Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post, Sun. December 4, 1988

# The Challenge of a 'European Home'

In the midst of a presidential transition, General Secretary Gorbachev has announced a visit to the United States—ostensibly to address the United Nations, in reality to stampede the new administration into committing itself before it has had an opportunity for a serious appraisal.

President-elect Bush has shown a welcome wariness, indicating that he will listen but not negotiate. For whatever Gorbachev's long-term intentions are, it is neither in the interest of the Western democracies nor indeed of the Soviet Union to deal with issues of peace by public relations pressures. The ultimate challenge is to negotiate security arrangements and a political relationship that establish peace on a recognized mutuality of interests—independent of who governs in either country.

There exists a foundation for peace on such terms, but it has been submerged by the remarkable success of Gorbachev's remarkably empty publicity campaign, which paradoxically could produce, together with arms control, a major political crisis over the shape of Europe of the kind that caused World War I. Bush's wariness could turn attention back to the conceptual foundation for peace.

Soviet policy under Gorbachev advances the following propositions:

a) Gorbachev is facing serious domestic challenges and is entitled to Western help to overcome them.

b) Soviet goodwill is shown by a willingness to control nuclear weapons.

c) Conventional arms control negotiations will follow nuclear arms control and take into account "asymmetries" between the two sides.

d) A new structure should emerge in Europe—a European "home" from the Atlantic to the Urals, which will usher in a new era of international relations. It will make Franco-German military cooperation unnecessary and the modernization of short-range nuclear weapons in Europe provocative.

The degree to which these propositions have taken hold without challenge—especially in West Germany—marks an astonishing success for Soviet policy at a time of maximum Kremlin weakness.

The flood of Western bank credits being offered to Moscow without political conditions reflects an unexamined premise that an economically strong Soviet Union will automatically make Moscow benign and thus solve the West's security problems. But the fashionable proposition that the West must help Gorbachev is an evasion, not a policy. We do not understand the arcane politics of the Kremlin well enough to know what help he requires or what the consequences of such help would be. Unless Gorbachev's reforms lead to a drastic reduction of Soviet military power and changes in historical Soviet conduct, Western credits are a form of hidden subsidy of the threat to Western security. And the Soviet Union has yet to reduce its military expenditures at any time during the Gorbachev period.

"Nor have the arms control negotiations so far altered the military threat. They have focused on nuclear weapons, especially on the reduction of America's ability to retaliate from European soil. To some extent this weakens the link between the nuclear defense of America and of Europe and the credibility of the nuclear deterrent on which the West relies to balance Soviet conventional superiority. The START talks as now conceived will accelerate that process.

Of course there is talk of emphasizing conventional defenses; great hopes are placed in asymmetrical conventional arms reductions, in which each side would reduce those weapons in which it has a preponderance. But Europeans do not believe in conventional 'deterrence, and no NATO country is prepared for the vast increase in expenditures that a serious conventional defense effort would require. As for the much-heralded asymmetrical reductions of conventional forces, after years of being talked about, no agreed NATO concept exists as yet—and so far as I can discover no agreed U.S. concept exists either. In any event, the Soviets have made clear what they have in mind: a trade of American long-range European-based aircraft for Soviet tank forces. In other words arms control, in the Soviet view, contributes to the dismantling of America's nuclear protection for Europe.

But should conventional arms reduction talks turn serious, a political negotiation would be essential, or a political crisis would become inevitable.

When all the clever formulae about asymmetrical reductions are said and done, any meaningful scheme must have two components: the Soviet Union must reduce its forces in Central Europe to a level from which it can no longer threaten Western Europe; and there have to be absolute, verifiable and enforceable provisions against the reentry of Soviet troops. But forces too weak to attack the West would also lose much of their capacity to repress East European upheavals. And prohibitions against reentry would spell the end of the Brezhnev doctrine. But empires do not disintegrate without convulsions. In the absence of a political dialogue, the two sides are working themselves—in the name of peace and arms control—into a classical European crisis of the kind that produced World War I.

Unfortunately, NATO responds to these challenges by debating the secondary issue of modernizing short-range nuclear weapons stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany. The proposal to push modernization while long-range weapons were being withdrawn from Europe under the INF Treaty insensitively encourages arguments that America seeks to refine the weapons whose special characteristic is to devastate Germany. On the other hand, the proposition that it is provocative to make existing weapons more efficient shows the degree to which the Soviet Union is achieving—step-by-step—a veto over NATO dispositions. This kind of debate runs a high risk of reawakening pressures for unilateral U.S. withdrawal.

An alliance whose military doctrine is being eroded and which is divided about alternatives is vulnerable to escapist slogans. The most pernicious of these is the so-called "Common European

Home" first put forward in Gorbachev's perestroika and since then relentlessly pursued by Soviet spokesmen. The European home extending from the Urals to the Atlantic is supposed to reunify Europe and provide an alternative to existing political and military arrangements and to any attempt to improve them.

No Western leader has as yet had the courage to point out the one-sidedness and even absurdity of such a concept. On the contrary, it has become a staple in the rhetoric of some NATO leaders, especially in West Germany. For one thing, such a Europe excludes the United States—the source of Europe's security. And what exactly is meant by a Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic? What happens to the part of the Soviet Union—nearly two-thirds of the country—extending from the Urals to the Pacific? Will the Soviet Union claim an Asian home for the part beyond the Urals so that these two "homes" combined would ensure Soviet hegemony in Eurasia? Any European home so defined would include all of the Soviet Union and exclude the United States.

The practical consequence would be Soviet preponderance in Europe. During periods of Soviet internal strain, Europe is invited to pay tribute to "help" prevent worse consequences. Should the Soviet reforms succeed, Europe will be conscious of its impotence as NATO gradually becomes vestigial. In the meantime, all attempts to foster West European integration or to improve NATO are already opposed in the name of the European home.

To be sure, there are elegant theories arguing that Moscow will grow so dependent on Europe that it could never risk alienating it. But which European country, once hooked on Soviet trade and Moscow's smiles, would dare to jeopardize these links at heavy domestic cost? Soviet theoretical journals have no doubt on that score. They argue that once the image of a hostile Soviet Union has been destroyed, American postwar foreign policy will disintegrate and America will be expelled from Eurasia.

But these tactical successes for the Soviet Union could easily turn into Pyrrhic victories. For what the Soviet Union views as a weakening of American influence in NATO is likely in the long run to reopen the question of the future of Eastern Europe.

True, the Soviet Union has succeeded in awakening German nostalgia for an Eastern role, shown in the endless round of visits, credits and pronouncements by leading Germans all over

-over-

Eastern Europe. Other European nations, especially France, seeking to prevent Germany from going it alone, bid fair to make subsidies to the Soviet economy a principal goal of the European community. But these trends, combined with the side effects of perestroika, are loosening Soviet control in Eastern Europe by giving the erstwhile satellites greater freedom of maneuver. A more autonomous West Germany operationally contests Soviet preeminence in Eastern Europe, however obligingly that policy is formulated; all of Germany's unfulfilled goals are, after all, in the East.

Once conventional arms control turns serious, that process will accelerate.

The challenge to the West is therefore to go beyond arms control as a numbers game. It must relate—at least conceptually—nuclear to conventional arms control and conventional arms control to a view of Europe's political future. Passively waiting for the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, or its automatic transformation into something for which there is no precedent in 400 years of Russian history, is not a policy. By circuitous routes, the issue of world peace has returned to Europe.

The West needs a concept of what it understands by peace. Specifically, it should boldly accept the challenge of a "European home," but redefine it into a concept that creates a new and safer future for Europe and the world. Such a concept could have the following components:

a) From the political point of view, a European home cannot extend from the Urals to the Atlantic. It must either include both the Soviet Union and United States or exclude both. The former is more or less the present situation; the latter is the road toward a stabler future.

b) A political Europe so defined would extend from the Soviet-Polish frontier to the Atlantic. The Brezhnev doctrine would be abandoned. The Soviet Union would be entitled to traditional security guarantees, but it could not identify security with imposing unpopular and unstable regimes in Eastern Europe. The peoples of Eastern Europe would have the right to determine their own political arrangements.

c) In such a Europe, the existing alliances could remain, but the forces on both sides would be sharply reduced by agreement. And they would be confined to bases without the right of intervention in domestic affairs.

d) A European home so conceived would require rapid progress toward West European integration as the core of a new European construction.

e) The East European states would have the right to become associate members of the European Community but not—for an agreed period—of its political arrangements.

f) At the same time, since NATO and the Warsaw Pact would continue to exist, the security arrangements would include an area wider than the political European home.

There are many variants by which the security principles could be implemented. One illustrative scheme would be to create four zones in the area covered by the two military pacts: west of the Rhine; from the Rhine to the Elbe; from the Elbe to the Polish-Soviet frontier; and from the Soviet-Polish frontier to beyond Moscow. The forces in the zones in the extremes (west of the Rhine and Polish-Soviet frontier to beyond Moscow) would be roughly equal, as would the forces in the two central regions.

Sooner or later, some such approach will have to enter the dialogue if the goal of East-West relations is to be peace rather than short-term psychological comfort. It is, in fact, the historic opportunity of the Bush administration.

©1988, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

46
# Kissinger's World View

He sees massive shifts, with Europe back on center stage

These comments were compiled from a recent dialogue between the Monitor's editorial board and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

I BELIEVE that the '90s, whatever we do, will be a period of tremendous structural change in international relations and it is a mistake to ascribe it all to Gorbachev or even primarily to Gorbachev - in fact it is selling the situation short to ascribe it to Gorbachev because that implies that it is an idiosyncratic change.

And if you look at Soviet history, every general secretary has disavowed his predecessor and therefore it isn't even in our interests to say that Gorbachev is the only solution to our problem since he's mortal and will leave sooner or later. In fact the term of office of the president, if he sticks to it, is only 10 years - so by the late '90s he would be out of office. And much better for us to think in terms of structural changes that any sensible Soviet leader would want to follow. Even if he has a less dynamic personality than Gorbachev's.

Now, I think that the dominance of the two superpowers will erode in the '90s. You will have various powers. You will have the US, Soviet Union, China, India, Europe. All of which will be simultaneously economic, political, and military powers, and a little later I wouldn't exclude that Brazil and Mexico could be at least at the second rank of such a world.

This requires that we look at the world in a different way than we did in the post-war period. The Soviet Union will still be a major country; it will still have a major influence in world affairs. But we are very close to the goal of containment as it was defined in the 1940s.

Economic reform for the So-

viet Union is not a favor they do to us. It's not something for which we should pay a huge price; it is something that they almost have to do. An aggressive Soviet policy would unite all of these powers on their borders against it and therefore they have reasons quite beyond Gorbachev to move into a period of conciliation.

So our task is to do something that Americans have not ever done before: namely, to think of a world of equilibrium. Not of a world in which we like to think of foreign policy as conversion - that Gorbachev comes along and he ends 70 years of communist history. He'd really have to end 400 years of Russian history.

How should he come to that view? What is it in his experience that would lead him there? There's no Jefferson in his past. There's no American tradition. But there is the compulsion of circumstance.

If we want to disengage ourselves from the front line of every confrontation, we have to learn to think of the structural balances that exist in the world and to decide whether we want to back whom we back.

It's sort of a balance of power concept, which in a modern global world is much more complicated. In that context, I think we can negotiate with the Soviets much more reliably than by being so obsessed about whether the President and the Soviet leader get along. And incidentally, I would also think that it also means that the emphasis on pure arms control gets us off the subject.

I'm not opposed to arms control as one of the many negotiations to conduct, but take Europe for example. In many ways Gorbachev is conducting a traditional Russian policy. He's trying to separate Europe from the US. And he has had major success in

Germany in getting this German romantic feeling that they've got to have some sentimental attachment to somebody focused on the Soviets. That's a short-term victory if the world is bipolar.

In the process, however, Eastern Europe is becoming fluid and what we may see is a simultaneous disintegration of Western and Eastern Europe, with Eastern Europe disintegrating faster and in which even the seeming victories of Gorbachev are double-edged. Because to the extent that he gets the Germans more active in foreign policy, the place they have something to gain is in the East not in the West, and so he may be resurrecting the contest between the Teutons and the Slavs.

Now, that's what we've got to get beyond. And it's sensible that negotiation with the Soviets

would be unavoidable in the next administration, and, in my view, the big issue will be Eastern Europe. Because whatever perestroika does in the USSR, it is undermining the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. So long as the Soviets identify their security with the maintenance of unpopular regimes, therein is a trap of their own making. If they go into one of these countries they will undermine everything that they have achieved with their policy of apparent moderation. And if they don't go in they start a process which may spill over into the Soviet Union.

THEREFORE, I believe an important subject of negotiation with them on a quiet basis, is whether it is possible to create a political framework in Eastern Europe which separates the security issues from the political issues, in which we can be very far-sighted and generous. You know, something like Finland in which the peoples of Eastern Europe are free to choose

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 1/6/89, p. 19

Washington Wire

A Special Weekly Report From
The Wall Street Journal's
Capital Bureau

BUSH MAPS battle plans, but deficit problems complicate all efforts.

He plans to move ahead quickly to meet some campaign promises. He will present a new ethics bill to both toughen restrictions on executive-branch employees and subject Congress to the same curbs. Another priority: an initiative to deal with acid rain.

Aides also expect an early effort to increase spending on the Head Start program for needy youngsters. But the deficit complicates strategy. Even items like the minimum-wage increase—endorsed by Bush in the campaign—are reconsidered; though an increase wouldn't directly affect the deficit, Bush aides worry that it might cost jobs and thus raise unemployment benefits.

Bush also will push early on for a two-year budget cycle; Senate leader Mitchell expresses interest in the idea.

DEMOCRATS FASHION an aggressive agenda to greet the new administration.

Wright promises to move quickly on housing, environment and ethics. In a private note to Kemp, he cites the new HUD chief's commitment to urban enterprise zones, and gives favored status to related legislation backed by New York's Rangel. Energy Chairman Dingell files a bill on airborne toxic pollutants that is expected to lay the groundwork for a new Clean Air Act debate.

On health care, House Democrats will push proposals to subsidize long-term nursing-home care; Senate Democrats want to do something about the 37 million Americans who don't have health insurance. On the revenue issue, a move to raise excise taxes could pit Rostenkowski, who favors such a move, against Wright, who doesn't.

REAGAN'S HARSH BUDGET will set the stage for Bush's battles.

The departing president's fiscal 1990 plan, due Monday, will propose cutting nearly $30 billion from domestic spending programs. It takes big swipes at health care for the elderly and aid to farmers, and would eliminate mass-transit assistance, direct Ex-Im Bank loans and the federal subsidies for Amtrak.

Congressional leaders say they don't even plan to look at the Reagan budget, preferring instead to wait for Bush's proposals. But they remain split on how to handle them. Wright calls for Congress to press ahead with a budget regardless of Bush's stance, but some key committee chairmen complain that the speaker neglected to consult them on the matter.

And Senate leaders see no need to hurry, preferring to keep the pressure on the new president.

DUKAKIS'S DECISION: this week not to seek re-election could cost him if he runs for president again in 1992; some close aides believe. By keeping mum on his gubernatorial plans until next year, they note, he could easily have raised $3 million that could have been turned over to his presidential campaign—where an early money advantage of that size could be critical.

DUBIOUS DISTINCTION: FDIC chairman FDIC chairman sends Home Loan Bank Board counterpart Wall A "note of congratulations." The reason: The Bank Board edged the FDIC, 222 to 221, in the number of stricken financial institutions that were bailed out during 1988.

KISSINGER REDUX? Besides seeing former aides in key Bush jobs—Scowcroft at the NSC and Eagleburger expected to be deputy at State—the former secretary turns his considerable diplomatic skills on conservative leaders. He has been meeting with top officials of such groups as the Heritage Foundation, hoping to assuage their long-standing suspicions of him.

THE ETHICS PROBE: into Wright's personal financial dealings, once expected to be completed by the start of the new term, now isn't expected until at least February. Congressional observers suggest the timing may be designed to separate the sensitive issue from the coming debate over congressional pay raises and new restrictions on outside income and honoraria.

BUSH AIDES STRIVE to enhance the new administration's science savvy.

Chief of staff Sununu, a former engineering professor, is expected to take a strong hand. The new administration faces tough choices over how much to spend on Star Wars, the space station, the superconducting supercollider and a host of other big-ticket science projects. It also must decide whether to give NASA the go-ahead for a manned trip to the moon or to Mars.

Administration aides promise that the science adviser, long ignored under Reagan, will meet regularly with Bush. In addition, the Commerce Department will beef up its role in civil technology, and a new National Space Council, chaired by the vice president, will set space priorities.

The council could give Quaule a turn to gain respect; in a similar role, LBJ successfully urged Kennedy to make a moon landing a top priority.

MINOR MEMOS: Accepting a compliment on the lapel pin identifying him as a Democratic member of the 101st House, freshman Tennessee Rep. Tanner says: "Thanks—it only cost me $858,000." ... Members of the Congressional Chorus, an amateur group of singing staffers, are thrilled to be performing at the inauguration—but were stunned to discover that they're following the world-renowned Monmon Tabernacle Choir. ... Fresh from Bush's announcement of Lujan as new Interior secretary, the department cafeteria serves "Hispanic sausage and peppers" the first workday of the new year.

-Compiled by RICH JAROSLOVSKY

WALL STREET JOURNAL, 1/6/89, p. A1

Kissinger's World View...

47

their own government and there
are clearly defined limitations on
military capabilities.

In such a framework, then,
one could approach conventional
arms control, which in my view is
totally insoluble in the Warsaw
Pact-NATO context. Well, to-
tally insoluble is exaggerated, but
incredibly complicated. It will
turn into a numbers game that
will feed on itself.

I think the fundamental nego-
tiation with the Soviets should be:
what kind of a world do we visual-
ize? How can we avoid sliding into
a war which neither of us want
and which we can't settle by just
technical rearrangement of arms?
For the first time now since the
war there is a real danger that
some explosion could occur in
Eastern Europe like prior to
World War I. We are so focused
on Hitler, and we forget that
Sarajavo produced a world war.

I don't think the Soviets will
ever march into Western Europe
to occupy it as Hitler marched
into neighboring countries. But
what could happen instead, as an
act of desperation we could face a
Berlin crisis. The one way they
could demonstrate the fact that
they're the one who runs Eastern
Europe is to make us knuckle un-
der on something in Berlin. And
you notice that even as they are
courting the Germans they will
not agree to have West Berlin a
German state, which would be the
easiest way to settle it. They insist
on treating it, as close as they can
get away with it, as a free city.

I'm writing a book on how na-
tional cultural patterns and values
affect the perception of foreign

policy. And you really find in
many countries a very consistent
pattern. But Germany didn't be-
come a nation until 1871, then
for 19 years they had a foreign
minister - a genius who juggled
all the competing forces in Eu-
rope in such a complicated way
that it couldn't be continued.

We Americans got to know the
Germans *after* the war. And so we
thought that the pro-Western ori-
entation of Germany was a natu-
ral thing. The fact is if you look at
German history, Germany has
never had alliances in the West -
all its alliances have been in the
East, when they had any alliances.
So the Adenauer-tradition, pro-
American group has been demor-
alized as a result of many factors -
including some of the recent ne-
gotiations with the Soviets.

And so you now have a kind of
restless activism, almost for its
own sake. The West Germans
give a billion marks to Hungary in
order to ease the fate of the Hun-
garians, but what they are also
doing is to increase the freedom
of maneuver of the Hungarians
vis-à-vis the Soviets, and there is a
limit to this. So German romanti-
cism and sentimentalism without
any evil intention could be a very
real problem. It sort of triggers
everybody else.

The French are running to
Moscow now because they don't
want the Germans to be there
alone. The French are quite cyni-
cal in their conduct of foreign
policy. And in Gorbachev's
*perestroika* and in all the Soviet
public statements - nobody pays
much attention to this in this
country - they keep talking about

the European house that goes
from the Urals to the Atlantic.

On the face of it, it is already
an absurdity, because what hap-
pens to the Soviet Union on the
other side of the Urals? Will that
be cut off?

NOW, a Europe from Mos-
cow to the Atlantic will
lead to one of two things:
either the Soviet Union will be
the permanent drain on its re-
sources if its economy doesn't im-
prove or the Soviet Union will
become so strong that all of Eu-
rope will become Finlandized and
America will be gradually sepa-
rated from Europe.

The logical dividing line is on
the Soviet-Polish border, with
Moscow and Washington having
equal status legally in Europe. In
such a context you could think of
arms control agreements. But no-
body is picking the Soviets up on
this. And once this gets estab-
lished in people's minds that Mos-
cow is part of Europe but Wash-
ington is not, the '90s could get
very uncomfortable.

PAGE TWO OF TWO

48
Freshets from the mouths of insiders

JOHN LOFTON

In a Niagara of leaks gushing forth from the front pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times, it is reported that Secretary of State-designate James A. Baker III has told key congressional leaders that the Bush administration plans "a fresh approach" to Central America. Thus, according to "informed sources," there will be no early request for military aid to the Contras, the freedom fighters who have fought the Communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua...

As The Post reports it: "While still seeking to pressure the Sandinista government to accept democratic reforms, Baker has made it clear that President-elect Bush does not want to begin his term by igniting a confrontation with Congress over military aid like those of President Reagan's final years in office, the sources said."

Said to be seeking advice on "how to fashion a Central America policy that would enjoy bipartisan support" (another Post paraphrase), Mr. Baker "is looking for a fresh approach on this issue," says Democratic Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois, who talked with Mr. Baker. And another senator, who requested anonymity, says of Mr. Baker that although he sees no point in pushing the Contra/military aid issue now, Mr. Baker, still, wants "to keep up the pressure on [Nicaragua President Daniel] Ortega somehow."

This unnamed senator, who has also talked with Mr. Baker, said his discussions with the secretary of state-designate about this matter was "all rather nebulous."

Another senior member of Congress is quoted as saying that Mr. Baker "made it clear" in talks with lawmakers that "he wants a compromise with Congress on U.S. policy in Central America." This congressperson says of Mr. Baker: "He's talking about working with Central American nations, which is very

much what we're interested in. If that's where he's headed, he will get support here" on Capitol Hill.

In a front-page story in The New York Times — headlined "A bipartisan foreign policy? Reasons to hope under Bush" — it is reported that Mr. Baker "has moved to head off any clash between congressional Democrats and the Bush administration over military aid to the Nicaraguan rebels." And this will be accomplished, it is said, by forgetting about, for now, any military aid requests like those that produced battles in the Reagan years.

Reporting several Democratic senators as saying that Mr. Baker spoke to them about the need to avoid "futile fights" (a Times paraphrase), The New York Times quotes Canada's longtime ambassador to the United States, Allan Gotlieb, as saying that Mr. Bush takes office with a tremendous advantage over most of his previous predecessors.

This advantage? According to Mr. Gotlieb it is that — unlike Presidents Nixon, Carter and Reagan, all of whom ran against the Washington establishment as outsiders — Mr. Bush takes office as "a consummate insider" ready to work with other insiders.

Well, now. All of this is something right out of George Orwell or "Alice in Wonderland."

How in the world can seeking a bipartisan plan with Congress, or seeking to work with other Central American countries regarding the Communist Sandinistas, possibly be called "a fresh approach"?!

How in the world can seeking to avoid a confrontation with Congress,

by delaying military aid to the Contras, be considered "a fresh approach"?! This is the oldest of approaches concerning this issue. And it has failed miserably.

Now, there are approaches to the Nicaraguan question that might accurately be characterized as "fresh." For example, Mr. Baker might announce that since diplomacy has failed to diminish the Sandinista-Communist-Soviet-Cuban threat to our hemisphere, it is being abandoned: And in its place we shall, henceforth, pursue a policy of military victory over the Communist Sandinistas.

This would be a real "fresh approach." But, please, Mr. Baker, don't talk about compromise, bipartisanship and multilateral diplomacy, and call this "a fresh approach," sir! It ain't. No way.

This kind of bankrupt thinking is only more of the hair of the dog that has bitten us so viciously in our policy toward Communist Nicaragua.

Please, wake up, Mr. Secretary of State-designate!

Where have you been for the past eight years?!

No wonder Mr. Baker's discussions on this subject are described by one senator as "all rather nebulous." No wonder he is reported as saying that "somehow" the pressure must be kept on the Communist Sandinistas, but not by, early on, asking for military aid for the Contras.

"Somehow," Mr. Baker? But how, sir? How? How, if not by military pressure, the only kind of pressure communists really understand — in fact, the precise kind of pressure the Communist Sandinistas used when they seized power.

But don't hold your breath (unless you look good in purple), waiting for Jim Baker or Mr. Bush to recommend a policy of military victory over the Communist Sandinistas, or any other communists, for that matter. Because this is not the way "consummate insider" members of the Washington establishment think — which is why, alas, such folks are a part of the problem of Communist Nicaragua, not a part of that problem's solution.

John Lofton is a columnist for The Washington Times.

WASHINGTON TIMES, 1/6/89, p.F-3

INTERNATIONAL

A Memo to the Next President

By HENRY A. KISSINGER

The postwar era in international relations is coming to an end. Such periods of transition have always presented opportunities, but also involved turmoil and struggle. That is not how many Western leaders view today's realities, however. They paint an idyllic picture in which change will occur thanks to a new breed of communist leader.

Gorbachev is described as singlehandedly altering the course of Soviet history. Glasnost and perestroika are seen as the key to ending international tensions—even though most people do not know exactly what the words mean. Soviet leaders are expected to lose their ideological fervor and become preoccupied with domestic affairs.

