Signals over the Abyss

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Moscow's "mood music" may be fine, but Reagan wants concrete actions

Perhaps more than any other event, a change in command at the Kremlin holds out hope for better relations between Washington and Moscow. It gives the leaders of the nuclear-armed superpowers a fresh slate, free of personal enmity and old misunderstandings. Because a new Soviet leader is, almost by definition, an unknown quantity, he is seen through hopeful Western eyes as a possible friend, or at least something less than an unblinking enemy. And so, now that Yuri Andropov has become only the fourth new Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin died at the height of the cold war, an irrepressible question is echoing around Washington: Might there be some chance of toning down the bitter hostility between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.? The answer, as far as it could be deduced at the end of a week of busy diplomatic signaling, seemed to be a highly qualified and tentative yes.

With Andropov in power only a week, there were, of course, no changes of substance: no new negotiations started or scheduled, no fresh proposals from either side. Indeed, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz made it clear late in the week that Washington is waiting warily for Moscow to take the first concrete step toward easing tensions. But American and Soviet officials did seize the opportunity to stop the angry and menacing verbal exchanges that had been escalated into a war of words during the two years that Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev led the superpowers, and to substitute cautious expressions of hope for conciliation. To use the felicitous phrase that Shultz picked up from an American reporter, the "mood music" of U.S.-Soviet relations had suddenly softened.

The shift in mood began in the first hours after Brezhnev's death two weeks ago. It grew more pronounced as Vice President George Bush and Shultz arrived in Moscow for the funeral, under specific instructions from President Reagan to emphasize U.S. willingness to ease tensions. Andropov, accompanied by Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Andrei Alexandrov-Agentov, an adviser on East-West relations, met with them and U.S. Ambassador Arthur Hartman for 30 min. in the brightly lit Green Room of the Kremlin. They discussed nuclear-arms control, Afghanistan and human rights, three of the prickliest issues between the two countries.

While neither side would disclose what was said, the talk apparently was civil and businesslike. Bush told other U.S. officials that Andropov impressed him as a decisive and self-confident leader who already felt himself to be in full control of Soviet policy. After the meeting the Vice President issued a conciliatory statement that said, "The challenges, while enormous, are far from insurmountable." Soviet officials below Andropov voiced even more soothing words. The most notable came from Nikolai Tikhonov, who holds what in the U.S.S.R. is the subordinate title of Premier. Said he: "The Soviet Union has been and is for normal and, even better, friendly relations with the United States. There were such relations in the past, and they can again become a reality."

For all the attention devoted to the future of relations with the U.S., that is far from the only, and not necessarily even the most pressing, matter on Andropov's mind. Besides receiving Bush and Shultz, the new Soviet boss plunged into a round of meetings with satellite, neutralist and even anti-Communist heads of government who were in Moscow for Brezhnev's funeral (see WORLD). Soviet officials sought to impress on Americans that, because their chief intends to move fast in establishing the main themes of his foreign policy, the U.S. has no time to lose in seeking a better relationship. Nor will the U.S. necessarily be pleased with all the changes that Andropov might make, such as a partial reconciliation with China. There were some discordant notes in the new U.S.-Soviet dialogue too, including barbed exchanges at a meeting of 250 U.S. businessmen with Soviet officials in Moscow.

Nonetheless, the Reagan Administration by midweek concluded that the melodious mood music might just prove soothing enough to produce an unwarranted euphoria in the nation and world. Accordingly, Washington moved to damp it down. At a Thursday news conference held for that purpose, Secretary of State Shultz asserted that "signals are fine" and the U.S. appreciated the "great courtesy" that Andropov had shown toward himself and Bush, but "the thing we are really looking for . . . is the substance of change in behavior." As Shultz noted, no sooner had Brezhnev been laid to rest than "it was as though someone threw a switch and suddenly martial music and a long march-by of troops. That was mood music too, I thought."

Washington, said Shultz, would be watching especially for signs that Soviet negotiators are ready for "a process of give and take" in arms-control talks already under way in Geneva and Vienna, and human rights discussions in progress in Madrid. The U.S. would welcome other steps, like a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan or an easing of martial law in Poland, he asserted, but these are not matters for direct talks between Washington and Moscow.

The Administration attitude, simply, is that the Kremlin created world tensions by starting a frenzied military buildup and bullying its neighbors, so it must take the first step toward relaxation. The U.S. would respond quickly to any move, but meanwhile it will make no new offers of its own. "It would be nutty to do more than gesture," said a top U.S. diplomat in Washington. "We would certainly not want to change the substance of our policy merely because they have changed leaders in Moscow." President Reagan scheduled a speech Monday in which he was to propose "confidence-building" measures to lessen the danger of nuclear war by accident, like advance notification by each side to the other of all test missile launches. But those ideas only repeat suggestions that Reagan made publicly last June. The President also planned to announce a basing mode for the new MX missile, a decision that certainly would not comfort the Soviets.

