And Now, Moscow's Dollar Diplomat

Leonid Ilich Brezhnev came courting the U.S. last week. Money and trade might be in the air more than love, but by East-West standards it promised to be an extraordinarily warm visit. Late Saturday afternoon a sleek blue-and-white Soviet Ilyushin-62 touched down at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. Out stepped the Soviet party leader, who was greeted by Secretary of State William Rogers and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Walter Stoessel. There were smiles and handshakes at the airbase, but no bands, no fanfare, no formal speeches.

Important guests arriving unofficially at Andrews--even the most powerful Communist chief on earth--always receive a low-key welcome. But the understated formalities belied the potential significance of Brezhnev's visit. This week's Washington summit, regardless of the decisions reached, could not possibly match the drama of Richard Nixon's historic visit to the Middle Kingdom of Chairman Mao. Nor was it likely to repeat the cold-warring tension of John Kennedy's 1961 test of wills with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna. Nonetheless, this summit had a drama of its own. Here was Leonid Brezhnev, a superconfident Soviet leader at the zenith of his power, who had staked much of that power and of his own reputation on the idea of revitalizing the Soviet economy by dealing with the West. And here was Richard Nixon, an American President weakened by a damaging political scandal, who nevertheless had done more than any previous President to establish a new attitude toward the East.

What was at stake in the talks between the two men was of inestimable importance to the future of East-West relations--and to peace. Was an era of detente evolving into a time of trade-oriented dollar (and ruble) diplomacy?

Could commerce between the world's undisputed superpowers provide the cement of coexistence for future generations? Those were the key questions that might find tentative answers at the Washington summit.

There had been fears that the summit might have to be canceled or postponed--despite persistent avowals by both leaders that they were determined to go ahead. Part of the suspense was provided by Brezhnev, who, as he frequently does, kept his hosts guessing about his plans until almost the last minute. Three days before he was due to arrive, U.S. officials still did not know whether he would bring his wife (he did not). And it was not clear until the middle of last week whether he would land on Saturday or Sunday. By choosing the earlier day, Brezhnev allowed himself the luxury of being flown by helicopter to the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., to rest up from jet lag.

Brezhnev's eight-day visit--the first by a Soviet leader since Nikita Khrushchev was the guest of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959*--officially began on Monday with ceremonies on the White House lawn. The scheduled program:

Nixon and his top aides, including Secretary of State Rogers and Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger, wait at the head of a red carpet extending from the White House diplomatic entrance. After a trumpet fanfare, a military band plays the Hymn of the Soviet Union, followed by The Star-Spangled Banner.

The two leaders deliver their welcoming remarks and then repair to the Oval Office for their first negotiating session.

With the Soviet party leader is Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, a newly appointed Politburo member, and Soviet Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Dobrynin. In addition, Brezhnev is accompanied by 50 Soviet foreign-trade, industry and agriculture officials, not to mention 75 Russian newsmen.

Plans were that while in Washington he would stay at Blair House, the guest house for visiting foreign dignitaries, located across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

Working Summit. Like last year's meeting in Moscow, this one is billed as a "working summit." The two leaders will spend much of the week conferring at the White House and at Camp David. Despite President Nixon's promise last week of "major new progress," U.S. diplomats cautioned Americans not to expect anything dramatic. "The purpose of this summit," declared a top State Department official, "is to keep up the momentum created last year rather than to carve any new paths."

Nonetheless, both sides are striving for visible hallmarks. Thus, although there will be nothing comparable in magnitude to the treaty that was signed in Moscow in May 1972, limiting each country's ABMs to 200, some lesser agreements will provide occasion for broad smiles and the clinking of champagne glasses. The most important one will be a "declaration of intent and principles" governing the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks currently taking place in Geneva. Other agreements will concern agricultural, scientific and cultural exchanges.

Among the official functions will be reciprocal state dinners at the White House and the Soviet embassy. Brezhnev will also host luncheons for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and about 40 American businessmen. On Friday, he and Nixon will fly to the Western White House at San Clemente, Calif. Some time during the week, probably at Blair House, Brezhnev will tape a speech to be aired over the three television networks during the weekend.

Brezhnev will have virtually no chance to see and hear the sights and sounds of the country. Initially, he had expressed some interest in visiting an automobile assembly line in Detroit.

Largely for security reasons, a tentatively scheduled side trip to that city was canceled, as was a stopover in Houston, where Nixon had hoped to show his guest the technological wonders of the NASA Space Center.