To be sure, this refrain is punctuated by frequent protests of wariness about Soviet intentions. But this is ritual; the dominant theme is one of incipient friendship between the West and the Soviet Union, and between Western leaders and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Progress has clearly been made on several fronts in East-West negotiations. But a new era cannot be based on ephemeral personalities. To be lasting, it must reflect a number of new, underlying realities:

* Gorbachev has started a process within the Soviet Union and across Eastern Europe whose consequences not even he can foretell. The current turmoil in Poland and the ferment in several Soviet republics show that change, once started, generates its own momentum.
* In the West a comparable momentum will bring about major changes in the political and security relations of the Atlantic Alliance. The political structure of Europe—East and West—will thus emerge as the central issue of the '90s.
* The declining appeal of communist ideology does not eliminate—and could increase—the threat of historic Russian expansionism.
* Japan, China and India, as well as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, will grow in importance, and must be integrated into a new international order.
* The recent progress on regional conflicts—Afghanistan, Cambodia, southern

Africa—has resulted in part from the changed priorities of the superpowers. But it would be naive to believe that the Soviet Union has abdicated its interest in these regions, and it would be wrong for the United States to pull back from them.

Rarely are so many factors in flux simultaneously. There is an extraordinary opportunity to shape a better future with imagi-

native statesmanship. For the first time since World War I, it is possible to envisage a plan to reunite Europe with the consent of all its peoples. This could be coupled with the creation of a new security arrangement that would sharply reduce the armed camps that now confront each other in the center of Europe. In Asia, too, a new equilibrium is emerging. And regional disputes could become more a matter of diplomatic and economic competition than military conflict.

But a more desirable international order will not appear automatically. Gorbachev will not solve our problems for us. Nor is arms control the sole, or even the principal, key to meeting these challenges. No agreement so far negotiated—including those in which I participated—has made a strategic difference. Indeed, they are justified domestically on the ground that they leave the military situation unchanged. They are a response to domestic pressures, and valued for their political symbolism. In fact the symbolism accelerates the potential for

crisis by encouraging centrifugal tendencies in both East and West.

If the democracies persist in relying on only the most optimistic assumptions about the future, the present tranquillity will be just the calm before the storm. The overwhelming need is to create a political framework for dealing with the consequences of foreseeable change.

ORBAN—SYGMA

Incipient friendship: Gorbachev on a street in Prague, 1987

A new era cannot be based
on ephemeral personalities

The Riddle of Mikhail Gorbachev

Gorbachev's success in overcoming the Soviet Union's isolation has been astonishing. Many Western leaders, President Reagan included, now emphasize their personal relationship with the General Secretary. They imply that Gorbachev alone is responsible for the domestic changes taking place in the Soviet Union, and that these changes will bring about a new era of peace. But it defies all reason to believe that a man who has never held any post outside the Soviet Communist Party (with its doctrine that history is governed by "objective factors") would approach his colleagues on the Politburo with the proposition that his personal ties to democratic leaders justified changes in Soviet policy.

For all his panache, Gorbachev is to some degree responding to circumstance. The struggle in Moscow is not over democracy but how to achieve a more competitive Soviet Union. This goal requires the weakening of the feudal baronies that have become entrenched within the centrally planned Stalinist economy. Presumably, another Soviet leader would pursue similar policies, if with less verve and psychological skill. After all, the current phase of Soviet policy was inaugurated in 1984 during the era of the decrepit Chernenko when Gromyko called on President Reagan at the White House.

Even were Gorbachev committed to peace in the Western sense, there is little in the history of either czars or commissars to supply comfort to the Soviet Union's neighbors. The question of whether Soviet foreign policy is shaped by communist ideology or historic Russian expansionism has been debated ever since the Bolshevik revolution. It is impossible to answer. The demands that Molotov made to Hitler in 1940

34 NEWSWEEK: SEPTEMBER 19, 1988

INTERNATIONAL

as a price for Soviet support, that Stalin pursued after the war and that Brezhnev carried out in Afghanistan date back to imperial Russia: Soviet domination of the Balkans and the Dardanelles; a major voice in Poland; and Soviet hegemony over Iran.

The role of communist ideology has been threefold: it has given Soviet leaders an assurance that the czars lacked; it supplied them with a global cadre of supporters; and it tempted them into distant conflicts in such places as Angola, Cuba, Nicaragua and Indochina. Gorbachev is willing to trim commitments that traditional Russian rulers might have given a lower priority. But that does not mean the historical Russian agenda in Eurasia has been abandoned. Ever since the 17th century, the frontiers of

what was once the Duchy of Muscovy have moved inexorably outward, until the present national frontiers now encompass 11 time zones.

Twice before the West deluded itself by basing its policies on favorable assessments of Soviet leaders: with Stalin in 1944 and Khrushchev in 1956. I am not making any predictions with respect to Gorbachev. But it is dangerous to base East-West relations on the personality of one Soviet leader for several reasons: first, it makes the relationship unstable, since every new Soviet leader has disavowed the policies of his predecessor. Second, it strengthens neutralist elements that have claimed all along that the Cold War is frivolous. Third, it creates the risk that if Gorbachev leaves office, even for internal reasons, the democrac

cies will blame and flagellate themselves.

Most importantly, the psychiatric approach could lead to more Soviet adventurism. In the present circumstances Moscow's restraint is not a concession but a counsel of prudence. But Western escapism may tempt a Soviet leader to achieve unilateral gains rather than fight the domestic battle that genuine reciprocity would require.

The increasingly fashionable notion that we should help Gorbachev is devoid of meaning unless "help" is properly defined. Does it imply that we should make agreements not justifiable on their merits? Should we side with Gorbachev in his internal disputes? (Do we understand them well enough to do so?) In my view, we help him—or other moderate elements—best by putting forward a careful assessment of the legitimate interests of both sides, and undertaking a serious effort to determine whether and how they can be reconciled. Any other course invites a subtle form of blackmail.

The Challenge for NATO

Unlike Brezhnev, who was above all concerned with safeguarding the status quo in Europe, Gorbachev seems intent on weakening the Western Alliance. Soviet theoretical journals justify peace not so much for its own sake as to deprive the United States of the Soviet menace as a rallying cry. Taking their cue from the General Secretary's book, "Perestroika," Soviet emissaries are promoting the vision of a "European House" that will extend from the Urals to the Atlantic, providing for European security and safeguarding European civilization against American materialism. The thrust of the Soviet policy is to diminish American influence, if not to excite us from Europe altogether.

HIROJI KUBOTA—MAGNUM

Moral complexity: Vietnamese troops leaving Cambodia

It will be tricky to sustain
advances on regional issues

Gorbachev has already made significant progress in undermining the existing NATO strategy of nuclear deterrence. How often can the phrase "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought" be repeated in U.S.-Soviet communiqués before the deterrent loses its credibility? How many reductions of nuclear weapons are possible before the strategy of flexible response becomes unfeasible? Step-by patient-step, the Soviets are gaining a de facto veto over NATO nuclear defense policy. For example, the modernization of short-range weapons, which 10 years ago the allies accepted without comment, has become highly controversial.

Traditionally pro-American groups, especially in the Federal Republic of Germany, are beginning to respond to the siren calls from the East. More and more European political candidates journey to Moscow, sometimes even in preference to Washington. In a prescient 1982 lecture, the distinguished American historian Gordon

A. Craig warned that historically Germany has felt tied to Central Europe or the East. The German attitude toward the West is ambivalent, he argued, and vulnerable to "gusts of nostalgia" for a return to tradition. I believe that is now happening.

I do not expect anything so dramatic as a German swing to overt neutralism. But efforts to augment and modernize NATO forces and to strengthen the cohesion of the alliance are already meeting growing resistance. Even increased European military cooperation may face opposition. We may soon witness a repetition of the '50s debate about whether German unity should take precedence over Western ties.

According to current conventional wisdom, none of this makes any difference

because the Soviets will become so economically dependent on Western Europe as to preclude a return to Cold War tensions. Dependence is double-edged, however. It is equally possible that some Western leaders will grow so politically and psychologically dependent on Moscow that they will do anything to avoid the Kremlin's displeasure.

The Future of Eastern Europe

These trends are being exploited by the Soviets with a daring inconceivable in the Brezhnev period. But it remains to be seen whether Soviet foreign policy is as farsighted as it is daring.

For one thing, the Soviet Union is operating from a position of domestic weakness. Over two decades ago, de Gaulle said, "During my lifetime Communist ideology has been personi

fied by many people... Each of these holders in his turn condemns, excommunicates, crushes and at times kills the others. In any event he fights firmly against the personality cult of the others." At this point, it is impossible to predict whether Gorbachev will prove an exception. Clearly he has started a process with an uncertain outcome. The established bureaucracies will not give up their power and their privileges easily. In an empire of many peoples, decentralization inevitably raises the nationality question. The Soviets have no entrepreneurial tradition to act as a counterweight to central planning, or to play the role the middle class did vis-à-vis the aristocracy during the struggle to build a modern state in Europe. The secret police and the military may not have spoken their last word.

Gorbachev's policies are likely to prove particularly unsettling in Eastern Europe. His reforms, which advertise the corruption and inefficiency of the Soviet system, are bound to increase challenges to the

NEWSWEEK: SEPTEMBER 19, 1988

legitimacy of ruling groups in Eastern Europe. Now wonder that some of the East European communist parties—in East Germany explicitly, and to a lesser extent in Czechoslovakia—are openly dissociating themselves from the Soviet pattern. The Polish Communist Party was in trouble even without changes in the Kremlin. But glasnost has clearly helped revive the Solidarity trade-union movement.

The new Soviet policy may have created a Frankenstein. To weaken the Atlantic Alliance, Moscow must appear to invite greater ties between East and West. But as the Federal Republic and other countries of West Europe increase their activities and investments in Eastern Europe, the centrifugal tendencies in the Soviet empire will

accelerate. Bonn's slogan that it seeks to ease the lives of ordinary East Europeans is no doubt sincere. To the extent that policy succeeds, it may lead to a re-emergence of the competition between Teaton and Slav that produced two world wars. Confronted with a growing erosion of its position in Eastern Europe, Moscow may decide to intervene militarily. A new crisis over Berlin may seem far-fetched today, but is conceivable if the Soviets feel pressed to demonstrate the limits of Western power behind the Iron Curtain. If that should happen—even as an act of desperation—Western euphoria will switch to hysteria.

Soviet policy, whether by design or inadvertence, has returned the diplomatic focal point to Europe—a situation that requires more far-reaching decisions by Moscow than Washington. The time has come for the first comprehensive discussion about the political future of Europe since the outbreak of World War I. The Soviet formula of a European House is too clever by half. After all, it was the projection of Soviet power into the center of Europe that led to the Cold War. For America to leave a European House that includes Russia would bring about the very kind of hegemony that we fought two wars to prevent.

But there is another approach that could dramatically alter the frozen landscape. It would be based on the realization that there are only two solutions for Europe: either both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are present in force, or they both substantially reduce their presence. In that concept, the European House would extend from the Polish-Soviet frontier to the Atlantic, and its core would be a united Western Europe.

A thoughtful exploration of this subject would seek to bring home to Soviet leaders that identifying their security with unpop-

ular regimes only mortgages their policy to the repression of periodic upheavals. In the long run, aren't arrangements in Finland more useful to Soviet security than those in Eastern Europe? Is it possible to devise arrangements that would give the Soviets security guarantees (widely defined) while permitting the peoples of Eastern Europe to choose their own political future? Under such a system, it would be possible to conceive a drastic reduction of all outside forces in Europe—including those of the U.S.—that might revolutionize present concepts of security.

This is not a negotiation that would lend itself to formal diplomacy conducted by coveys of diplomats and technicians. Its initial phase must be highly confidential. It

States, nor as afraid of the Soviet Union. They are therefore not as emotionally absorbed with Gorbachev's personality.

At least since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, China has feared that it could become a victim of the Brezhnev Doctrine—Moscow's claim to maintain doctrinal orthodoxy in the communist world. Now that Moscow is itself preaching reform, the Soviet incentive to impose ideological conformity on China has surely diminished. China will always be wary of the possibility that the Soviets might try to set back Chinese modernization. But that temptation is limited by Moscow's need to maintain its standing elsewhere—at least while it is absorbed in domestic struggles. Too much overt pressure on China would

weaken the Soviet appeal in Western Europe and the United States. The careful calculators in Beijing understand that the Soviets are unlikely to make a direct grab for hegemony. Thus, the price Beijing will be willing to pay for Washington's support will decline. At the same time, it will take care not to be isolated by a U.S.-Soviet rapprochement. It will not want to be the last to man the barricades of the Cold War.

The prospect is for a steady improvement in Sino-Soviet relations—especially as the Soviets meet Chinese conditions, such as encouraging Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia. But Chinese planners are not sentimental. They will keep in mind that rapprochement with Moscow cannot shorten the more than 4,000-mile Sino-Soviet frontier. They know that

professions of good will are not binding. They will try to improve relations with Moscow without weakening the confidence of the United States, which Beijing will continue to see as necessary to blocking Soviet hegemonial aspirations in Asia or any other attempt to pressure China. China will also continue to be interested in a Europe capable of keeping Soviet attention and resources focused on the West.

The next test for Sino-U.S. relations will be whether the United States can understand and accept Beijing's complex diplomacy. Conservative ideologues frustrated by the waning of the Cold War may be tempted to turn on China. Liberals may resist the idea that helping to preserve China's territorial integrity and assisting in its modernization are essential to maintaining a balance of power. Beijing may compound the problem by misunderstanding American psychology or domestic politics. But wise leaders in China and the United States must act on the premise that both

PHANSAK—SIPA

Careful calculators: Chinese steel complex in Anshan

# Steady progress is likely in Sino-Soviet relations

can only succeed if Europe is an active participant. But it cannot succeed if each European nation acts on its own. Thus it requires rapid progress toward West European integration.

## Asian Perspectives

Gorbachev has made essentially the same appeal in Asia as in Europe: that the United States is dispensable to Asian security. But the impact has been different.

The Asian nations are preoccupied in a manner no longer conceivable in Europe by their relations with each other. They do not look for a transcendent end to international tensions. They will try to assess the trade-off between a decline in Soviet ideological dynamism and a potential increase in Soviet power should perestroika succeed. They will seek to evaluate whether American actions reflect a long-range strategy, a decline in American strength or domestic incoherence. Compared with the Western democracies, the Asian nations have never felt so dependent for security on the United

NEWSWEEK: SEPTEMBER 19, 1988 37

INTERNATIONAL

countries have parallel interests in frus-
trating hegemonial aspirations from any
quarter.

Japan, already an economic superpower, is becoming a major political factor. Though less than 2 percent of its Gross National Product, Japan's military budget is already the third largest in the world. Japan is not likely to be much influenced by the domestic changes in the Soviet Union. Its policy toward Moscow has always been shaped less by the ideological threat of communism than by the Soviet occupation of Japan's four northern islands and by Soviet military power in the Far East. As Japan's military capacity grows, and as America emphasizes burden-sharing, the price Tokyo is prepared to pay for U.S. military protection is bound to decline.

The economic rivalry between
the two allies is likely to in-
crease. Japan is certain to con-
duct a more assertive foreign
policy, especially in Asia. The
U.S.-Japanese relationship will
need careful tending to allow
for greater mutual respect and
reciprocity.

At the same time, India will
play an increasing internation-
al role. Its goals are analogous to
those of Britain east of Suez in
the 19th century—a policy es-
sentially shaped by the Vice-
roy's office in New Delhi. It will
seek to be the strongest country
in the subcontinent, and will
attempt to prevent the emer-
gence of a major power in the
Indian Ocean or Southeast
Asia. Whatever the day-to-day
irritations between New Delhi
and Washington, India's geopo-
litical interests will impel it

over the next decade to assume some of the
security functions now exercised by the
United States. The politicians in New Delhi
will not like this, but they are condemned to
rivalry with Moscow in the Indian Ocean,
and with China and Japan in Southeast
Asia, much more than with the target of
their rhetoric, the U.S.

In fact, the balance of power in Asia in-
volves the United States less directly than
in Europe. For the foreseeable future, the
U.S. must be part of the European balance.
In Asia, Korea excepted, no American
troops are in the front line. In the '90s two
balances of power will exist in Asia: be-
tween China, Japan and the Soviet Union
in Northeast Asia; and between Japan, In-
dia and (to some extent) the Soviet Union in
Southeast Asia. The American role with
respect to these two balances should be
similar to Britain's historical stance vis-à-
vis the European continent: we are the
guarantors of the equilibrium. To main-
tain these balances, the U.S. must support

the weak against the strong and potential
victims against potential aggressors. Such
a policy has to be carried out despite the
fact that we may not be able to count on our
Philippine bases over the next decade, and
that we will need to restructure our forces
and command arrangements in Korea.

Regional Issues

Recently the Soviet Union has agreed to withdraw its armed forces from Afghanistan, Vietnam has indicated that it would leave Cambodia by 1989, and Angola has agreed in principle to send home Cuban troops. At a minimum, all this indicates that the Soviet Union has found itself over extended in areas that (with the exception of Afghanistan) were not traditionally identified with Soviet national security. It is

in Afghanistan against each other and ex-
ploiting America's short attention span.

Afghanistan is difficult politically; Cam-
bodia is complex morally. The challenge
there is not only to block Hanoi's ambitions
but to thwart the unspeakable Khmer
Rouge from taking over the country. So far,
the trauma of Indochina has prevented us
and other democracies from translating
moral outrage over genocidal practices
into adequate support for non-communist
forces such as those of Prince Sihanouk. In
the absence of such support, the Khmer
Rouge are bound to prevail. Or else the anti-
Vietnamese coalitions will have to rely on
the puppet Vietnamese military force as a
counterweight—an absurd situation.

The basic challenge to U.S. foreign policy

is thus conceptual. The emer-
gence of a multipolar world does
not diminish America's impor-
tance. But it requires us to
change the nature of our in-
volvement, at least in some ar-
eas. We can no longer do every-
thing simultaneously. We
remain the world's hope for
freedom, but we must learn to
establish priorities and allow
other nations to take over some
of our present security func-
tions. Hence the need for a
new appraisal of the balance
of power.

Americans of all persuasions
have historically believed that
the concept of balance of power
is immoral and contributes to
international tensions. This is
strange, because our domestic
political system is based on a
balance between the three
branches of government. And it
is unrealistic, if "burden-shar-

ing" is to progress from a slogan to a policy. Until very recently, America could base its foreign policy on geographic isolation, economic self-sufficiency and military superiority. But modern technology has made distance irrelevant, and nuclear weapons turn superiority into an elusive goal. As for economic power, in 1950 the United States produced 52 percent of all the world's goods and services. Today it produces around 22 percent. That still makes us the world's strongest nation. But we can no longer maintain the balance of power all by ourselves; we must learn to rely on coalitions and equilibrium.

The recent progress on so-called regional
conflicts resulted from a favorable local
balance of power and the ability to articu-
late clear objectives. We now need to set
comparably realistic objectives and assem-
ble the local power to attain them, or all that
has been achieved can again be lost.

Many Americans are restless with for-
eign policy because it no longer seems to

ZINS—BMVG

'Gusts of nostalgia': NATO tanks on maneuvers

The Soviets are promoting a
vision of a 'European House'

important, however, to put these successes
in perspective. There is a tendency to com-
pare the various agreements to the Ameri-
can experience in Indochina. But in Viet-
nam the United States not only withdrew, it
abdicated. The Soviets will not do that in
Afghanistan; nor will Vietnam wash its
hands of Cambodia. Neither nation will
abandon historic designs on neighboring
countries; they will pursue their objectives
by more indirect means.

To sustain progress on regional issues will be tricky. Once Soviet troops have been withdrawn from Afghanistan, Congressional and public support for the resistance will surely decline. The Soviets will increase pressure on Pakistan to adhere to its agreement not to supply arms, and after the death of President Zia Pakistan will be preoccupied with domestic affairs for many months. It will thus be difficult to prevent the Soviet Union from implementing Lenin's dictum of "one step backwards... two steps forward" by playing the various forces

NEWSWEEK : SEPTEMBER 19, 1988

INTERNATIONAL

permit the direct application of our moral principles. But to meet today's more ambiguous, drawn-out challenges requires an even greater moral commitment than any effort in our past. This is why America must work to elaborate a strategic and geopolitical concept. Today, defense policy too often focuses on procuring weapons for their own sake, not because they meet a strategic need. Arms control has become a liturgical exercise for experts. Alliance strategy is frozen in patterns developed during the period of overwhelming Western nuclear superiority. But now all-out nuclear war risks hundreds of millions of casualties. Attempts to develop more discriminating, less potentially cataclysmic options—such as strategic defense or more precise targeting—are resisted on the one hand by pacifist groups and on the other by allies eager to move the theater of devastation from their own territory to ours. Ultimately, continuation of these trends may confront the democracies with a choice between Armageddon and surrender.

In arms control, all experts agree that if existing arsenals are cut by 50 percent, the remaining forces will become more vulnerable—especially on the U.S. side. There is wide consensus in the Administration that this vulnerability could be eased by such measures as developing mobile missiles, reducing the number of warheads on existing missiles, deploying fewer missiles on each submarine, or some sort of strategic defense. In the name of arms control, the Democratic candidate for President opposes all these programs needed for arms control. Nor has the Administration explained that a responsible arms control program will cost more, not less.

Attention is turning to conventional defense, but without a conceptual framework. That makes the democracies vulnerable to Gorbachev's favorite tactic of accepting a vague Western idea based more on domestic politics than long-range strategy. There is a real danger that with a symbolic reduction of their forces in Eastern Europe, the Soviets could paralyze a serious Western buildup or a realistic arms control scheme. What will be NATO's defense strategy after nuclear weapons have been stigmatized and conventional weapons have been frozen or reduced in a strategically irrelevant manner?

Any catalog of contemporary problems is bound to look formidable, especially in a period of dramatic change. But it is important to maintain perspective. The challenges outlined here can almost without exception be met by changes in policy. Those of the communist world are structural—a much more difficult predicament. The United States and its friends are still in a position to shape their own future. The challenge is less to divine Gorbachev's purposes than to define our own.

TASS
Corrupt legacy: Brezhnevs with Churbanov (far left, inset)

LASKI-SIPA

A Show Trial in Moscow

Crime is a product of social excess, said Lenin, and last week the Soviet Union began a trial designed to spotlight that point. Sitting ashen faced before three military judges, Yuri Churbanov, the son-in-law of the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, listened to a 1,500-page indictment detailing the nepotism that allegedly led him into extortion. When the recitation ended, Churbanov and eight codefendants entered pleas. Two claimed innocence while six pleaded guilty to lesser bribery offenses; Churbanov admitted to abusing his position but denied taking bribes. With about 500 witnesses yet to testify, the Communist Party daily Pravda said, "it is terrible and loathsome to listen."

The Kremlin clearly had two purposes in mind: to discredit the Brezhnev regime and to frighten corrupt officials who remain. Foreign Ministry spokesman Genady Gerasimov said bluntly: "If you wish, you can read into this trial a political message. We don't want to have a state where such a crime will go unpunished." The publicity around the hearings also suggested that Mikhail Gorbachev is aware of the potential for price gouging and black-market profiteering created by his own economic reforms. Said a Soviet-bloc diplomat, "It's a show trial. The Soviet authorities are trying to reassert law and legality."

The Churbanov affair has exposed the web of corruption that extended from the Kremlin under Brezhnev. Churbanov's codefendants were police officials in the republic of Uzbekistan—a notorious center of corruption in the Brezhnev era—where they allegedly accepted cash bribes, and in

one case, sheep, for such favors as facilitating the purchase of cars. Churbanov, a former first deputy interior minister, is accused of taking 20 bribes totaling more than $1 million in return for using his influence on behalf of the Uzbekistan officials. He also faces punishment for misappropriating $31,000 from the Defense Ministry to build a country home. In addition, the indictment confirmed a rumor that Churbanov's boss, former interior minister Nikolai Shchelokov, committed suicide in 1984 as the probe uncovered his protection of illegal rackets.

**Family ties:** Churbanov's defense lawyer, Andrei Makarov, tried in vain to shift the focus away from his client's family. The Soviet press mocked Churbanov's mediocre government career before marrying Galina Brezhneva, and carried rumors about her heavy drinking. Her testimony at the trial may give credence to charges that Churbanov's rise to the No. 2 Interior Ministry job depended on his father-in-law. Makarov told the court: "One gets the impression that... under the name of Churbanov, they are trying to judge Brezhnev."

That's the outcome the Soviet public apparently wants, and expects. "This trial is, in my view, a deep analysis into the causes why the events mentioned in court hearings became possible," said engineer Igor Surovtsev outside the court. While Churbanov faces the death penalty if convicted, he may get off lightly for cooperating with the prosecution. What won't survive is the legacy of Leonid Brezhnev.

GORDON MOTT with STEVE GOLDSTEIN
*in Moscow*

NEWSWEEK: SEPTEMBER 19, 1988 41

BUSINESS

# The Feds Finger the King of Junk

## Drexel's Milken, the man who revolutionized Wall Street, is charged with insider trading

BY BILL POWELL
and CAROLYN FRIDAY

Drexel Burnham Lambert, Michael Milken and others devised and carried out a fraudulent scheme involving insider trading, stock manipulation, fraud on Drexel's own clients, failure to disclose beneficial ownership of securities as required, and numerous other violations of the securities laws.

—SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, Sept. 7, 1988

No one likes to be sued, but I welcome the opportunity to have, at long last, a full and open hearing... in an unbiased forum.

—MICHAEL MILKEN, Sept. 7, 1988

They have never said so publicly, of course, but for two excruciating years, Mi-

chael Milken and everyone else at Drexel Burnham Lambert must have known the day would finally come. On Nov. 14, 1986, Ivan Boesky spoiled what had been a rollicking decade on Wall Street. The flamboyant arbitrageur settled civil charges of insider trading and continued cooperating with the burgeoning government investigation into crime on Wall Street. Ever since, the intention of the SEC and of U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani has been unspoken but obvious: to piece together a formidable case against Drexel and Milken, the most powerful man at the firm that, more than any other, came to embody the roaring '80s on Wall Street.

