TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/052289/05228900.045

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 10KB | 184 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.