What does MBFR mean to you? Name of a corporation? New College Board test? Maybe a new drug? Wrong on all counts. Although not possessing a snappy acronym like SALT or START, the MBFR talks are ongoing East/West arms negotiation. And these Vienna deliberations are just as important, in their own way, as the much more publicized Euromissile talks going on in Geneva right now.

The Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction negotiations were formally convened in October of 1973. East and West had very different reasons a decade ago for desiring a cut in troops and equipment stationed in central Europe, the aims of the talks. For the U.S., this period was an obviously trying time for those who believed in strong foreign deployment of American troops. The burden of some 200,000 U.S. soldiers in Europe, high relative costs and inflation, a simple desire to "bring our boys back home," and especially the conflict in Vietnam had already prompted Congressional debate on unilateral withdrawal. But few in the executive branches of the allied governments wanted this; it was believed that any substantial reduction in American troop strength would compromise Western conventional defenses, as well as sending Warsaw Pact nations a dangerous message about Western goals. Western leaders viewed the talks, essentially, as a means of co-opting the unilateralism.

The Soviet bloc, on the other hand, approached the negotiations with two issues in mind: the memory of the World Wars and the partition of Germany. Even today, the generation guiding the Soviet Union still remembers quite clearly the carnage of 1941-45. The memory was even fresher in the '60s and early '70s, when American strategic power held a vast advantage over the Soviets. Directly related to this war memory is Russia's intense desire to keep Germany split. In a sense, Soviet domination of Eastern Europe is justified in the Russian view as a "buffer zone," with E. Germany serving as the forward bustion between the homeland and any future aggression. Four, even paranoia, of a reunited Germany, backed by the United States, rules Russian policy concerning Europe. The Soviets therefore viewed the talks as a means of essentially ratifying the postwar occupational boundaries, and reducing the U.S. European presence in support of West Germany.

After years of wrangling over the format of the negotiations, the talks began with a general goal of cutbacks to 700,000 ground troops for both sides and a proportional amount of equipment. Within days the major problems appeared that persist almost unchanged today:

* Even the initial estimates of force to be negotiated were in dispute. The West estimated Warsaw Pact and Russian combined troop strength at approximately 925,000. NATO's at 777,000. However, Russia claimed rough parity at the lower level. Ten years later, the two sides have come no closer to aggreement on the data, that presumably would be a prerequisite for any final treaty.

* Opening positions on which national forces to consider also differed. The West believed that American and Soviet forces should be reduced first, to set an example and increase confidence, with the allied governments following suit. The East wanted to include all NATO forces, especially Germany's, in the reductions simultaneously. This directly reflected Russian fear of a rearmed Germany. This objection, however, has apparently been sidestepped by Western agreement to consider all the forces together, as long as adequate means exist for monitoring compliance.

* The East refuses to agree to verification measures the West sees as essential to any treaty. In 1979 the West dropped some of its troop demands in return for verification requests--on-site inspections, exchange of information, establishment of exit-entry points with observers, and so forth. After initially rejecting these demands categorically, the East appears to have yielded somewhat, to the point where the United states sees some hope in the area.

* Finally, a sticking point related to all the above points is the West's desire for so-called "asymmetrical" reductions, where the Soviets would have to give up more troops than NATO because Western estimates say they have more. This point is clouded by the fact that, since the Russians claim parity anyway, reducing to the agreed-upon limit of 700,000 soldiers would require equal--and small--reductions. The East is essentially dodging this entire issue by denying Western estimates.

WHILE MANY OTHER technical and detailed issues have been raised, these four--data, linkage, verification, and assymetry--form the crux of the 10-year impasse between East and West.

Strangely, nuclear questions have not constituted an integral part of the talks thus far. And conventional force imbalance, in some ways, lies at the core of the debate about Euromissles--which may be the most pressing reason for the West to make a concerted effort to try to break the MBFR logjam right now.

The end of WW II established the Soviet and Western "buffer zones," from which neither have made substantial deviations. These zones are built on conventional force deployment: tactical nuclear weapons came later. As they were developed, they were integrated into the battle plans of each alliance as weapons of potential use rather than deterrence, like ICBMs. And now Euromissles have arrived to add to the confusion.

But through all the nuclear development, one thing has remained clear: the conventional force equation is at the root of the European political split that fuels our nuclear dilemma. Nukes only destroy; they don't conquer territory, achieve revolution or political reform, or even apply total pressure. Nuclear weapons' only use, as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has recently written, is for deterrence; as a practical component of Western defense strategy, they are useless. Not so with convention forces. The MBFR talks offer a chance for the West to start redressing what some have estimated as a 3-1 Wasrsaw Pact advantage in conventional strength--where inequality could really prove fatal.

Indeed, if the West can persuade the Soviets that troop reduction is in their interest, then all European security questions would become simpler. Gains for the West are obvious: reduced cost for equal security, greater assurance against attack, and a simple slacking of military tension during peacetime. And for the East the gains from an MBFR agreement would be tangible as well: a reduction in cost and tension and a lessening of the American presence in Europe, something that Russia has wanted for a long time.

And there is hope, U.S. officials have recently indicated that some sort of compromise on the negotiations is not out of the question. If Soviet paranoia can be assuaged by good-faith negotiations, perhaps a settlement can be had. And if the West can start to redress the conventional imbalance in Europe, the nuclear question would certainly become easier to handle, if not to solve.