The SEC civil complaint, which many on Wall Street had treated for months as a foregone conclusion, was still shocking in its detail. The portrait it paints of Milken is one that will please his critics. He is a man who grew fabulously wealthy in part by

illegally manipulating companies and markets, the SEC alleges. In the process, say his critics, he burdened once healthy corporations and financial institutions with huge, risky debts.

But to his network of steadfast supporters, Milken, 42, is a modern-day Tucker, a financial entrepreneur who is now the victim of a vendetta. To Milken's fans, he simply popularized a product—the junk bond—that changed corporate America forever. (A junk bond is debt that is not "investment grade" and thus is more risky to buy.) unrated bonds helped fuel a takeover binge in the United States that continues today. By putting together a network of investors for the bonds, Milken created the primary weapon for a small regiment of corporate raiders. In a flash, thanks to Milken and Drexel, T. Boone Pickens, Carl Icahn, Ronald Perelman and others could raise billions of dollars and threaten Fortune 500-size companies. Sometimes they succeeded in taking over their targets, and sometimes they didn't. But they most certainly frightened executives in countless American boardrooms, and some of Drexel's supporters privately believe Milken is, in part, the victim of an establishment backlash. Says one raider: "I just think the big boys don't like Milken and want to put him out of business."

It may take a trial to determine which Milken is the real one, but when he will get that hearing is unclear. In securities cases, criminal proceedings generally take precedence over civil cases, and Drexel now

### Dennis Levine

The Wall Street scandal broke in May 1986 with the arrest of Dennis Levine, a Drexel 'M&A' specialist. He finished a two-year sentence last week.

PHOTOS BY RON GALELLA

### Ivan Boesky

Levine implicated Ivan Boesky, the Street's biggest arbitrageur. Boesky paid $100 million in penalties and received a three-year sentence.

42 NEWSWEEK: SEPTEMBER 19, 1988

Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post, Wed. Jan. 11, 1989

# First, a Breakthrough With Mexico

The leaders of the seven major Latin American debtor nations, including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela, have asked for a summit with the industrial democracies, their creditors, to discuss solutions for their increasingly intractable debt problem. It is an invitation to the incoming Bush administration should accept—especially in the light of the president-elect's important statement that the debt crisis is not only economic but also political and that it must therefore be solved in a political framework.

The incoming Bush administration will face a grave crisis with a short deadline. By April 1990 all the key governments in Latin America will have changed leaders. In each of these elections, the way these countries' huge foreign debt is being handled will be a principal, perhaps the decisive, issue. The gradualist approach toward the debt favored by the United States—and generally associated with the governing centrist governments in Latin America—will come under heavy attack. If statesmanship does not prevail, the outcome could be a decisive political shift toward populism, nationalism and anti-Americanism.

Latin American populism is the last refuge of traditional Marxism. It has been impervious to glasnost and perestroika. To Latin American populists, faith in state enterprises and in the bogeyman of rapacious capitalists retains its pristine virtue. Thus if a new approach to the debt problem does not emerge through imaginative U.S. leadership, it will be shaped in the crucible of confrontation.

Confrontation would make irrelevant the speculation over whether the center of gravity of American foreign policy is shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific. A hostile Latin America—already a source of illegal immigration, drugs and financial instability—would unavoidably direct America's preoccupation to the Rio Grande.

A major effort to revitalize hemispheric relations does not in the end rest on these negative considerations. Latin America is the part of the developing world with which America has the closest historical and cultural affinity. Growth in such dynamic countries as Brazil, Mexico and Argentina is essential for the well-being of the entire hemisphere, including that of the United States. A creative, cooperative relationship between North and South America is crucial whatever assumption one makes about the world economy. In a world of free trade, a growing Western Hemisphere will sustain general prosperity. If—as is entirely possible—trading blocs develop in Europe and elsewhere, close ties within the Western Hemisphere will enable it to compete effectively. From that perspective the U.S.-Canadian free trade agreement could be a first step toward a larger Western Hemisphere arrangement.

The origin of the debt problem goes back to the '70s, when U.S. banks "recycled" vast amounts of oil dollars into foreign loans. The process in fact prevented a broad financial crisis. It was based on the assumption that rising oil prices would make repayment painless and that borrowers would use the debt for reforms by which to outgrow its burden.

The collapse in oil prices and sharp rise in interest rates of the early '80s destroyed that illusion. Starting in 1982, first Mexico and then other debtors found it impossible to meet their obligations; commercial banks responded by cutting off credit to most developing countries. At first the banks pretended that they were dealing with a short-term liquidity crisis—a temporary inability to pay—not a challenge to the fundamental solvency of Latin America. The remedy, it was argued, was to advance funds to cover interest

payments, together with some relatively modest adjustments in Latin American economies. These would cause exports to grow faster than interest payments. Credit-worthiness would be restored. Debt service and austerity were an investment to lay the groundwork for renewed growth.

But matters did not turn out that way. The problem is clearly one of solvency; some countries owe more than they can possibly repay. The temporary adjustment programs of 1982 have turned into the apparently permanent austerity of 1988. Since the end of 1982 Latin America has paid around $235 billion in interest, but its indebtedness has increased by $50 billion. Latin America, an underdeveloped region, has become a net exporter of capital—an unsustainable and unjust state of affairs.

The impasse is heightened because the U.S. and the Latin American perspectives on the debt problem are almost diametrically opposite; the discussion between them is often a dialogue of the deaf. This is why a new approach is so essential.

The dominant view in the U.S. government and the major banks still denies that there is an emergency. It cites debt-reduction schemes in Mexico, Brazil and Chile; multiyear reschedulings in Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico and a multibillion-dollar loan to Brazil as evidence that the process is working. It argues that the experiences with the near-default of Brazil and Peru have taught the other Latin American countries the futility of failing to maintain interest payments. It draws comfort from trade surpluses in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil and from the growing role of the World Bank. Latin America's seemingly permanent stagnation and runaway inflation are ascribed to lack of determination in pressing reform.

The Latin American countries and almost all of their leaders are exasperated by this technical approach. To them sharply declining living standards spell not potential progress but certain political catastrophe. The collapse in real wages in most of Latin America—according to the new president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in Mexico they have fallen as much as 50 percent since 1982—means domestic disaster. No democratic government can stand the prolonged austerity and cuts in social services demanded by the international institutions. In every Latin American country the political elite has become convinced that the present system of dealing with foreign debt has grown politically unsustainable.

Both sides are right. From a strictly economic point of view the U.S. perspective is valid. From a political point of view the Latin American argument is compelling.

Fortunately both sides have learned a great deal in the six years of dealing with the debt crisis. The American banks have on the whole understood that the problem has a political component. Most of them have gone to the limit of what profit-making organizations can absorb by reducing their profit margins and by establishing reserves against default. They have been generally innovative in designing financing schemes to ease the debt burden. What they will not do is voluntarily forgive debt or accept the full market discount on the bulk of the outstanding credits. They fear that a serious precedent would be established that would impair their lending capacity and thus cause a global financial crisis. They prefer to be forced into accepting losses by the U.S. government on the theory that the government would then be obliged to ease their burdens, if only by tax relief.

As for the U.S. government, then-secretary of the Treasury James A. Baker III laid the conceptual foundation for a new approach at the Seoul IMF meeting in 1985 when he put forward the proposition that the debt problem could be solved only by global economic growth. However, in the end practice did not match theory. The Baker plan did not get very far, largely because in an election year the Reagan Administration was reluctant to undertake policies that its political opponents could represent as "bailing out the banks." But the Baker plan's reliance on growth remains central to any solution.

In Latin America, too, beyond the sound and fury a more receptive mood toward a constructive compromise is emerging. Latin American ministers now in office understand that during a

period of fiscal stringency the United States is in no position to undertake large governmental expenditures; hence if they want to grow they must encourage the flow of private capital. Access to that capital would vanish were debt to be renounced unilaterally. Moreover, most Latin American leaders understand that reform is not an idiosyncratic idea of international financial institutions but the precondition of sustained domestic growth and hence of the survival of democratic institutions. In the end the issue between North and South America is no longer that debt relief must be tied to some conditions; the issue is the terms of those conditions.

To define the conditions for growth involves a highly political act for all of the countries concerned. On the U.S. side the new administration must put aside bromides about automatic economic remedies and the need for banks to solve their own problems without a governmental role. On the Latin American side demands for debt relief must be coupled with a precise program of how economic growth can be achieved in a politically relevant time frame; it has to be accompanied by credible assurances that the reduced level of debt will not simply be a stage on the road to complete default.

The key element of such a solution will be a reallocation of the burden of debt—both principal and interest—between debtors, banks and governments. The banks cannot carry the burden alone. A U.S. governmental role is unavoidable. But the U.S. government can have no interest in engaging itself to promote default by stages. A U.S. governmental contribution can be justified only on the ground that it promotes Latin American growth and democracy and a more cooperative relationship in the Western Hemisphere.

Two principles should govern this process:

* Latin America must take in more new capital than it sends out to service its debt. Some U.S. governmental grants would be helpful. But the budget deficit inhibits large-scale direct contributions from the U.S. Treasury. U.S. help must consist of such devices as tax relief for affected banks or some form of guarantee for new bank loans that help start the renewed process of growth.

* The Latin American countries must contribute a genuine program of reform. It makes no sense that state capitalism remains supreme south of the Rio Grande long after it has been abandoned in the communist world. Privatization, freeing capital flows and reducing governmental exactions must be key elements of such a program. In short the Latin American governments must understand that a larger U.S. role can be justified only in the context of genuine structural economic reform and a credible system for meticulously servicing the new reduced level of debt.

Historic coincidence and geographic proximity combine to make Mexico the test case. The

United States and Latin America are both tortured that the first governmental change in the massive transformations looming for the entire hemisphere has brought President Salinas into office in Mexico. No other Latin American leader shares to the same degree the U.S. preference for market economies, private capital and cooperative solutions. Moreover, Mexico under Salinas' predecessor, President Miguel de la Madrid, has had the most sustained record of economic reform of any of the Latin American countries. And a U.S.-Mexican frontier of 2,000 miles, millions of migrant Mexicans to the United States and the crisis in Central America all combine to give a special priority to the solution of the Mexican debt problem.

Significant progress must be shown before the other Latin American elections take place. U.S.-Mexican relations could set a model for negotiations with the other countries as the new governments emerge. In practice this means that top priority must be given to a breakthrough with Mexico during the first six months of the Bush Administration.

Much is at stake for the Western Hemisphere. Confrontation can only produce losers. Latin America would fail to grow; default would not give it any significant additional resources. The United States would lose the opportunity to help

> "The banks cannot carry the burden alone. A U.S. governmental role is unavoidable."

construct a truly cooperative world order and a new relationship in the Western Hemisphere. A summit would provide an opportunity to abandon entrenched positions in favor of a commitment to the common good. But whatever the forum, the Bush administration faces no more urgent challenge than to revitalize its relationships with our neighbors to the South.

©1989, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

As the Kremlin Shakes,

Sunday, October 16, 1988

LA Times

the West Must Be Wary

By Henry A. Kissinger

NEW YORK

Political upheavals in Moscow occur with the suddenness of thunderstorms. A flash of lightning illuminates an often murky landscape. But the significance of figures frozen in the tableau is far from self-evident. The observer must disentangle the familiar from the novel and try to understand the true significance of what is novel.

The speed—often a matter of hours—
and satisfaction with which almost all
Western leaders welcomed Mikhail S.
Gorbachev's accession to the presidency
reflects the Soviet leader's talent for
mesmerizing the democracies. The gener-
al assumption seemed to be that anything
that strengthened Gorbachev helped the
cause of peace. But a more plausible
lesson of the Kremlin maneuvers may be
that no outsider can possibly disentangle
the obscure machinations of power shifts
within the Politburo—much less influence
them. Not even the losers in the power
struggle seem to have seen it coming.
Moreover, another unpredictable turn of
the wheel could affect the personnel
guiding Kremlin foreign policy. Any poli-
cy that relies on a single Soviet personali-
ty is built on sand. East-West relations
must be based on more fundamental
realities of national purpose and interest.

On one level what has happened in
Moscow is quite familiar. From Josef
Stalin through Leonid I. Brezhnev, every
general secretary has begun his term by
purging the men who put him in office.
Despite three years of glasnost and peres-
troika, secretiveness and coup-like proce-
dures persist; so does the abruptness with
which losers have been ushered offstage.

After 70 years of power, the Soviet
system has still not achieved a method of
legitimate succession at the top. An
American President, once sworn in, is
immediately in full charge; the general
secretary of the Communist Party is not
secure until he has disavowed his prede-
cessor and replaced appointees of the
previous regime with men personally
loyal to himself. This is because the Soviet
system is more akin to the governance of

a feudal state than a modern corporation
or national state. It depends on an
intricate set of understandings that make
personal obligation far more significant
than legal structures.

What is new about the latest upheaval
is that Gorbachev's program of change
apparently causes him to be insecure
about the loyalty of his own retainers.
Therefore he seems to be aiming for a
structure of government that makes him
substantially independent of even the
tenuous checks and balances remaining in
communist society.

And Gorbachev has good cause for
apprehension. His most significant contri-
bution is a recognition that the Soviet
economy—if continued in the pattern of
the last 70 years—is doomed to become no
more than the most developed of the
underdeveloped countries by the next
century. A plethora of commissions, min-
istries and boards performs the role of the
market in capitalist societies. This maze
evades all rational control and even
oversight. But there is comfort in this
maze for the Communist Party since
manipulating it is its essential rationale.
Hence the paradox: A modern state
cannot be run by Soviet central planning;
but without a system of central planning,
the Communist Party will be irrelevant.

Any attempt to reform the economy
thus runs up against the vested interests
and entrenched prerogatives of the very
group that confers legitimacy in a com-
munist society. Hence a second paradox: If
he wants to reform the economy, Gorbac-
hev must weaken the very instrument
from which he derives his power.

Gorbachev has come up with an ingen-
ious formula to avoid the fate of Nikita S.
Khrushchev, the last Soviet reformer.
Gorbachev has taken over the heretofore
largely ceremonial office of President—as
did Brezhnev before him—but he has
proposed that it be given unprecedented
executive powers, akin to those of a U.S.
President. These functions would be re-
moved to a considerable extent from
control by the Politburo. If he succeeds in
carrying these ideas to their logical
conclusion, Gorbachev will have achieved
a formal concentration of power exceed-
ing even that established by Stalin.

The question therefore is to what extent
the West should gear its policy to the

presumed virtues of so powerful and
attractive a Soviet leader. If only Gorbac-
hev can bring peace, it follows that there
is no objective basis for peace, an ulti-
mately precarious situation. My belief is
that Western policy should free itself to
the greatest extent possible from reliance
on a single personality because the test of
East-West relations is Soviet foreign
policy, not Soviet domestic policy; the
West must have a program of its own that
goes beyond "helping Gorbachev."

For one thing, economic reform in a
communist society is exceedingly diffi-
cult. The greatest progress has so far been
made by China, a culturally homogeneous
society with an entrepreneurial tradition
and prerevolutionary remnants of an
enterprise system. None of these condi-
tions exists in the Soviet Union.

All the intricate Kremlin maneuvering
so far has concerned the allocation of
power, not the purpose to which it is put.
The wrenching transition toward a mar-
ket economy has not even begun. Price
reform is essential but still only a slogan.
Since all prices in the Soviet Union are
artificial, nobody really knows what costs
are. But price reform involves the remov-
al of subsidies, which causes a substantial
increase in prices and the loss of job
security as inefficient enterprises go
bankrupt. Conservatives are thus certain
to return to theray, casting themselves
as defenders of the public against inflation
and unemployment. Gorbachev oppo-
nents are likely to reappear for another
round of policy controversy or perhaps
even an assault on his position—many of
them are still on the Politburo.

Similar ambiguities bedevil other as-
pects of perestroika. For example:

- The dilemmas of Soviet centraliza-
tion still await a concrete program. Centralization guarantees stagnation but de-
centralization risks a rise of nationalism in
various republics of the Soviet empire.

- The governmental structure envis-
aged by Gorbachev may look more im-
pressive in theory than in practice. A
Soviet general secretary is anointed as the
incarnation of historical necessity; an
American President has the sanction of a
popular vote. The new Soviet president is
neither anointed nor really elected by any
remotely representative body. By what
legitimacy does he exercise power?

- Even reorganization of the Commu-
nist Central Committee is ambiguous. The
consolidation of some 20 departments into
six commissions could yet produce a real
challenge to the general secretary, espe-
cially when two commissions are headed

(continued →)

by men—Yegor K. Ligachev and Viktor M. Chebrikov—assumed to be critical of Gorbachev aims.

It is still far from clear whether glasnost is an end in itself or a means to achieve personal power. On the way to pre-eminence, Gorbachev has encouraged some expressions of public discontent—especially among intellectuals—to bring pressure on a recalcitrant bureaucracy. But that will not necessarily be the pattern once Gorbachev's personal power is consolidated. Like many reformers, Gorbachev may believe that all rational persons will come to the same conclusion. But like reformers before him, he will be disappointed by the perversity of human nature. Until that test comes, it is foolish and dangerous to celebrate democratization of the Soviet Union.

If perestroika and glasnost are not automatic solutions to the problems of coexistence, there is even more reason to be wary. For all its moderate, even sentimental rhetoric, Soviet foreign policy has been daringly aimed at reducing American influence in Eurasia and separating Europe, especially West Germany, from the United States. But it may turn out that in foreign policy Gorbachev is more skillful as a tactician than as a strategist. Japan and China are essentially immune to sentimental appeals. They insist on being paid in geopolitical coin—that is to say in an improvement of their strategic positions. And they cannot be “won” by Moscow because they will always consider the United States essential to prevent hegemony in Eurasia.

Gorbachev's psychological offensive has had more success in Europe, notably in West Germany. But the question remains: To what permanent effect? The natural field of activity for a more autonomous West German policy is Eastern Europe, thereby resurrecting the historic rivalry between Teuton and Slav.

The rhetoric of glasnost and the possible withdrawal of Soviet troops from Central Europe are likely to encourage even greater centrifugal tendencies in Eastern Europe than within the Atlantic Alliance. In the end it may be the stability of Eastern Europe that is at issue. What Gorbachev has achieved so far is less a disintegration of the Atlantic Alliance than a reopening of questions about the political future of Eastern Europe.

Logically there should be real opportunity to negotiate a genuine relaxation of tensions. The Soviet Union faces not only domestic problems but also the reality that most emerging power centers—Europe, Japan, India—are at or near its borders. An aggressive Soviet policy is likely to unite all these nations against it. But a more peaceful course cannot be charted with the phrase “helping Gorbachev.”

The fashionable slogan is both empty and an abdication of policy. No Soviet leader has ever retired with honor nor has his reputation survived his death. Only the toughest individuals with a highly developed drive for power enter a competition against such forbidding odds. Why should Western leaders expect Gorbachev to treat them with more compassion than he did his erstwhile colleagues to whom, after all, he owes his position?

In short, the goal of Western policy must not be to “help” any one Soviet leader in the Kremlin's arcane power struggles but to develop a common program on such issues as:

- What is the Western interest in strengthening the Soviet Union in the absence of a political accommodation? And what are the terms of such an accommodation?

- What is the proper policy toward the future of Eastern Europe, especially after the European Community is fully institutionalized after 1992?

- What is the ultimate purpose of arms control? How does it relate to security and the evolution of Eastern Europe?

Western policy is firmly built only when it relates to fundamental principles and interests. A West tying itself to one leader paralyzes itself in the face of changes it cannot affect—or perhaps even understand. ☐

SPECIAL REPORT

# Time to Talk With Iran

BY HENRY KISSINGER

TRAGEDY

IN THE GULF

Occasionally an unexpected catastrophe provides an opportunity for reassessing a course in which all participants, like actors in a Greek tragedy, seem bent on fulfilling a destiny no longer in their control. The tragic shootdown of the Iranian civilian airliner by the American Navy may be the occasion for all the parties involved in the gulf war to pause and to reclaim control over their destinies.

The basic facts require no discussion. Even the fanatics in Teheran must know that the United States had no conceivable rational motive for such an act. No doubt the U.S. military authorities will review the relevant rules of engagement in an effort to minimize the possibility of a recurrence. But above all, the accident should provide an occasion for all sides to review how they wound up in a situation where such an incident could happen in the first place.

Fundamentally, there are few nations in the world with less reason to quarrel and more compatible interests than Iran and the United States. Though the shah came to symbolize the friendship between the two countries in the 1970s, those interests did not depend on him. They reflected political and strategic realities that continue today. This unfortunate accident may provide the occasion to reopen a dialogue with Teheran. As part of the process, the United States could agree to pay compensation to the families of the airline victims—but put the money in escrow until there is a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war and American hostages in Lebanon are released.

America has three basic objectives in the gulf:

* To ensure freedom of navigation. At least half of the oil reserves of the world are located in the countries bordering the gulf. An interruption of shipping in the area would threaten the industrial democracies with a recurrence of the oil shock of the '70s, which produced inflation, recession and mounting unemployment.

* To prevent Soviet domination of the area. At least since the time of Peter the Great, controlling the gulf has been a major goal of Russian policy. In the 19th century, but for British intervention, Iran would have been incorporated into the Russian empire, just as the neighboring Central Asian principalities were conquered by the czars. In 1946, but for American intervention, Iran's northwestern province of Azerbaijan would have been seized by the commissars as a first step toward dismembering Iran, which has a frontier of some 1,500 miles with the Soviet Union. The invasion of Afghanistan was another stage in fulfilling this centuries-old Russian

ambition. And the current withdrawal almost surely means not that the goal has been abandoned, but that it will be pursued by more indirect means.

* To preserve the territorial integrity of friendly states and encourage their progress. Two radical threats exist in the gulf: secular Iraq and fundamentalist Iran. Iraq has a history of supporting terrorism and bringing pressure on nearby moderate states. Fundamentalist Iran has sought to overthrow all moderate regimes and to humble Iraq, which attacked it in 1980. A victory for either side would undermine the security of friendly gulf countries and jeopardize the prosperity of the industrial democracies. So long as Iran seemed to be winning the war, it was necessary for the United States to tilt toward Iraq. But in the end America can have no conceivable interest in the victory of either side.

To what extent are these objectives served by the American commitment in the gulf?

In 1987, when the United States first started escorting Kuwaiti tankers, I expressed grave reservations. It seemed to me then that the stated goal—freedom of navigation—hardly reflected our real purposes. Iran has no interest in closing the gulf, because it uses that waterway to export its oil. Iraq did have such an interest, because it wanted to deprive Iran of its principal source of hard-currency earnings. In fact, statistics show that through 1987 the majority of attacks on shipping in the gulf came from Iraq; Iranian attacks on shipping generally were in retaliation. Nor was the escorting of Kuwaiti ships representing less than 2 percent of the total traffic through the Strait of Hormuz relevant to the problem of free navigation. It is only in the last three

months that the United States has offered assistance to all neutral shipping.

Despite these inconsistencies, the deployment wound up serving American long-term interests. Teheran—and friendly moderate governments—interpreted the scale of our deployment as a prelude to more sweeping designs, perhaps even to an assault on Iran. This induced extraordinary (and heretofore uncharacteristic) circumspection on the part of Iran, reducing fundamentalist pressures. Friendly moderate governments have recovered from the shock of U.S. arms sales to Iran: witness Saudi Arabia's break of diplomatic relations with Iran. It no longer seems possible for Iran to win the land war; a stalemate in the fighting appears to have developed. There are even indications that Iran is reconsidering its policies. The second man in Iran, Parliament Speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has stated that Iran has needlessly antagonized neutral countries with its revolutionary fervor. And

LEDRU-SYGMA

Parading a hostage: U.S. Embassy ordeal, 1979

**Iranians have suffered tragically. Americans have been bestially abused.**

30 NEWSWEEK: JULY 18, 1988

# A Letter From Iran Air 659

## Are Americans callous about Iranian lives?

BY CHRISTOPHER DICKEY

Iran Air 659 from Teheran to Dubai took off a little before 3 Saturday afternoon, not quite a week since the downing of Iran Air 655. The passengers aboard the packed jumbo jet were much the same kind of people. There were lots of women, dozens of kids running down the aisles and giggling in the corridor by the bathroom. Why was the flight full? Because life in Iran is hard. Sitting next to me was a former teacher at an American school in Isfahan. Before the revolution he taught foreign students, mainly Americans, about contemporary Iranian culture ("I used to tell them religion was really very central"). Then the Islamic revolution came and he was out of a job. "I don't really do anything," he said. "I am retired." He has accumulated enough foreign exchange to come to Dubai—an ancient Mideast trading city—to buy a television set, a vacuum cleaner, maybe a VCR. Back in Iran, he will sell them. At black-market rates, you can make a living that way.

Many of the crew wore black ribbons. "Our best friends died, you know," one said. "It is very bad." A rough-hewn Iranian peasant with little experience of flying sat near the window. When we were over land once more he started smiling. He looked at me and groped for the English word: "Finish," he said. We were no longer in danger. He made a shooting motion skyward and frowned. Then he laid his head on a hand, to show he could relax now.

**Ask 'them':** Throughout three previous days in Teheran itself, Iranians treated me and other American reporters with unflagging courtesy. At the public funeral for 76 of the victims, I encountered no personal hostility, even amid the ritualistic shouts of "Death to America." People asked me, "Why?" Again and again they said, "The American people are not our enemies," even though they suspected Washington was lying about how it happened. Said the schoolteacher on my plane: "When I heard the Americans shot down the Airbus I couldn't believe it. I thought at first that something was wrong with the Iranians."

