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- <text id=89TT1355>
- <title>
- May 22, 1989: Madison Avenue, Moscow
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- May 22, 1989 Politics, Panama-Style
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 33
- Madison Avenue, Moscow
- </hdr><body>
- <p>As Baker sits tight, Gorbachev wins another public relations
- round
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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."
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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."
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.)
- </p>
- <p> 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."
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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."
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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