TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93HT0676> <title> 1985: When History Reaches a Peak </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1985 Highlights </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> November 25, 1985 WORLD When History Reaches a Peak </hdr> <body> Future Soviet-American relations are at stake as Reagan and Gorbachev meet By Wednesday night it will all be over. Ronald Reagan will be packing to leave for Brussels to report to NATO allies, then will hurry on to Washington to address a joint session of Congress that will be televised to a waiting nation. Mikhail Gorbachev will be getting ready to head back to the halls of the Kremlin, where he will weigh his impressions of the American leader. Soviet officials, newly savvy about influencing public opinion, and American officials, veterans in the art, will be struggling to put the proper spin on what took place in the first encounter between their two leaders--just as these officials spent the previous week trying to manipulate the expectations. After the 3,000 journalists who converged on Geneva file their final reports, after the last evening broadcasts by Dan Rather and Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw are transmitted from specially built new ground stations, it will be possible once again to get a hotel room and a table in a restaurant--and easier than ever to get an outside phone line in a city were 1,250 miles of new cables were laid for the most heavily chronicled superpower summit in history. For 40 years the world has watched with growing concern every move in the fitful drama of Soviet-American relations. As arms- control talks sputter and arsenals inexorably grow, so do the fears and, perhaps miraculously, so do the hopes. That is why Geneva was destined to be, more than any of the ten summits that have preceded it since the end of World War II, a global extravaganza, an event whose very occurrence transcended in importance whatever might be put on paper at its end. Yet for all the hoopla, the most important moment in Geneva was likely to have been the most personal and private one. On Tuesday morning at 10:05, shortly after meeting for the first time, Reagan and Gorbachev were scheduled to excuse themselves from the ceremonial opening din and sit down together in a tranquil room in the villa Fleur d'Eau with only their interpreters. No battalions of advisers, no swarms of reporters. Alone in the room with just their wits and their heavy sense of responsibility. That is when, in all likelihood, the full wonder of the moment will have most powerfully gripped them. Two humans out of 5 billion somehow chosen to carry the hopes of all, searching each other's eyes, listening to the timbre of each other's voice, looking for some familiar signal that could lead to a better way to live together on this planet. John Kennedy probably best described the realizations that come from such a moment. He was back home in Palm Beach, Fla., resting after the 1961 summit in Vienna, a daiquiri in hand, Frank Sinatra records filling the night air. He remembered Nikita Khrushchev as seeming, well, so different when the two first sat down alone. "I looked him over pretty good," Kennedy chortled. He became fascinated with his adversary's hands. They were always thumping, fiddling. They were blunt, ungraceful hands, Kennedy recalled, but strong, so quick. "You're an old country, we're a young country," blurted Khrushchev. "Look across the table," retorted Kennedy, "and you will see that we are not so old." One moment Khrushchev was a battering ram determined to end the irritation of West Berlin, a threatened democratic enclave in the midst of Communist East Germany. The next, he was country cracker, Kennedy's cigar match went wild and landed behind Khrushchev's chair. "Are you trying to set me on fire?" snorted Khrushchev. "Not at all," Kennedy assured him (though, as Kennedy later mused, the thought was tempting). "Ah ha!" answered Khrushchev. "A capitalist, not an incendiary." Echoes from that hastily conceived summit have resounded down the years. The complaints of the various Soviet bosses have been similar, their pride so predictably fragile. Kennedy thrust at the core of the problem between the leaders when on an impulse he asked Khrushchev, "Do you ever admit you're wrong?" Surprised, Khrushchev clouded up, then angrily pointed out that in the 20th Party Congress he had made his famous speech attacking the Stalin regime. "Those weren't your mistakes," said Kennedy. For the first time Khrushchev had no rejoinder, but his eyes smoldered. After Vienna, Kennedy did win a little help from the Soviets in dampening the fight in Laos, but there were no agreements on nuclear-weapons testing or on Berlin. The summit, it soon developed, was to prelude to crisis. Khrushchev sized up the young President and decided Kennedy could be challenged. The Berlin Wall followed. The Cuban missile crisis followed. Kennedy, the romantic, came away from the meeting with the conviction that the two most important ingredients in these confrontations were strength--and strength. Back in August 1968, Lyndon Johnson convened one of his Tuesday lunches to plot the Viet Nam War. These were often grim affairs, where discouraging news was ladled out with the soup. On that particular Tuesday, however, he was bubbling over with a secret. He had the stewards bring in a little "sherry wine" and pour each of his