Diplomacy A Superpower at the Abyss

By RICHARD NIXON

As his country slipped deeper into domestic chaos, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev last week unveiled an "anti-crisis program" designed to reassert Moscow's central control and curb the spreading economic and political unrest. In a speech long on apocalyptic warnings and exhortations to discipline -- but, as usual, short on fresh ideas -- the President called for a moratorium on strikes and demonstrations to be coupled with additional measures to stabilize the economy. Gorbachev threatened tough action against republics that refused to cooperate, but he offered no specifics on how he planned to enforce his program.

Gorbachev's speech was immediately greeted with two acts of naked defiance. Georgia became the first republic outside the Baltics to declare outright independence. The next day tens of thousands of workers in Minsk, the capital of once quiescent Belorussia, answered the call for a strike moratorium by walking off the job, joining the estimated 300,000 miners on strike. The cost of these labor disruptions is already estimated to run into the billions. This can only worsen a budget deficit that has in the first quarter already exceeded the government's projection for the entire year by more than 4 billion rubles, owing to a shortfall in contributions from the republics.

Two weeks ago, Richard Nixon had the opportunity to observe firsthand the country that now appears, even in the view of its embattled leader, to be on the brink of catastrophe.

In our meeting in the Kremlin, Mikhail Gorbachev assured me that his current turn toward the reactionaries is just a temporary detour. But the evidence is overwhelming that he is leading the U.S.S.R. toward the abyss. In the absence of radical reform, the Soviet Union will become an irrelevant and crippled empire -- a nuclear superpower with a Third World economy, unable to play a major role on the world stage. This is good news in one sense because it means a declining Soviet threat. But it is also bad news because, as I told Gorbachev in 1986 and again in our recent meeting, the security of one nuclear superpower cannot be built on the insecurity of the other. We need the U.S.S.R. as a reliable international partner in building a new world order.

During my recent visit I found a mood of depression unlike anything I had ever encountered before. Previously I had seen people living in poverty and fear, but they still had some hope the system could work. Now there is an absence of fear but an absence of hope as well. The communist regime is totally discredited. The Soviet economy is collapsing.

Gorbachev seems unable to realize that there is no halfway house between a command system and a free market, and that there can be no successful private enterprise without private ownership. He is unable to cut the umbilical cord to the Marxist-Leninist philosophy that has nurtured him all his life.

His insensitivity to nationalist sentiments and his rejection of the legitimate aspirations of the Soviet republics have aggravated the secessionist tendencies that are now tearing the country apart.

In his heavy-handed approach to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Gorbachev has alienated many of his former reformist allies. At the other end of the spectrum, the reactionaries charge him with insufficient ruthlessness to implement an effective crackdown. All sides accuse him of being unreliable, * weak, indecisive -- a talker rather than a doer. The unkindest cut I heard was from one former ally who called him a "cruel wimp."

Gorbachev is left with no genuine political base of his own, and his flip- flops have damaged what is left of his credibility. His reform-minded advisers, like Eduard Shevardnadze and Alexander Yakovlev, have either deserted him or been deserted by him. His small circle of advisers is now composed mostly of yes-men, who tell him what he wants to hear rather than what he needs to know, and communist functionaries, who are nostalgic for the superficial stability and artificial imperial glory of the Soviet totalitarian past.

Some of Gorbachev's supporters told me that his alliance with the reactionaries is only a marriage of convenience. However, such marriages often produce unwanted children. Already we see ominous restrictions on glasnost, as well as emergency police measures such as bans on demonstrations and strikes. As a result, the democratization of recent years is being reversed.

Gorbachev took pride in ending the Soviet obsession with what he termed the "enemy image." Yet he is now resorting to the old habit of blaming Soviet failures on unnamed Western opponents and "troublemakers."

Gorbachev feels he has no choice but to seek the help of the reactionaries to stabilize the situation, particularly the dangerous deterioration of the economy, before giving his reforms another push. But he must realize -- and realize soon -- that stability at the cost of freedom is too high a price to pay because it means no progress, while freedom at the cost of some instability is a price worth paying in order to achieve progress.

