Roadblocks en Route to a Superpower Summit

By Strobe Talbott

"It takes two to tango." That is how Ronald Reagan once described the condition necessary for cooperation with the Soviet Union. The tango is just the right metaphor for diplomacy. It is performed in the formal setting of a ballroom, to the vigorous but stately measure of 4/4 time, with a good deal of melodramatic posturing and a great variety of steps. But for the past few years, any kind of dance has been just the wrong metaphor for Soviet-American relations. The two superpowers have been circling each other warily, sometimes menacingly. If they came together, many feared, it would be to fight. Now, suddenly, there is a faint hint of tango music in the air.

The Soviets have let a handful of their Siberian Pentecostals go; they are looking, or pretending to look (it is still hard to tell which) for a way of pulling their occupation troops out of Afghanistan. The Reagan Administration, in addition to cautiously welcoming these and other Soviet steps, is making a few of its own: resuming consular negotiations and sending a delegation off to Moscow to negotiate "confidence-building measures," like upgrading the hot line. The two countries have agreed on a major sale of U.S. grain to the Soviet Union. The State Department is musing about how to engage the Soviets in mutual restraint and perhaps even joint diplomatic initiatives in the Third World, particularly southern Africa. Both leaderships recognize that unremitting hostility is wasteful and dangerous. Yuri Andropov's Politburo is trying to figure out what to do about social and economic stagnation; it is preoccupied with the pacification of Poland and its "peace offensive" in Western Europe. Those campaigns are harder to wage if international tensions are on the rise. Reagan has a budget deficit to trim, an unruly Congress to assuage and an election to contest. A summit with Andropov would help him outflank the Democrats on the war-and-peace issue. But the question still nags: What business can be transacted at a summit? Both leaderships have disclaimed any interest at all in a getting-to-know-you session. And they are right to do so. The combination of Reagan's extraordinary charm and political street smarts, which stands him in good stead with allied leaders and helps compensate for his relative innocence in world affairs, would neither interest nor impress Andropov. Personality would not be on the agenda.

Neither would Soviet prestige. Some European officials and some members of the Reagan Administration have convinced themselves that Andropov is aching for a summit as a kind of status symbol, to prove his legitimacy as Leonid Brezhnev's successor and to underscore the Soviet Union's standing as an equal of the U.S. Yet it is just as plausible that Andropov is under pressure to prove to his hard-line comrades that he is tough enough to hold out for a summit on his own terms. Nor is it realistic to think that a productive summit can be convened around what are essentially secondary issues in the relationship, such as whether to open new consulates or install touch-tone dialing on the hot line. Those matters have their significance, but only when they are part of an overall improvement in relations. Similarly, high-level dialogue on cooperation in the Third World is possible only when there is a modicum of harmony between the First and Second. That depends on the core issue, which is the management of the military competition.

And that in turn depends largely on the state of nuclear arms control. There Soviet-American relations are still very bad, and they could get a lot worse before the year is out.

The most important and immediate point of contention is the installation later this year of American Pershing II ballistic and Tomahawk cruise missiles in Western Europe. The U.S. and its NATO allies quite justifiably insist on the right to deploy new weapons in Europe to redress the military imbalance resulting from the Soviet buildup in recent years, especially the arrival on the scene of some 360 SS-20 ballistic missiles, each with three warheads. The Soviets, quite outrageously but very stubbornly, have made it a cornerstone of their policy that NATO has no such right; not a single new long-range missile may be added to the arsenal of the West without upsetting the balance that Moscow spuriously claims already exists. Yet Washington is determined to begin deployment by the end of the year, thus keeping to a schedule that the Western alliance set for itself in December 1979, when NATO embarked on its two-track approach: preparing to modernize its arsenal and negotiating with the Soviets.

The assumption in Washington has been that only when Moscow accepts the reality of new missiles in Western Europe will it negotiate seriously at the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) talks in Geneva. The Administration anticipates that deployment will trigger Soviet concessions and restore allied self-confidence. But what if deployment leads to an unhappier result, triggering instead an escalation in Soviet obstreperousness and, consequently, in West European nervousness?