aides a glass. Then he announced that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would soon begin nuclear arms talks, and he and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin would hold a summit to seal the deal. That afternoon Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia on their brutal mission of suppression. End of dreams. Johnson had thought that his odd little meeting in Glassboro, N.J., with Kosygin a year before had created a special personal rapport. It was man to man, story for story. Kosygin told of working in a textile plant as a boy. Johnson fired back that he had been on a road gang and had chopped cotton. "You want war, we want peace," said Kosygin. "I agree with half of what you said," answered Johnson. "You want peace--so do we." They parted without a deal, and Johnson flew off to his ranch scheming how he would handle Kosygin next time. That time was not to be. Richard Nixon was born for summitry, eager to show a hostile world he was somebody. He relished the pageantry and the pomp, the feeling of being at center stage as history was made. In 1972, when his aides feared that his visit to China and the mining of Haiphong harbor would so anger the Soviets that they would never talk to him, Nixon figured differently. His long years of trekking about the world as Senator, Vice President and Pepsi-Cola hustler had given him a feel for the realities of power. His audacity and conspiratorial bent fascinated the Soviets. When Henry Kissinger arrived in Moscow to prepare for the summit, he found the Soviets awed by Nixon. After a vodka or two, important officials took Kissinger to a dim corner and probed quietly about Nixon. "He's a little crazy, is he not?" asked one. Maybe, Kissinger replied, leaving the answer hanging mysteriously. Crazy like a fox. Nixon went to Moscow with his old blue bedroom slippers, his supply of Wheaties and martini mixings, and a healthy distrust of everybody he was about to meet. When he got there he hammered out the SALT I nuclear-arms limitation treaty, the only one that survives, the first concrete step in realizing the hopes of this weary world that those hideous weapons could be restrained. There were other agreements on antibalistic missiles, safety at sea, cooperation in space. It was a stunning season of diplomacy, borne along by a singular relationship that grew up between Nixon and Communist Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev. When the two met again at Camp David in 1973, they grew even more friendly. Things went so well that Brezhnev hatched the idea that the Soviets might build their own Camp David especially for the return visit scheduled in 1974. But Brezhnev, the executor of absolute power, did not have a firm feel for the American system. He flew off praising his friend Nixon the very day that John Dean took the stand in the Senate's Watergate investigation. Jerry Ford tried heroically to pick up the torch when he flew to Vladivostok in 1974. Old Brezhnev, by that time ailing, also tried hard to fan the dying flame. Greeting the U.S. delegation at the ramp of Air Force One, Brezhnev jammed a fur hat on Ford's head, then peeled off the President's brand-new fur coat in jest. The two huddled that night as a gentle snow fell across the land, and they agreed to resume nuclear arms talks the following year. It was this Vladivostok agreement that Jimmy Carter wanted to push aside in 1977 in his evangelic zeal to substitute deep cuts in missiles and warheads. But surprises are not welcome in the programmed society of the U.S.S.R. Brezhnev, sicker than ever, angrily turned down the idea. It took Carter two years more to get back to Ford's agreement. Before he rushed off to tell the world of his SALT II achievement in Vienna's Hofburg Palace, he kissed Brezhnev on both cheeks, the way they do down in Georgia--Soviet Georgia--a kiss seen round the world. Six months later the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. An angry Sunday-school teacher is dangerous. Carter thrashed about in his despair, pulling the U.S. out of the Moscow Olympics, embargoing the sale of American grain to the Soviets, and losing the nation's confidence in his Vienna nuclear arms deal. It died in Congress. But there is in this world a craving for peace that will not die. Almost against their wills, Gorbachev and Reagan have been pulled and poked toward the summit. "I don't underestimate the difficulty of the task ahead," the President said in a televised address last week, recounting the problems his predecessors faced. "But these sad chapters do not relieve me of the obligation to try to make this a safer, better world." He proposed an expanded program of "people-to-people exchanges," spoke of "a historic opportunity" to change the course of Soviet- American relations and dubbed this trip "a mission for peace." Yet as his advisers have been doing for weeks, Reagan played down hopes that the summit would produce a major breakthrough in arms control. Now that summits are media extravaganzas, somewhat like presidential primaries, manipulating expectations is part of the walk-up. The Reagan Administration's official line was one of "tactical pessimism." The idea was to explain away in advance any failure to reach substantive accords as the fault of a new Soviet leader who, for all his pretense to the role of Great Communicator, is in fact just another dogmatic Kremlin apparatchik. For their part, the Soviets