Say you’re a Democrat, a member of the 100th Congress, and you’ve been pummeling the Reagan Administration for the past six years for failing to come up with an arms-control agreement with the Soviets. Then, suddenly, George Shultz comes back from Moscow with an agreement-in-principle to eliminate superpower intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe; maybe shortrange weapons will be thrown in as well. Could be a good idea—after all, you and your colleagues were linking limbs in spirit with arms-control activists from Berkeley to Bonn a few years ago. On the other hand, let’s be serious. Simple removal of the weapons might leave Europe vulnerable to the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Warsaw Pact’s conventional forces, undermine European confidence in American resolve, and help the Soviets toward their ultimate goal of driving a wedge between Europe and the United States.
Geopolitics can be so tricky. Of course, what really gets your goat is that the Reagan Administration has stolen your issue! With the White House ready to embrace the most sweeping nuclear-disarmament proposal in history, what’s a Democrat to do? Embrace it too, make the White House look good, and, just possibly, sign off on the biggest strategic blunder since Yalta? Or come out against the plan and sound like a hypocrite? And how to preserve party unity, especially as the “defense intellectuals,” such as Senator Sam Nunn and Representative Les Aspin, have already denounced the plan?
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