Not surprisingly, he appeared less dynamic and optimistic than he did five years ago. But his formidable intellectual skills and instincts as a political survivor remain intact. It is not too late for Gorbachev the reactionary to become Gorbachev the reformer once again.

He has shown before that he is capable of 180-degree turns. This is the same leader who declared he would never let East Germany join West Germany or let a unified Germany remain in NATO. It is the same leader who vowed he would never abandon the Communist Party's monopoly on power in the Soviet Union.

We can hope he will reverse himself again. Meanwhile, it would be a serious mistake for the U.S. to tie all its hopes for a good relationship with the Soviet Union to one man -- even one as remarkable as Gorbachev. We must face the reality that his power is slipping away from him.

On each of my previous six visits to the U.S.S.R., I had discussions with only the top man -- Nikita Khrushchev in 1959, Leonid Brezhnev in 1972 and 1974, Gorbachev in 1986. This time I had meetings not only with Gorbachev but with the chairman of the KGB, the ministers of Defense, Foreign Affairs and the Interior. I also met with Boris Yeltsin and other top opposition figures in Moscow as well as with their counterparts in Lithuania, the Ukraine and Georgia. Power is being dispersed; there are now, in a way that was unthinkable a short time ago, competing constituencies.

I have seen firsthand the degree to which some of the republics have been able to gain control over their internal affairs. They are attempting to develop foreign policies of their own as well. This is true not only in the Baltic republics and Georgia, which are seeking complete independence from the Soviet Union, but also in the Ukraine, where the communist government is refusing to take orders from Moscow.

These developments require an unambiguous, positive American response. As inconvenient as it may be in terms of conventional diplomacy, the U.S. should start immediately to build political, economic and cultural bridges to the newly assertive republics.

This is particularly true with the largest of the republics, Russia. I met with Yeltsin, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, for over an hour with only his interpreter present. After being led to expect a lightweight and a demagogue, I quickly realized how inaccurate media reports and assessments by Establishment diplomats can be. The Russian leader projects steely determination and strength of conviction. He has the physical magnetism that is so important for an effective politician. He is not as intellectual and sophisticated as Gorbachev, but he is still a political heavyweight. Gorbachev appeals to the head, Yeltsin to the heart; Gorbachev dazzles his listeners, Yeltsin moves them. If, as some of his critics claim, Yeltsin were seeking power for its own sake, he could be a very dangerous dictator. Fortunately, his critics are wrong.

I'm not surprised that the American media, with their tendency to put style over substance, prefer Gorbachev to Yeltsin. But in evaluating Yeltsin we should focus on what he stands for rather than his personal style. Yeltsin totally repudiates the communist philosophy; Gorbachev does not. Yeltsin supports private ownership; Gorbachev does not. Yeltsin would give immediate independence to the Baltics; Gorbachev would not. Yeltsin would cut all Soviet aid to Cuba, Afghanistan, Angola and other Third World losers; Gorbachev would not. Yeltsin seeks a mandate to rule by winning a free election; Gorbachev will not take that risk.

Most significant, Yeltsin's advisers, some of whom used to advise Gorbachev, are more able than the reactionaries who counsel Gorbachev today. They are the best hope for reform.

I am not saying that the U.S. should start interfering in Soviet internal affairs and side with Yeltsin against Gorbachev. The U.S. must continue to deal with whoever is in charge of the other nuclear superpower's foreign policy. Today that happens to be Gorbachev, and for the time being there is no alternative to him.

But at the same time we can and should strengthen our contacts at all levels with the reformers in Russia and the other republics. Gorbachev will not like that. But we must remember that he needs us far more than we need him.

The future of U.S.-Soviet ties is organically linked to the fate of reforms inside the U.S.S.R. Supporting reform is morally right. It is also very much in America's national interest. Ironically, it is in Gorbachev's interest as well. If we support the reformers, they will be better able to bring pressure to bear on Gorbachev to realign himself with them, to end his current detour and return the country to the road of reform.

Gorbachev must abandon the unholy alliance that he has formed with the reactionaries. If he sticks with them, he may save his position of power but lose his place in history. It would be tragic if he were to suffer the fate of so many reformers in the past: those who plant the seeds of reform seldom reap the harvest.