TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/100289/10028900.012

Text File | 1990-09-18 | 5.3 KB | 104 lines

WORLD, Page 24

Fresh Air, Fresh Ideas

The Soviets are raring to go, but the U.S. isn't


    The U.S. is panicked at what the Soviets may say yes to." That
comment from Jack Mendelsohn, deputy director of the Arms Control
Association, may sound a bit exaggerated. But when Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze brought a letter from Mikhail
Gorbachev to Washington last week, it had U.S. officials worried.
What if it contained some bold proposals? That might force a
curiously hesitant Administration to decide how far and how fast
it wants to go toward nuclear-weapons agreements -- or even to make
up its mind on what, if anything, it should do to help Gorbachev
survive.

    As it happened, Gorbachev proposed nothing startling but plenty
to intrigue negotiators. His letter was a grab bag of proposals
covering the whole gamut of arms control. All told, they suggested
not just Soviet cooperation but an extraordinary readiness to
compromise to give stalled arms negotiations fresh momentum.
Standout example: Moscow withdrew its insistence that curbs on
space weapons must be linked to slashes in the number of long-range
nuclear missiles.

    Yet, oddly enough, arms control seemed almost peripheral in
the wide-ranging talks Shevardnadze had with President Bush at the
White House and with Secretary of State James Baker during two days
amid the majestic scenery of Jackson Hole in Wyoming's Teton
mountains. They agreed to hold a summit in late spring in the U.S.
But the most astonishing talk concerned the Soviet Union's internal
troubles, an unheard-of topic for superpower discussion.

    On the four-hour flight from Washington to Wyoming,
Shevardnadze gave Baker a detailed rundown on Moscow's problems
with its economy and restive nationalities. The two men took off
their jackets and leaned so close together that their faces were
just inches apart. Shevardnadze's tone was urgent. "We need fresh
ideas," he told reporters. "It is high time for us to move from
mutual understanding to mutual action."

    The U.S. has little useful advice for Moscow's ethnic revolts.
But Shevardnadze made it clear he was in search of American
technical know-how for the ailing Soviet economy. Together with
several U.S. and Soviet economists, the pair chewed over such
specifics as ruble convertibility and Soviet Treasury bonds. "There
is a change in the psychology of how they are prepared to talk
about themselves and in their attitude toward us," said a Baker
aide. "There is a degree of trust emerging."

    But if the Soviets are "raring to go," said a senior U.S.
official, "we're not so raring." That has begun to disturb not only
the Soviets but many American foreign policy specialists and
Congressmen as well. They fear the Administration is passing up a
historic opportunity to move beyond the superpower confrontation
and risking the danger that if Gorbachev is not helped, he will
fall and be replaced by a hard-liner. Senate majority leader George
Mitchell charged last week that Bush and company seem "almost
nostalgic about the cold war." To many, the Bush team seems
stubbornly reluctant to move beyond what the President calls a
"show me" attitude.

    In part, this attitude reflects Bush's deeply ingrained caution
about doing "something dumb," as Baker put it last week. It also
suits the hard-line doubters, like NSC deputy Robert Gates,
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Vice President Dan Quayle, who
think Gorbachev is only a short-timer and the Soviet Union will
never really change.

    There are practical as well as ideological impediments to
moving more dramatically to help out the Soviets. Expanded aid to
Eastern Europe, for example, could conflict with Bush's
no-new-taxes pledge. And officials rightly insist that the
Administration has few moves that would really improve Soviet
conditions. Presidential aides defend their policy as a kind of
diplomatic semaphore: carefully calibrated gestures to convey that
Washington wants perestroika to succeed and will reward progress.
`It's a clear signal to the Soviets," says a top official. "You
change and we'll change."

    Nonetheless, even if the U.S. can exercise only a marginal
influence on Soviet events, it ought to use what clout it does
possess. Bush should:

    Start a round of regular summits. Things happen when the bosses
talk that do not otherwise.

    Drive harder for arms deals. Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev were
close to a START deal to cut nuclear arsenals in half. There seems
little reason Bush could not wrap one up, though he might link it
to proposed cuts in conventional forces.

    Offer food aid to the Soviets and allow them to enter the U.S.
market on terms equal to those offered most other nations.
Additional food might help Gorbachev more than anything else

    Expand aid to Poland and Hungary. The U.S. is trying to signal
the Kremlin that if it pushes internal reforms "it could all be
yours," as one official puts it.

    None of this may ease Gorbachev's troubles much; in the end,
the U.S. cannot solve them for him. But his fall could cause such
instability within the Soviet Union, and beyond, that it would be
nearly as disastrous for the U.S. as it would be for the U.S.S.R.,
and so Washington should do whatever it can to avert such a
calamity.