In one way, the Brezhnev visit could hardly be better timed from Nixon's viewpoint. Foreign policy has always been the President's forte, and the presence in the U.S. of the ebullient Soviet leader may divert some public attention from the Watergate hearings. Yet there is clearly a major risk involved. The widening scandal has dramatically reduced Nixon's prestige with the electorate, his effectiveness in dealing with Congress and his ability to run the Administration. Thus he could well find himself at a competitive disadvantage in dealing with a man who is noted as a hard and persistent bargainer.

Potential Problems. The President's overall policy of detente enjoys wide bipartisan support. But there is considerable disenchantment, particularly in the Midwest, over the Administration's handling of last year's $1 billion wheat sale to the Russians. Though widely approved at the time, the sale in retrospect appears to have been a disastrous example of official mismanagement and blundering--subsidized by $300 million in taxpayers' money and a major factor in spiraling prices.

Potentially even more embarrassing for the President is the probability that Congress will not honor his request to grant Moscow most-favored-nation status--a key plank in the Soviet-American trade treaty signed last October.

No fewer than 77 Senators and 260 members of the House--a potent show of support--have lined up behind amendments to the Administration trade bill that would deny MFN status to any nation that limits free emigration of its citizens. The amendments are primarily aimed at the arbitrary tax that the Soviet Union levies on citizens wishing to emigrate, most of whom have been Jews. Support for the amendments is based on political, ideological and humanitarian concerns. But probably the strongest pressure has come from Jewish lobbying and politicians' concern over the "Jewish vote."

The amendments, should they pass when the trade bill is taken up by Congress later this year, will not halt trade with the Soviet Union. But Moscow is particularly eager to get special status because it would mean tariff cuts of up to 50% on Soviet imports into the U.S.

In an extraordinary concession, the Politburo, at Brezhnev's urging, agreed to the suspension of the tax--though it could be reinstated at any time. In April, Brezhnev personally assured a group of seven American Senators visiting Moscow that he would not allow the tax to stand in the way of better relations. The White House fears the amendments would limit the President's flexibility in foreign affairs and set a precedent of interference in the domestic affairs of a foreign country.

Brezhnev's visit to West Germany last month is evidence enough that he will make every effort to pull as much American money, technology, hardware and credit as possible into the Soviet economy. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union has stopped trying to catch up with the U.S. economically through its own efforts. Instead, it seeks to achieve "peace and prosperity" by harnessing Western technological and industrial know-how to the Soviet chariot. As one European diplomat put it:

"The business of diplomacy these days is business."

Though Brezhnev is not exactly an "economic mendicant dressed up as a military giant"--the acerbic description of him by French Political Scientist Pierre Hassner--he has high personal stakes in the summit. Indeed, they may be higher than Nixon's. As the architect of what he calls a "peace program" of detente, Brezhnev has gone further than any other Moscow ruler since the Bolshevik Revolution in seeking a normal relationship with the West.

In the past three years, Brezhnev has had five successful meetings with West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, French President Georges Pompidou and President Nixon. He has been the crucial partner in Brandt's policy of Ostpolitik, and has formed a more protective Westpolitik of his own, which seeks to preserve ideological conformity --especially in Eastern Europe--by providing more material benefits. Next month the Helsinki Conference on European Security will take up formal ratification of the post-World War II political status quo of Eastern Europe.

Under Brezhnev's guidance, the Soviet Union has achieved nuclear parity with the U.S.--and recognition of that status in the first SALT treaty.

An essential ingredient of this policy is the Soviet Union's decision to hinge its economic development on help from the West. Brezhnev is a leading advocate of rapid technological development at home. If his policy misfires, he will have much to answer for. One indication of how many Soviet hopes are pinned to the summit is its treatment in the Soviet press. For weeks, articles have appeared daily applauding Brezhnev's peaceful-coexistence policy and depicting his trip to the U.S. as of historic significance. Americans are described, in a refreshingly unpolemical way, as eager for trade and "sick and tired of the cold war."

Even more significant, perhaps, is the Soviet treatment of Watergate; it has received only brief mentions in Pravda and Izvestia. Both in Moscow and in Eastern Europe, party cadres have portrayed the affair as a conspiracy by American "reactionaries" to sabotage Nixon's rapprochement with the Soviet Union. One lecturer claimed there was a parallel with John Kennedy, who, he said, was assassinated because he intended to improve relations with the Soviet Union.

