TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/052289/05228900.045

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 10.3 KB | 197 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 33

Madison Avenue, Moscow


As Baker sits tight, Gorbachev wins another public relations
round


    By now, one might think, Washington would have wised up.
Again and again, Mikhail Gorbachev has grabbed headlines and
impressed world opinion by making catchy, if often
propagandistic, arms-control offers. So it would behoove any
American official who sits down with the Soviet leader to be
prepared for surprises -- preferably with a fresh and appealing
U.S. initiative.

    Secretary of State James Baker and his colleagues in the
Bush Administration would have none of that. Convinced that
Gorbachev will make concession after concession if the U.S. sits
tight, Baker deliberately carried no significant new ideas to
Moscow last week for the most important superpower meeting since
the new Administration took office. Instead, he arrived
determined to "put a Bush stamp" on U.S.-Soviet relations by
swinging the spotlight toward regional issues and away from arms
control altogether.

    Predictably, Gorbachev fired off another of his patented
bombshells -- this time, a proposal for dramatic cuts in
conventional forces in Europe, coupled with an announcement of
a unilateral, though small, reduction in short-range nuclear
weapons. Both were crafted to appeal to U.S. allies, notably
West Germany, that have been pressing Washington at least to
negotiate about reducing the numbers of short-range nukes.
According to some reports, Gorbachev assured Baker that his plan
was not a political ploy, but Baker replied, "It certainly is."

    The Secretary of State had little else to say: he promised
to consult the allies about the offer, praised the short-range
nuclear cut as a "good step, but a small step," and refused to
countenance any kind of negotiations on short-range nuclear
forces (SNF). Once again the U.S. was made to look slow and
unimaginative -- and once more it might be missing a chance to
reduce tensions. The failure was all the more remarkable because
some of Gorbachev's ideas have relatively little military
significance. His unilateral reduction of 500 short-range
nuclear weapons would come to about 5% of perhaps 10,000 the
Soviets have available in Europe, and would leave the U.S.S.R.
still enjoying a huge advantage over about 4,000 NATO nukes.

    But the conventional-arms reductions that Gorbachev
proposed are striking enough: hundreds of thousands of troops
on each side and, by Moscow's arithmetic -- which does not come
close to agreeing with NATO figures -- slashes of about
two-thirds in the number of Warsaw Pact tanks, armored vehicles
and artillery pieces. After the reductions, which would be much
heavier on the Soviet than the U.S. side, NATO and Warsaw Pact
troops and weaponry would supposedly be equalized by 1996-97 at
a level a bit below that now fielded by NATO. Still, Gorbachev
essentially only filled in the details on a proposal made by
Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in March, moving
closer to NATO's negotiating positions and repackaging them as
his own. While he was at it, Gorbachev tossed in a hook. He
called for a 55% slash in NATO helicopters and fighter aircraft,
an idea the U.S. is certain to oppose strenuously.

    What really distinguished the Soviet move was its adroit
timing. It came just a day before George Bush was to deliver
his first major speech on U.S.-Soviet relations and 18 days
before a NATO summit meeting at which the alliance will be hard
pressed to heal the U.S.-West German split over SNF
negotiations. Moscow moved swiftly, and with apparent success,
to keep the rift open. Shevardnadze used a scheduled trip to
Bonn Friday afternoon for meetings with German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher to tout the
Soviet proposal. He added a touch of salt to the new Soviet
sweetness, warning that if the U.S. expands the reach of its
short-range launchers as planned, the Soviet reaction might be
to develop a new short-range rocket of its own.

    Afterward, Kohl denied any intention of completely getting
rid of nuclear weapons, a prime fear of the U.S., which deems
them necessary to offset Soviet superiority in conventional
forces. But the Chancellor added, "I think we are on the right
path" in demanding early negotiations.

    The Secretary of State, who appeared surprised at
Gorbachev's proposals as he flew out of Moscow, sought to
downplay them as much as he could. He repeated that the U.S. saw
no point in SNF negotiations until the imbalance between Soviet
and U.S. short-range nuclear weapons is reduced by much more
than 500, and he claimed that the U.S. has long been urging the
Kremlin to make some unilateral cuts. On conventional forces,
too, Washington asserted that Moscow was replying to American
proposals.

    Nor did the White House see any reason to make changes in
Bush's Friday speech. The President spoke not just of easing
tensions but of superpower "friendship." Said Bush: "The United
States now has as its goal much more than simply containing
Soviet expansionism -- we seek the integration of the Soviet
Union into the community of nations." But, confirming what his
lieutenants had been saying privately, Bush put the onus on the
Soviet Union to make further moves to bring that happy state
about. "A new relationship cannot be simply declared by Moscow
or bestowed by others," he said. "It must be earned."

