lt. Gen. William Odom,
the Army's intelligence chief. "Aft
T e heavy cost of a
stepped-up arms race,
some analysts believe, also
would pose serious new
problems for the Soviet
Union in its Eastern Euro-
pean empire. Moscow al-
ready faces fresh trouble
with its satellites after de-
cisions to curtail subsi-
dized-oil shipments and
other trade benefits for
these nations. The result is
a festering resentment di-
rected at the Kremlin.
Taken together, these
factors are seen as strong incentives
for Gorbachev eventually to work out
an understanding to temper the pace
of the arms race and, above all, to
forestall a major U.S. drive in space.
True, there is scant evidence of this
so far in the arms talks that opened
March 12 with Moscow's negotiators
taking a tough stand. Kremlin leaders
hope to exploit potential disunity
among Western allies and mounting
pressure for defense cutbacks in the
U.S. to force Reagan's hand.
But in all this, Gorbachev can ill
afford to ignore the hazard for the
Soviets of a failure at Geneva that fuels
a massive new arms race. In the words
of ex-CIA analyst ore is : "ivloscow
has reason to view prospective trends
... as distinctly un avora e.
By ROBERT S. DUDNEY with NICHOLAS DAA7-
,_~_ Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201730005-7