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“No precedents exist for finding, indoctrinating, and instructing treaty verifiers. . . . And there is little time to plan.”
Imagine that you have been given this mission: By 0800 tomorrow, forward to the White House three lists, totaling no more than 600 names, of people selected for special assignment to the Soviet Union. None of them can have an intelligence background. Yet most of them must know Soviet nuclear weapons, and many must be fluent in Russian. Some of them must be prepared to settle in the Soviet Union, with their families, for a tour of duty of undetermined length.
This mission is no fantasy.
The requirements come from the proposed Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that President Ronald Reagan has sent to the Senate for ratification. According to Section III of the treaty:
“ Within one day [emphasis added] after entry into force of the Treaty, each Party will provide the other Party with a list of aircrew members, a list of inspectors to carry out inspections . . . and a list of proposed inspectors to carry out inspection activities by means of continuous portal monitoring activities. ... No list may include more than 200 individuals.”
The list of aircrews will be the easiest to draft. The Military Airlift Command (MAC) already has a number of pilots and support personnel who fly regularly to and from the Soviet Union and Eastern-bloc countries.
These MAC crews have been cleared by the communist countries to enter their airspace and use their airports to transport supplies and documents to U. S. embassies and other diplomatic missions.
The treaty inspectors, however, are a new breed. They must be technicians, linguists, and diplomats, trained in the mechanics of verification as spelled out in great technical detail in the 396-page treaty document. They must be alert to the ever-present potential for espionage and propagandizing. They need a grounding in Soviet history and some realistic training in spotting and outsmarting Soviet intelligence officers.
An unspecified number of technicians are also needed to carry out other aspects of the treaty, which calls for the destruction of nuclear weapons. Some missiles will be launched toward fiery oblivion in the ocean. Others will be wiped out by “explosive demolition or burning.” The treaty proposal states that the two nations’
2,611 missiles and their launching equipment “shall be burned, crushed, flattened, or destroyed by explosion.”
Inspectors must be acceptable to security officials from each
complete an accelerated course in one of the most sensitive su jects in the U. S. intelligence curriculum: the manufacture, ^ maintenance, and deployment 1 Soviet nuclear weapons.
The INF document signed by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met>c ulously describes the rules g°v"
By Thomas B. Alle°
side. The inspectors are sup- . posed to be verifiers, not intelligence agents. If caught engage in espionage, they would not only jeopardize the fate of the INF Treaty but also the Strategy- Arms Reduction Treaty.
This puts the intelligence community out of bounds as u likely source for inspectors. The next possibility is the military- The Army, which has a progran1 for developing specialists in ge0^ graphic regions, could find some candidates among its Soviet experts. The Navy, which has no such regional-specialist progi"11111' could turn to Russian language instructors from the Naval P°st' graduate School in Monterey, California.
An Army or Navy nominee for nuclear inspector, however- would have to be an implausib L type: a Soviet expert with no military intelligence or counte1' intelligence background. Assun1 ing that such a specimen exists- he or she would then have to
120
Proceedings
Naval Rcvie"
considerably. Furthermore, according to a recent General ccounting Office report released by Aspin, the MX’s trance is not working properly and will require millions of dollars to fix.11
The C3 issue is more complex and contentious.12 Strate- tlsts h&ve long believed that to maintain an adequate de- ctrent, the United States must have the capability to hunch under attack.” Because it takes approximately 30 ^or Soviet ICBMs to reach the United States, it w>dely believed that only the land-based ICBMs
could meet this requirement. This may or may not be true. While this author agrees that the deterrent capability to launch under attack should always concern the Soviets, trying to do the myriad of things necessary in only 30 minutes boggles the mind.
More important seems to be the question of whether C3 can be sustained with submerged submarines. Here, critics are simply wrong. As Rear Admiral W. J. Holland points out, there have been capabilities for two-way communications with submarines for some 50 years, and it is by
mng the duties of the verifiers ni k accorc*- Each side can , i short-notice inspections.
east two members of the inspection party must speak Rus. an' Other inspectors, probably cornpanied by their families, .«e exPected to live near the Portals” stations at the inspec- D P s*te> typically a factory ca- le of manufacturing the eaty-banned missiles.
^ oe treaty document calls for ng instruction of “a perma- t .continuous monitoring sys- ^ 1 at such sites within six ^oriths after the treaty goes into tj ct- These monitoring sta- rj as’ Seated at ‘‘an agreed pete eter around the periphery of lnspection site,” will be
°nt>nuously operated during the
13-
year life of the treaty.
No
Precedents exist for find-
in» 'ndoctrinating, and instruct-
e„ .treaty verifiers. No agency is fe,'Ppcd to create this corps of the^3* treaty enforcers. And
thc^- 'S t'me t0 P*an s*nce
CQnVanguard must be able to day ■UCt an Inspection within 30
effec a^CF t^le treaty 8oes into
Th >
tioas ^ *D*anners only ltave ques-
Perc
to work with so far. What
entage of inspectors will
thev H ge - •hil't faW ^rom t*ie uniformed ary? From Department of oth CtlSe civihan ranks? From Coner federal agencies? From tj0ne?e recruitment? From tradi- s0l,a ^deral employment e-es? From a Peace Acad, lEor a long time the acad- gre . as had widespread con- but Sl0nal support—as an idea n°t as an appropriation.)
eedin8s 1 Naval Review 1988
121
What clearances will be necessary? Will standard background checks be conducted? If so, will the Defense Investigative Service (DIS) perform these checks? (DIS is currently running 32,000 background investigations a year, with a growing backlog of about 80,000 cases a year.)
Because of the need for Russian-speaking inspectors, will planners recruit Soviet emigres in the United States? And, given that the treaty represents U. S.- Soviet cooperation, will U. S. investigators in the Soviet Union attempt to gain background checks?
Some stopgap measures will probably be taken for setting up the vanguard force. (Both countries may even have to agree quietly to the interim use of some intelligence officers as the only personnel immediately available.) But serious thought ought to be given to the founding of something like a Treaty Verification Corps (TVC), a new kind of Peace Corps that will be responsible for the training and maintenance of the inspectors and the personnel who will manage and provide support for arms control treaties. The INF Treaty, for example, sets up Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers to handle inspection requests.
The centers need to be manned continually. The TVC would also provide such specialized backup services as logistics and the maintenance of the weapons data bases that each country agrees to provide to the other.
A long-range source of TVC
recruits could be a training program modeled after the ROTC program, already in place in many colleges. In 1987, Representative Constance A. Morelia (R-MD) proposed such a ‘‘peace officer” program, aimed at training Peace Corps volunteers. Her idea was put forth in a bill that has drawn support from 56 cosponsoring House members from both parties. The bipartisan support for her plan suggests that Congress would accept an ROTC spinoff as a TVC training program.
The most appealing aspect of a TVC is its potential attraction to young men and women seeking a new form of government service. Like the Peace Corps, the TVC could be designed to provide an opportunity for short-term dedication rather than lifetime careers. Representative Morelia’s words about prospective ROTC-trained Peace Corps volunteers could just as well apply to TVC recruits:
“A major concern so often heard today, that today’s students are selfish or disinterested in the world that surrounds them, would be simply and directly addressed. And, as in the case today, Peace Corps volunteers continue to serve their nation upon their return: in government, international relations, education, medicine.”
Mr. Allen, former assistant director of the National Geographic Book Service, is the author of War Games (McGraw- Hill, 1987) and the coauthor, with naval analyst Norman Polmar, of Merchants of Treason (Delacorte, 1988).