The diplomacy of compliance and modern arms control: problems of third-party participation*

Abstract

In his discussion of his 1978 arms control negotiations with Andrei Gromyko, Cyrus Vance refers to 'telemetry encryption'1 at missile testing-the encoding by a testing nation of the data on its missile performance which is being monitored by an observing nation-and describes how difficult it was to go beyond the apparent tautology that 'telemetry encryption was prohibited if it impeded verification'. The Soviet version of this was, of course, that 'encryption was permitted unless it impeded', and so on. The question of what kind of encryption would impede what sort of verification was precisely what the United States was not willing to discuss. The Soviet Union was left wondering if the United States was serious in negotiation.2 The reason for this impasse was not new. The United States did not want to disclose to the Soviet Union the extent to which it was capable of monitoring Soviet missile tests even after the telemetry message had been partially encoded by the Soviet Union. Such a disclosure would have been equivalent to revealing US intelligence capacities in the general field, which would have exposed its monitoring system to interference and led to enhanced Soviet capabilities for confusing future verification procedures. On the other hand, a total ban on encryption was not acceptable to the Soviet Union because the telemetry involved in missile testing included a considerable amount of data which was not included under the SALT limitations. The United States also had reasons for wanting to reserve the right to conceal this kind of telemetry data. With such a history of negotiating difficulty behind the provisions which prohibit any interference with verification activities conducted by national technical means (NTM)3 and (in the case of SALT II) the agreed statements and common understandings associated with Article XV of the Treaty, any third party not fully familiar with all the details would be completely at a loss if it tried to assess the charges and counter-charges of violation in this area. Without the benefit of full comprehension of all the nuances of these agreements, and often lacking the technological means to carry out independent verification, all a third party can do in this area, if it wishes to investigate compliance with the SALT limitations, is to acknowledge the claims of the two sides, the Soviet Union and the United States. Debates between the two superpowers on non-compliance with the SALT