engaged in similar pre- emptive propaganda about how the Reagan Administration had all but doomed the summit's chances. The awesome responsibility that face Reagan and Gorbachev was to withdraw from this distressing clamor and, in those quiet moments by themselves, search for some genuine gesture from each other. For the good of mankind. It did not matter if it was just a look or a word; it could be a start toward something much larger. By Hugh Sidey. High Hopes, Low Expectations A TIME poll finds the U.S. eager for summit progress but wary When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, large numbers of Americans shared his determination to build up U.S. armaments and take a hard stance against Soviet expansionism. But as Reagan prepared for this week's meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva, a TIME poll showed more support for reaching an accommodation with the Soviet Union, than at any other time during his presidency. The U.S. public strongly favors making significant progress in talks with the Soviets, particularly on nuclear arms control, even while it is dubious about any likely success. Although a majority of Americans favor development of the President's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a solid 74% indicate a willingness to trade away the proposed missile-defense system for cutbacks in Soviet military power. The desire for summit deals is hedged by considerable doubt about their feasibility. The survey of 1,020 registered voters, taken Nov. 5 through Nov. 7 by Yankelovich, Skelly & White, Inc., found that while 82% of respondents believed the first summit in six years was a good idea, only 7% expected significant forward movement from the talks, and 16% forecast no progress at all. The Administration's attempts in recent weeks to dampen expectations about summit accomplishments were clearly successful. For example, 86% of those surveyed considered a mutual reduction in nuclear arms a "very important" summit goal, but only 31% thought it likely to happen. More than three- quarters of the survey respondents put a high priority on the two superpowers agreeing to stop interfering in the affairs of Nicaragua and Afghanistan, yet less than one-fifth of them thought such restraint likely to be achieved. Even if a breakthrough agreement on a vital foreign policy issue could be reached, the survey indicated considerable skepticism about whether it would work: 66% do not believe the Soviets can be trusted to keep their end of the bargain, and a surprising 28% think the U.S. is similarly unlikely to honor the fine print of a pact. Much of the dubiousness can be laid to misgivings about the two main players in Geneva and their willingness to strive, seriously for an arms-control agreement. Despite a flurry of artfully crafted public appearances. Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev remains an unknown quantity to the American public. Some 93% of the survey group admitted knowing little or nothing about the new Soviet leader; 47% of those who know at least something about Gorbachev suspect that he cannot be counted upon to honor his end of a bargain. Gorbachev's public relations efforts and his youth (by past Politburo standards) notwithstanding, a majority of Americans consider the new Soviet boss to be part of the old Kremlin leadership, no better or worse than his predecessors. More surprising are public doubts about the popular Reagan. Only 30% think the President emphasizes arms control over expansion of our nuclear arsenal, although 79% personally favor that position. Fully 50% of those surveyed believe Reagan is determined to build up America's supply of nuclear weapons, but only 12% find that a good idea. Indeed, by 25% to 21%, more voters believe Reagan's nuclear policies increase rather than decrease the threat of war. (A remarkable 46% think those policies have no effect either way.) Still, the President enjoyed solid public support as he faced off with Gorbachev: by 53% to 20%, voters view Reagan as more knowledgeable in world affairs; by 66% to 14%, they rate him more skilled in presenting his ideas; and by 58% to 9%, think him more concerned about the threat of nuclear war than his Soviet counterpart. Moreover, a solid 55% predicted that Reagan would outscore Gorbachev in world opinion. Yet 33% thought Gorbachev more likely to get his way at the summit, while only 28% predicted Reagan would prevail there. More ominously, despite general approval of the Geneva talks, 51% of Americans think U.S. involvement in a nuclear war is either somewhat likely or very likely in the next 20 years. The survey indicates a marked recent softening of anti-Soviet opinion in the U.S. In 1980, shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, Americans were divided on how the U.S. should treat the Soviet Union, with 45% favoring a cooperative policy of detente and 41% urging a cold war approach to the Soviets as potential enemies. But after four years of a costly U.S. military buildup, the proportion of Americans favoring detente has jumped to 65%, while the number of those favoring cold war tactics has dropped to 24%. Significantly, the detente approach received almost equal support from Republicans and Democrats alike. Even though a solid 55% of those questioned characterize current U.S.