1/12/82

New York Times Article

It was five weeks after martial law was declared in Poland that the foreign ministers of NATO assembled in Council to plan their "response." Thousands of Solidarity leaders had meanwhile shivered in concentration camps; strikes had been broken; Poles who looked West had discerned no sign of succor and little understanding; yet the German Chancellor did not even consider the imposition of martial law in Poland of sufficient gravity to interrupt a visit to East Germany, clearly planned to lull him about the planned crackdown, to say nothing of cancelling his vacation in the Florida sun.

Nothing has exposed the true state of the Atlantic alliance so ruthlessly as the vacuousness of the Western reaction to Poland. The lack of a consensus on security magnified the near panic in the face of Soviet military power. The absence of clarity on East-West relations has destroyed the balance between strength and conciliation. Negotiations which should be seen as part of a comprehensive strategy have become ends in themselves. Trade and economic

relations hips originally conceived as providing incentives for Soviet restraint are becoming instruments of Soviet blackmail used not by us but against us. The West seems clearly less prepared to interrupt it than Moscow.

It would be some small comfort if this state of affairs could at least be laid to European hesitations. Europe's leaders have little to be proud of. But neither, if we are candid with ourselves, have we. European fecklessness is in the process of becoming an alibi. It is not a cause.

From the first day of the repression of Poland, arguments for inaction cascaded forth--and if we are truthful with ourselves, not only from Europe. At first we were warned that we must not respond too vigorously or history would blame us if the Polish people decided to resist. It was said that the response of the West should be measured in order not to destroy the possibility of eventual tolerance for some diversity held out by the early proclamations of the Polish military government. Then restraint was urged to remove the incentive for Soviet intervention. Next we heard that our allies must not be driven into neutralism by rash American actions.

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And now it is said that despite the flagrant violation
of the Helsinki accords all diplomatic contacts at high
level must continue and indeed be intensified. The worse
the crisis, so the argument runs, the more important such
contacts are--even the parody of discussing the implementa-
tion of the Helsinki accords, even a meeting of the Soviet
and American foreign ministers, even a summit conference.

What these arguments show is more serious than any
policy disagreements. What they show is a conceptual
breakdown. Once the Polish army was unleashed, it should
have been clear that Solidarity as it had developed would
be crushed. Communists do not often assuage whatever
doubts they may have had about the wisdom of a decision
by incompetent execution or change of course just when
the objective is at hand. Indeed the *only* chance of saving
anything would have been a Western reaction so immediate,
so clear, so beyond rhetoric and so strong as to have
imposed some pause and some thought of compromise. The
prospects for this were admittedly slim; but they vanished
completely when with every day of inaction the West carefully
rehearsed reasons why nothing should be done and so tacitly
colluded with the martial law.

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The fear of allied reactions seems to me similarly
out of place. No doubt our allies expressed their unhappiness
from the beginning about any effort to make the Soviets pay a
heavy price. But I would argue that we were in a better
position to challenge our allies over Poland, with respect
to which there is a considerable amount of public uneasiness
in Europe, than over the Middle East or Central America which
will be the next objects of contention. And, in the end, it
is we who must lead, in this Alliance.

The problem of economic sanctions is admittedly
difficult, but not as maddeningly so as the West's response
seemed to suggest. Admittedly trade sanctions have rarely
worked, and were bound to be less than decisive in this
instance as long as the United States was unprepared to cancel
grain shipments and Europe its pipeline contracts. But in
this instance, the West had readily at hand an instrument
far more significant than trade -- Poland's colossal debts
to Western banks, and its confessed need for $1.5 billion
of new capital from the West every quarter in 1982 just
to stay afloat. Yet five weeks into the crisis finds us
still without a common policy on whether the allied
governments will permit our private financial institutions

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to administer those essential transfusions of Western
savings into the Polish economy.

Whatever can be said about problems of economic
sanctions cannot be said of diplomatic intercourse, however.

Here the decision whether to proceed is in
executive control; no Congressional action is required.
No private interests are at stake. Allied involvement
in our bilateral dealings is at a minimum. How then
can one explain the eagerness to continue all negotiations?
How is one to reconcile the President's assertion that the
Soviet Union is to blame for the suppression of Poland's
freedoms with the continued participation in the Madrid
Conference on the very Helsinki agreements which are
violated so utterly every moment the repression continues
in Poland,

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How is one to explain a meeting between our Secretary of
State and the Soviet Foreign Minister while martial law and
concentration camps continue in Poland? What is the urgency
of publicly discussing a Brezhnev-Reagan summit?

I am familiar enough with the counterarguments:
arms control is too important to be hostage to day-to-day
fluctuations of internal politics; Madrid is a great
forum for exhibiting Soviet culpability for events in
Poland; Haig will scold Gromyko; Reagan will lay down
the law to Brezhnev. I know because I have been there
before. The foreign policy bureaucracy never lacks
ingenuity for devising rationales for its preference for
talk over action and for its conviction that by the sincerity
OF OUR DISCOURSE
we will moderate the behavior even of the Kremlin. But we
scarcely need Madrid to castigate the Soviet Union; Washington

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and the UN would serve the purpose equally well and less
embarrassingly. Summit meetings can perform useful functions
but, not when their preparation goes blithely ahead at the
very moment that the first buds of freedom are being crushed
in Central Europe. It should be national policy that we
multiply high-level contacts during crises caused by the
Soviet Union unless we want to give the Soviets an incentive
to produce more crises.

Nor is it easy to reconcile these arguments with
the earlier policy declarations of this Administration.
A year ago it was being said that it was dangerous to
select one area of diplomacy for preeminent attention;
linkage was the watchword. The Helsinki accords were
characterized as useless. High-level meetings were to
reflect careful preparation and reward restrained Soviet

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conduct. Every administration learns from experience; one
can only be congratulated when it adjusts its policies
to reality. But such drastic shifts as these, especially
mid-way in a crisis, run the risk of undermining credi-
bility abroad and demoralizing well-wishers at home.

And the original arguments had much merit. To be
sure, it is easy to make fund of linkage; to demonstrate
that nothing will ever happen if everything is linked to
everything else. But the art of policymaking is to have
a sense for nuance. If the Soviets can insulate particular
areas of negotiation from international conduct, they are
being handed a safety valve with which to regulate tensions
they cause and to remove the onus from their aggressions.

I believe it would have ultimately served the cause of
negotiations far better had the United States on December 11

[Y]

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declared a moratorium on high-level contacts until martial
law was lifted in Poland, the Solidarity leaders released
and some form of internal discourse started, with the
Church and the Union.

I have devoted so much space to my uneasiness about
our Polish policy because it is important to understand
that not all causes of the crisis in the Alliance lie
in Europe. Nor are the American origins to be found
mainly in this Administration. The Reagan team inherited
a record of changes of course without adequate consultation
and of episodic shifts in American leadership and policies.
These go far to explain why Europe no longer rushes to
follow an American lead.

I campaigned for Reagan in the last Presidential
campaign; I would do so again were there an election