12

tomorrow. I criticize with pain a foreign policy team
staffed by so many friends and former associates. I
do so in the hope that the Administration, the Nation
and the West will use the occasion of the crisis in
Poland to learn, to review its procedures and to redefine
purposes. The following tasks seem to me of the highest
priority.

A. <u>Organization of the Policy-Making Process:</u>

Judge Clark in setting in setting up new National
Security Council procedures in the White House will
want to review how we came to waste crucial weeks on
essentially rhetorical exercises, which options were put
forward to waste time and above all what strategic
assumptions underlay the →

- 13 -

conflicting theories and proposals put up for Presidential attention. He will want to make sure that in the future what reaches the White House are the real choices.

But he must go beyond that. He must insure that the philosophy of foreign policy of the Administration is clarified. For better or worse, a serious foreign policy requires a comprehensive central concept; without it, pronouncements are exercises in rhetoric and actions are driven by tactics without coherence or purpose. The policy making process must be organized by efficient procedures. But, more importantly it must be organized by a basic strategy, as our response to Poland has not been.

B. **A Notion of Security:** The root problem of our relations with our allies, which the Polish crisis has so brutally expressed, is not procedural but structural -- not that we do not consult enough but that we are uncertain of the purpose of Atlantic consultation. Today, we lack in the Atlantic Alliance a security doctrine which takes realistic account of the growing nuclear stockpiles on both sides and the new threat of Soviet conventional power. In the past, alliances represented a pooling of strength; NATO has far too long operated as if it were a unilateral

- 14 -

American nuclear guarantee. This produces a neutralism based on irresponsibility; America is thought to have no choice except to defend Europe against Europe risks nothing by political dissociation and lethargy on defense. Sooner or later this will lead to catastrophe. If we are serious about avoiding nuclear war and do not wish to yield to the ruthless, the Alliance must build up its conventional forces. There is no other choice; but a program to that effect is lacking on both sides of the Atlantic.

C. East-West Relations: Poland represents a fundamental challenge to East-West relations not only because of the brutal violation of the Helsinki accords. It does not primarily because of what it tells us about the Soviet perception of security. It is one thing to seek to be secure against a hostile military presence in surrounding countries; it is quite another to equate security with a cordon of vassal states subject to an ultimate Soviet right to impose minority governments on populations that overwhelmingly rejects them. Equally inadmissible is the proposition that the Red Army is the guarantor of the irreversibility of history, the enforcer of the rule that what is Communist is eternal and what is non-Communist is available for undermining.

- 15 -

D. <u>The Function of Negotiations with the Soviet Union.</u>

The question of whether to negotiate with our adversaries has become a domestic issue and a source of international friction within the Alliance. This weakens us in three ways: in relatively calm periods it allows the initiative to the Soviets to present themselves as the apostles of peace; when we are finally driven to negotiations by allied and Soviet pressures we are then tempted into opening positions that look like complete reversals; and once engaged in talks they turn into ends in themselves.

Our rhetoric and our strategy must be brought into balance. And our allies must stop pressing us towards concessions to placate their domestic opposition. We need a program that avoids the twin dangers of leaving the peace issue to our adversaries without turning negotiating into a form of self-blackmail by fearing their failure above all else.

16

E. East-West Economic Relations: A decade or so ago when East-West trade, technology transfer and financial relations began to develop, many of us believed that they would become an instrument for moderating Soviet conduct.

In a crisis, the fear of losing markets or access to raw materials, technological innovations of the West or bank credit would produce Soviet caution. This has clearly not happened.

On the contrary, so many Western nations have let themselves become dependent on Soviet trade that a cutoff has become a Soviet weapon against the West. Comprehensive trade sanctions are extremely difficult when each side of the Atlantic has key sectors of the economy which depend on Soviet goodwill. Our banks have been profligate in extending credit to Poland and other East Bloc countries and free of considerations of state policy in doing so.

17

The result is that they are now exposed if there is any
let up in the break neck pace of private lending to the
East. No other task is more important than to end this
dependency.

In 1976, my last year in office, I recommended to
a ministerial meeting of the OECD an urgent study to
examine the implications, the risks and the need for
greater Western coordination regarding East-West trade.

~~EFFECTIVE~~ AND CREDITS. EFFORT
The next administration permitted to the study to languish.
As a result, there are no criteria for East-West trade.
TODAY FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF
OUR ECONOMIC COOPERATION WITH POLISH DEPRESSION.
The industrial nations fiercely compete to fulfill
Lenin's dictum that the capitalists would in time fight
over the privilege to sell the rope they would be hanged with,
to hang them with.