-Soviet relations as generally poor, the survey disclosed a startling drop in concern over the Soviet threat to this country. The proportion of Americans who believe the Soviet Union represents a very serious threat to the U.S. declined from 52% in 1983 to 32% this month. Similarly, the respondents who agreed that "the nuclear arms race is so dangerous that spending more money on nuclear arms weakens our national security rather than strengthening it" increase from 45% in 1982 to 62% this month. Some 68% believe the U.S. has sufficient nuclear weapons now. Only 22% favor more "for self-defense." Despite the sentiment for moderating the nuclear buildup, public opinion is gradually forming behind the President's expensive space-based missile-defense project. A majority think SDI will work (65%), believe it should be built (59%) and are convinced it will make the U.S. more secure (58%). Those views, however, are hardly based on exhaustive knowledge. While 88% of those surveyed claim to have heard of SDI, or Star Wars as it is often called, 69% admit they know only "a little" about it. Moreover, Star Wars creates notable splits along partisan and gender lines. Republicans plump for Star Wars 75% to 19%, while Democrats oppose it 47% to 46%. Men are overwhelming adherents of the program, 70% to 24%, women back it by a mere 47% to 44%. Nor does the increasing support mean that uneasiness about the project's usefulness has vanished. Asked whether Star Wars deployment would facilitate an arms-control agreement, 36% of the respondents replied yes and 33% answered no. Some 36% believe Star Wars would decrease the possibility of nuclear war, up from 26% in a similar survey last July; 20% believe the system would increase the chance of war, vs. 30% last July. The depth of public commitment to SDI is also suspect. Among possible goals for the summit, the survey listed, "Reaching an arms-control agreement in which the U.S. stops building the Star Wars defense system and the Soviet Union makes similar cutbacks in its military systems." A commanding 74% thought that idea to be a "very important" goal, while only 18% labeled it "not very important." If the President continues to insist that SDI offers more security than a missile cut, he will have to persuade the U.S. public as well as the Soviets of his views. The poll results underscore a remarkable anomaly in the public's reaction to Reagan, whose lusty 62% positive job-performance rating remains near its historic high. Even though the national economy has just completed three years of expansion, only 27% of respondents believe they are better off economically under Reagan, while 28% think their economic situation has deteriorated. Concern over the swollen federal deficit and U.S. economic health continue to rank first and second among problems facing the country, well ahead of the arms race and the threat of nuclear war. Yet, despite their reservations about the President's hawkish summit stance, many voters claim they feel more comfortable after five years of Reagan's defense and foreign policies. Only 16% consider themselves in greater danger militarily because of Reagan's defense and foreign policies, while a full 36% believe they are safer. Perceptions of the legacy from Geneva will doubtless affect those numbers. By David Beckwith. Countering America's Crusade Moscow presents a looking-glass version of individual liberties Leonard Peltier is not exactly a household name in the U.S. But in the Soviet Union he ranks right up there with Ronald Reagan and Michael Jackson. While the President is in Geneva, the White House will be deluged with sacks of postcards mailed by readers of the Young Communist League newspaper demanding the release of that "well-known" political prisoner. The paper called on its readers "to raise our voices in defense of the human rights and freedom of those whose only `fault' is to struggle against the genocide unleashed by U.S. authorities against the native population." Translation: in the looking-glass logic of superpower relations, Peltier, an American Indian serving two consecutive life sentences for the murder of two FBI agents, is to Soviet propagandists what dissident Physicist Andrei Sakharov is to the U.S., a symbol of flagrant disregard for human rights. The Kremlin has peppered the U.S. with scattered human rights charges ever since the Sacco and Vanzetti case of 1920. But in the maneuvering leading up to this week's summit, the denunciations have reached new heights. The campaign represents a tactical shift by Moscow; while the Soviets still maintain their traditional stony attitude about Western interference in their own "internal affairs," they are now going on the counterattack. In reply to the continued U.S. criticism of Soviet emigration policies and Reagan's recent rebukes of the oppressive nature of Soviet society, the Kremlin under Mikhail Gorbachev has taken the offensive with a rancorous propaganda drive. Its goal is to paint the U.S. as a nation teeming with human rights violations that run the gamut from unemployment to genocide. "They used to deal with human rights criticism by sitting in cold silence," says one senior Western diplomat in Moscow. "Now the new leadership are tough and embattled and intend to match our criticism with criticism of their own." Virtually every day, Soviet newspapers fulminate about rampant U.S. censorship, persecution of dissidents, forced labor, religious discrimination and telephone tapping. Film of homeless Americans sleeping on subway grates and bag ladies foraging through trash cans has become so