All the anti-American slogans, the jingles that bored kids sing to themselves almost unconsciously, are so familiar

they are mere background to daily life in Teheran. Iranians are becoming cynical about their own leaders. Hostage-taking, the terrorism in Beirut are done by "them." Iranians, at least of the English-speaking class, rarely seem to talk about their clerical leadership as "the government" or even the more pejorative "regime." It's "them." And "they" did these things. Even the head of the Air Force, Brig. Gen. Mansour Satary, when asked why the war drags on, said reporters would have to ask "them."

This in no way absolves Iran for past atrocities like the hostage seizures. But how would an American crowd have reacted to an Iranian reporter in its midst after nearly 300 U.S. civilians, more than 60 of them children, had been blown out of the air by an Iranian warship. Would Americans differentiate between that Iranian and his government? Not likely.

And that's really the point. When the mullahs call the United States "the Great Satan" their people are likely to react with skepticism or indifference. A large part of the American public, however, seems perfectly willing to believe in the satanism of Iranians. Just before I went to Iran on Tuesday I was called by a radio talk show from the States that wanted to know if there was anything to the idea that the Iranians set up the whole thing,

then dumped all those naked corpses of women and children in the water.

I even caught myself asking if it might be true. Then I saw the bodies—and I've seen a lot of bodies. I talked to the people in Bandar Abbas and Teheran. Satary, who received training in America, wondered if Americans thought Iranian lives were perhaps less important than other lives.

**Durable demons:** None of this is meant as criticism of Capt. Will Rogers or his crew. Rogers's statement that he would have to live with this for the rest of his life was one of the few made by an American official that seemed genuinely felt. And it was clear that even Satary did not think the United States actually intended to shoot down an unarmed civilian aircraft. He just said they didn't care enough to be careful enough not to do it.

The administration needs a more critical look, I think. It's not pushing a point too much to say that demonization has been a Reagan rhetorical trademark: remember the "evil empire"? The Soviet demons seem to have shed their horns, but the mullahs have remained reliably sinister. Only, we don't say "the mullahs." We say "the Iranians."

The bereaved steward on my flight from Teheran wanted to know how I felt about what had happened. I said it was awful, then turned the question around. What did he think happened? "I don't know," he said. "It was a mistake, an American mistake and an Iranian mistake." It was his friends who died, yet he saw gross errors on both sides. Why is it so hard for Americans to do the same?

GREG ENGLISH—AP

'Our best friends died': Wreckage of downed airliner displayed in Bandar Abbas

NEWSWEEK: JULY 18, 1988 29

SPECIAL REPORT

Teheran has opened dialogues with Great Britain and France.

These successes would have suggested a reassessment, even had the civilian airliner not been shot down. At the same time, the accident makes it necessary to demonstrate that new initiatives represent not a loss of nerve but a long-range policy.

America has no reason to create the impression that it is irrevo-
cably hostile to Iran, even less that it is committed to the victory of
Iraq. On the contrary, America has a positive interest in the
territorial integrity and economic development of Iran, provided
that its rulers do not make trouble outside their national borders.
What brought American naval forces to the gulf was the expansion-
ist policy of Iranian fundamentalism. What makes a dialogue
between America and Iran so difficult is Iranian support for some of
the most obnoxious forms of terrorism and the cynical manipula-
tion of American hostages.

The rulers in Teheran must sooner or later see the folly of a policy that challenges the most distant superpower—and thereby weakens them against a giant neighbor with historically demonstrated ambitions to dismember Iran and dominate the gulf. Nor can they doubt as to the basic readiness of the Reagan administration to improve relations. Fanaticism may blind the Iranians to the motive. They took the arms-for-hostages fiasco as a sign of weakness. They may worry as well about their domestic cohesion if they deal with what the mullahs choose to call “the Great Satan.”

Although the United States can do nothing to change the in-

grained attitudes in Teheran, it
could use the disaster in the gulf
to give Teheran another oppor-
tunity for a businesslike dia-
logue. This should take place in
three stages: a settlement of the
airliner issue; a de facto cease-
fire in the Iran-Iraq war; the
beginning of a more fundamen-
tal dialogue.

With respect to the airliner, the Reagan administration has already expressed its regret at the loss of life. To go further and apologize would imply an admission of deliberate wrongdoing that might become a pretext for new acts of terrorism. There has been too much self-flagellation on that score.

Moral concern is not demon-
strated by abjectness. But it
could be expressed in the follow-
ing additional steps:

- Agreeing to allow an inter-
  national investigation of the
  incident.

■ Offering to pay compensation to the families of victims.

However, the United States cannot be asked to finance the war against Iraq or to pay a substantial sum of hard currency to a country whose disciples are still holding American hostages. Innocent Iranian families have suffered tragically. But innocent American families have been suffering for years while their loved ones have been bestially abused, and at least two have been murdered. Congress should therefore be asked to vote appropriate compensation, but to place the part of it that will go to Iranian nationals in escrow until there is a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war and American hostages have been released from Lebanon. To prevent the compensation issue from turning into a new form of blackmail, the amount should be proposed by internationally recognized experts based on established criteria, such as the lifetime earning capacities of the victims.

America would thus formally agree to specific compensation for

innocent Iranians. Iran would demonstrate its readiness to end the suffering of innocent Americans and victims of the Iran-Iraq war. The rulers of Iran will only increase their long-term dilemmas if they use a tragic accident as an excuse for a new wave of terror. Such actions would surely produce retaliation. Hostages are no longer a bargaining chip but an obstacle to an improvement of relations that in the end is at least as much in Iran's interest as in America's.

From that basis, America should undertake major efforts to bring about an end to the Iran-Iraq conflict. Now that Iraq's armies have reconquered practically all the territory occupied by Iran, that goal becomes more realistic. In order to avoid endless negotiations between the parties about the modalities of a cease-fire, the United States could make the following five-step proposal:

■ Iran and Iraq would both unilaterally declare an end to all offensive operations beyond their national frontiers.

■ Iran and Iraq would agree to end attacks on shipping.

■ The secretary-general of the United Nations would create a commission to investigate the causes of the war—thus meeting a key Iranian demand.

■ As soon as each side has declared its willingness to stop offensive military operations—or even if Iran does so alone—the United States would stop escorting shipping in the gulf.

■ As the cease-fire takes hold, the United States would reduce

its naval presence in the gulf
to the levels existing before
the escorting of neutral ship-
ping began.

Once that context is estab-
lished, the United States should
be prepared to initiate confiden-
tial discussions aimed at a per-
manent improvement of U.S.-
Iranian relations. The mistake
of the last initiative toward Iran
was to seek to move immediate-
ly to the solution of concrete
problems. Because those prob-
lems involved profound Ameri-
can anxieties, the mullahs were
tempted to engage in blackmail.

In fact, the situation has some
analogies to the early stages of
U.S.-Chinese relations. In that
case, two ideologically hostile
countries began a dialogue
based on the premise of congru-
ent geopolitical interests. Each
side presented its view of the
international situation and ex-
plained where it met and where

it differed from the other's. Similarly, in a dialogue with Iran, it
would be futile for either side to pretend to approve of the other's
values. It is possible, however, that over time a common interest in
stability in the gulf can emerge. The United States can do no more
than present as thoughtfully as it is able why this is so. As in the
secret negotiations with China, this process would be best conduct-
ed by a small group on a highly confidential basis, to avoid raising
unnecessary expectations and having to make jarring public
explanations.

The United States has achieved its basic objectives in the gulf. The choice is now Iran's. Is it prepared to face reality and act on the basis of national interest? Or will it continue to pursue essentially revolutionary aims? If it chooses the former, it should find a fair and open-minded partner in the United States. If Teheran chooses the latter, the United States has no option but to stay the course and defend its vital interests and those of its friends.

KOLARAB- SYOMA

Radical versus radical: An Iranian casualty near Fao

America can have no
conceivable interest in a
victory by either side

NEWSWEEK : JULY 18, 1988

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

# Meese's Long Goodbye

His resignation helps Bush, but a prosecutor's report details ethical lapses

© ROBERT HOLMGREN

A player in most of the questionable incidents: *Attorney Wallach*

Early last Tuesday, Attorney General Edwin Meese III got a chance to play his favorite role as the nation's top cop when he presided over a raid on a California marijuana patch. But that was nothing compared with his bravura performance later that day at a hastily convened press conference in Sacramento. Declaring that he had been "completely vindicated" by independent prosecutor James McKay's 14-month investigation into his ethical conduct, Meese said he would leave the Justice Department by the beginning of August. It was a definition of "vindication" missing from standard dictionaries. Just hours before the attorney general made his announcement, McKay filed an

830-page report detailing Meese's improprieties in office.

A controversial figure since he followed Ronald Reagan from California eight years ago, Meese has calmly shaken off allegations of wrongdoing time and again. Though few in the administration besides the president wanted him around, most despaired of his volunteering to step down before the election. But with the "sleaze factor" emerging as a key Democratic issue, Meese had become a political liability for the Republicans. For the Bush campaign, the resignation couldn't have been more welcome. In a terse statement, the vice president said simply: "Ed did the right thing and I wish him well."

**'Everything wrong'**: McKay found insufficient evidence for indicting the attorney general on any federal criminal charges. Nevertheless, law-enforcement sources say that the report, which has been placed under court seal until later this month, concluded the attorney general was at best insensitive to the appearance of impropriety. Other prosecutors hinted that, faced with the same evidence, they might have indicted him. As one government official puts it: "The word at Justice is that the report says Meese did everything wrong except commit a crime." By resigning before its contents are made public, "he can claim vindication without having to react

to any of the items that may be in the report," says Terry Eastland, who was fired as Justice spokesman in May. With the attorney general's office in disarray and only six months left, the administration scurried to find a successor who could be confirmed quickly—and end the Reagan era at Justice on a dignified note. At the weekend, former Pennsylvania governor Dick Thornburgh headed the short list.

"No Problems Ed"—as Washington pundits call the ever-upbeat Meese—finally realized he had a problem after a series of springtime setbacks. In late March, Arnold I. Burns, the No. 2 man at Justice, and William F. Weld, head of its criminal division, quit because they felt Meese had compromised the department's credibility. That same week, McKay announced that he would not recommend an indictment against Meese but indicated that his upcoming report would raise questions about the attorney general's ethical conduct. A month later, the Senate subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management found that, as counselor to Reagan, Meese had violated White House policy

when he intervened to win a defense contract for the scandal-ridden Wedtech Corp. His firing of Eastland, a popular conservative, alienated supporters on the far right.

Reagan repeatedly dismissed the charges against Meese as largely partisan smears. Though he reluctantly agreed with principal advisers—most notably his wife, Nancy—that Meese was a political handicap, he refused to try to force him out. But while Reagan was away at the Moscow summit, Bush told Meese that he should resign for the good of the party. Given the attorney general's stubbornness, few administration insiders expected him to oblige. He "was ready to fight the world on this report," says a former Justice official. "He

had been under attack for so long, he could not think rationally."

**Narrow window:** In fact, despite his public determination to stay on, Meese notified Reagan several months ago of his plans to resign before the term was up. Last month Meese began plotting his strategy with a small group of trusted advisers, including Justice aide William Bradford Reynolds and veteran Reagan pollster Richard Wirthlin. "Not one of the group was telling

WALLY MCNAMEE—NEWSWEEK

Reagan loyalist: With James Baker, Michael Deaver

32 NEWSWEEK: JULY 18, 1988

Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post

Sunday, June 12, 1988

# Reagan's Final Challenge

That the fourth summit between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan ended without major agreements is a sign of a new maturity in East-West relations. Highly technical negotiations do not mature on artificial deadlines, and heads of government are dangerous negotiators. They lack the requisite expertise for the complexities of arms control. And their disagreements permit no appeal.

Annual summits provide above all an opportunity for the two leaders to understand each other's point of view so that they know how to react in crises and to set realistic goals. Reagan's fourth East-West summit achieved what was possible, which is, after all, the art of foreign policy.

Nevertheless, the president must face the painful fact that the opportunities for serious negotiation, which exist and which his policy has made possible, will come to fruition in the next administration. His place in history rests not on his conclusion of yet another agreement under the pressure of an artificial deadline but on his restoration of America's self-confidence and strength and navigation of the transition from a bellicose rhetoric to a recognition of the special responsibility for peace of the two superpowers. The president's final challenge is psychologically the most difficult: Will he be able to dissociate his personality from the process he started? His challenge is to give peace a concrete content, to supply criteria for progress to a public all too eager to believe that there exists a magic shortcut.

This is why it would be a grave mistake to seek to complete the START agreement in what remains of President Reagan's term. Such a treaty would bind the United States with respect to precisely the weapons on which the defense of free peoples has depended for the postwar period. Such a solemn commitment should be undertaken in the last days of an administration only if the issues being negotiated are largely settled and if a wide domestic consensus exists. Neither condition obtains today.

If an agreement were signed in such circumstances, the beginning of the new president's term would be heavily mortgaged. During the election campaign, neither candidate would be able to give day-to-day negotiations serious attention; afterward the winner will or should be occupied with forming his administration. If he were presented with a completed agreement, he would have to fight for the ratification of a document he had no hand in shaping. He would have to ask for funds to restructure strategic forces in the face of certain opposition from the Soviets as well as domestic groups arguing that such an effort violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the agreement. He would be under simultaneous pressure to maintain the momentum of arms control set by his predecessor.

This would be a heavy burden to leave to a successor, when many START issues are so controversial. The issue of cruise missiles is unresolved. The issue of the Strategic Defense Initiative, involving the key strategic innovation of the Reagan years, is being obfuscated. The issue of mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles is unsettled. In short, these problems are too complex to be negotiated responsibly in a few weeks and during a presidential election campaign.

It seems inconceivable that even verification can be solved in the time available to the president. To give but two examples: Under the protocol signed at the Washington summit in December of last year, the Soviet SS-25 mobile missile is assumed to carry only one warhead. However, the SS-25 is essentially the SS-20 (banned under the INF Treaty) with one additional fuel stage. The SS-20 had three warheads, which did not have to be destroyed under the INF Treaty. Since only 700 SS-20 launchers will have to be dismantled, there are approximately 2,100 SS-20 warheads available for deployment on SS-25s in a crisis, or more than 40 percent of the 4,900 warheads permitted by the START agreement. What happens to these warheads under START? How, if at all, would they be counted?

Or take the issue of verification of mobile missiles. The official U.S. position is to ban mobiles even while it is known that two new Soviet long-range missiles—the SS-25 and the SS-24—are mobile. The official U.S. position is therefore nearly certain to be abandoned; the decision has in fact been foreshadowed by preliminary discussions with the Soviets about the verification of limitation of mobiles.

Almost all experts agree that mobile missiles are to all practical purposes unverifiable in the vast expanse of the Soviet Union. To get around this dilemma an ingenious scheme has been devised according to which mobile missiles are to be confined to specified locations where they can be counted. They are to be permitted to leave these "parking areas" only in times of crisis.

This scheme sacrifices invulnerability to verification. Mobile missiles in parks are essentially unprotected and, therefore, even more vulnerable than stationary missiles in silos. They therefore almost invite surprise attack, and a decision to move the missiles from their parking areas could escalate a crisis into a conflagration.

Since the Reagan administration has yet to decide whether it wants mobile missiles and, if so, what kind, it cannot possibly know where to establish the "parking areas." Congress favors mobiles, but the House of Representatives supports the so-called Midgetman, while the Senate prefers the mobile Minuteman III. As a result, funds have been voted for research on both. But deployment is paralyzed.

In such circumstances the administration is in no position to complete a START treaty. Before it binds itself for the indefinite future with the Soviets, it must come to terms with itself and with Congress.

This applies not only to the special case of mobiles but to the entire structure of U.S. strategic forces. All experts agree that if existing U.S. strategic forces are cut by 50 percent, the vulnerability of the land-based and submarine-based strategic forces will increase immediately and mount progressively as the accuracy of Soviet missiles and the effectiveness of Soviet antisubmarine forces grow. Hence the concern with mobility, with designing a new silo-based missile with fewer warheads and reducing the number of missiles per submarine from 24 to 16. These measures would enable the United States to distribute the permitted number of missiles among more silos and submarines, thus making a Soviet first strike more difficult. And there is, of course, also the option of some kind of strategic defense. All this would cost tens of billions of dollars. Is Congress prepared to spend that money? Is the administration prepared to request it?

Finally, the withdrawal of strategic forces from Europe and the reduction of the U.S.-based forces by 50 percent must inevitably affect NATO strategy by reducing the weapons available for flexible response. START should therefore be linked to conventional force discussions, or else NATO should build up its own conventional strength. If we do neither, a long-term vulnerability is inevitable.

This is not to suggest that all efforts in the direction of START should be abandoned for the rest of the president's term. On the contrary, the president can take three steps to perpetuate his legacy.

1. The START negotiators can clear up ambiguities in the already existing text and complete nearly concluded sections.

2. The White House can press the various agencies to come up with a plan to restructure U.S. strategic forces under START conditions. This could be put before the relevant congressional committees as the condition for arms control.

3. The administration could leave a clear statement of its concept of strategic defense to help frame a debate of its most original initiative, which must be completed in the next administration.

These steps would constitute a more durable legacy than an agreement concluded under such pressure that it would be unlikely to stand the test of time.

SUMMIT IN MOSCOW

Newsweek, June 6, 1988

# An Agenda for 1989

BY HENRY KISSINGER AND CYRUS VANCE

We have decided to write this article together because of our deep belief that the security of free peoples and the growth of freedom both demand a restoration of bipartisan con-

sensus in American foreign poli-
cy. We disagree on some policy
choices. But we are convinced
that the American national pur-
pose must at some point be fixed.
If it is redefined—or even sub-
ject to redefinition—with every
change of administration in
Washington, the United States
risks becoming a factor of in-
constancy in the world. The na-
tional tendency to oscillate be-
tween exaggerated belligerence
and unrealistic expectation will
be magnified. Other nations—
friends or adversaries—unable
to gear their policies to Ameri-
can steadiness, will go their own
way, dooming the United States
to growing irrelevance. If broad
agreement on central foreign-
policy objectives can be reached,
the 41st president of the United
States will be able to start his
term with a strong mandate for
leadership at home and abroad.

By the end of this century a
number of the pillars on which
the global order was rebuilt after
World War II will have changed
significantly. For the United
States, our nuclear monopoly

has long since disappeared and our rela-
tive share of the world economy will be
less than half of what it was 40 years
ago. Other countries already have had a
major impact on U.S. interests: the econ-
omies of Japan, Western Europe and the
"newly industrializing countries" are
obvious examples; several countries
have nuclear weapons capability and
others can acquire it quickly. Old East-
West security issues persist, but new is-
sues such as state-sponsored terrorism
and international drug trafficking have
become urgent. At the same time, the
poorest countries will continue to need

humanitarian assistance.

A growing list of constraints on Amer-
ican actions also must be considered:
despite our vast military power, our abil-
ity to shape the world unilaterally is
increasingly limited. We can no longer

the maintenance of world order and pros-
perity. We understand the frustration un-
derlying this national mood, but it is the
duty of our national leadership to keep it
from jeopardizing important American
interests and the defense of freedom.

At the highest level of our poli-
tics, the presidential candidates
of both parties should describe,
not specific tactical moves, but
their visions of America's world
role. They should explain which
international commitments they
would reinforce, reduce or reallo-
cate to others. And we hope they
recognize that the United States
has made certain commitments
in pursuit of vital interests which
cannot be redefined on the basis
of transitory fashions.

To illustrate, we shall apply
these principles to some major
foreign-policy issues, beginning
with the core issue of policy to-
ward the Soviet Union.

**U.S.-Soviet relations:** The super-
powers' possession of vast nucle-
ar arsenals imposes on them a
special obligation to maintain
peace. But this occurs in the con-
text of ideological differences and
geopolitical rivalry. America also
has an obligation to ensure
that willingness to defend free-
dom and justice is not impaired
by U.S.-Soviet negotiations that
raise unrealistic expectations.

Today the emergence of a reju-
venated Soviet leadership has raised new
hopes for Soviet-American relations. We
have both met several times with Mikhail
Gorbachev and found him highly intelli-
gent and determined to remedy the fail-
ures of the Soviet economy with socialist
solutions. He is eloquent in arguing that
he prefers to live in peace with the West
and to reduce Soviet defense spending so
as to transfer resources to the civilian
economy. At the same time, we have no
doubt that Gorbachev is also firmly com-
mitted to defend Soviet international
aims. What then does he mean when he
speaks of a "balance of interests". And
how, precisely, would he define legitimate
Soviet aims?

No American president can base his
policies for dealing with the U.S.S.R. on
the presumed intentions of a Soviet gener-

afford financially to do as much interna-
tionally by ourselves as was the case in
the immediate postwar period. For many
of our staunchest friends, the Soviet
threat to the free world seems dimin-
ished, especially with the accession to
power of a reform-minded leadership in
the U.S.S.R. This perception tends to
reduce Western dependence on Ameri-
ca's role. Thus the United States is called
upon to exercise new, subtler and more
comprehensive forms of leadership.

Since 1941, successive generations of
Americans have accepted the global re-
sponsibilities thrust on the United States.
It now appears that a growing number of
Americans wants the United States to be
less active internationally. They want
other nations to assume greater risks, re-
sponsibilities and financial burdens for

SIPA
Bipartisans: Kissinger, Vance in Moscow in 1987

The United States
risks becoming a
factor of inconstancy
in the world

The authors are former secretaries of state. Henry Kissinger served under Presidents Nixon and Ford, Cyrus Vance under President Carter. This article is condensed from a longer article in the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs, © the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc., 1988.

NEWSWEEK : JUNE 6, 1988

SUMMIT IN MOSCOW

al secretary. We cannot predict whether his intentions may radically change under domestic political pressure. A successor may change policies, as has happened before. Even *glasnost* and *perestroika*, which are intrinsically appealing to the West, should not by themselves fundamentally alter how we conduct our relations with the Soviet Union. Of course we welcome evidence of greater internal freedom in the U.S.S.R. and the increased emigration of minorities. But ultimately the West can only marginally affect the outcome of a struggle that derives from the internal failures and contradictions of the Soviet system and that is over issues not necessarily of direct concern to us.

Up to now the major—almost exclusive—object of East-West negotiations has been arms control. The purpose of these negotiations has been to contribute to the lessening of East-West tensions, to improve political relations and to ease communications between Washington and Moscow. The intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty is the first arms agreement to be ratified by both countries in more than 15 years. Because it covered the simplest elements in the arms-control agenda and presented manageable verification problems, the agreement was reached within the essential requirements of Atlantic cooperation.

Future agreements with the Soviet Union, however, will be much more difficult to conclude. The Strategic Defense Initiative has helped soften Soviet negotiating positions, but the place of space defenses in a future arms treaty or in future Western defense planning is far from clear.

While still of concern to the Soviets, the value of SDI as a bargaining chip for the United States has declined as domestic opposition and budgetary objections to the project have grown. This is a good example of the need for domestic consensus. Though we differ on deployment, research and development in SDI should be continued and gains that have come out of our SDI programs should be preserved.*

It is imperative that the next phase of arms control concentrate on conventional forces and weapons in Europe. The place of conventional arms and force reductions in any future arms-control agreement will be of overriding concern to the West. We believe that NATO must examine its force structure and arms-control plans in light of potential negotiations. Neither of us advocates further reductions in the battlefield nuclear weapons in Europe without reductions in Soviet conventional forces and weapons. Unfortunately, the West has not yet done

adequate homework on the key aspects of conventional arms control.

We also believe that the time has come to give much greater emphasis to the political dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviets have begun to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan. If carried out in a manner that permits the Afghan people to determine their own fate, this is a significant development. In discussions with Western officials, the Soviets emphasize that their military strategies and doctrines are "defensive," and they seem to be more flexible in some discussions on arms control.

Nonetheless, the ultimate test of any government's intentions is not its rhetoric, but the specific actions it takes. Some of the issues requiring a Soviet response:

international cooperation against state-sponsored terrorism; willingness to accept asymmetrical reductions in Soviet conventional forces so as to eliminate their military advantage in Europe, and steps to help end regional conflicts. Overall, we conclude that there is now an opportunity for significant improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations. The issue is how to take advantage of this occasion. This requires a concrete American and Western political program.

In this context there will be an opening for an unprecedented conversation between the next American president and the Soviet general secretary early next year. By then Mikhail Gorbachev will have completed four years in office. He will be preoccupied with drafting his country's 13th five-year plan, which will guide the Soviet economy during the early 1990s. Given the internal problems, and in light of the new balance of international forces, the Soviet leadership may well conclude that a serious and continuing dialogue with the United States is in its interest.

Thus, at the outset of their relationship, the new American president and the Soviet general secretary should initiate a wide-ranging discussion of where U.S.-Soviet relations should be at the beginning of the next century and how they propose to contribute to a climate of international restraint. We would favor regular U.S.-Soviet summits, so that meetings between the two leaders are not seen as rewards for good behavior or reasons for concessions or pretexts for signing agreements.

Atlantic relations: NATO has preserved the peace in Europe for four decades—the longest such period since the European state system came into being. It connects America with countries of similar cultural heritage. It must remain the keystone of U.S. policy.

But conditions have changed vastly since the early days of NATO. There is nuclear parity with the U.S.S.R.; this has aroused doubts in some quarters about America's continued commitment to the defense of Europe. A second important change since the 1940s has been Europe's economic recovery and the growing importance of the European Community as an economic and political entity; this tempts more intense economic competition with the United States. On both sides of the Atlantic a new generation has ma-

SOVFOTO

Kremlin aims? Missile crew in Leningrad exercises

## Future arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union will be more difficult to conclude

*Kissinger believes that defensive forces should be limited in relation to the limits on offensive forces. He believes we must continue to develop SDI actively and ultimately deploy it, because of Soviet research in the field and because of SDI's potential future value to Western defenses. Vance also believes that we should continue research and development, but at a measured pace; he is highly doubtful that it will prove to be cost-effective militarily or advantageous politically for the United States to deploy even elements of an SDI system.