There are, of course, rather obvious reasons for taking such a tack. As Editor Daniel Kraminov of the Soviet weekly Za Rubezhom bluntly put it: "A few years ago, certainly, we would have underlined more strongly the dirtiness of American political life. Now we are observing an old Russian proverb which says: 'Never throw mud into the house you are about to enter.' "

From the careful questions raised by Soviet diplomats at receptions, it is clear that the Russians are worried about Watergate. That Brezhnev stuck to the original schedule for the summit, however, suggests that he believes Nixon will somehow ride out his seventh and most serious crisis. Quipped a British Kremlinologist last week: "Brezhnev really has quite an investment in Nixon's survival." The Russians have in fact developed an agreeable working relationship with the President and, of course, Henry Kissinger. It is doubtful if they could envision more complementary partners.

In their discussions this week, the Soviet party boss and the President will take up a number of issues that go well beyond immediate bilateral questions. Nixon will probe Brezhnev to see just how genuine the Russian commitment is to detente. Brezhnev will try to ascertain how far the U.S. is likely to go in its political rapprochement with China. The threat of China has grown in Soviet eyes along with Peking's expanding nuclear capability. The Soviet Union's awareness that it cannot afford to be embattled on two fronts was a major factor in the decision to ease pressures on its western frontiers.

The most important issues to be discussed:

TRADE. This will be the No. 1 topic so far as the Russians are concerned. Brezhnev is said to have talked with Kissinger in terms of $250 billion in trade with the U.S. over the next 20 years. That may be unrealistic. U.S. trade with the Soviet Union nearly tripled last year, to $642.1 million, but this was largely due to grain sales. A congressional committee has optimistically estimated that trade could go as high as $5 billion annually by the end of the decade. This is still modest compared with $30 billion in trade with Western Europe last year and $14 billion with Japan. Chief U.S. exports currently include automotive and oil and gas extraction equipment, road-building vehicles, computers and electronic equipment, and chemicals. The U.S. imports from Russia consist mainly of furs, chrome ore, platinum metals, diamonds, vodka and caviar.

Although there is little that Brezhnev can do about most-favored-nation status, he will seek extensive long-term credits for gas and oil development schemes. Two weeks ago, the U.S. signed a formal endorsement of an $8 billion, 20-year contract between Occidental Petroleum Corp. and the Russians for the exchange of chemicals and machinery. Occidental and El Paso Natural Gas have just signed a "letter of intent" to negotiate an even bigger deal to pipe gas from northeast Siberia to liquefying plants near Vladivostok and from there to the U.S. West Coast. In return for American technology, equipment, and credit, the Russians will offer access to their vast natural resources.

Brezhnev will also push for more frequent Aeroflot flights between Moscow and New York City, as well as an extension of the route to Washington and the West Coast.

ARMS LIMITATIONS. This is the area of most concern to the U.S. With the slow-moving second round of SALT talks in progress, there will be no breakthrough to match the Moscow treaty limiting ABMs. On the difficult problem of limiting offensive strategic weapons, Kissinger at a press conference last week conceded: "We do not expect--indeed we do not aim for--a settlement of these questions at this meeting."

So far as conventional weapons are concerned, there is no sign that the Soviets intend to reduce the pace of their military buildup. The enlargement of their already substantial navy continues, as does the expansion of their air force. The Russians have dragged their feet at the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks now going on in Vienna. Only after the West reluctantly agreed to accept Hungary's observer status at the talks, effectively removing from the negotiations the 40,000 Soviet troops on Hungarian soil, was work on the agenda begun. Nixon needs some kind of reciprocal withdrawal by the Russians to hold off congressional demands for a unilateral cutback of the 300,000 U.S. forces in Europe. Brezhnev is well aware of these pressures, which suggests that he is unlikely to be conciliatory. To even the score, the U.S.

has sought to tie MBFR talks to progress at the European Security Conference, which the Russians badly want.

SECURITY CONFERENCE. The Soviets want to end preparatory talks on European security late this month and hold a summit finale in September. They see a full-scale conference as an opportunity to make permanent all of those borders that were redrawn to the Soviets' advantage at the end of World War II. As Willy Brandt did when Brezhnev visited Bonn, President Nixon will insist that the success of the conference must hinge upon a free flow of ideas and people throughout Europe.

INDOCHINA. As he has in the past, Nixon will suggest to Brezhnev that Soviet cooperation--meaning putting pressure on Hanoi to observe the cease-fire--will determine the extent of U.S. help in trade and technology. Although Brezhnev may be willing, the President's bargaining position has been weakened by the threat of a congressional cutoff of funds for bombing in Cambodia.

MIDDLE EAST. After lengthy discussion, the two sides will merely agree to disagree. Neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union wants to see war erupt in the area. But Russia is not willing to put pressure on the Arabs. It wants the U.S.

first to exert its influence on Israel to pull back from the occupied territories.