As the December deadline draws closer, the Kremlin has been bearing down on two threats that lately have been sounding less like bluffs and more like promises: if deployment goes ahead on schedule, there will be 1) Soviet "military countermeasures" that would further upset the East-West balance, thus presumably requiring counter-countermeasures on the part of the West; and 2) a Soviet walkout from both the INF and strategic arms reduction talks (START) in Geneva.

Up to now, the inclination in Washington has been to downplay both halves of the Soviet ultimatum. According to this attitude, the U.S.S.R.'s military countermeasures will turn out to be more political bark than military bite. As for a Soviet walkout in Geneva, that would be crazy, say many American officials. The Soviets would stomp out of the talks looking like the spoilers. That would put the lie to their advertisements for themselves as infinitely patient good guys in the eyes of Europe.

Some in the Administration are confidently predicting that when the moment of truth arrives, the Soviets will find a way of avoiding a walkout or at least of limiting it to a token temper tantrum, a brief pout before getting back to the bargaining table. Another fashionable view in Washington right now is that regardless of their extreme distaste for the Reagan Administration, the Soviet leaders are pragmatic enough to realize that they need a breakthrough in the arms talks at least as much as the U.S. does, and that they probably stand to get a better deal before November 1984 than after that. Why? Because Reagan is looking formidable, perhaps unbeatable in next year's election. Therefore the Kremlin is more likely to negotiate an agreement that suits its own purposes some time during the next 15 months, while Reagan is a candidate who needs to impress the voters with his statesmanship, rather than later, when he is a second-term President with the election safely behind him. There is talk of "the 1972 precedent": Richard Nixon was able to go to a summit in Moscow and sign the SALT I accords in an election year, when he was doing a number of things that made the Soviets furious, such as cozying up to the Chinese and mining and bombing the U.S.S.R.'s ally North Viet Nam.

But this may turn out to be a highly selective and perhaps misleading use of history. There is a big difference between Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984. For one thing, Nixon was the Kremlin's candidate. Brezhnev & Co. had seen the arch cold warrior transformed into the champion of detente, and they wanted him reelected. Reagan will surely not have that dubious endorsement next year. The Soviets had hopes that Reagan would undergo a Nixonian metamorphosis, but they probably have no such hopes any longer. Regardless of his tactical and rhetorical readjustments of late, they see him as the most hostile, dangerous American President they have faced since the end of World War II. At almost every level, Soviet spokesmen insist that they will not allow a summit to take place if its principal consequence is to help Reagan politically.

Also, the momentum of Soviet-American relations between 1969 and 1972 was toward a summit and a treaty. That is not the case now. Despite the change in climate and a certain amount of course correction on both sides in recent months, Soviet-American relations are still in a state of drift, and below the surface, they are not drifting toward a summit. On the contrary, over the INF issue alone, they could be drifting toward a crisis. The two tracks of the 1979 NATO decision may end up leading to a spectacular collision, in which arms control crashes into deployment. That could mean the derailment of both enterprises, since an end of the talks could further undercut the already shaky support in Europe for new weapons.

The American approach now is to hope for the best (a summit and an agreement), but to make sure that if the worst occurs (a collapse of the negotiations), the Soviets will be seen as the ones to blame. The trouble is that the West Europeans may not be satisfied any longer with an American policy whose principal accomplishment is to establish Soviet guilt for the failure of a negotiation. They want an agreement, and they want more flexibility than the U.S. has shown to date in its INF proposals. That certainly goes for the all-important West Germans.

There is considerable, and very understandable, resistance in the Administration to the notion that West European political forces should determine American military actions. How far can we let European fears push us? The answer, alas, is quite far indeed when the weapons in question are to be installed on European real estate. Chancellor Helmut Kohl has been admirably stalwart in his support of U.S. arms-control policy and rearmament efforts alike. If some further adjustment of the U.S. negotiating position would help him keep his domestic opposition at bay, then it makes sense to give it to him.