32 NEWSWEEK: JUNE 6, 1988

SUMMIT IN MOSCOW

one of few uncontested achievements of American policy during two decades of bitter debates. We are concerned that it not be neglected as East-West negotiations enter a new phase.

China has already taken decisions that offer opportunities to American economic interests. American business no longer expects profits on the scale originally contemplated during the initial stages of normalizing relations with China. Nevertheless, the existence of a market of more than 1 billion people and an increasingly open economy are reasons for long-run

optimism about trade and investment in the P.R.C. It is shortsighted and unfair, however, to continue to include the P.R.C. in less favorable categories for the purposes of technology transfer and financing. Thus we favor the use of discretionary powers to encourage the transfer of technology to China, to assist growth.

**The Arab-Israeli conflict:** For the past 40 years the United States has been the only major country able to engage all of the belligerents in peaceful efforts to solve the Arab-Israeli disputes. Unfortunately, the peace process has been stalled for the past decade, and the forces of conciliation and compromise in the area have been weakened.

Whatever the structure of the negotiations, America needs to develop a substantive position on the Palestinian issue. This can be summed up in three principles:

Israel should not and cannot stay where it is in the occupied territories. The demographic trends there are running against Israel; the militancy of the Arab population will increase; Arab radicalism outside the territories will grow.

At the same time, Israel has a right to secure and recognized frontiers. Admittedly, in the missile age security cannot be absolute. We believe that a return to Israel's pre-1967 borders would not be compatible with Israel's survival. We believe, however, that Gaza and parts of the West Bank, including major Arab cities, should be put under Arab control.

The Palestinians have legitimate rights which should be recognized, provided they in turn unambiguously recognize the right of Israel to live within security and recognized boundaries. Israel should not be asked to negotiate with groups that are unwilling to renounce Israel's destruction or that justify acts of terrorism against its population.

**The Western Hemisphere:** Since its own independence, the United States has felt a special concern for developments in the New World, although there has often been too much ignorance and arrogance in our policies. Recent troubles in the region have made it clear that we must deal with the problems differently than before, and also differently from the way we defend our interests on other continents. In Mexico, for example, traditional foreign-policy approaches are of little use: the usual levers of diplomacy, military power and international economic

government, halt Nicaraguan support for insurrections elsewhere in Central America, eliminate the Soviet-Cuban presence and military assistance in Nicaragua or democratize the Sandinista regime. Now the presidents of five Central American nations have taken on the responsibility for making peace.

Is there anything left for the United States to do? First, it remains very much in the U.S. interest to obtain the withdrawal of Cuban and Soviet military advisers from Nicaragua, significant reductions in the armies and armaments

in the region (especially in Nicaragua), a total ban on Sandinista help to guerrillas elsewhere and the internal democratization of Nicaragua. Second, Central America is a measure of U.S.-Soviet relations: whether the Soviet Union is willing to suspend arms shipments into this area of our most traditional relationships. Thirdly, we favor substantial economic assistance to Central America.

PETER TURNLEY FOR NEWSWEEK

Increasing militancy: Young West Bank protester

## Israel should not and cannot stay where it is in the occupied territories

policies do not apply to a close and friendly neighbor, with which we are connected by so many intangible ties. The issues that we face in Mexico are almost all domestic in character: the flow of people, cross-border trade, drugs and Mexico's huge external debt. The United States has led public and private efforts to find new financing to service that debt.

Central America provides a conspicuous example of an area where U.S. policy has suffered because of a lack of clear-cut national objectives that could be publicly debated and congressionally mandated. One clear aim of the United States is to increase the likelihood that stable and democratic governments will survive in the region. But confusion remains over whether our principal tactic should have been to overthrow the Nicaraguan gov-

As is apparent from the foregoing, our next president will be severely challenged to guide us through a period of international transition and to secure a firm place for the United States in a changing configuration of nations. He must focus American resources and energies on areas where precisely defined U.S. national interests are at stake. He must not be reluctant to admit that there are important issues, even conflicts, in which the United States has no special role to play. But he must not shrink from defending our interests.

We believe that America's international standing and national security need not be diminished because we adopt more selective and collaborative international strategies based on new realities. Our position can be strengthened by taking into account the growing strength of other regions. We believe profoundly in the resiliency of the American people; we have often overcome great international challenges. Imaginatively analyzing the new realities affecting America's role in the world should provide the next administration with prescriptions for its foreign policies. Through such understanding and discipline, our leaders can guarantee that the future security and well-being of the American people will be at least as well defended in the future as they have been in the past.

34 NEWSWEEK: JUNE 6, 1988

SUMMIT IN MOSCOW

tured which shares neither the sense of danger nor the emotional commitment to cooperation of NATO's early years. Moreover, the era of more active diplomacy with the East creates new challenges and risks of competitive, separate approaches to Moscow.

It is time for NATO to redefine its goals. Immediately following the U.S. elections, the Atlantic partners should begin a broad reassessment of their mission and plans for the next decade—perhaps by appointing a distinguished group of private citizens to submit a report within 12

months. A revised alliance structure and force posture should emerge from this review, as well as clear parameters for the next round of arms-control negotiations with the U.S.S.R.

The United States must make unequivocally clear that NATO cannot be defended without sufficient quantities and types of both nuclear and conventional weapons, so as to deter a nuclear adversary that continues to enjoy a conventional superiority in some significant categories and to possess nuclear weapons stationed inside its territory capable of reaching all of Europe. It is no service to the alliance to indulge in extreme proposals or fanciful notions—such as the complete de-nuclearization of Europe, pledges against the first use of nuclear weapons or claims that SDI will provide an impenetrable shield. Such utopian visions undermine serious discussions of a common Atlantic strategy and stigmatize the very weapons on which a credible deterrence must be based for the foreseeable future.

Europe will inevitably play a greater part and have a larger voice in the defense of its own territory. Growing intra-European defense cooperation, possibly in the form of a European defense entity, should be endorsed. With the European Community moving toward virtual economic integration by 1992, it is especially important that a revised structure for the defense of Western Europe also be in place by then.

The strengths of the Western Alliance derive from its common democratic values and its ability to respond when circumstances change. The West is fully capable of reorganizing itself and thus emerging better prepared to continue to defend its freedoms and prosperity. We believe, nevertheless, that NATO leaders must understand that if divisions within the Atlantic community over issues out-

side NATO are permitted to fester, they will threaten the capacity of the alliance for cooperation and mutual defense within the NATO area, and hence the vital interests of each member.

**The world economy:** America's role in the world has become directly dependent on the strength and performance of the U.S. economy. Foreign policy and economic policy have become increasingly interdependent.

The budget contraction is already beginning to complicate vital bilateral political relations and call into question

growth in our standard of living. If, however, we ignore these economic realities, American influence abroad will decline significantly and our children will pay the price of our inattention.

**Japan:** There are many shrill and contradictory voices in this country proffering advice on how Japan should change. Some regard Japan's $60 billion trade surplus with the United States as the most urgent problem, and they insist that Japan modify its trading rules to reduce that imbalance substantially. Some believe that Japan should concentrate on

providing massive economic and financial assistance to the developing world out of its substantial foreign-exchange surplus. Others are convinced that Japan should relieve the United States of some of its Asian defense burdens and increase defense spending substantially above the present level of 1 percent of GNP.

There can be no debate over the importance of Japanese-American ties. Preserving this relationship is vital to both countries. We should start by recognizing that a root cause of the trade imbalance is Japan's currently superior productivity and long-range planning. In the end, market forces more than governmental intervention will affect the trade deficit.

The American-Japanese dialogue must not be confined to mutual harassment. The two countries should seek to establish overall goals and work toward them. One step would be to establish an overall trade balance the United States would find tolerable; within that balance, Japan would have the choice of either

reducing its exports or increasing its imports, thus removing the need for sector-by-sector industrial negotiations.

We warn against any attempt to deal with the deficit by pressing Japan to step up its defense efforts. Such a course would generate the gravest doubts all over Asia. It might deflect Japan from a greater economic contribution to the growth of developing areas. Only in adopting a common course can we sustain the global economic growth without which economic competition between Japan and the United States could degenerate into a disastrous political conflict.

**China:** No relationship has changed more dramatically over the past four administrations, of both parties, than America's relations with the People's Republic of China. Sino-U.S. friendship is

whether the United States will be able to maintain some of its foreign military commitments. Too many major modifications of the American force structure now occur primarily as a result of budgetary pressures; in the long run they could well weaken us. Dramatic cuts in funds available to assist friends in the developing world are provoking serious political aftershocks in many of the poorer countries as well.

America's ability to influence events abroad and ensure prosperity at home will be determined in large part by how rapidly we get our economic house in order. Fortunately we can still make these decisions ourselves. We must face the fact that our economy and consumption have become so overextended that the remedies will involve sacrifice and slower

ANDY HERNANDEZ FOR NEWSWEEK

More flexibility: *Soviet troops leave Afghanistan*

## What does Gorbachev mean when he speaks of a 'balance of interests'?

NEWSWEEK: JUNE 6, 1988 33

LA TIMES, March 27, 1988

# Preparing a New U.S. Position to Meet the Next World Order

By Henry A. Kissinger

NEW YORK

One main task for the next American President will be to guide his country through a profound transition in its international position. Yet no presidential candidate is making a serious effort to prepare the American people for the radically different world they will soon face.

Three developments are likely during the next decade:

1. The relative supremacy of the superpowers, whose rivalry has shaped the global agenda for a generation, will decline.

2. Political, economic and military power—even nuclear strength—will become more congruent among leading nations of the world.

3. As a result, new power centers will emerge.

By the year 2000, it is highly probable that Japan will be well advanced toward rearmament, China and India will have grown economically as well as militarily and Western Europe will either have united or have abdicated as a major force on the international scene.

Japan will be the most rapidly emerging great power of the next century. Japanese industrial, technological and financial prowess will enable Tokyo to shape global investment patterns and to become a significant military power in Asia. Japan also will have moved some production facilities into other Asian countries to take advantage of their lower labor costs and the link of their currencies to the dollar. This will create incentives for closer political ties and in time for military protection of these assets.

Japan's culture, unlike China's, stresses the uniqueness of Japanese institutions while a feudal tradition makes a relationship of sovereign equality with other nations at best an acquired trait. Growth of Japanese strength will, at the same time, fuel suspicions in other Asian countries while tempting Japan into a more assertive role. This foreshadows an uncomfortable period of adjustment which will require statesmanship on all sides.

China for several millennia was the most powerful and culturally dominant country in its world. It influenced adjacent regions through the majesty of its conduct and through its diplomatic skill in pitting rival barbarians against each other.

Every Chinese leader knows intuitively that the People's Republic faces two geopolitical problems: a resurgent Japan and Soviet military power along a frontier of 3,000 miles. They will attempt to deflect Japanese ambitions by providing economic opportunities, at the same time offsetting them with American and West European investments. And they are likely to seek an improvement in Soviet relations if only as a hedge against Washington's impetuosity. But Chinese leaders are too subtle not to grasp that reassuring slogans do not shorten frontiers or affect relative military potentials. They will seek to balance ominous neighbors against each other. But in the end they will look to the United States—the most distant country with the fewest direct ambitions—as their anchor to windward so long as they retain confidence in America's understanding of the requirements for global equilibrium.

By the next century, however, China will calculate that the scale of effort to overwhelm it may be so large that American assistance is both less necessary in ordinary circumstances and more automatic should any country undertake aggression. Chinese policy is therefore likely to grow bolder (though not more reckless) and more willing to assert specifically Chinese interests, especially in the developing world. Thus in the next century American foreign policy will have to deal with two triangular relationships in Asia: in the northeast, China, Japan and the Soviet Union; and in the southeast, Japan, China and India, with the Soviet Union beginning to extend its reach there.

India is in many respects the most neglected of the emerging major powers. This is a mistake, because India has perhaps the most efficient infrastructure and ablest civil service in the developing world. Indian long-range diplomacy is also probably the most predictable be-

cause British policy east of Suez in the 19th Century—shaped by the Viceroy in New Delhi—provides a fairly reliable clue. Indian strategists' conclusions are unlikely to differ radically from those of the British officials who preceded them; witness India's insistence on the inviolability of the lines drawn during British rule demarcating the boundary with China and Afghanistan.

As India becomes stronger—its moralistic rhetoric notwithstanding—it is likely to resist inroads by major powers in the Indian Ocean and great-power domination of Southeast Asia. The former will draw it into potential opposition to the Soviet Union over Iran and the Persian Gulf, the latter into rivalry with China and Japan.

Western Europe faces different changes; it is now delicately exploring whether or not to seek autonomy in the security field and what political use to make of its emerging unity—a process unintentionally encouraged by erratic trends in U.S. policy and the recent American tendency to negotiate with Moscow over the heads of European countries. Either way, Europe's role will be different.

In many ways, the Soviet position is the most complex of all. On the one hand, it

Please see POSITION, Page 6

# Position: Finding a New U.S. Place

Continued from Page 1

has no choice but to undertake domestic reforms; for an interim period at least, this enterprise is likely to be accompanied by domestic instability at home and turmoil in Eastern Europe. In my view, glasnost and perestroika will ultimately lead neither to apocalyptist abandonment of 400 years of history nor to the frozen persistence of the status quo. Like most historical processes, these will be bounded by geopolitical realities. Even with the most optimistic assumptions about perestroika, the Soviet economy is likely to grow less rapidly than the new power centers described above, not to speak of the established industrial powers. And all of the new centers are either at or close to the Soviet borders. Thus containment of Soviet power will increasingly be the result of regional strength buttressed, but not created, by U.S. policy.

The Soviet Union will almost certainly strive to escape this prospect during the 1990s by seeking to push the United States back into the Western Hemisphere and then using its central geographic position to neutralize neighbors one by one. Much current Soviet policy is quite compatible with the objective of generating distrust of the United States among its friends, especially in Europe, as a prelude to luring them into separate dealings with Moscow.

The 1990s are therefore likely to be much less comfortable for the United States than current conventional wisdom suggests. But the Soviet domestic predicament and its attempt to control Eastern Europe will limit the risks the Soviets can run in pursuit of this policy, provided the West does not let itself be stampeded by Soviet psychological warfare into abandoning fundamental necessities. If the democacies can navigate this passage, a serious accommodation based on a real balancing of interests will be possible.

But can America conduct a policy appropriate to such a world? Certainly it is well placed. It has no territorial aims in Eurasia. It is not immediately affected by most of the local conflicts. It has therefore the margin to concentrate on those issues that threaten global or regional equilibrium. On the other hand, America has historically re-

jected a policy based on balance of power and insisted on collective security which, assuming a uniformity of interest, seeks to unite all so-called peace-loving states against an aggressor.

With these attitudes, the United States risks psychological overextinction, for uniformity of interests is an illusion. This will tempt America to manage all problems from Washington and to involve itself, as it has so often in the past, in legalistic issues or global reform, neglecting threats to its long-term security. But America can play a crucial role if it understands its own special assets.

The relationship of the United States to the rest of the world, especially to the Eurasian landmass, will be comparable to Britain's relationship to Europe until the end of World War II. Britain understood that if the resources of Europe fell under the control of a single country, it would be outmatched and hence, in time, defenseless. Churchill put the case with characteristic eloquence: "For 400 years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating power on the Continent. It has nothing to do with rulers or nations; it is concerned solely with whoever is the strongest or potentially dominating tyrant. Thus we preserved the liberties of Europe."

The U.S. foreign-policy problem is nearly identical, except that the challenge is global. America's basic objective must be to maintain the balance of power in Eurasia—a task that is both permanent and has objective criteria. When the 1972 Shanghai Communique of the United States and the People's Republic of China committed these ideological rivals to oppose hegemony, it expressed what must be a basic principle of U.S. foreign policy: America must be on the side of the weaker against the stronger, not as a preference of a particular president but as a fundamental principle of public policy.

It is essential to recognize that such a policy requires a deep change in ingrained American attitudes. Specifically:

1. One precondition is a precise analysis of U.S. national interest and of threats to U.S. long-term security. This engages American power in defense of the global

equilibrium. In that sense legal obligations reflect the national interest; they neither create it nor exhaust it. Preserving China's territorial integrity, for which there exists no formal commitment, is a good example.

1. In these terms, America must disenthrall itself from the bipolar vision of current diplomacy and the reliance on personal qualities of Soviet leaders. The United States cannot afford to base policy on the personal attitude of the head of the strongest country on the Eurasian landmass—especially a country where every leader, except Lenin, has been disavowed by his successor. The United States will be able to ease its vigilance only after the Soviet Union loses its ideological drive and the capacity to achieve hegemony and becomes a traditional national state. At that point, one might well see a dramatic improvement in relations, especially if another hegemonic power or group of powers appeared.

1. The initial defense of most areas—Europe probably excepted because of its tenuous psychological state—should be in the hands of those countries whose independence is most immediately threatened. (And even in Europe, U.S. ground forces will surely be reduced by the turn of the century.) America's military contribution should, like Britain's in its heyday, be appropriate for the balancer of equilibrium: naval, air and ground units with high technology capable of rapid and decisive intervention.

1. In the Western Hemisphere especially, America should foster economic growth and democratic institutions. Cultural affinity combines with geopolitical interest to confer a special status to a united Europe.

All this would represent a wrench with traditional American attitudes formed when geography protected America's shores and other nations assumed the responsibility for global equilibrium.

Unfortunately, presidential candidates have abandoned the role of educator. They forget that their ultimate justification as leaders will not be the sound-bites of the evening news. Their real duty is to take Americans from where they are to where they have never been—a place where they must be if they are not to be engulfed by the turmoil of our time. □

Mr. Chairman,

I would like to take this opportunity to sketch briefly
the main tasks facing the Atlantic Alliance.

Any discussion of the state of NATO must begin with the
recognition that it represents one of the great success
stories of the post-war period. For more than forty years
Europe has known no wars--the longest period of peace in
Europe since the creation of the modern state system. While
it is never possible to prove conclusively why something has
not happened, the Western democracies have every reason to
take pride in their collective achievement.

Success breeds two contradictory dangers however: on
the one hand complacency and on the other a temptation to
tinker that takes the achievement for granted and seeks to
combine it with basically irreconcilable objectives.

The Atlantic Alliance faces both dangers: complacency
in the reluctance to come to grips with the major political
and technological changes that have occurred; tinkering in
the restless quest for negotiating formulae often heavily
influenced by domestic considerations that will in the long
run undermine the cohesiveness of the Western democracies.

Part of the cause for this state of affairs lies in the
failure to resolve contradictions that have beset the
alliance since its early days. These contradictions were
tolerable so long as the democracies possessed a vast
military superiority. But the growth of nuclear stockpiles
on both sides and the resulting nuclear balance requires
that they be dealt with if the achievements of the postwar
generations are not to be jeopardized.

## NATO Strategy

The present NATO deployment of five American divisions
and supporting air and naval forces evolved in the 1950s,
when NATO's doctrine was massive retaliation. The strategy
then was to react to aggression with an immediate and
overwhelming nuclear blow against Soviet territory. From
the perspective of massive retaliation this deployment had a
political, not a military rationale. On the one hand NATO
did not wish to tempt Soviet conventional aggression by
doing anything to suggest that a Western response would be
limited to non-nuclear means. On the other hand the
European members of NATO sought for political reassurance:
they wanted to make sure America was organically committed
to nuclear retaliation even in the face of conventional
aggression. Both European and American conventional forces
were conceived as a trip wire for an American nuclear
riposte. From the birth of NATO a full conventional defense
has been part neither of its strategy nor of its efforts.

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A substantial non-nuclear establishment was created
nevertheless to give credibility to the nuclear threat.

This situation became precarious when the growth of
Soviet strategic forces altered the credibility of the
nuclear threat. Yet NATO deployment has been essentially
unaffected by the change. NATO has improved its
conventional defenses but not as fast as the Soviets have
improved corresponding capabilities; hence the gap in
conventional forces remains and is perhaps greater than
ever. As the current NATO commander made clear recently,
even counting the five American divisions that have remained
in Europe, the alliance is still unprepared to withstand a
major Soviet ground attack for more than a few weeks.
Ambivalence continues 35 years after NATO's creation. Our
allies remain unwilling to develop forces strong enough to
provide an alternative to nuclear weapons; the United States
would surely not reintroduce the draft. Yet much of public
opinion and many leaders shy away from even thinking about
the practicalities of nuclear deterrence. Indeed they
constantly affirm the unthinkability of nuclear war while
basing their security policy on its deterrent effect.

The need to build up NATO's conventional capability has
been passionately affirmed for a long time; for an equal
period the goal has proved elusive. This is partly because
our European allies have less confidence in conventional
defense than some American systems analysts. History
teaches them that deterrence with conventional weapons is a
chancy enterprise. For hundreds of years Europeans have
seen wars break out between armies that were thought to be
evenly matched. (Even at the outset of World War II the
French army was considered to be--and in fact was--superior
in numbers and equipment to the German army.) In
conventional war, leadership, concentration of force, and
tactics, play a role which make systems analysis
calculations a hazardous guide. It can be no accident that
all wars in the postwar period have broken out where there
were no American forces and no nuclear weapons.

NATO has never solved its perennial problem: the
proper mix between conventional and nuclear forces and the
appropriate strategy for the use of nuclear weapons albeit
as a last resort. The doctrine of flexible response was to
resolve these issues. But NATO is still some distance from
a conventional capability that could sustain itself for even
the thirty days envisaged in some scenarios. And the
elaboration of a doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons
runs into two obstacles: Some anti-nuclear groups insist
that nuclear war must necessarily be all-out extermination
of civilians lest governments be tempted into nuclear
adventures. Some of our allies start at the opposite end of
the political spectrum but reach the same conclusion: that

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anything less than the threat of all-out war would weaken
deterrence.

However, statesmanship and morality both demand that so
long as nuclear weapons exist governments seek ways to limit
their use and to terminate any war before it turns into a
world holocaust. In a world of tens of thousands of nuclear
weapons, it is reckless to teach that any nuclear incident
must automatically escalate into a cataclysm. If the worst
happens--for whatever reason--governments have an obligation
to humanity and to history to limit the consequences. Only
nihilists or abstract ideologues can shirk that duty.

The situation is made more complex because in nearly every NATO country the consensus on defense and foreign policy has broken down. As a result, national security policy is too often overwhelmed by domestic politics. The result has been an unworthy debate in which for example the recent American proposals on modernization are presented by critics as a means of shifting the risks of nuclear devastation to Europe.

Competitive avoidance of nuclear risk cannot possibly be the basis of NATO strategy. It is essential to develop a strategy that distributes risks equitably but effectiveness must be the ultimate outcome. This is why the issue of modernization should become the occasion for a careful and bipartisan reappraisal of NATO strategy and arms control policy. Otherwise the Alliance will be left with a precarious combination of the formal NATO doctrine of flexible response which, however, now has to be applied under conditions of nuclear stalemate, growing nuclear pacifism, a subtle Soviet strategy to separate the US and Europe -- especially in the nuclear field -- and continued inadequacies in conventional forces.

INF and NATO Modernization

Divisive trends have been magnified by the INF agreement. This is not the occasion to analyze the merits of what will soon be an accomplished fact. If the Senate were to refuse ratification, domestic pressures in all European countries would force the withdrawal of these missiles in any event. The current choice is between unilateral withdrawal or the quid pro quo envisaged in the agreement.

To understand the impact of this state of affairs some discussion of the background of INF is important. The formal justification for INF as a counterbalance to the Soviet SS-20's was always a mistake and led directly to the so-called zero option. The INF weapons were never aimed at the SS-20's. Their ultimate justification was to prevent the nuclear blackmail of Europe by linking the strategic defense of Europe with that of the United States. With

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intermediate range American weapons in Europe the Soviets could not threaten Europe selectively; any nuclear attack and any successful conventional attack would trigger an American counterblow from European installations since the Soviets would have to calculate that the United States would use its missiles before they were overrun. Hence the Soviets would have to attack the missiles if they used even conventional weapons in Europe; that in turn would trigger a counterblow on Soviet territory. Were the war confined to Europe this would inflict an unacceptable level of damage on the Soviet Union. But the Soviets could escape this challenge only by initiating general nuclear war against US territory--a decision out of proportion to any likely objective. Hence the defense of Europe and the US were "coupled."

INF in short was a reassurance for defense-minded Europeans that America would use its nuclear capability on behalf of Europe's survival. But the defense-oriented leaders in Europe faced bitter opposition. In the end the INF missiles were introduced only after riots and demonstrations that shook the domestic tranquility of many countries for months. It is impossible to understand the psychological impact of the INF agreement without considering what the current leaders went through when the missiles were installed.

The NATO challenge can thus be summed up as follows:

- The INF agreement and the pressures it generates against the remaining nuclear systems places the predominant burden of nuclear defense on weapons based in the United States or at sea.

- In the process, many Europeans are convinced a gap is being created that in time will enable the Soviet Union to threaten Europe while sparing the United States. In technical terms, the defenses of the two sides of the Atlantic may be "decoupled."

- This fear is all the greater because the Soviet conventional superiority has not been reduced. The threat that generated NATO in the first place remains intact.

- The modernization of NATO's short-range nuclear weapons must be seen in this context. The Atlanticists in the Federal Republic have been traumatized by the removal of intermediate range weapons. They fear another change in American position while the critics of US policy feel confirmed in their view. Both now tend to unite against a scheme that can be represented as making Germany a nuclear battlefield. Sentiment is therefore being generated for the removal of these missiles--the third zero option. And modernization of short-range weapons is likely to face the same domestic opposition as the intermediate range weapons a decade ago.