There is no likelihood that the two leaders will agree to a moratorium on arms shipment. The best that can be expected is Brezhnev's affirmation that the Soviet Union will not actually seek to block any negotiations.

One side effect of Soviet-American summitry--and this summit in particular--is a certain uneasiness in Europe.

No one questions that the Nixon-Brezhnev meeting is a necessary move in the strategy of detente. But there has long been an endemic suspicion that the superpowers might make a bilateral deal that would be to the detriment of Europeans--a suspicion that has been enhanced by Watergate and the danger that a seriously weakened President might try to recoup by concluding something spectacular. Last week Secretary of State Rogers departed from the text of his speech at the NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Copenhagen to reassure the Atlantic allies that Nixon would make no agreements with Brezhnev that would be detrimental to their interests.

The Japanese are apprehensive that Moscow will seek to use favorable agreements with the U.S. or West Germany to pressure Tokyo into more favorable terms in the joint exploitation and development of Siberian gas and oil. The Russians are seeking $1 billion in credits from Tokyo for the 2,000mile Irkutsk-to-Nakhodka oil pipeline.

Last week Moscow abruptly informed Premier Kakuei Tanaka that his sched uled visit to the Soviet capital in Au gust would be "inconvenient." What dis turbed the Japanese government was that Moscow at the same time invited a delegation of Japanese Diet members, including the opposition, to visit Moscow -- in August.

Barring some unpredictable and unlikely disaster, the Washington summit will almost certainly enhance Brezhnev's prestige and position in the Soviet Union. Until recently the Moscow hierarchy was a determinedly collective leadership. Brezhnev's dealings are still sharply defined within the perimeters set by the Politburo. But since the last summit, when he shared the spotlight with President Nikolai Podgorny and Premier Kosygin, he has handled the show alone. In a major Politburo shake-up in April, he dispatched two of the strongest opponents of his policies. His official job -- General Secretary of the Communist Party -- does not entitle him to so much prominence. (Unlike Stalin and Khrushchev, he is not also the head of state.) Acknowledging the problem, the Soviets have responded by building up his status in the press to a degree that recalls the cult-of-personality era.

At 66, Brezhnev is not exactly a reluctant star. He does everything with gusto, exuding an earthiness and nervous energy that sometimes evoke comparisons with Lyndon Johnson. He is a natty dresser, tending to dark suits for day and blue suede jackets for informal wear. He can also be vain and demanding; he is the only Soviet leader to wear TV makeup. "He has a keen eye for that little red light on the TV camera," observes a U.S. official.

Beneath the bonhomie, say officials who have sat in on discussions with him, he is a very cautious politician. Though much more surefooted now than in his earlier years at the top, he is still not totally at ease in foreign affairs and relies heavily on Gromyko.

"You have the feeling that he has worked out the entire scenario in advance, and he is sticking to it all the way," says one observer. He loves to talk late at night, trying to wear down his opponents, and often stays at the table until the small hours. A joke about his 1971 visit to France is being recalled these days in Washington. As Brezhnev left Paris, a French journalist remarked: "One more negotiating session and

France would have been in the Warsaw Pact."

Brezhnev's principal relaxations are hunting and cars. He is occasionally seen driving his Citroen-Maserati sports car (a gift from Pompidou) or his Cadillac Eldorado (given him by Nixon).

As a result of his Bonn summit, he has a Mercedes 450, and his Kremlin garage also holds a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. He has a splendid dacha in Zavidova, 70 miles away from Moscow, equipped with swimming pool and sauna, high-speed boats for dashing along the Volga, and a vast duck and boar-hunting preserve.

Hunting guests--who have included Henry Kissinger and Helmut Sonnenfeldt of the National Security Council --are customarily supplied with complete outfits, including boots and a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight.

The hunters sit on chairs on carpeted platforms waiting for the boars to come for corn meal that has been spread in regular feeding places. After 20 or 25 minutes, the boars arrive, the hunters fire (from 50 yards) and the animals are dressed for the freezer. Afterward, there is a picnic of vodka and sandwiches.

In Moscow, Brezhnev lives with his wife Viktoria and his 86-year-old mother in a five-room apartment in a complex reserved for high officials. His daughter Galina has worked for the Novosti Press Agency, and his son Yuri is a trade official. Though Brezhnev relishes the perks of power, he lives relatively simply. He often rolls up his sleeves and cooks for old comrades from his home town Dneprodzerzhinsk.

Inside the Politburo, he is known as a tough infighter--a reputation that is supported by his survival during the Stalin years. He owed his rise to Khrushchev, who recognized his abilities as a party leader in the Ukraine and rewarded him with supervision of the "Virgin Lands" agricultural program and, eventually, full membership in the Presidium. Khrushchev's destalinization policies and his mania for economic and party reorganization displeased Brezhnev, who is believed to have had a major role in his ouster.

