Just Tidy Up

The United States and the Soviet Union could reach a nuclear arms agreement now if the Reagan Administration tidied up its end of the negotiating table, a panel of three international affairs professors said at a symposium entitled "The Challenges to the World System" yesterday.

The superpowers' recent arms control initiatives are "more similar than in the past," said Dillon Professor of International Affairs Joseph S. Nye. "This is the time a deal could be struck."

However, before an agreement will be reached, Reagan must tidy up his administration, which is "internally divided" on arms issues and eager to preserve plans for a strategic defense shield, Nye said.

These administration-imposed obstacles to negotiation combined with a lack of personal initiative from the President have virtually preempted an arms control agreement by the end of Reagan's tenure, said Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France Stanley Hoffman.

"I don't see any concerted effort by the administration to reach an agreement. Reagan is not making the possiblility of bargaining into reality," said Hoffman. "We are exactly where we were at the beginning [of Reagan's years in office]."

Nye said he would be more optimistic about the potential for a negotiations breakthrough if all goes well in the next six months of talks.

Nye, the author of "Nuclear Ethics," cautioned proponents of unilateral disarmament that "the premature abolition of nuclear weapons" would destabilize the world situation and could lead to an unregulated arms race or even a nuclear showdown.

To a maintain stability in an increasingly interdependent world, Hoffman recommended "bargaining instead of posturing." The United States should stop trying to "export inflation or deflation and regularly trying to force other countries to pay the cost," he said.