Some American experts consider the wary Administration attitude a mistake, and urge wholly new proposals. Zbigniew Brzezinski, an emphatic hard-liner when he was Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, advocates three specific U.S. offers: 1) an international agreement trading Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan for a guarantee to the U.S.S.R. of Afghan neutrality; 2) an agreement on Poland offering Western economic assistance in exchange for internal liberalization; 3) a sharp reduction in the number of Soviet tanks stationed in East Germany in return for "a significant cut in U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons in Central Europe."

In any case, Reagan, though now willing to moderate U.S. rhetoric, is a visceral anti-Soviet who hates to reverse course, and the increasingly influential Shultz (see box) is by temperament a cautious diplomat who likes to formulate policy only after a situation has been thoroughly analyzed, and it will take time to assess the new constellation of forces in the Kremlin. Says a Shultz aide: "Where is the U.S.S.R. going? The serious answer is that we don't know." In Shultz's mind, that justifies a wait-and-see attitude.

Meanwhile, the turn toward politeness in U.S.-Soviet discourse has some value in itself. Angry and threatening exchanges generate their own momentum, and they can poison the atmosphere for any serious discussion. Civility costs nothing, and while it is far from sufficient to assure successful dealings, it can help make them possible.

If there are to be new or expanded negotiations with the Soviets, the U.S. can at least approach them with a deeply divisive wound in its own western alliance healed. Or somewhat healed: the manner in which Reagan lifted the U.S. sanctions that had forbidden sale of American-designed equipment for the Soviet-West European natural-gas pipeline, even if it was made by European firms under U.S. license, touched off a nasty, though probably temporary, spat between Washington and Paris.

Reagan wanted to break the news in his regular weekly radio address Saturday, Nov. 13, to get the issue out of the way before he welcomed West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on a visit to Washington. To avoid the implication of a political defeat, Reagan also wanted to announce an agreement among the allies concerning possible new curbs on their trade with the Soviets. Accordingly, the U.S. asked the six other countries involved if they would agree to publication of a working paper that diplomats had fashioned in Washington, Britain, West Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan consented.

But only an hour before Reagan was to go on the air, the French were still recalcitrant. According to U.S. officials, Reagan attempted to place a call to French President Franc,ois Mitterrand, but Mitterrand refused to come to the phone. Instead, French Presidential Counsellor Jacques Attali told a senior White House official that France not only objected to publication but had "substantive" problems with the accord, which Americans said had not been voiced before (the French insisted that they had). Feeling doublecrossed, Reagan went ahead with his speech anyway, incensing the French, who immediately disavowed any accord. That night U.S. Ambassador Evan Galbraith was called out of a U.S. Marine Corps ball in Paris and summoned, in tuxedo, to the Quai d'Orsay for a chewing-out. Two days later Mitterrand declared, with Gallic sarcasm, "France is not a party to what is not even an agreement."

Though the so-called agreement still has not been published, by all accounts it is indeed tenuous. The Europeans promised to study alternatives to Soviet-supplied energy and new restrictions on high-technology exports and low-interest loans to the Soviet bloc. They did not commit themselves to any specific acts. Washington, finally aware that the sanctions were dividing the alliance without stopping the building of the pipeline, needed an excuse to end them. Said one senior adviser to Reagan: "We didn't want cheese. We just wanted out of the trap." The French attempt to deny Reagan even this measure efface saving irritated British and Italian as well as U.S. officials. All regarded it as a play to French public opinion, which since Gaullist days has placed a high premium on independence from Washington.

But the French-American pique was minor compared with the fury the sanctions had aroused within the alliance. The value of getting rid of them was quickly demonstrated when Kohl arrived in Washington. Freed of any need to quarrel about the pipeline, Kohl and Reagan, both conservatives, agreed about everything they discussed. Kohl pledged support for Reagan's proposals on nuclear-arms reduction, and for the stationing of U.S. intermediate-range nuclear missiles on German soil next year if no agreement can be reached with the Soviets on arms reduction. The German and American leaders joined in a communique asserting that new approaches to the Kremlin depend on "Soviet conduct," especially in Afghanistan, "an acid test of Soviet readiness . . . to exercise restraint." Kohl said later of himself and Reagan: "We are on the same wave length."

Better relations with the allies are indispensable, but the relationship that will determine the course of world diplomacy is that between the U.S. and the Soviets. In the first week of the new Kremlin leadership, that crucial face-off has taken a small turn for the better. But already, there is a cacophonous counterpoint to the gentle mood music: TASS, the official Soviet news agency, huffed that Shultz's press conference indicated that the Reagan Administration remains committed to "a course of confrontation." If the new civility is not to give way once again to angry rhetoric, flexible and imaginative diplomacy will be required on both sides.

--By George J. Church.

Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow and Johanna McGeary/Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Erik Amifitheatrof/Moscow, Johanna McGeary/Washington

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