standard on Soviet TV that at least a few viewers must be convinced that all of New York City consists of such unfortunates. Recalling the concentration camps of the Nazi era, a professor serving as a commentator for one show tells his audience, "The U.S. is going through a prison boom; camps for dissidents are hastily being built there." One heavily hammered theme has been the bombing in Philadelphia last May of the headquarters of Move, a radical cult. "American authorities recently gave the whole world a demonstration of their democracy," TASS declaimed, "when they publicly slaughtered more than a dozen black-skinned inhabitants of Philadelphia and bombed a whole city block." The Soviet press, however, omits any mention of the fact that the mayor of Philadelphia is black and that the bombing has provoked much soul-searching in addition to searing criticism and lengthy hearings and investigations. Soviet authorities employ the catch-all term, "state terrorism" to cover a multitude of human rights sins. Last week, for example, they wheeled out Vitaly Yurchenko, the fickle KGB defector, for a rather wooly and sometimes bizarre two-hour press conference in which he elaborated on his tales of kidnap and torture at the hands of the CIA. After Yurchenko reiterated his charges that he was given drugs by the CIA, a Soviet doctor compared the alleged doping "to the experiments perpetrated by the Nazis on our war prisoners." At one point, the press conference seemed to turn into a scene from an early Woody Allen movie. Rambling on about "cheap CIA tricks," Yurchenko gravely announced that the CIA "made me play golf." Worse was to come. "They also gave me a suntan," added an indignant Yurchenko, "to get rid of the green color of my skin." The Soviet approach is double-edged; along with the vituperation, they have decided to offer some concessions. On the eve of the summit, Moscow announced that it had resolved about ten controversial emigration cases by granting exit visas to a small number of its citizens. Among those now able to leave the Soviet Union are eight long-separated spouses of Americans, representing about a third of the so-called divided-spouses cases, situations in which Moscow has prohibited Soviet husbands and wives from joining their partners in the U.S. In the past Moscow has been known to offer such symbolic gestures just before the start of major negotiations to create the appearance of compromise. But some of those involved were skeptical. "Until I hold [an exit visa] in my hands, I won't believe it," said Irina McClellan, 47, who married an American professor 11 1/2 years ago. On occasion even that has been insufficient. In 1974 the Kremlin granted exit vistas to the family of Abe Stolar, 67, a Moscow resident who holds dual U.S.-Soviet citizenship. But the KGB removed them from an outward-bound plane just before takeoff. As with virtually every issue dividing the two superpowers, human rights are defined differently by the Soviets and the Americans. While the U.S. emphasizes the rights of the individual, such as freedom of speech and religion, the Soviets stress the notion that individual rights are contingent upon the rights of the collective. They regard full employment, housing and comprehensive health care as the fulfillment of basic human rights; less tangible rights are barely considered. A Soviet law professor was quoted in TASS as saying, "About 9 million unemployed in the United States is evidence of the gross violation of international human rights in that country." Ironically, it is the Soviets, all the while castigating American capitalism, who view human rights in a materialistic rather than a political way. The 1975 Helsinki accords, signed by Washington and Moscow as well as 33 other nations, committed those nations to "respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief." Often citing this document, Jimmy Carter turned America's concern for individual freedoms into a high-visibility moral crusade. Although Reagan has not been as vocal as Carter in condemning human rights violations, he will not be silent at the negotiating table. After years of stonewalling references to Helsinki's human rights provisions, the Soviets now frequently invoke them when accusing America of abuses, creating a distorted mirror image of U.S. human rights policy. As Pravda recently wrote, "The U.S. today is the biggest country in the world where the oppression of millions of people is camouflaged by unrestricted demagogy about "freedom." The offensive has probably been effective in changing perceptions about the U.S. among some Soviet citizens; its goal of taking the edge off Washington's charges about Moscow's alleged violations is still remote. Washington so far has not reacted to the stepped-up campaign, maintaining an aloof disdain for the Soviet charges, and is quietly relieved that the Soviets are talking about human rights at all. Notes one senior U.S. official: "Everybody here can judge this country's approach to the enhancement of human rights, and they can judge the other side's. We'll let those judgments rest." The offensive may come back to haunt the Soviets. While it is intended to put the U.S. on the defensive, it also opens the way for a closer look at the issue of human rights, an examination that the U.S. can only welcome. By Richard Stengel. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington and James O. Jackson/Moscow. </body> </article> </text>