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On the other hand, the denuclearization of the Federal
Republic--the nearly inevitable consequence of the third
zero option--would create profound splits in the Alliance.
A nuclear free zone logically implies the adoption of a "no
first use" concept, because otherwise the zone would still
be under nuclear threat from weapons outside. And once the
alliance has proclaimed that it would not use nuclear
weapons first, it is committed to accepting defeat with
conventional weapons rather than escalating to nuclear war.
Once the principle of defeat is accepted the neutralization
of Central Europe, the goal of Soviet policy for 40 years,
will be nearly complete. The nuclear armed members of NATO
would be asked to assume risks on behalf of the Federal
Republic which that country is not prepared to run for
itself--an impossible state of affairs.

The Future of the Atlantic Alliance

A single statement can do no more than outline
directions. A complete policy must emerge out of a detailed
debate within the United States as well as within the
Alliance. But restoration of the unity of the Atlantic
Alliance must be a prime objective of American foreign
policy; without it a continuation of current East-West
negotiations will lead to the unravelling of all that has
been achieved by forty years of bipartisan foreign policy.

a. A Coherent NATO Strategy

The ambiguities that have beset NATO for forty
years--some of which have been outlined above--must be
overcome. On the part of the United States it requires an
end to the rhetoric that America's goal in East-West
negotiation is the total elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Such a goal is neither possible nor desirable and Western
leaders do their publics a disservice if they shrink from
avowing this truth. Tens of thousands of nuclear weapons
have been produced by the superpowers; hundreds by
medium-sized countries; dozens by recent entrants into the
nuclear club. No scheme of disarmament could account for
all these weapons. Nations would insist on residual forces
to protect themselves against cheating, or against the fact
that the factories that produced the weapons would remain,
or, should by some improbable chance these too be destroyed,
against the knowledge in the minds of men from which these
factories and weapons sprang in the first place. Mankind
cannot unlearn the secret of the atom. For the immediate
future--even assuming forseeable reductions--that level will
remain quite high; the real issue before us will be the
nature of deterrence, and its components.

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At the same time our European allies have an obligation to face strategic and technological realities. Too many of them create the impression that deterrence can be separated from defense and that it depends entirely on the vastness of the threat. But deterrence in fact is the product of the threat and credibility. If credibility is zero even the most devastating threat will amount to nothing. Europe has a right to insist that the United States use all the means necessary to stop Soviet aggression. It can have no interest in a strategy that has the end of all civilized life as its inevitable corollary. The elaboration of other options is in the interest of both sides of the Atlantic.

It is therefore urgent to end the demoralizing debate over which side of the Atlantic is seeking to escape what risks and responsibilities. The goal must be an effective defense at tolerable cost. The deterrent threat cannot be separated from what the Alliance is prepared to implement without opening a psychological gap which sooner or later will tempt aggressive conduct.

## b. Arms Control Policy

The idea of arms control is novel, if not revolutionary. Developed in its present form in the 1950's arms control strove explicitly for stability by reducing the incentive for surprise attack not through arms but through agreement. The historically extraordinary notion emerged that a country's vulnerability was a strategic asset; with the civil populations of both sides at risk--so the argument ran--neither side would dare to launch its weapons. Arms control theory contributed--in the West--to an aversion to defensive weapons; it also caused every offensive system to be subjected to extended scrutiny lest it somehow "destabilize" the military equation. Never before in history had military policy been judged by such criteria; the Soviets for their part have shown no such inhibitions in their unilateral weapons decisions.

This is not the place for an analysis of arms control theory which included many valuable and indispensable insights. However, arms control, to be effective, requires an unusually delicate understanding of the elements of strategy. Nations had often suffered catastrophe in the past even when they fancied themselves superior; negotiating equality with an adversary calls for an unprecedentedly sophisticated analysis. The measurement of equality has been maddeningly complicated by the novelty of the weapons, by the asymmetry in the design of the weapons systems of the two sides, in their geostrategic positions and in the unpredictability of technological developments. Thus even were the Soviets ready for a serious effort, negotiations would be difficult because the weapons of the two sides are

7

designed by different criteria and serve different strategic ends.

Since its early days, arms control theory has developed a life of its own. It used to be argued that arms negotiations should be an essential complement to broader strategic and foreign policies. Today the tail comes close to wagging the dog. Care must be taken lest esoteric arms control schemes become an end in themselves thereby eliminating any relationship to defense strategy.

The issue of NATO modernization illustrates the point. Before the INF agreement modernizing the Lance weapons stationed in the Federal Republic was considered an internal NATO matter not subject to international discussion. The INF agreement has turned it into an East-West issue. Modernization is opposed by the Soviets with the argument that it violates the non-circumvention clause of the INF agreement. And it is opposed by significant segments of German political opinion because it allegedly singles out the Federal Republic for nuclear risk. The so-called "compromises"--linking modernization to some new arms control measure--nevertheless accept the principle of denuclearization of the Federal Republic; the controversy concerns the price.

All this repeats the INF experience. None of the schemes account for the fact that the Soviet Union as a nation state will retain the capacity for nuclear threats while NATO as an alliance in need of 16 sovereign decisions gradually loses that capacity as nuclear weapons are being delegitimized while the conventional inferiority remains. Even assuming full compliance with foreseeable agreements the Soviet Union will always retain categories of weapons on that part of its national territory outside the agreement from which it can launch a threat to Europe. But the removal of categories of weapons in NATO denuclearizes nations--not parts of a national territory. Hence it throws an increasing burden of decision on the United States and elaborates different perspectives between the US and Europe and between the nuclear and non-nuclear countries within Europe.

This is all the more worrisome because NATO depends on nuclear weapons more than the Soviet Union. Finally, large reductions in START work against the discriminating use of nuclear weapons and hence underline the declining credibility of the threat of general nuclear war at a time when the INF negotiations force ever greater reliance on a nuclear strategy founded on weapons based in the United States or at sea. In short, arms control policy and alliance strategy must be brought into harmony lest they paralyze each other. Or else arms control becomes a device by which the Soviet Union gains a veto over Western defense policy without meaningful reciprocity.

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### c. A Larger Role for Europe.

In the early days of NATO the United States had first an atomic monopoly and later a huge nuclear superiority coupled with economic predominance. It was inevitable in these circumstances that the Alliance structure came to be dominated by America. But since then Europe has recovered economically and restored some of its military strength. Britain and France have developed nuclear forces of their own. In the process, existing arrangements have become unbalanced. When one country dominates the alliance on all major issues--when that country chooses weapons and decides deployments, conducts the arms-control negotiations, sets the tone for East-West diplomacy and creates the framework for relations with the Third World--little incentive remains for a serious European effort to redefine the requirements of security or to coordinate foreign policies. Such joint efforts entail sacrifices and carry political costs. Leaders are not likely to make the sacrifice or incur the cost unless they feel responsible for the results.

An imbalance such as the one now existing cannot be corrected by "consultation," however meticulous. In the long run, consultation works only when those being consulted have a capacity for independent action. Then each side takes the other seriously; then each side knows that the other's consent has to be won. Otherwise consultation becomes "briefing." Agreement reflects not conviction but acquiescence for want of an alternative.

Moreover, military dependence on another nation has a cumulative impact. When dependence no longer results from wartime destruction but from a policy choice, made under conditions of relative prosperity, it can breed guilt, self-hatred and a compulsion to display independence of the senior partner wherever doing so is safe, especially with regard to some Third World issues, the Middle East and certain aspects of East-West relations.

For all these reasons the United States has a positive interest in encouraging the evolution of a more autonomous European voice in security matters. During the entire postwar period it has been an axiom of American policy that for all the temporary irritation it might cause us, a strong, United Europe was an essential component of the Atlantic partnership. We have applied that principle, insofar as it depended on American actions, in all areas except security. With respect to defense, the US has been indifferent at best--at least since the failure of the European Defense Community in 1954--to any sort of Europeanization. Many seem to fear that a militarily unified Europe might give less emphasis to transatlantic relations and thus weaken the common security.

9

The opposite is almost certainly the case. In the
economic field, integration was bound to lead to
transatlantic competition, even to some discrimination.
What defines a Common Market, after all, is that its
external barriers are higher than its internal ones. In the
field of defense, by contrast, increased European
responsibility and unity would almost certainly promote
closer cooperation with the US. A Europe analyzing its
security needs in a responsible manner would be bound to
find association with the US essential. Unity in defense
matters would also enable the Federal Republic to escape the
fear of isolation and enable the Atlanticists to resist
nationalist tendencies.

Greater unity in defense would also help to overcome
the logistical nightmare caused by the attempt of every
European nation to stretch already inadequate defense
efforts across the whole panoply of weapons. For example,
there are at least five kinds of battle tanks within NATO,
different types of artillery and different standards for
calculating the rate of consuming ammunition. In a major
conflict, it would be a herculean task to keep this
hodgepodge of forces supplied.

Thus the paradox: the vitality of the Atlantic
Alliance requires Europe to develop greater identity and
coherence in the field of defense. I am not talking about
traditional "burden sharing", paying more for the existing
effort. I have in mind something more structural--a more
rational balance of responsibilities. The present
allocation of responsibilities fails to bring the allies to
reflect naturally about either security or political
objectives. Everyone has been afraid to take the initiative
in changing the present arrangement, lest doing so unravel
the whole enterprise or antagonize the United States. There
is no foreseeable East-West conflict in which Europe will
not be better off with American support. This is why, if
the British and French can agree on coordinating their
nuclear forces, the United States should encourage it as an
important first step toward a greater European role in the
joint nuclear defense. Above all the United States should
make clear that European union on defense matters will be
viewed as strengthening not weakening Atlantic ties.

## East-West Relations.

Too many in the West seek to escape their dilemmas by taking refuge in the personality of Gorbachev. Without entering into the debate as to the long range purposes of the Soviet leader, the democracies cannot make themselves dependent on a single personality, especially as every Soviet leader except Lenin has been disavowed by his successor.

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Gorbachev's personality is no doubt striking. But is it wise to treat his person as the deus ex machina to solve all the West's dilemmas--a communist leader who will bring peace and tranquility without any real effort on the part of the free countries? Do these attitudes do justice to the actual choices facing the Soviet leadership? It is easy to forget that Gorbachev has emerged at the top of what must be the toughest competition in the world--one in which losers are rarely heard from again. He has never wavered from basic communist doctrine. And how could he, never having held any position other than as a member of the communist hierarchy?

Reality no doubt imposes at least a respite on Soviet foreign adventurism, perhaps even an end to it no matter who governs in Moscow. But Gorbachev, as any prudent leader, is unlikely to court unnecessary domestic problems. He will not volunteer changes in political and strategic arrangements that powerful factions within his bureaucracy would find unpalatable. Obviously, he will push those programs most advantageous to his own country.

More fundamental issues must be addressed. What exactly is it that the West wants the Soviet Union to stop doing? What is the American and Western notion of cooperative conduct? In the contemporary situation is glasnost or human rights progress enough, or are other changes necessary? Can four centuries of Russian expansionism be due to personalities, or do they reflect more permanent geopolitical and strategic elements? The absence of criteria causes domestic disputes to fester. The reluctance to endow peaceful coexistence with political content produces an overemphasis on numerical nostrums and threatens to open up a gap between strategy and arms-control policy in which each checkmates the other.

I do not know how Gorbachev would react if presented with a comprehensive program that would reduce nuclear and conventional weapons simultaneously. Or how he would respond to a serious attempt to discuss the US-Soviet role in the world a decade or so ahead of us. I am convinced that he has the intelligence and imagination to make a significant and constructive response. And if he refused, we would at least understand the nature of the challenge better than we do now.

## Conflicts Outside the NATO Area.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a response to the fear of Soviet aggression against Europe. At that time, 40 years ago, the United States had a huge nuclear superiority and was dominant economically, while Europe was only beginning its recovery from the war. Conflicts outside Europe were produced by the process of decolonization; the

11

Soviet role in them was relatively minor. The United
States, reluctant to be involved in colonial wars, insisted
that the obligations of the Atlantic Treaty did not extend
outside of Europe.

Since then, conditions have changed dramatically.
Europe has recovered its economic dynamism and is moving,
although fitfully, toward political unity. The fear of
Soviet invasion has diminished. American nuclear
superiority has been replaced by rough parity with the
Soviet Union, and European allies increasingly question the
credibility of the nuclear deterrent.

But on the issue of relationships towards third area
conflicts the early problem remains almost unchanged,
although the two sides of the Atlantic have exchanged their
roles. Now it is Europe that insists that the treaty's
obligations do not extend to the developing world. And it
is Europe that feels free to dissociate itself from US
actions where indigenous upheavals and Soviet efforts to
outflank the alliance produce contemporary crises.

That process of dissociation has been accelerating for
at least 15 years. During the 1973 Israel-Arab War, Britain
and West Germany refused to grant the US permission to use
American bases for reconnaissance--or blocked American arms
shipments to the Middle East from their territories. Allied
governments almost unanimously opposed American policy
toward Iran during the hostage crisis, on Central America
and Grenada. To be sure, cooperation in the Persian Gulf
has been much better. But as Europe develops its own
autonomy explicit arrangements for third area conflicts and
tolerable dissociation become more important. The Alliance
will be weakened if interests considered vital by one
partner are consistently neglected by the other.

Conclusion

This is a vast agenda. And it cannot possibly be
accomplished except in a bipartisan setting. The national
security interest of the United States does not change every
four or eight years. That possibility makes us a factor of
instability. Weapons decisions, arms control strategy and
serious diplomacy have a lead time longer than the term of
office of a single Presidency. There will always be
disagreements over tactics; but the fundamental issues must
be settled. It should be the highest priority of a new
Administration and of both sides of the Congress.

Kissinger Backs Pact, With Misgivings

*Rejecting INF Treaty Would 'Magnify All Difficulties,' Senate Told*

By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer

Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger urged the Senate yesterday to approve the U.S.-Soviet treaty to eliminate Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) but expressed "grave reservations" about its likely effect on the East-West balance of power.

"Failure to ratify the treaty or insistence on amendments requiring renegotiation would not cure its defects," Kissinger told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "It would, on the contrary, vastly magnify all difficulties."

Senate rejection of the treaty at this point would "generate a crisis in the Atlantic Alliance which would in the end almost certainly lead to the unilateral withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Europe and undermine the cohesion of the alliance," he said.

Moreover, Kissinger contended, confidence in U.S. leadership would be "severely undermined" and neutralist sentiment would grow. "The Soviet strategy of dividing the Atlantic Alliance would be greatly enhanced."

But he expressed fear that the treaty would reduce U.S. ability to retaliate with nuclear weapons based in Europe against Soviet aggression while also failing to significantly reduce the Soviet nuclear threat to Europe.

By forcing NATO to rely on U.S. weapons in more distant locations for nuclear deterrence, he said, the treaty creates a "psychological and political imbalance which is greatly magnified by Soviet superiority in conventional forces."

HENRY A. KISSINGER
...treaty might create "imbalance"

While the Senate cannot afford now to block the treaty, it should insist in the future on moves to reduce the imbalance of conventional forces in Europe as well as curbs on Soviet activities elsewhere, including Africa and Central America, he said.

He also said INF verification procedures are inadequate for other arms accords.

Meanwhile, chief INF negotiator Maynard W. Glitman told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the treaty would not impede U.S. efforts to help NATO modernize its remaining nuclear arsenal, despite contrary Soviet claims.

And committee chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) tried anew to put a constitutional roadblock in the way

of administration attempts to reinterpret the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

Nunn on Monday noted assurances from Secretary of State George P. Shultz that testimony such as Glitman's would constitute an authoritative interpretation of the treaty.

Such INF pact constitutional assurances should apply to other treaties, said Nunn, who contends that Nixon administration testimony during ABM ratification requires a narrow treaty reading that precludes advanced testing of space-based missile defenses.

The White House and conservative Republicans say that Shultz' assurances do not apply to the ABM dispute.

But, Nunn said, "I do not happen to agree ... that Secretary Shultz's letter pertains only to the INF Treaty and has no bearing on the administration's responsibility with regard to past or future treaties."

Henry Kissinger

Arms-Control Fever

The Washington Post

Tuesday, January 19, 1988

When earlier this year, as part of a small private delegation, I met General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev, he asked why I was so opposed to the Reykjavik formula—key parts of which are now embodied in the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement about to be examined by the Senate. I told him that some Americans want agreements virtually for their own sake regardless of content; others oppose any agreement regardless of content. I belong to a third group, I said, that wants agreements if they really make a difference. Gorbachev began to push me on what I thought did make a difference, but he soon decided that it was unwise to explore, before witnesses, alternatives to a formula so promising for Soviet strategy as Reykjavik, and he turned to other subjects.

This article serves as a substitute for that aborted discussion about what makes a difference. If I had had the opportunity or the presence of mind, I might have said something like this:

"The nuclear superpowers concentrate on their reciprocal nuclear arrangements, seemingly oblivious that new power centers are emerging which, by the next century, are certain to reduce superpower predominance. Historically such a process has always produced years, sometimes decades, of political tensions. And history leaves little doubt about two other propositions: 1) Almost all wars have been caused by the failure to solve central political issues, not by arms races. 2) Conventional deterrence rarely works. Unfortunately, Reykjavik devalued the nuclear deterrent by producing agreements on the zero option on medium-range missiles, and on the totally unrealistic objective to abolish all nuclear weapons with the destruction of strategic missiles as a first step. Thus, the resolution of political conflicts grows correspondingly more urgent because it is unlikely that they can be contained by conventional deterrence alone. True, lip service is being paid to the objective of a political dialogue. But it has yet to receive appropriate high-level attention or negotiating priority.

"The outline of the world by the year 2000 is already apparent:

■ "Japan will become an important military power as its formal military expenditures creep toward 2 percent of gross national product, and expenditures on matters relevant to military capacity such as space research will put Japan well above 2 percent.

■ "China's economic reforms will proportionately increase its military potential and its weight in international affairs.

■ "India, already the most powerful country in South Asia, will continue to grow. It has shown every readiness to use power to advance national interest.

■ "Western Europe will increase its cohesion in the political, economic and military areas—in part as a reaction to being a bystander while decisions about its security are being made by the two superpowers.

■ "The developing countries are certain to accelerate their pressures for a more important role in world affairs and for a greater share in global economic well-being.

"Never have so many changes occurred simultaneously in so many different parts of the world. In the past, the emergence of even one new power center has led to decades of turmoil as the balance of power was adjusted—usually by war—to the emerging reality. If the Soviet Union continues to fuel all conflicts—from the Persian Gulf to Angola, from Southeast Asia to Nicaragua—by weapons sales and intelligence and political support to its friends, some crisis inevitably will get out of control with cataclysmic consequences. A war between the United States and the Soviet Union would inevitably hasten the relative decline of both countries and the shift of the world's center of gravity to other areas."

I do not know how Gorbachev would have reacted to such a disquisition. I am convinced that arguments based on the balance of power would have more meaning for a leader whose entire career has been in the Communist Party with its emphasis on the decisive role of "objective factors" than do sentimental invocations of personal relationships or invocations to see the "realities" of American life, including back-yard swimming pools.

At any rate, such a dialogue has not occurred. The most conservative U.S. administration of the postwar era is preoccupied—almost obsessed—with arms control and personal appeals to the Soviet leadership. Agreements are called historic because they abolish two categories of nuclear weapons but are then schizophrenically justified as safe because all necessary military missions can be performed by the remaining nuclear arsenal. Agreement has become its own reward.

The euphoria of the Gorbachev visit may in retrospect appear as an escapism that dealt with symptoms,

not causes. The underlying political crisis may in fact be accelerated by the gradual deterioration of America's leadership role and the danger that the Soviet Union may be tempted by the West's yearning for tranquillity, however temporary, to tip the global balance of power in its favor.

Technology was bound to reduce gradually America's nuclear superiority. Yet American decisions have accelerated the process before adjustments could be made. The combination of inferiority in conventional forces and—at best—parity in nuclear destructive power, coupled with the de facto abandonment of the Strategic Defense Initiative, will sooner or later demoralize allies that have relied on American military protection. Unless a conventional balance is restored, either by buildup or negotiation, conditions for Soviet blackmail will have been created in equal parts by arms policies and arms-control policies dominated by short-term domestic considerations. But the Soviet knowledge that economic conditions are likely to prevent an expensive conventional buildup weakens the Western bargaining position in any negotiation to reestablish a conventional equilibrium.

Gorbachev may well be sincere in seeking a respite; the internal situation in the Soviet Union in fact gives him few other options. But it is expecting too much for him to offer concessions that have not been asked and to refuse to take advantage of opportunities presented on a silver platter. The careful planners in the Kremlin surely understand the process of historical change outlined earlier. But they cannot fail to recognize that almost all emerging power centers are located on the Soviet borders. If that process succeeds, containment of Soviet expansionism could come about not primarily as a projection of American power but as a result of growing local strength and cohesion. The location of these new power centers makes them vulnerable to Soviet conventional strength, however, and current Western policy may tempt the Soviets to neutralize those burgeoning powers before they consolidate their strength.

Thus the Reykjavik proposals do make a difference. But rather than produce stability, they may over time wreck what has been built by bipartisan American efforts over 40 years. Whatever their stated purpose from

continued

the Soviet point of view, these schemes have a corollary benefit: They enhance the European sense of impotence and may tempt separate deals with Moscow, especially by the Federal Republic of Germany. The Soviets can then seek to wrest concessions from China before that country's economic progress makes it too formidable; Gorbachev's invitation for a summit with Beijing may be the first step in this direction. Such an outcome, in turn, would leave Japan with little choice but to adjust to the region's dominant reality, relying on its unique social and political institutions to maintain its independence. Fortress America—the dream of so many isolationists—would have turned into Imprisoned America.

In short, the West's policies run the risk of increasing long-term perils while reducing its capacity to deal with them. All this will be compounded because too many in the democracies justify the present course by postulating a moral equivalence between East and West that removes any sense of danger or even perspective, especially from the younger generation. The ironic result is that it is Gorbachev, not Reagan, who gets credit for Western concessions.

Negotiations with the Soviet Union are important and necessary. Modern technology drives the superpowers toward coexistence; Gorbachev's personality coupled with Soviet internal difficulties may provide opportunities approaching that goal. But the process is neither automatic nor can it be based on personal relationships. It should reflect a hard analysis of long-term interests, including the following:

a) Glasnost and perestroika represent attempts to modernize the Soviet state. That is an internal Soviet matter relevant to the democracies only if accompanied by a change in Soviet foreign policy.

b) Any foreign policy change must

be reflected in concrete negotiations on political issues. It should deal with areas of tensions and should address what measures are permissible and where. Under what conditions and where is the sending of arms or the conduct of intelligence activities to take place? More complex topics must also be included, such as how to prevent tensions before they occur. From that point of view, the potential Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan would be more significant than any other negotiation.

c) The current nuclear arms control negotiations are too one-sided. No further step should be taken toward nuclear arms control unless it is linked with measures that reduce Soviet preponderance in conventional weapons.

d) Immediate attention must be given to the conventional balance. The numbers game of measuring conventional deterrence by the equality in manpower and equipment must be abandoned. It violates the most elementary lesson of history: victories are won not by total numbers but by the ability to concentrate force at the decisive point. A thoughtful concept is even more essential for negotiations regarding conventional arms control—a much-neglected subject. If it is not dealt with soon, the upcoming negotiations will turn into another trap dominated by slogans and domestic politics. Soviet spokesmen are already promoting a trade of Soviet tanks for Western aircraft, another step along the road of leaving Europe under the nuclear gun while even further weakening America's ability to retaliate from Europe. That would be another step, too, on the road toward separating America and Europe.

e) The highest priority for U.S. policy must be to construct—with its allies—a definition of vital interests, to determine what is necessary to defend those interests and the appropriate negotiating positions to adopt with the Soviet Union.

Devising such a strategy is a difficult, subtle but manageable task. Given the relative economic positions of the two sides, it must be easier for the democracies to preserve the global balance of power than it is for the Soviet Union to upset it. It is a simple evasion for the democracies to permit themselves to be so mesmerized by the personality of a Soviet leader, however able and charming. They have all the means to take charge of their own future.

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cooperation. Last year, Heilongjiang Province and the Soviet side signed about 160 technical and economic agreements and contracts, 15 of which are being imple- mented.

The process of economic integration of Asian-Pacific countries has prompted the Soviet Union to change the nature of its economic relations with foreign countries. We are especially interested in the establishment of joint ventures, and have looked for new approaches to coop- erate with foreign partners. In this connection, certain progress has been made in nongovernmental talks with South Korea. [passage omitted]

The Soviet Government is also very concerned about the development of intergovernmental friendship and cooperation with Asian-Pacific countries. Japan could play a great role in the development of the economy in the Soviet Far East. During his visit to Tokyo in December last year, Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze offered specific suggestions for the Soviet Union and Japan to vigorously promote economic, trade, scientific, and tech- nological relations. However, this suggestion did not receive the desired official response from Japan. As a result, Japanese business circles, which possess tremen- dous potential for the development of the Soviet Far East, are unable to play a greater role in developing the economy of that region. [passage omitted]

We hope that, in the new year, the concrete plans and suggestions for promoting mutually beneficial economic cooperation between the Soviet Union and the Asian-Pacific nations is realized.

### 'Technical Error' Cuts Nakasone Remark on TV Show

LD3001161689 Moscow World Service in English
1500 GMT 30 Jan 89

[Text] In their comments on a Soviet television program, Western news agencies alleged that the ex-prime minis- ter of Japan, Nakasone's, remarks about the affiliation of northern territories was deliberately omitted. As the host of yesterday's program, the Ninth Studio, Valentin Zorin admitted today a purely technical error had been com- mitted. A top category translator didn't hear and thus failed to translate one remark by Mr Nakasone, who spoke rather quickly.

Mr Nakasone said, for one thing, that among the unre- solved problems between the USSR and Japan there was the affiliation of northern territories, or four Kurile islands. Valentin Zorin reported that the entire discus- sion had been televised without any cuts. He regretted the error and promised to apologise for it in one of the next programs.