The original zero option would have required the Soviets to dismantle every last one of their SS-20s, from one end of the U.S.S.R. to the other, in exchange for cancellation of the NATO package. Earlier this year, Reagan offered a less drastic trade: a scaled-down NATO deployment for a scaled-back SS-20 force. But the U.S. is still insisting that SS-20s in the Far East, aimed at Japan and China, be treated as part of the Euromissile deal, since they could be moved westward in a crisis. As part of a final offer before the new American missiles arrive in December, the U.S. might improve the plausibility of its negotiating position and thus minimize the backlash against deployment in Germany by seeking reductions only in SS-20s targeted on Europe and settling for a freeze on those in Asia.

Another possibility would be for the U.S. to be prepared to sacrifice the Pershing II and deploy only cruise missiles in exchange for dramatic reductions in the European SS-20 force and other Soviet concessions (including an end to Soviet insistence on limiting British and French nuclear forces under an agreement). That was the nub of the now famous walk-in-the-woods formula that chief INF Negotiator Paul Nitze worked out privately with his Soviet counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky, a year ago. Both men were overruled by their home offices on the grounds that they had given away too much. The Reagan Administration felt it could not live without the Pershing II. Critics argue that the decision was shortsighted, both militarily and politically. Since the Pershing II is, like the SS-20, a ballistic missile, the Administration has been reluctant to give it up and rely solely on cruise missiles to counter the remaining SS-20s. But other ballistic missiles already in the U.S. strategic arsenal can cover the same targets as the Pershing II. Moreover, by refusing to back the deal, Washington missed a chance to put the onus for its collapse on the Soviets. The Administration may have a second chance now. The West Germans are promoting a revival of the plan, and the Soviets are saying they would "discuss" it. Their half of the discussion is likely to be another nyet, but there is only one way to find out. A firm Soviet rejection of a formal American walk-in-the-woods proposal would be bad news for the negotiations but might help bolster support for deployment.

Meanwhile, the Soviets have been probing for some indication that the U.S. might yet accept "the postponement option": defer deployment, if only for a few months, to give the negotiators more time. Absolutely not, says virtually every responsible American official. Postponement is tantamount to cancellation, and therefore it is not an option at all. The Soviets by now have good reason to conclude that deployment will indeed take place. Yet far from positioning themselves in a way that would allow them to compromise at the last minute in INF, they have continued to drop dark hints of a walkout and a buildup.

Just in the past few weeks, Soviet officials have sounded variations on the following theme: for just over 20 years, the superpowers have lived under an arrangement whereby neither side stationed long-range missiles in proximity to the other's territory; if the U.S. upsets that balance, there would have to be both a political and a military response. The mention of 20 years is a reference to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The Soviets seem to be putting the U.S. on notice that they regard 1983 ("the Year of the Missile," the State Department calls it) as offering them an opportunity--indeed, imposing on them an obligation--to make amends for 1962.

John Kennedy agreed to remove from Europe forerunners of the Pershing II, while Nikita Khrushchev removed from Cuba the forerunners of the SS-20. That exchange was largely cosmetic. The U.S. had been planning to pull its missiles out of Europe anyway, for its own political and military reasons, while Khrushchev had tried to introduce his missiles in Cuba and, naturally, had intended to leave them there.

In one of the most famous remarks of superpower brinkmanship, Dean Rusk remarked, as Soviet ships steamed home from Cuba with the rockets on their decks, "We're eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked." In negotiating the understanding that ended the crisis, Andrei Gromyko's deputy, Vasily Kuznetsov, said sternly to his American counterpart, John McCloy, "You Americans will never be able to do this to us again." It was largely the humiliation of that episode that impelled the Soviet Union to undertake its 20-year buildup, of which the SS-20 program is one of the most troublesome manifestations.

Now it looks as though the Soviets may be bent on turning the Year of the Missile into a replay of the Cuban missile crisis, at least in its symbolic dimension, as a clash of wills between the superpowers. While this does not necessarily mean a return to the brink of nuclear war, it certainly does not augur well for an agreement that would secure the nuclear peace, nor for a summit at which such an agreement might be signed. --By Strobe Talbott This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.