To the Summit After a Stinging Defeat Over Turkey

To the Summit

The 25-year search for an East-West accommodation--in Geneva and Paris, in Glassboro and Vladivostok--takes President Gerald R. Ford this week to the capital of Finland for a new round of that mixture of diplomacy and show business known as summitry (see THE WORLD). With 35 nations in attendance, the Helsinki conclave is being touted as the most spectacular since the Congress of Vienna, and yet because the preliminary negotiations have led to no real change in the current state of uneasy detente, the world is also being told that the European Security Conference is mostly show, a ratification of historic facts.

For Jerry Ford, however, the trip is not so inconsequential. As he proceeds through flag-waving crowds in Bonn and Warsaw, he demonstrates anew that America's first appointed President is a world figure to be reckoned with. It was all the more dismaying, then, that Congress sent him on his way with a stinging defeat, on what had seemed to be a peripheral question. At issue: Should Congress continue embargoing arms shipments to Turkey because the Turks had used American weapons in their 1974 invasion of Cyprus?

Barrage of Noes. After strong Administration lobbying, the Senate had voted to repeal the embargo last May by a narrow 41-40, but Ford lobbied even harder with the House. He pleaded with key Congressmen for their support of a major NATO ally. To help the bill's chances, he watered it down, providing mainly for a restoration of the $ 185 million in arms that Turkey had already contracted to buy. When the measure came to a roll-call vote last week, a series of ayes flashed on the House's electronic screen, and Ford led. Then in the last 50 seconds, a barrage of noes suddenly defeated the measure, 223-206. The crowd in the galleries, including many Greek Americans still incensed about Turkey's invasion of Cyprus and willing to lobby strenuously for their cause, erupted in cheers and applause.

Ford immediately predicted that the House vote would do "the most serious and irreparable damage to the vital national security interests of the United States." Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called it a "tragic evolution" and added an expression of hope that the Turks "will not take any precipitous action." That hope was too late. The Turkish government issued a declaration saying that Ankara's bilateral defense treaties with the U.S. were "no longer valid." Later all but one of the two dozen U.S. military centers on Turkish soil were placed under Turkish control. The only exception was the nuclear-equipped strategic airbase at Incirlik, which the Turks will continue to allow U.S. personnel to run provided its future functions are confined strictly to NATO duties. The suddenness of the Turkish action prompted Ford to issue a statement that called it "essential" for the House to reconsider its vote.

In terms of U.S. strategic interests, the House vote made little sense. Although Greek orators liked to protest the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, it was in fact touched off by the now ousted Greek military regime's overthrow of the elected Cypriot government. Moreover, Turkey was entitled by treaty to protect the island's Turkish minority. It was true that the Turks' use of American arms was technically illegal, but they are not the first to employ American arms for their own purposes. Finally, whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, the prospects of the Turks being coerced by a congressional arms embargo were just about nil.

Partisan Politics. Why then the sudden congressional revolt against presidential leadership on foreign policy? Partly, of course, some Congressmen believed in applying pressure for a Cyprus settlement; partly, they were responding to lobbying by Greek Americans, headed by Indiana's Democratic Congressman John Brademas, who loudly accused the Turks of "blackmail." Partly, too, the vote was simply partisan politics. While 39 Republicans voted against Ford, so did 184 Democrats. A similar partisanship animated the House the following day when it moved on to the question of arms for Jordan. Although the President had agreed to sell 14 batteries of Hawk antiaircraft missiles to King Hussein, the Congressmen seemed determined to reduce the number to six, even at the risk of alienating a moderate and pro-U.S. Arab state that is a potential counterweight to the power of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization.

The congressional action coincided with what seemed Like a sudden upsurge of opposition to the President's basic policy of detente. In part this was prompted by the first Soviet-American space shot, Soyuz-Apollo--a technological triumph which, precisely because of its propaganda element, prompted skeptics to raise questions about Soviet-American relations on earth. Critics were ready to declare that detente was doing more good for the Soviets than for the U.S. No part of the East-West competition is entirely one-sided, however.

Some observers pointed to the Soviets' huge new grain purchasing, which is a boon now but may eventually drive up the price of Americans' bread (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS). Others pointed to Portugal, whose Communist Party is undoubtedly partly financed by Moscow --although there is speculation that the Russians have actually tried to restrain the highly aggressive Portuguese party. In the Middle East, the Russians have provided arms to radical governments and groups, but in recent negotiations they have been, as the Western diplomatic phrase has it, "not unhelpful."

The fact is that detente is neither better nor worse today than it has been for some time. It has always been a wary, limited arrangement, not excluding ideological competition and maneuvering for advantage, primarily designed to prevent nuclear war. It is precisely in the nuclear field, where the Soviets are making significant progress and are least willing to compromise, that the ultimate test of detente will come. The rest is largely emotion.

Much of that emotion has lately been contributed by the exiled Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who has spent the past month wandering in and out of Washington to fulminate against American policy. If Ford had welcomed him and shaken his hand, his criticisms might have attracted less attention, but Ford's advisers, notably Kissinger, unwisely urged him against such a meeting. That made Ford look like someone who had to defer to Soviet displeasure. Ford changed course as far as anyone could, offering Solzhenitsyn a standing invitation to the White House, but Solzhenitsyn last week preferred to issue statements. He accused the President of going to Helsinki to "sign the betrayal of Eastern Europe" and "acknowledge officially its slavery forever."

Helsinki certainly need not be exaggerated into a feast of friendship, but neither should it be exaggerated into a moral disaster. Ford later retorted: "It has been my policy ever since I entered public life to support the aspirations for freedom... of the peoples of Eastern Europe ... by every proper and peaceful means." That was a way of endorsing Kissinger's earlier response to Solzhenitsyn: that there is no alternative to coexistence, for all its dangers and moral ambiguities. By week's end, Ford was off to Helsinki via West Germany and Eastern Europe, whose people may have their own doubts about detente, but who also understand the lack of alternatives.

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