There is thus a considerable agenda before our leaders
and those of all Western nations, to which mutual recrimination
is largely irrelevant. To deal with this agenda success-
fully is the pressingly preeminent task of statesmanship.

I have no illusions that this will be an easy task. Events have conspired in recent years to erode the foreign policy consensus of this nation, and to create fault lines of opinion which cut across all strategic questions. We are divided in America today:

- between a new isolationism and traditional
Atlanticism;

- between those who are emotionally prepared for, or regard as inevitable, an apocalyptic showdown with the Soviet Union and those who think that the competition will be a feature of our foreign policy for as far into the future as the eye can see, and, are prepared to pay the price of a permanent foreign policy;

- and between those who regard trade, technology and finance as matters of private concern, subject only to pure market considerations, and those who see our economic relationships, particularly with the Communist World, as so centrally important to the future of both the West and East as to be an inherent part of the public policy of the West.

19

The strains generated by the competition between these contending points of view have been all too evident in the weeks following the repression in Poland. They will tug at our policy in the months to come as well, until we move to resolve them and in the process design a longer-term, fully rounded concept of our strategy, our resources and our broader objectives in the world. Until these issues are settled, it will be impossible even for the wisest of leaders to make more than momentary sense from the range of options presented to him by his staff each day for decision.

If we can but master these issues and in the process design a coherent policy, the Polish fiasco -- which exposed our uncertainties and weaknesses so clearly -- could in the end generate a lasting benefit for all the West. If we fail, we shall remember these months not only with shame but as a decisive turning point.

1/12/82

New York Times Article

Five weeks after martial law was declared in Poland, the foreign ministers of NATO assembled in Council to plan their "response." Thousands of Solidarity leaders had meanwhile shivered in concentration camps; strikes had been broken; those Poles who were looking West had discerned no sign of succor and little understanding. The German Chancellor did not consider the declaration of martial law in Poland of sufficient gravity to interrupt a visit to East Germany, clearly planned to lull him about the planned crackdown. Neither he nor other Western leaders considered the suppression of minimum liberties in Poland of sufficient gravity to interrupt vacations to plan-- or even to discuss--a joint strategy. When they at last assembled they faced an accomplished fact; they could "punish," whatever that meant in international affairs; events in Poland had by now their own moment -- which caused little

[Y]

2

discomfiture to at least some of them. The pattern of
the Schmidt-Reagan meeting was repeated at NATO head-
quarters: our allies gave us the rhetoric of Soviet
complicity in return for a non-sequitur: the avoidance
of meaningful joint action.

Nothing illustrates better the crisis of the Atlantic
alliance than its vacuousness in the face of the Polish
crisis. The lack of a consensus on security magnified
the near panic in the face of Soviet military power. The
absence of clarity on East-West relations is in the way
of turning what should be a balance between strength and
conciliation into a unilateral Soviet tool. Negotiations
once conceived as part of a strategy have become ends in
themselves. Trade originally designed to provide incentives
for Soviet restraint is turning into an instrument of Soviet
blackmail; the West seems clearly less prepared to interrupt
it than Moscow.

[Y]

3

It would be tempting to blame this state of affairs
on European hesitations. Europe's leaders have little
to be proud of; but neither, if we are candid with ourselves,
have ours. European fecklessness is in the process of
becoming an alibi, not a cause.

No doubt events in Poland present the West with a
searing dilemma. We had no military option and it would
have been wrong to conduct ourselves as if we had. One
can understand the reluctance to seem to encourage the
Polish people into open resistance the West would then
find no means to support. But statesmen are ultimately
judged by their conception of alternatives. What seems
to have happened over Poland is a coalition between those
who wanted to do nothing and those who argue that unless
you do everything you can do nothing. The result is paralysis
either way.

4

From the first day of the repression of Poland, arguments for inaction have cascaded forth--and if we are truthful with ourselves, not only from Europe. At first we were told to be measured in order not to destroy the possibility of reform held out by the proclamations of the Polish military government. Then restraint was urged to remove the incentive for Soviet intervention. Next we heard that our allies must not be driven into neutralism by rash American actions. The Soviets were warned and, ignoring the warning, were slapped on the wrist by measures whose hesitation is more likely to convince the Kremlin of our irresolution than of a considered strategy. We were told that despite the flagrant violation of the Helsinki accords all diplomatic contacts at high level must continue and indeed be intensified.