### Present, Future East-West Relations Examined

OW2801074289 Moscow Television Service in Russian
0455 GMT 28 Jan 89

> ["Studio 9" program presented by Prof Valentin Sergeyevich Zorin, political observer for Soviet television and radio; with former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone; former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; Valentin Mikhaylovich Falin, chief of the CPSU Central Committee International Department; and Yevgeniy Maksimovich Primakov, director of the World Economics and International Relations Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences; Kissinger speaks in English and Nakasone in Japanese, fading into Russian translation]

[Text] [Zorin] Hello, comrades. Today, the discussion group present at our "Studio 9" table at Ostankino Television Center is somewhat unusual. Members of the rather influential, in the Western world, Trilateral Com- mission, are visiting Moscow and we decided not to miss an opportunity such as this.

First of all, I would like to introduce to you the partici- pants in today's talk: Mr Yasuhiro Nakasone, prime minister of Japan from 1982 to 1987, and Dr Henry Kissinger who was the national security adviser and U.S. secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations from 1969 to 1977. Also participating in our talk is Valentin Mikhaylovich Falin, doctor of historical sci- ences, chief of a CPSU Central Committee department and a prominent Soviet scholar; and one of the leading Soviet scholars in the field of social sciences, Yevgeniy Maksimovich Primakov, director of the World Econom- ics and International Relations Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Before we begin our discussion today I would like to give you a short outline of the Trilateral Commission. Certain people in the West fond of sensationalism have, on occasion, called this body the invisible government of the Western countries. Certainly this is somewhat more than an exaggeration, but also certainly, this organiza- tion is very influential. It was created more than 15 years ago, in 1973, at the initiative of David Rockefeller, the American banker, with prominent U.S., West European, and Japanese government, academic, and public figures taking part in this organization. This commission, as a rule, convenes behind closed doors; meets once a year in various countries; publishes reports; conducts research; and exerts considerable influence on the thinking and policies of the leading capitalist countries. Traditionally, people who occupy official government positions are not members of the commission. Many prominent figures have made it known that they are members of the commission. In particular, it has become known that Jimmy Carter has been a member, although by and large members of his government have not been members of this commission. Presently, the commission has some 300 members. In April last year this commission met in Tokyo, and its most recent meeting was held in Moscow. During the course of the Moscow talks the question of

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West-East relations was discussed. As you know, mem-
bers of the Trilateral Commission held a substantial and
detailed talk with Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, dur-
ing which a large number of pressing and important
problems were discussed.

Well, after this preamble I think that we can now begin
our discussion. I assume that the participants in our
discussion today would assess the many problems that
exist in the world today in different ways. But I feel that
in dealing with one question, in all likelihood, there
ought to be no serious disagreements. A different world,
quite unlike the one that existed previously, is emerging
before us today. Many old perceptions and political
stereotypes no longer apply and now new paths into the
future should be explored. In connection with this, I
would like to ask every participant in our talk today to
briefly respond to the following question: Slightly more
than a decade remains before the end of this century.
What, in your opinion, will be the dominating factor in
this period? I have in mind the problems pertaining to
economic and political areas. I will ask Dr Kissinger to
be the first to respond to this question.

[Kissinger] The predominant feature in both economics and politics will be the growing interdependence of the world. It is becoming increasingly clearer in politics that the traditional ways and means that states solved their problems—for example, by means of war—is no longer possible.

Should this path be chosen once again it would be
catastrophic for all—for those who win and those who
lose. It follows that all conflicts must be resolved by
means of diplomacy, by means of recognizing vital
mutual interests, including security interests, which is
the goal of all states.

In the sphere of economics the world is also becoming
interdependent. Not a single country can, in isolation,
successfully solve its problems. This has long been recog-
nized in the non-socialist world. I was amazed to hear,
during talks with your Soviet leaders, that they too now
agree that the economies of socialist and non-socialist
countries have to be linked in some sort of system, a
mutually beneficial system. I feel that it is precisely this
which will become the predominant feature of the nineties.

[Zorin] Mr Nakasone, please.

[Nakasone] If we should speak of an international econ-
omy, then as Dr Kissinger noted, the level of interdepen-
dence is forever increasing. Economy without state bor-
ders is a phrase that we are using increasingly. This
means that the world economy will develop progres-
sively along the path of interdependence. I feel that, in
connection with this, a problem arises: When will the
ruble become convertible? The convertibility of the ruble
will exert a strong influence on the world economy. I
think that this will be achieved under conditions of

harmony and compromise between the West and the
East. I feel this problem will be of primary importance in
the political sphere as well, and not be limited to the
economy.

The second question is: How will mutual relations
between the EEC and CEMA develop? In all likelihood
the Common Market will become more cohesive and
increase the level of its integration. For its part, the
Soviet Union will have to adequately react to these
developments and changes. It is possible the Soviet
Union and the other socialist countries will embark on
the path of further development of mutual dependence
between the two economic communities.

[Zorin] Valentin Mikhaylovich, your turn.

[Falin] I think that in the upcoming years all will become
more definitely and profoundly aware of the fact that all
of us are part of a larger whole. Moreover, the solution to
practically all international problems outside this whole
is impossible. The solution of many national problems
outside this whole is difficult as well. This is applicable
to the political and economic areas. Within this context
it appears that it will become increasingly clearer to both
politicians and others that we cannot live with the old
baggage of accumulated knowledge and wisdom. Broad
approaches and a fresh and courageous search for new
solutions to problems, which for various reasons were
thought today and yesterday to be almost insurmount-
able, must be implemented. From now on and forever-
more we are doomed to either live well together in peace
or to end civilization through continued conflict.

[Zorin] Yevgeniy Maksimovich, please.

[Primakov] I think that the new political thinking which
the Soviet Union is attempting to implement into the
system of international relations gives rise to optimism.
I think that the foundation of this optimism—the mate-
rial foundation if you wish—in the upcoming years, will
be the successes of our restructuring. I feel that by the
middle of the next 5-year plan these successes will
become very evident in the economy. Then the condi-
tions also will be ripe for the convertibility of the ruble,
increased opening up of the Soviet economy, and greater
involvement in the international division of labor.

I would like to say that this optimism would be seriously
enhanced if the West would embark on restructuring its
relations with us. I would like to think that this will take
place.

[Zorin] I would like to note that if a question like this
had been asked by me at this table, say, 5 years ago, I
rather think the degree of disagreement among us would
have been significantly greater. Since nuances of opin-
ions have been voiced, I would like to ask you, Valentin
Mikhaylovich, to point out the areas of convergence and
instances where differences still exist.

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[Falin] Well, naturally, there are certain nuances. These nuances cannot be absent, because each of us carries within him his past, which we have already discussed. Each of us grew out of this past and carries it into the present and even into the future. This is why our Western capitalist collegues stressed the changes which can be expected, or which are sought, in the Soviet Union. I think this topic found an adequate response in the words of Yevgeniy Maksimovich. I shall continue Academician Primakov's argument: Restructuring cannot develop unilaterally in a multilateral and interconnected world. If it is to be based on one side acting while the other merely observes, then the world will not become the new world that we await.

But there are general things which I see in the following way. One should search for new, fresh ideas and boldly undertake their implementation. This idea, on its own, is not so new, because Paine, the American philosopher and author, said as early as the 18th century: If all previous experience does not suggest a solution to a situation, people should behave in a way as if they were the first thinking creatures on Earth.

[Zorin] Dr Kissinger, I believe that you wish to elaborate on this. Am I not mistaken?

[Kissinger] There, obviously, is a connection between domestic restructuring and the international situation. We have lived through almost 40 years of competition and even conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, between the other countries and the Soviet Union, and between other countries and the United States. I was present at the historic speech made by General Secretary Gorbachev at the United Nations. I was sitting in the hall next to Mr Falin. Gorbachev proposed numerous important theoretical opinions on events that ought to be happening and how they ought to develop. The challenge for us lies in the question of how to implement these theoretical ideas into practice in certain areas.

The general secretary made some specific proposals regarding the true reduction of conventional arms. But he also made other conclusions, those about non-use of force among nations and that no nation has the right to dominate another nation. We now have to do together certain specific work in the areas where we can implement these ideas. For example, when the ruble becomes a convertible currency, we truly shall have an international economy and be able to organize a political structure which would further unite the entire world.

We should approach the solution of such tasks with goodwill on all sides and implement these principles in life.

[Zorin] I am very glad that Dr Kissinger touched upon the United Nations speech by Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, because this speech, in my opinion, contains a new philosophical concept of the development of human

society during the upcoming period. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev emphasized that we presently have entered an epoch when the interests of all mankind are to be the foundation of progress, and the formula of development at the expense of someone else is becoming outdated. Mr Nakasone, do you, to some extent, share this philosophy?

[Nakasone] I agree. I have already mentioned relations between the EEC and CEMA and convertability of the ruble. I would like to comment on this.

With the appearance of Mr Gorbachev in the political arena, the world situation improved considerably. His restructuring and diplomacy impress me in many respects. I agree with him in the sphere of international economics, as well. I would like to see his concepts and policies achieve further success.

Recently agreements on conventional arms reduction, solutions of the human rights problem, and so forth, were reached in Vienna. The achievement of these agreements brings me great joy. I think that overall, development is taking place in a positive and favorable direction. In these situations the high ideals promoted by Mr Gorbachev cannot help but impress us. We also want to develop civilization in the interests of all mankind. However, to achieve these great goals, several bridges should, of course, be crossed.

There is the question of interrelations in Europe—relations between CEMA and the EEC, and the human rights problem. Of interest to Japan are the problems of the Korean peninsula, the Vietnam problem, and a whole range of problems related to the development of economic cooperation between Japan and the USSR.

In this respect and in the general context, it would be good to create in Asia a situation similar to that established in Europe. We are indeed able to create this situation, in particular to establish a kind of economic commonwealth.

Thus, in general the world situation and its development are changing in a positive direction. In this respect, Japan would very much like to do its part and cooperate with other countries.

[Zorin] Mr Kissinger, you are both a scientist and a political figure. We know about your book and are familiar with your activity as the head of American diplomacy. I would like to ask you—both as a scientist and a political figure—the same question: Do you share the concept that we have entered the epoch when the interests of all mankind should be the basis for progress and that the formula of development at the expenses of others is becoming outdated?

[Kissinger] Upon the completion of Gorbachev's UN speech, a member of the Soviet delegation asked me what I considered the most important aspect of the

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speech. At that moment, everyone's attention was drawn to specific proposals on arms reduction. Of course, these are important. My answer, however, was that I thought the philosophical section of the speech to be the most important, because it proposed an approach that obviously differed from the usual ones, different from all that was heard in the past.

You referred to my historical research. History attests to the fact that nations at all times compete and try to achieve their own success at another nation's expense. We are now discussing precisely an attempt to reject competition of this kind and approach international relations from the point of view of mutual benefit. This demands a change in approaches both by the Soviet and the American sides, as well as by the Japanese side. All these countries must change their approach. However, this should be done with consideration of specific situations—mere declarations will not do. The new approach lies precisely in this. Indeed, we should apply it to specific situations. I hope this is precisely what will happen when the new administration takes its place in Washington. On the one hand, it will happen in the U.S. Administration and, on the other hand,—in the Soviet Government.

[Falin] I think Mr Kissinger gave a very accurate description of the impressions of, and the first spontaneous reaction to, Mikhail Sergeyevich's United Nations speech, because he himself witnessed it. Mr Kissinger characterized the philosophical section of the speech as the most important and that with the most lasting effects.

Indeed, the speech outlined a long-term program because the changes described therein, the construction of a new, peaceful world order, cannot be accomplished immediately by waving a magic wand. This would not be possible, and it will not and cannot happen.

However, for us to cover the distance that separates us from a more humane, stable, and sensible world, efforts and mutually agreed upon or parallel actions are needed. A common task and a common goal are needed. If today we can understand the words of Mr Kissinger and Mr Nakasone to mean that this aim is appearing, that our movement sees the path along which we will not get lost once again, then this in itself is cause for hope.

The thing is that contrary to the past—it is not the first time after all that we face a situation in which a choice must be made, a very responsible choice—contrary to the past, today we do not have the right to make a mistake. If 40 years ago we could conduct experiments, test different paths along which more often than not competition prevailed rather than cooperation, which took second, third, or even 10th place, today this method is forbidden because confrontation, which as a rule, always stems from competition, can put us on the edge of an abyss or push us into an abyss.

Consequently, today the gravity of every one of our decisions, made individually or jointly, every step taken or not taken when such a step was possible, acquires particular value, and we, all of us who to some extent are participants in preparing this decision, or at least are witnesses to the decision, bear particular responsibility in this regard.

[Zorin] I would like to seize on a phrase expressed by Dr Kissinger in order to attempt to discover one of his secrets. It is widely known that you, Doctor, have maintained close and good relations with the new U.S. President for a long time now. This is no secret, anywhere in the world. Now, in connection with this, I would like to ask: You will probably be sharing, and may have already shared your views with him, particularly on the future of Soviet-U.S. relations, so could you reveal your secret and tell the Soviet television viewers what your advice was?

[Kissinger] What can I tell the Soviet television viewers? That I have already had three very extensive conversations with the new President with the participation of the new Secretary of State and the new national security adviser. And I am convinced that all of them, and especially the new President, adhere to the idea of introducing fundamental changes in the political relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. They want to work on this most seriously.

My own view, which I have often written about, is that up to now we have spoken mainly about weapons, how to reduce them, to control them, and how to verify them. These are very technical matters. We must work at reducing and eliminating political causes for the existence of these weapons. If we can make progress on this issue then the question of arms will also become much easier. I do not want to go into detail now, but I think it would be correct to say that this fundamental philosophy is shared by both the new President and his closest advisers.

[Primakov] On this issue, if I may, I both agree and disagree with Dr Kissinger. Why do I agree? I agree that all political problems which require solution and which divide us must be involved in the exchange of relations between the two countries. Sometimes they even put us on different sides of the barricades. On the other hand, I would not contrapose all of this to efforts being made to reduce arms, and I do not consider this to be a purely technical question. [Falin whispers to Zorin: "I will object."]

Arms reduction is the main direction for moving away from the line on which the world is standing today, or from where it was standing even closer to this line some 3 or 4 years ago. You know, I recall when I was in Geneva—I was among those, including Valentin Mikaylovich Falin, who accompanied Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev—and at the time I recall how the U.S.

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President put the question, at first, mainly before Gen-
eva. At the time it was put as follows: First, let us prove
confidence between the two countries, first let us decide
the issue of human rights and international conflicts, and
then we will proceed to disarmament. For one who is
engaged in this sphere, for example, this order of things
does not satisfy me. I think we should move in all
directions and we in fact moved in all directions, keeping
in mind the main direction—the reduction of arms. And
we achieved something in this regard.

[Kissinger] I did not say that we should first do one thing and then the other. We should do the main thing; we must solve the main issues—political, economic, and military—simultaneously. I do not mean that we must establish trust first and then act. I do not think you can work on trust in a purely abstract way. You must work on specific problems. I am not saying that we should not reduce weapons or talk about arms reduction. There is a dialogue on weapons, it exists, and it should continue. A political dialogue, on the other hand, should be elevated to the same level of the present military dialogue. Very soon it should be accompanied by an economic dialogue. That is my idea.

[Primakov] After that explanation, I agree.

[Falin] This is precisely how Dr Kissinger always under-
stood the problem, and I can confirm this on the basis of
a whole series of conversations with him. I think that our
somewhat common experience in talks on extremely
major and difficult problems in the past indicates that
this could be the only productive method for solving
particularly difficult and particularly delicate issues.

It seems to me that if we do not determine the common
character of fundamental aims, or at least ensure that
these aims do not exclude one another, then talks on
even particular, very important, and very acute issues
can eventually fail to produce results and the effect that
both our sides—and I state this as a gratifying fact—
strive for today.

[Zorin] Mr Nakasone, please.

[Nakasone] What a wonderful address General Secretary Gorbachev delivered at the UN General Assembly session. This speech was magnificent, and I think that with it he earned the right to be called a pioneer, if you will, of a new stage in world history. From the Japanese point of view, as an Asian country, there has been too great an emphasis on Europe in world politics, and somewhat less attention has been paid to Asian affairs.

After all, much more was undertaken in Europe. Various
measures on confidence building were adopted there,
and as a result great successes were achieved. Yet prob-
lems also exist in Asia. Take the problems of the Korean
peninsula, Vietnam, and Indonesia, for example. Never-
theless, corresponding measures have not been adopted
to create conditions for improving the general situation.

Of course, we are not to sure of what to do specifically
regarding Asia. Everything is rather vague and not quite
definite. However, Japan, the Korean peninsula, Viet-
nam, and other problems must be solved one after
another and a common climate established that will
permit further progress. Take arms reduction, in partic-
ular: In Europe, the Soviet Union has announced a
reduction of 500,000 troops. But, as far as Asia is
concerned, with the exception of a withdrawal of Soviet
troops from Mongolia, there has been no mention yet of
any significant reduction of Soviet armed forces
deployed in Asia. We are most interested, from this
point of view, in what specific measures in this sphere
can be found in the Soviet leadership's plans.

[Falin] I think there is an accidental mistake here, and I
would like to correct it right away. A unilateral step
reducing Soviet armed personnel and corresponding
weapons by 500,000 is not a reduction that concerns
Europe alone. Of the 500,000 there are 240,000 officers
and men who will be withdrawn or demobilized in the
European part of the country; 200,000 will be the num-
ber by which the complement of Soviet armed forces in
the Asian part will be reduced, and 60,000 will be
withdrawn from the southern parts of the country.
Consequently, if we compare 240,000 with 200,000, then
the difference is not all that great, and obviously here we
have not forgotten Asia. It is another question whether
or not more could be done. Possibly a lot more could be
done on the basis of collective efforts and on the basis of
a clearing up and utilization of those objective prerequi-
sites that have formed today for major decisions in this
sphere.

If the Japanese Government, as well as some other
governments of this region are ready, then, as it follows
from Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev's speeches in Vla-
divostok and Krasnoyarsk as well as in Delhi, the Soviet
side is fully capable and most interested in carrying out
a thorough and businesslike discussion.

[Primakov] I would like to add a few words, if you will
permit me. You must understand that Asia, the Asian
part of the Soviet Union and the areas close to it, is not
just another part of the Soviet Union; it is also part of the
global situation. That is why I feel that we should
consider all measures that can be implemented by us in
Asia. What I have in mind is the reduction of arms
within a certain context, which include the existence of
American bases on Japanese territory as well. There is
also a very strong American presence in South Korea
and, as is well-known, there are bases in the Philippines.
Clearly, if quantity is to be considered, then the U.S.
naval forces have superiority. We are often accused of
speedily and dynamically developing our Navy. But we
are far from achieving the level of the United States. As
you know, and Dr Kissinger knows this particularly well,
as far as the United States is concerned, its Navy is the
sacred cow which no one wishes to touch and which,
under no circumstances, can be reduced. At times, we in
the Soviet Union, are told that we are not a maritime

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power. First, I do not agree with the premise that we are not a naval power. Secondly, this logic is faulty because if that was the case, we would have been building up our land-based forces which prevail and dominate over all others. But we are reducing the strength of our land-based forces.

[Nakasone] As I said before, I was speaking about the Far East, particularly the Soviet Maritime Kray. I also had in mind the reduction of Soviet forces deployed in the Mongolian People's Republic. I know this. What I had in mind is the reduction of Soviet forces in the Far East, particularly the Maritime Kray. The American military presence is not limited to Europe, but is also close to us in Asia. On the other hand, we have no specific information regarding the Soviet naval forces. We don't even specifically know the whereabouts of the USSR naval bases, and so forth. We would very much like this information made public so that we can understand what is what. From our point of view Vladivostok is seen merely as an active naval base. It appears that it has no economic or cultural significance. Certainly, we could be wrong. But if that is the case, provide us with information.

[Falin] I most certainly do feel that you are somewhat in error. Vladivostok is not merely a naval base. It is also an industrial as well as a scientific base. Moreover, the scientific base encompasses theoretical and fundamental sciences. It is also the cultural center of our Far East, the Maritime Kray. Therefore, not everything about Vladivostok can be reduced to naval buildup or naval activity. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev raised the question of opening the city and turning it, in essence, into a free harbor. This is the prospect of the upcoming years, the near future, and there are no reasons to believe that this decision will not be fulfilled.

On the question of availability of data, I feel that the question pertaining to the military activity is just, and in the next few days very detailed data on the correlations of East-West forces in the European region—providing figures to the last officer and man—will be published. Similarly, the publication of data regarding other regions is on the agenda. In principle, I see no difficulty that this data on correlation of forces—obviously I am not talking about only our forces—to the extent that it is known to us, should not become accessible to our foreign partners, particularly our neighbors, and to our own public. This question will be solved in the very near future.

[Zorin] Mr Nakasone, I only wish to point out that if you acquaint yourself with what the Soviet press has been saying lately, you will see that the Soviet public, within the framework of glasnost which exists in our country, is asking the very same question that you have just asked. I think that Dr Kissinger wishes to say something.

[Kissinger] I think that the politicians of our countries have been working, primarily, on the question of nuclear disarmament. Certainly, this is a difficult question, but we must remember that what we are discussing here are

merely a few categories of armaments—five, six, or seven. We are not talking presently about all categories. These categories are comparable. They are not identical, but they can be compared. But when we speak of the problem of conventional arms, then the problem, from the intellectual point of view, becomes very much more complicated. For example, you could, roughly speaking, say that if the numbers are approximately equal on both sides, then the possibility of one side attacking the other is limited, if not totally absent. With conventional weapons quite often—and history tells of this—the weaker side has often defeated the stronger side. Therefore, equality of numbers in no way guarantees stability. In reaching agreement we should consider where these forces are deployed, the degree of their mobility, to where they can be transferred, and the existing reserves. I have no precise answers to all of these questions. I would be surprised if the Soviet side has precise answers to all these questions. If you were to consider Napoleon's victories before he marched on to Moscow, his forces were always smaller than those of his opponent. So were the German forces during their period of victory. Thus, numbers alone determine nothing.

A naval war is even more complicated. We know all too well what can happen in sea battles when one side achieves complete victory. Generally speaking, the equivalent of trench warfare does not occur at sea. Long ago a proposal was made to establish a relationship between French, British, and Japanese naval forces. But now experts are saying that the establishment of such an alignment of forces brought with it more harm than good. I am not saying that there is no need to discuss the possibility of reducing naval forces. We should most certainly be discussing this. But there is a hierarchy of intellectual preparation to the solution of these questions. In this context, nuclear disarmament made greater progress. We are only beginning to discuss conventional disarmament. As far as naval forces are concerned, I feel that at this stage we are lacking a serious approach to this problem. Perhaps we should first jointly research, at an academic level, the question of naval forces before making proposals at the diplomatic level. Candidly, I don't know what I would propose at this stage if somebody asked me.

[Primakov] Alright, I agree with you that the problem is very complex. But if we were to directly concentrate our attention on, let us say, confidence measures regarding naval forces, then this too would become a very important breakthrough if agreement can be reached. The Soviet side has made appropriate proposals, but unfortunately, the United States has not, as yet, given a positive reaction to these proposals.

[Zorin] What have you in mind?

[Primakov] What I have in mind is first to withdraw naval forces from certain areas. What I have in mind is to inform each other of any movements, to implement certain contacts at the fleet command levels, and so

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forth. As you can understand, all this is very important. If progress could somehow be achieved in this direction, then I feel that, as you have correctly noted, perhaps it would lead to the lessening of suspicion on both sides of a naval buildup with the aim of beginning action.

[Falin] Dr Kissinger raised two questions here. The question of conventional arms as such, and the question of naval forces. I think that the proposal to conduct a serious joint scientific research and analysis deserves every consideration and support. In order to decide anything, first we must know; in order to draw the necessary conclusions, material must first be collected. In regard to conventional arms, the elemental aspect of stockpiling over decades is making itself known. Particularly because the expenditure on conventional arms is 5 to 7 times greater than on nuclear forces. These armaments are particularly expensive and at times significantly more difficult to control. But if the question has been raised and it becomes more difficult as it develops, than I feel that the only correct conclusion to this situation could be the decision to, as quickly as possible, begin the essential examination of the problem. Water will not run under an embedded rock. The longer we relegate this problem to the future, the more difficult it will be to find a solution to it. Within this context, I warmly welcome the decision on the mandate adopted recently in Vienna, in the Conference of 23. I also feel that the following should be said about conventional armament: Conventional armaments, in their development, are approaching the level when they will become comparable to nuclear arms in their destructive ability. If technology in this field continues to be perfected, then the two problems will fuse eventually. Will must forestall this development, especially if one bears in mind that if research is inordinately expensive, then multiplication of the results of research can be achieved not only by the medium-developed countries but even by underdeveloped countries. It becomes merely a matter of procedure.

[Kissinger] I agree with Dr Falin on the technical issue of increasing the killing capability of conventional weapons and improving their accuracy. In some spheres these weapons are beginning to merge. This is a very important question.

[Falin] Another point, if I may, in the context of what you have said, about nuclear weapons: Yes, maybe in fact we have gone further here. However, an understanding of the danger here is not identical to the danger itself. Now we have spoken about the number of warheads and compared this number with 1965 and 1963. We forget that today one nuclear warhead, compared to those days, is three to five times more effective. Therefore, to understand the threat represented by today's figures, we must multiply them three to five times to compare them with the situation on the basis of which, after analyzing it, you, Dr Kissinger, and President Nixon proposed ideas on preventing nuclear war at the end of the 1960's and early 1970's.

[Kissinger] This is true. I was in Moscow and attended the signing of the first SALT agreement. Since then we have signed several more treaties. Yet, after a 50-percent reduction there will be more warheads remaining on both sides than there were after the first SALT agreement.