Since Brezhnev's accession to power, there has been a steady erosion of intellectual and personal freedom. Russia is not in the grip of anything like full-blown Stalinism, but police control is more rigid than in the Khrushchev era and ideological conformity is the strident order of the day. In April, Defense Minister Andrei Grechko and KGB Chief Yuri Andropov were elevated to the Politburo. It was the first time that the Soviet secret police had been represented in the party's governing hierarchy since Stalin's death.

Computer Communism. By training, Brezhnev is an engineer. His ambition, in the words of one observer, is "to replace the 'goulash Communism' of Khrushchev with 'computer Communism.'" Yet 1972 was the Soviet economy's most sluggish year since 1964--Khrushchev's last year in power. Growth of national income, industrial production and per capita income all fell sharply. Production of consumer items once again suffered setbacks.

Crops were 15% off target. Moscow was forced to shell out almost $2 billion in hard currency for foreign grains, causing a serious balance of payments deficit. The grain purchases are apparently so politically embarrassing that their magnitude has been concealed from the Soviet public.

Will expanding trade and importing Western technology produce a more efficient economy? The Russians believe so. Western economists remain to be convinced. The foremost impediment to Soviet economic development, they say, is their system of rigid controls and centralization. One sign of progress is the development of a new class of pragmatic, science-minded industrial managers.

Some have studied abroad; virtually all speak English, the accepted language of international business.

Moscow has become something of a mecca for American businessmen.

The archetypical American capitalist, David Rockefeller, has just opened a branch of his Chase Manhattan Bank at 1 Karl Marx Square; Chase will shortly be followed by Bank of America and First National City. In recent weeks, Soviet-American cooperation has been toasted in gallons of vodka, champagne and cognac in the name of mir i druzhba--peace and friendship.

If Western technology and capital promise to help develop Siberia and build trucks and Pepsi-Cola canneries, they also carry political risks for Brezhnev and his comrades. Inevitably, Western involvement will bring new pressures to bear on the insulated Soviet society. Western bankers have told Russian officials that they will have to give more information on plans and resources to qualify for major credits.--The problems in trade illuminate the differences between and basic complexities of the two societies: how does a state that tightly controls its economy and society negotiate with hundreds of private corporations? So far, diplomacy has provided a superstructure for cooperation. But there is a sense in some Washington quarters that any more cooperation and conciliation, without comparable gestures from the Soviets, would not necessarily be in the U.S. national interest.

"Vested Interests." The pertinent question is no longer whether there should be trade between East and West, but how much and on what terms. The Soviet Union, which is not a poor country by world standards, is seeking terms like those that would be granted a developing nation. Yet Brezhnev in his interview with newsmen last week made clear that the Russians are not about to part with their vast natural wealth without exacting a stiff price. The question the U.S. will have to ask itself is how much of its substantial resources should be funneled into the Soviet economy, for what benefits, at what risks and what long-term costs. In foreign affairs, the benefits are already considerable and should become more so. Kissinger said last year the U.S. aim was to create a broad network of "vested interests" that would qualify the foreign policies of both countries.

In Soviet domestic affairs, the situation is different. Samuel Pisar, the brilliant international lawyer, has argued that the only way the West can conquer the East is "with the tender sword of commercial and industrial cooperation, and the human freedoms that go with it." There is much to be said for the view that trade is an ideological leveler. But there is no conclusive evidence that freedom and commerce necessarily go together.

Indeed, high Administration officials concede that the U.S. is also coming to the point where it must face the issue of whether an essentially totalitarian system and an essentially open system can have a genuinely organic relationship that goes beyond a joint stake in survival and certain commercial deals. In the view of the more demanding U.S. policymakers, the long-range test of detente may be the Soviets' willingness to change their own system internally. So far there is no sign of that.

But for the moment it is at least refreshing--and hopeful--to see Leonid Brezhnev in Washington, talking trade and courting the U.S. on television.

* Premier Aleksei Kosygin's 1967 visit to the U.S., during which he met Lyndon Johnson at Glassboro, N.J., was officially to the United Nations.

Glassboro was chosen as the site of their two-day talks for reasons of protocol--it was equidistant from Washington and New York City. *One small but possibly telling portent occurred last week. The trade-union newspaper Trud reported that a much ballyhooed Siberian power generator supposedly put in service five years ago had in fact burned out at the factory and never been installed. Western economic analysts could not recall a case of similar candor.

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