    The President ticked off a long series of actions that
Moscow must take ("tear down the Iron Curtain . . . achieve a
lasting political pluralism and respect for human rights" inside
the Soviet Union) to earn U.S. trust. By contrast, he offered
little in the way of U.S. action. He revived and expanded the
"open skies" proposal advanced 34 years ago by Dwight
Eisenhower. Under it, each side would let the other's unarmed
reconnaissance planes, and now satellites, fly over its
territory.

    More important, Bush offered to work with Congress for a
"temporary waiver" of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which
sharply restricts U.S.-Soviet trade unless the Kremlin allows
free emigration of Soviet Jews and other citizens. The
condition: the Kremlin must write into Soviet law liberalized
definitions of who can leave the Soviet Union.

    It will take more to paste the NATO alliance back into a
unified negotiating posture. Briefing the 15 allies in
Brussels, Baker did win a communique that termed the Soviet
offer of unilateral cuts in short-range nukes "a welcome,
positive, but rather modest step." It noted, correctly, that
NATO forces have unilaterally removed 2,400 nuclear weapons from
their arsenals in the past decade, aggravating an "unwarranted
superiority" on the Warsaw Pact side. (Actually, NATO did so
mostly because the weapons were obsolete.)

    Behind the scenes in Brussels, there was considerable
unease. Even British officials expressed frustration that the
country that gave the world Madison Avenue could not seem to
wrest the public relations initiative from Gorbachev. As they
and many others see it, the Soviet leader is playing an
effective double game by trying to exploit splits in NATO and
deepen world yearning for peace: despite their high propaganda
content, his offers could serve as the basis for fruitful
negotiation. But Bush insisted at week's end that there is "no
such war" as a p.r. war. "I want to win the peace war."

    Still, even in the U.S., some officials saw more than
public relations in Gorbachev's latest proposals. A State
Department official described the conventional-forces reduction
ideas as "serious and detailed." He noted that they call for
deep cuts in precisely those Soviet weapons -- tanks and armored
personnel carriers -- that would be most useful for an invasion
of Western Europe and also in the NATO arms -- helicopters and
strike aircraft -- that most worry the Warsaw Pact.

    Baker did make one arms-control proposal, but it seemed pro
forma. He suggested that negotiations for a 50% slash in
long-range strategic nuclear weapons resume in Geneva on June
12 or 19. The Soviets accepted but scoffed at Baker's request
that the long-suspended negotiations run for only six weeks
before a summer recess. Said Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi
Gerasimov: "We think our negotiators have had enough holidays.
We have lost a lot of time. While diplomats are on vacation,
arms are piling up."

    On other matters, Baker made surprising progress. In four
meetings with Shevardnadze before and after his 3 1/2-hour
session with Gorbachev Thursday, Baker asked Moscow to reduce
its $500 million in military aid to Nicaragua's Sandinista
government. Shevardnadze's response: Well, maybe -- now that the
U.S. has switched to a diplomatic approach in Central America
rather than financing war waged by the contra rebels. Baker
assured Shevardnadze that the U.S., in a policy switch, would
no longer try to keep the Soviets from playing a role in a
possible Middle East settlement; Shevardnadze in turn did not
flatly reject Israel's U.S.-backed plan to hold elections among
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Baker further
sought to introduce into the U.S.-Soviet dialogue a new class
of "transnational" issues -- pollution, drugs, terrorism -- on
which ideology should pose no bar to cooperation. As a small
first step, he and Shevardnadze signed an agreement on joint
efforts to control pollution in the Bering and Chukchi seas,
near Alaska. All that was swiftly overshadowed once Gorbachev,
an hour into his meeting with Baker in the Kremlin, announced
that "the whole world wants this" and began detailing his
arms-cut proposals.

    The danger in Baker's let-them-keep-making-concessions
approach is that it may feed the impression in Western Europe
and much of the world that the U.S. finds confrontation and cold
war more familiar and therefore more comfortable than the
strange new world of disarmament and cooperation that Gorbachev
incessantly touts, with however much exaggeration and however
many hidden hooks. The whole world really does want a reduction
in the arms that threaten its existence, and Washington must do
far more than it has to convince its allies and its own people
that the U.S. seeks that result no less than the shrewd Soviet
leader.