[Zorin] Mr. Nakasone.

[Nakasone] Maybe that is enough about nuclear weapons? Maybe we should talk about the lives of people. You know I have heard much in the Soviet Union about joint enterprises, including those that produce consumer goods. However, I think that maybe before producing more itself, it should import surpluses of these goods of which there are large quantities outside the Soviet Union. At the same time I must speak frankly about what is happening. As far as the Soviet market is concerned, Western businessmen experience a sense of uncertainty, and this relates in particular to the absence of a convertible ruble and also to a lack of price reforms.

Possibly in a year or two this reform will be carried out, but what will happen during the interim period? After all, lawsuits and controversies may arise, and how will contentious issues be solved at the level of joint enterprises, and with Soviet enterprises? These problems linked with the interim period need interpretation, amplification, and explanation. What do you think, Academician Primakov?

[Zorin] What does the director of the World Economics Institute have to say to this?

[Primakov] Yes, well, I agree that the situation is difficult and that our partners have certain doubts and fears. This is a natural state of affairs, because we began this experiment with mixed companies fairly recently, although you cannot call it an experiment because now this is already one of the practical trends. Maybe if we take a retrospective view on many of our actions, then they too, did not have much trust in us; that ought to be stated directly. However, I think that now everything is being done to really advance this trend. Many innovations are already being implemented. For example, previously the proportion of participation of foreign capital was set only at the 50-50 level...

[Falin, interrupting] Or 49-51.

[Primakov] Yes, 49-51, in our favor. Now we have retreated from this. If we talk about guarantees for foreign capital, well they are based on law; it is guaranteed by law in the Soviet Union. I think this form has a future. However, if you raise the question, Mr Prime Minister, about the import of consumer goods essential to the Soviet Union, then, as an economist, I can tell you that, of course, a part of our needs must be satisfied through imports. However, I would categorically advise against relying on imports as a means for covering our needs in consumer goods, because this puts us in the

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WORLDWIDE ISSUES

situation of a government that will have to literally, in just a matter of a few years, pay out possibly all of its foreign exchange earnings in the form of interest.

This is a very complicated matter. The main solution to the question, of course, lies in creating an internal mechanism, in changing the internal economic situation in such a way as to sharply increase the consumption of goods essential for the population and services.

[Falin] If you permit, I would like to recall the words Mikhail Sergeyevich said when he met with you; namely, that there are two prerequisites for the Soviet Union's organic fusion with the world economic process. The first requires a scientific and technical revolution, scientific and technical transformations within the Soviet economy itself; and the second, the convertibility of the ruble. Only after these two conditions have been met can our cooperation with any other country become stable and rest on a firm foundation. A clear and reliable confidence then will appear in this cooperation; without this, capital will never seek a sphere of application beyond its national borders.

It was my impression that you agreed with this assessment and that you considered it realistic. How long will this take? If we look at the scientific and technical side of the matter, then the process of transformation in our economy will proceed at a rapid rate, insofar as this is a genuine and natural need. Invested capital will soon give a return. This is a question of the immediate future. As far as convertibility of the ruble is concerned, as our leader has told you, the problem of our internal convertibility must first be resolved; in other words, the possibility for Soviet businessmen, particularly Soviet cooperatives and citizens, to purchase convertible currency for Soviet rubles. This task has been set, and it has been set in a purely practical way, not a theoretical one. It too will be solved.

[Nakasone] I have a question. In order to set up joint enterprises and to get the goods exchange and goods turnover moving, middlemen or brokers are necessary. This category of businessmen plays a very big role in our economy. Some of our specialists say that it appears that you still do not have a recognized legal status for this middleman. You know, these brokers play the role of hormones and vitamins in our economy.

[Primakov] You are correct in this. Yes, you are correct. We need brokerage firms, consulting....

[Falin, interrupting] Consulting companies.

[Primakov continues] ...consulting and information companies and others engaged in marketing. We have a need for them and we will establish them. But, take even our institutes. I can tell you now, for example, that we are working on agreements or have achieved agreement on intentions—this means that part of the way has been

covered—with the Banco Commercialle, the Commercial Bank in Milan, and the Olivetti Company to establish a joint company that will collect the corresponding information and provide the data in which they are interested to our enterprises, as well as to Italian and other West European enterprises.

[Falin] Objectively, in fact, this is the way development should proceed. The main commodity today is information, information in all its forms. Our scientists say that by the end of the century 95 percent of any consumer product, for production or civilian use, will consist of software, of knowledge, and only about 5 percent will consist of energy and the raw materials used in its production. If this is the case, then the engineering and consulting companies, those companies that accumulate the highest achievements of world experience, world science, and world management experience, will be irreplaceable in any modern, structured, and flourishing economy. The example of Japan and a number of other countries attests to this. We want to learn, and you have probably noticed that we have been learning fairly intensively. I should add, however, that here we have the greatest number of deficiencies. We must overcome the biggest gap here in our restructuring.

[Nakasone] This means that presently the provisions of the status of the latter are not legally recognized. In the future they will be legally recognized, and then the brokers will be able to work.

[Primakov] Why? I think that they can be established even now, and are being established.

[Falin, interrupting] There are no obstacles.

[Primakov] There are no obstacles, and they can be established like any joint company.

[Falin] And they even exist.

[Primakov] Many of them exist. I have just cited an example whereby we have formed such....

[Kissinger, interrupting] May I make one point. I am not a businessman and I have no business interests in the Soviet Union; I have never conducted business in the Soviet Union. But my friends, who want to conduct business here, tell me that, of course, the laws have been considerably improved now. But it is extremely difficult to break through your bureaucracy. They have no idea who is responsible for the law. Any help that can be organized, any system that will simplify an understanding of what is very complicated in the USSR would be very helpful.

[Primakov] That is correct.

[Falin] I agree with you, Mr Kissinger. If the armor of our tanks and the armor of our battleships was made of bureaucrats, then they would be invincible.

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[Primakov, laughing] They are invincible now, but with bureaucrats they would be even stronger.

[Kissinger] I have heard that even some Soviet citizens do not always understand how the Soviet bureaucracy works. I do not know how true this is.

[Zorin] I even allow that the bureaucracy itself does not always comprehend how it works....

[Falin, interrupting] And why it works.

[Zorin] Yes, and why it works. I think that the discussion we have held attests to the great number of topics we have to discuss. Their number is considerably larger than we can embrace in the short time of our broadcast. As our time is coming to an end, I would like to ask each participant to say something of their own choice to our multi-million audience, something to conclude our discussion. Let us start with you, Dr Kissinger.

[Kissinger] In the last few days, I have had the privilege of meeting with your top leaders, beginning with Mikhail Gorbachev. I was impressed by the sincerity with which they discussed questions of economic progress and of peace. I think that we will succeed in strengthening our peace and that all people will gain from what your leaders propose, if this mood prevails.

[Nakasone] First of all, in connection with the disaster in Armenia, I would like to express my deep condolences to and compassion with all Soviet people, particularly the Armenian people. I would also like to express my gratitude for the condolences sent to us in connection with the demise of the emperor. We would like to develop our relations both politically and economically, in a comprehensive manner. The Japanese people hope that the upcoming visit of General Secretary Gorbachev to Japan will take place. He is impatiently awaited in Japan. General Secretary Gorbachev is currently a world figure, and I am confident that if he visits Japan he will be met with the same hospitality with which he has been met in other countries. We would like him to visit Japan as early as possible.

[Falin] I think that today's meeting, as well as the Moscow visit of the Trilateral Commission in general, confirms the need for more frequent discussion, without avoiding the most complex and acute questions. We will, much more so than in the past, strive to be both students and teachers to one another. If we view the situation in each country with open eyes, then we will always be able to find something that ought to be considered, even as a not particularly positive experience. But the main thing, however, is that we are gradually learning the tradition of discussion, of mutual understanding and respect for each other's sacred thoughts and not just the usual and known considerations. If this was almost impossible yesterday, then today and tomorrow it will be unavoidable and absolutely necessary.

[Zorin] Yevgeniy Maksimovich.

[Primakov] First of all, as a participant in today's meeting, I would like to express my sincere gratitude. The very high assessment of our leader made by two men so greatly experienced in political questions has made a great impression on me. In my opinion, this is very important. I would also like to thank Mr Nakasone for the condolences he has expressed to our people who have suffered from the truly great tragedy in Armenia. You see how many things already unite us. I think that we are now not so much arguing with one another as much as we are coming to some common conclusions. This is the starting point for implementing those...maybe they are still slogans, maybe they are just wishes, but the future of mankind essentially depends on their implementation.

[Zorin] I think that our viewers have listened with great interest to the opinions expressed here by competent Soviet representatives. The viewers no doubt have showed great interest in the unusual appearance—it is not every day that they can see such people as Dr Kissinger and Mr Nakasone on their screens. I think that they have listened to them with great interest. It only remains for me to thank you for participating in this discussion and to express the hope, Mr Kissinger, Mr Nakasone, and my colleagues, that this is not the last time that we will meet here for a similar discussion in Studio 9. Thank you.

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22

United States & Canada

U.S. Must Meet Sino-Soviet Summit With 'Maturity'

LD3101094589 Moscow TASS in English 0828 GMT
31 Jan 89

[Text] Moscow January 31 TASS—By TASS diplomatic correspondent:

The report "How the United States Should Prepare for the Sino-Soviet Summit", issued by the American Heritage Foundation, comments on Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze's forthcoming visit to the People's Republic of China.

What are the conclusions and recommendations offered by the Heritage Foundation to the American Administration? The report says that nothing frightening has happened: Sino-Soviet relations are being normalized, but the significance of Beijing as a counterweight to the USSR is not so great now in the general context of American foreign policy. However, it is proposed that a close eye be kept on changes in the character of such an important component of world politics as Soviet-Chinese relations.

The Heritage Foundation recommends that the U.S. Administration should let Beijing and Moscow know that a formal Soviet-Chinese alliance would be unacceptable to the United States, that military cooperation between them could lead to a reappraisal of U.S. relations with both countries. It is proposed that in relations with the Chinese emphasis should be placed on "a Soviet military threat", and the U.S. should more actively (?cooperate) in information exchange and even intelligence.

It is certainly difficult to say how the new administration would receive these recommendations. One would naturally like to ascribe a greater maturity of political thinking to the U.S. Administration. There are now new realities in the world and in the so-called USSR-USA-China triangle, and one should take them into consideration not only in words but also in deeds.

The new period in international relations is characterised, among other things, by many countries' growing realisation of their genuine national interests, and a steady improvement in the relations between the two neighbouring great socialist powers undoubtedly meets their fundamental interests.

As to possibilities of manipulations and manoeuvres within the "triangle" framework in the interests of any country, they would gradually be on a decline. It appears that neither in Moscow nor in Beijing will they regret this: The leaders of both countries repeatedly stated that the improvement of relations between them was not directed against anybody. So Washington, too, should be thinking not in terms of triangular intrigue but in terms of creating multiangular structures and fair and equitable international relations.

Tower Ignores Arms Cuts, Pushes Military Build-up

LD3101000889 Moscow Domestic Service in Russian
1800 GMT 30 Jan 89

["International Diary" program presented by Andrey Ptashnikov]

[Text] [Ptashnikov] Since we have begun talking about the new U.S. Government, I would like to note that its members are becoming increasingly involved in political activity. Although no decisions have yet been made either in the sphere of foreign or domestic policy, quite a few statements have already been made. Furthermore, they have by no means always been reassuring or balanced.

For example, a report from Tokyo describes the clearly negative reaction in Japan to certain remarks by John Tower, who has been appointed the new U.S. defense secretary. The fact of the matter is that Tower, speaking at Senate confirmation hearings, demanded a significant increase in defense spending from the Japanese Government. He also called for changes to the present Japanese Constitution, in which a number of clauses restrict the build-up of this country's military might. So, an editorial article today in the newspaper THE DAILY YOMIURI writes that in the light of these remarks, it looks as if Tower does not regard Japan as an independent state. Meanwhile, according to UPI, an anonymous representative of the Japanese Foreign Ministry stated the following: Judging from what Tower has said, he still has much to learn about our relations in the area of mutual defense. The representative went on to point out that on several occasions recently, Washington has expressed its satisfaction, on the whole, with the development of U.S.-Japanese relations in this area. But now, I will ask my colleague and commentator, Igor Surguchev, to continue talking on this topic.

[Surguchev] As we can see, those in governmental circles in the land of the Rising Sun are not concealing their irritation over Tower's remarks, which are regarded there as inappropriate and unfortunate. The newspaper THE DAILY YOMIURI assesses them, and not without basis, as interference in the domestic affairs of Japan. However, the government of Takeshita has made no official response to the preaching from across the ocean and, what is more, has not rejected these remarks out of hand. This can be explained by the fact that Tower has not yet taken up the post of U.S. secretary for defense, and consequently is not expressing the view of the new U.S. Administration. However, this argument does not seem convincing against the background of the draft program of the Japanese ruling Liberal Democratic Party for the present year, which was made public in Tokyo on 28 January. It contains a direct appeal for a review of the country's post-war constitution, in the interests, so it is said, of ensuring genuine national independence. No matter what eloquent phrases the leadership of the LDP may juggle with, one can clearly see its poorly masked desire to revise the peace clauses of the fundamental law of Japan. So Tower's pieces of advice correspond in full

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OBSERVATIONS ON U.S-SOVIET RELATIONS

by Henry A. Kissinger

Ed Feulner, ladies and gentlemen, I very much appreciate this applause. I know how hard it is to applaud and shrug your shoulders at the same time. Two or three years ago, my friend Norman Podhoretz invited me to the anniversary party of *Commentary*, and I stated that, if General Custer had survived Little Big Horn and been invited to the celebration of the victors, he would feel as I did when I addressed the neoconservatives in New York. Now I can say the same thing in addressing the conservatives in Washington.

Today, however, rather than engage in debates of other years, I thought I would state my views on Soviet-American relations in general, and then specifically as applied to the current situation.

I think U.S.-Soviet relations pose a particular problem for a society that never in its history has known irremediable disaster and that through most of its existence was secure from foreign danger. For the greatest part of American history, the British Navy and two great oceans protected this country so that the possibility of fundamental disagreements or of mistakes that cannot be remedied has not really been part of the American psyche.

**Liberal-Conservative Debate.** Indeed, the normal American tendency is to believe that foreign policy disagreements result either from a misunderstanding or from the temporary appearance of evil doers, to be removed either by strenuous good will or by conversion. And with all due respect to this distinguished group, I must say that some of the debate between liberals and conservatives in this country concerns precisely the subject of Soviet intentions. Both seem to agree that on some magic day an act of conversion will take place. The disagreement is that the liberals assert the conversion has already occurred, and the conservatives, being more suspicious, await that moment — as yet to come.

I hold a somewhat different view. I believe that the Soviet Union represents a challenge to the United States of two parts. One is geopolitical — its size, its extent, its power would present a geopolitical and strategic problem for the government of the United States no matter who governed. Russia has not been any joy for its neighbors, under either tsars or commissars. And therefore, I believe that the problem of how to deal with the Soviet Union is not one that can be addressed in terms of the intentions of Soviet leaders, fundamental changes in Soviet society, or any of the plethora of psychiatric analyses of Soviet intentions.

Second, of course, I believe also that Soviet ideology gives a particular urgency to this geopolitical thrust and creates a particular complexity in negotiating with Soviet leaders. Soviet leaders have been confronted for decades by Westerners who are convinced that

Henry A. Kissinger is President of Kissinger Associates, Inc.

He spoke at The Heritage Foundation on January 14, 1988.

ISSN 0272-1155. ©1988 by The Heritage Foundation.

they have a special relationship and a special key to understanding the Soviet leadership groups. And those are the people who have suffered the greatest shipwrecks.

The one thing that no Soviet leader can afford to do is to return from a meeting with a capitalist, especially an American, and report that he has met the most charming American President; that he has found swimming pools in the backyards of America, and that therefore, concessions ought to be considered that had not been part of what was believed to be the objective balance of forces.

**Nixon's Assessments.** In my view, not unanimously shared in this room, the most successful U.S. President in dealing with the Soviet Union was Richard Nixon, who, not being convinced of the permanent good will of Americans, was not about to trust the Russians. I defy anybody to find any statement of President Nixon concerning fundamental conversions of the Soviet system, changes of the Soviet attitude. Whatever differences might exist with respect to agreements that Nixon made, they were based on an assessment of relative benefits and of geopolitical trends, which, as any other assessment, might have been wrong. But they were not based on the assumption that we were dealing with a fundamentally new phenomenon in the Soviet Union.

This idea that we are dealing with a problem not of foreign policy, but of conversion of a system, is not new at all — the Soviets abolish their claim to world revolution every decade. In 1943, Stalin abolished the Comintern, and Tom Connally from Texas — not one of the more arch-typical liberals — said in response, "The Russians for years have been changing their economy and approaching the abandonment of communism, and the whole world will be gratified by the happy climax of their efforts."

**Essence of Stalinism.** *Fortune* magazine (I'm picking non-liberal publications) at about the same time said, "Russia will prepare for the peace of Europe to its communization." The argument in favor of this assumption is that Russia will be too weak for aggression in Europe, even ideological aggression, after the War. It is the essence of Stalinism to use communism as an instrument of Russian nationalism, foreign policy, and so on and so forth.

There are literally tons of quotations that say the same thing, which any researcher will find in every decade. In 1959, Averill Harriman said, "I think Mr. Khrushchev is keenly anxious to improve Soviet living standards. He looks upon this current seven-year plan as the crowning success of the communist revolution and a historic turning point in the lives of the Soviet people. He also considers it a monument to himself. However, he is finding it difficult to attain that ambitious goal so long as armaments are making such heavy demands for scientific genius, technical skill and capital investment." This was a year before the Berlin crisis, two years before the Cuban missile crisis.

And these are not selective quotations. There's another one, which I will paraphrase, in which the *Herald Tribune* wrote about the Geneva summit meeting that other people might have pitted strength against strength, but it was President Eisenhower's achievement to draw the little band of visitors from the other side of the Elbe into the magic circle of his good will, and thereby, change their attitudes, if not their policies.

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**Yearning for Normalcy.** My point is that there is in America a yearning for normalcy — a refusal to face a contest that has no end, in which progress can be made only incrementally. In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony, or by balance of power. There is no other way. We are too isolationist to achieve the former, and we have been too moralistic to achieve the latter. And that is at the core of our difficulties.

Now, let me apply this to the current situation. Those of you who read my writings — which of course I would assume is everybody in this room — know that I was not swept away by the Gorbachev euphoria. I have met him twice. He is an interesting and intelligent man. On the other hand, he has never held any job except cadre in the Communist Party. It is a competition that leaders do not enter who do not have an enormous thirst to prevail, because there is only one winner, and fundamental penalties — to put it kindly — for losers. He was the protege of Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, and of Mikhail Suslov, the chief ideologue since the days of Stalin, from which occupations I draw the perhaps unworthy conclusion that neither was a closet dove. It is, of course, possible that Mikhail Gorbachev fooled them all, in which case we live in a truly historic period, when the leaders of the two superpowers are both former actors. So I assume that he, as in the case of all Soviets, may not know much about running an economy. In fact, we don't have to assume that, that we know — but they are experts in political warfare. That is the communist specialty, finely honed in internal struggles and in theoretical reflections about the nature of one party dictatorship.

Gorbachev's contribution to the current situation — and it is considerable — is that he has recognized two things: One, he has correctly analyzed the internal weaknesses of the Soviet system, and I believe he is sincere in attempting to remedy them. He has also correctly analyzed the internal weaknesses of the American system, and I believe he is equally sincere in attempting to utilize those for his purposes.

**Gorbachev's Dilemma.** With respect to his domestic system, he faces a nearly insoluble dilemma. You cannot run a modern economy by central planning. But equally, you cannot run a communist society without central planning. What to do about the Communist Party in a communist state has been the paradox that no communist country has been able to solve. If it maintains a monopoly position of power, it becomes a mandarin group. If you attempt to thwart that, you then have at best something like the socialized countries, the welfare states, say Britain of 30 years ago, with great inflexibility of labor, nationalized industries, and no incentive for modernization. So the Soviet economic problem is almost insoluble.

And second, Gorbachev recognizes that decentralization will soon run up against the nationality question. Therefore, it may be no accident that the Soviet reformers have on the whole conducted very adventurous foreign policies — both Khrushchev, who was clearly adventurous, and Gorbachev, who is clearly very daring.

Now let me turn to my analysis of the Gorbachev foreign policy and to my concerns about the present state of affairs. Gorbachev confronts us with three propositions: one, he is a new type of Soviet leader; two, arms are the cause of tension, and therefore, strenuous efforts must be made to reduce the level of arms beginning with nuclear arms; and three,

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political conflicts cannot be dealt with simultaneously and must be left to the good will that
will be engendered by the other two developments.

**A New Type of Soviet Leader.** With respect to the first proposition, we all know that astonishing progress has been made and that all over the world it has achieved wide acceptance that Gorbachev is a new type, and that therefore he is entitled to concessions that might not have been made to his more pedantic predecessors. A peculiarly American wrinkle is to believe that the economic strengthening of the Soviet Union is a good in itself, independent of the foreign policy that it may pursue — the view that a strong adversary is better than a weak adversary, which is something that could be held only by a society that has never suffered any form of foreign policy shipwreck.

The second of Gorbachev's propositions — the dominance of arms control — is the overwhelming challenge to our current foreign policy. When I was a young professor and had written some articles and books about the proposition that reliance on general nuclear war and mass extermination would sooner or later lead to a dead end of pacifism and unilateral disarmament, I also joined some study groups, which very modestly tried to analyze the new impact of the mass destruction technology. In such seminars, the theory of arms control was born, in which it was argued, and I believe correctly, that the new weapons added a new dimension to strategy and that special consideration should be given to that dimension in the elaboration of strategy and foreign policy. We asked modestly for some place in strategy for arms control. Thirty years later, we are in a position where the reverse is occurring, where arms control is becoming almost its own end, and its relationship to strategy and foreign policy is not very easy to determine.

**Congressional Cuts.** In the early seventies, in the agreements that were made at that time, there was a theory that many of you will disagree with, but at any rate, there was an attempt to break the momentum of a Soviet buildup in the middle of a period of near civil war in this country, when it was impossible — the Congress every year was cutting our defense requests by 10 percent. And there was an attempt, with respect to ABM, to sell it to the public before Congress killed it, since Congress already had reduced the number of our stations from 12 to 8 to 4 to 2, and was clearly heading to zero. This may or may not have been correct policy. I'll be glad to debate it afterwards with anyone who chooses.

Today I find it difficult to understand the advantage to our security in any of the agreements that have either been concluded or are in the process of negotiation. As many of you know, I have had the gravest doubts about the INF agreement. I may say I have been nearly alone in fighting that battle, because the isolationist streak in some of the conservative groups did not mind so much any weakening of the Europeans' confidence in us, when the belief is that they are getting just about what they deserve.

Be that as it may, my concern with INF is less in the military than in the political field. It fundamentally has affected our relationships with Europe. And it is presented in an extraordinarily schizophrenic manner. It is presented as an historic achievement that, however, makes no difference strategically. That is not a proposition self-evident to me.

The historic aspect of the achievement is said to be that it reduces two categories of weapons, that it eliminates two categories of weapons. That makes sense only as a first step

to removing, to eliminating, all categories of nuclear weapons, an objective that has now been enshrined in two summit communiques. We are therefore in a position where the weapon on which the West has relied for 40 years, rightly or wrongly, has been stigmatized by the nation that has been its chief arsenal, while the conventional weapons have been left to some future negotiation. That, in itself, is no mean achievement.

**Damage Cannot Be Undone.** Second, as I have stated publicly, I endorsed ratification of the INF agreement, not because I see any merit in it, but because I think the damage of not ratifying it would be greater. The damage cannot be undone, the weapons cannot be kept in Europe anymore, and therefore, it would only be a means of enabling the Soviets to hold on to the SS-20s without achieving any real benefit.

But it is my view that this process must not be repeated with the 50 percent reduction that is now under negotiation. Before we proceed on so fateful a course, we have to understand in what specific way it is supposed to add to anybody's security. So far as I can tell, it does not alter the vulnerability of any of our forces. Quite the contrary, the ratio of warheads to missiles of our land-based forces will go from 3 to 1 to about 5 to 1. Now, that may not make any difference, but it is not a great achievement either. Our submarines will be reduced to about 18, while the anti-submarine forces of the Soviet Union are not part of the agreement.

I cannot visualize an inspection system that could adequately verify this. And I do not know how countries that depend on us can adjust to the twin shocks of the removal of our forward-based system and the total revision of our strategic arsenal without understanding what the strategic doctrine is that it is based on, or without at least a fundamental modification of our strategic forces so that the number of aiming points is reduced and we go to single warhead missiles, as a result of which we will not only not save money, but have to spend a lot more money.

**Causes of War.** It is a challenge to everybody in the West. Some relationship has to be established between nuclear disarmament and conventional disarmament. And some relationship has to be established to the political issues that are the ultimate causes of political tension. I know of no war — at any rate, we will all agree that few wars have been started by arms races, and that the overwhelming majority of wars, if not all wars, have been caused by unresolved political issues. And it therefore seems to me absolutely imperative that this be addressed.

Now, since you have often had occasion to express your less than total agreement and admiration for my views, less strong than my mother's, let me make a few comments about some of the conservative contributions to this state of affairs.

For years, the real issue has been one that my friend Norman Podhoretz never tires of raising with me, which is that the sort of foreign policy that I have studied, so-called *realpolitik*, balance of power, is not sustainable by the American people — that the U.S. needs an ideological mission. There is a lot of merit in what he is saying. But we now have proved to ourselves that we cannot maintain an ideological foreign policy for eight years, and therefore we may be left without an anchor.