The worse the crisis, so the argument runs, the more important such contacts are--even the parody of discussing the implementation of the Helsinki accords, even a meeting of the

5

Soviet and American foreign ministers, even a summit
conference.

We run the risk of confusing fatuousness with policy;
each of these arguments shows a conceptual breakdown even
more serious than any policy disagreements. Once the
Polish army was unleashed, it should have been clear that
Solidarity as it had developed would be crushed. Communists
do not assuage whatever doubts they may have had about
the wisdom of a decision by incompetent execution. From
then on, Soviet intervention would depend on Polish resistance,
not Western actions. Indeed the *only* chance of saving
anything would have been a Western reaction so strong as
to impose some pause and some thought of compromise. The
prospects for this were admittedly slim; but they vanished
completely when with every day of inaction the West tacitly
colluded with the martial law. The argument that reform
in Eastern Europe depended on acquiescence in the suppression

[Y]

6

of freedom is an application by its critics of their own
unfair caricature of the "Sonnenfeldt doctrine" of some
years ago.

The fear of allied reactions seems to me similarly
out of place. No doubt our allies were reluctant to support a
policy designed to make the Soviets pay a heavy price early.
But the consequences they would have drawn could not have
differed significantly from the dissociation they in fact
practiced. Indeed I would argue that we were in a better
position to challenge our allies over Poland, with respect
to which there is a considerable amount of public uneasiness
in Europe, than over / the Middle East or Central America which will
be the next objects of contention.

The problem of economic sanctions is admittedly difficult.
They have rarely worked, if only because of the near impossibility
of applying them on a general enough basis. But sanctions
known to be ineffective when they are implemented--indeed

7

chosen because of their marginal significance--are not
a warning but a confession of irresolution; they look more
like a sop to quiet domestic critics than a credible act
of policy. At the end the Europeans were acting out their
convictions, which I believe to be wrong; we have not even
that excuse.

If economic sanctions are technically complex and
legally ambiguous, the same cannot be said of diplomatic
encounters. Here the decision whether to proceed is in
executive control; no Congressional action is required;
Allied agreement to our bilateral dealings is at a minimum.

How then can one explain the eagerness to continue all
negotiations? How is one to reconcile the President's
assertion that the Soviet Union is to blame for the
suppression of Poland's freedoms with the continued participa-
tion in the Madrid Conference to discuss the implementation
of the very Helsinki agreements which are daily being violated

CYD

8

all over Poland? How is one to explain a meeting between
our Secretary of State and the Soviet Foreign Minister
while martial law and concentration camps continue in Poland?

What is the urgency of discussing a Brezhnev-Reagan summit
while urging sanctions on our allies? I am familiar with
the counterarguments: arms control is too important to
make hostage to day-to-day fluctuations of international
politics; Madrid is a great forum for exhibiting Soviet
culpability for events in Poland; Haig will scold Gromyko;
Reagan will lay down the law to Brezhnev. I know because
I have been there before. The bureaucracy never lacks
ingenuity for devising rationales for their preference.

We do not need Madrid to castigate the Soviet Union; the
UN would serve the purpose equally well and less embarrassingly.

Summit meetings can perform useful functions but not when
their preparation takes place while freedom is being suppressed
in Central Europe. It cannot be our national policy that

9

we multiply high-level contacts during crises caused by
the Soviet Union unless we want the Soviets to have an
incentive to produce crises.

But these arguments have to be reconciled with the
early declarations of the Administration. Then it was
argued that it was dangerous to select one area of diplomacy
for preeminent attention; linkage was the watchword. The
Helsinki accords were maligned. High-level meetings were
to reflect careful preparation and reward restrained Soviet
conduct. Any Administration will learn from experience;
it can only be congratulated if it adjusts its policies
to reality. But drastic shifts especially during crises
run the risk of undermining credibility abroad and demoralizing
well-wishers at home.

And the original arguments had much merit. To be
sure, it is easy to make fun of linkage; to demonstrate
that nothing will ever happen if everything is linked to

10

everything else. But the art of policymaking is to have a sense
for nuance. If the Soviets can insulate particular areas
of negotiation from international conduct, they are being
handed a safety valve with which to regulate tensions they
cause and to remove the onus from their aggressions. I
believe it would have served the cause of ultimate negotia-
tions far better had the United States declared a moratorium
on high-level contacts until martial law was lifted in
Poland, the Solidarity leaders released and some form of
internal negotiation started.

I have devoted so much space to my uneasiness about
our own Polish policy because it is important to understand
that not all causes of the crisis in the Alliance lie in
Europe. Nor are the American origins to be found mainly
in this Administration. The Reagan team inherited a record
of changes of course without adequate consultation, of
catastrophic changes in American leadership and policies

[Y]

11

which go far to explain why Europe no longer rushes to
follow an American lead. Nor can the early decisions on
Poland be reversed at this late stage. The West has failed
on Poland; its belated rhetoric does not obscure its inability
to act on the suppression of liberties in Central Europe.

I campaigned for Reagan in the last Presidential campaign;
I would do so again were there an election tomorrow. I
criticize with pain a foreign policy team staffed by so
many friends and former associates. Yet the best service
at this moment is for the Administration to use the
occasion to review its procedures and to redefine its purposes.
The following tasks seem to me of the highest priority.

A. **Organization of the Policy-Making Process:** Judge Clark in setting up new procedures will want to review how we came to waste crucial weeks on essentially rhetorical exercises, which options were put forward to waste time and above all what strategic assumptions underlay the

12

conflicting theories crying for the President's attention.

He will want to make sure that what reaches the White House is real choices and that the philosophy of foreign policy of the Administration is clarified. For better or worse, a serious foreign policy requires a comprehensible central concept; without it pronouncements are exercises in rhetoric and actions are driven by tactics without coherence or purpose.

B. **A Notion of Security:** The underlying crisis of the Alliance is the lack of a security doctrine due to the refusal to face the implications of the growing nuclear stockpiles on both sides. In the past, alliances represented a pooling of strength; NATO has far too long operated as if it were a unilateral American nuclear guarantee.

This produces a neutralism based on irresponsibility; America is thought to have no choice except to defend Europe and Europe risks nothing by political dissociation and lethargy

13

### C. East-West Relations:
Unfortunately the issue of whether to negotiate with our adversaries has become a domestic issue and a source of controversy within the Alliance. It weakens us in three ways: in relatively calm periods it leaves the initiative to the Soviets to present themselves as the apostles of peace; when we are finally driven to negotiations by allied and Soviet pressures we are then tempted into opening positions that look like complete reversals; and once engaged in talks they turn into ends in themselves. Our rhetoric and our strategy must be brought into balance. And our allies must stop

14

pressing us towards concessions to placate their domestic
opposition. We need a program that avoids the twin dangers
of leaving the peace issue to our adversaries without
turning negotiating into a form of self-blackmail by fearing
their failure above all else. Poland represents a fundamental
challenge to East-West relations not only because of the
brutal violation of the Helsinki accords. It does so primarily
because of what it tells us about the Soviet perception
of security. It is one thing to want to be secure against
a hostile military presence in surrounding countries; it
is quite another to equate security with the right to impose
minority governments on a population that overwhelmingly
rejects it. Equally inadmissible is the proposition that
the Red Army is the guarantor of the irreversibility of
history, the enforcer of the rule that what is Communist
is eternal and what is non-Communist is available for
undermining.

15

C. East-West Economic Relations: A decade or so ago when East-West trade began to develop, many of us believed that it would become an instrument for moderating Soviet conduct. In a crisis, the fear of losing markets or raw materials would produce Soviet caution. This has clearly not happened. On the contrary, so many Western nations have let themselves become dependent on Soviet trade that it has become a Soviet weapon. Neither sanctions nor other economic measures are possible when each side of the Atlantic has key sectors of the economy which depend on Soviet goodwill. No other task is more important than to end this dependency.

In 1976, my last year in office, I recommended to a ministerial meeting of the OECD an urgent study to examine the implications, risks, and the need for greater Western coordination regarding East-West trade. The next administration permitted the study to languish. As a result, there are no criteria

16

for East-West trade. The industrial nations fiercely compete to fullfill Lenin's dictum that the capitalists would in time fight over the privilege to sell the rope to hang them with.

There is thus a vast agenda before Western leaders, to which mutual recrimination is largely irrelevant. To deal with it successfully is the preeminent task of statesmanship. If we master it, the Polish fiasco will have led to some important benefit; if we fail, we shall remember these months not only with shame but as a decisive turning point.