threatens the global equilibrium. It is this assault that must be ended if there is to be true progress toward peace.

Any serious effort to improve relations with the Soviet Union must therefore begin with an analysis of realities—those that impede progress as well as those which, properly managed, offer reason for hope. Among the factors that make for tension, ideology still plays an important role. This may sound surprising in view of the widely reported cynicism of much of the Soviet population. Nor am I suggesting that Lenin is read at bedtime by Soviet leaders as a guide to the next day's actions. The impact of ideology is more intangible: ideological élan has been replaced by an orthodox interpretation of reality; personal conviction has given way to a kind of rote impetus to undermine Western democracies and the international equilibrium. To a Leninist, peace is neither a personal affirmation nor a static condition. It reflects "objective factors"—the balance of power, the state of the economy or technology. No Soviet leader, for example, can justify concessions on the basis of the personal good will or sincerity of a Western leader. Soviet negotiators make concessions to what they define as the balance of forces, not to personalities. They understand concrete proposals based on reciprocity; unilateral gestures are likely to be interpreted as a trick or as a confession of weakness. It is no accident that those presidents most eager for an improvement of relations, most prone to personalize their diplo-

macy and most resistant to the concept of balance of power suffered a shipwreck with the Kremlin; while those presidents who were least sentimental and insisted on strict reciprocity were the most successful. Absent a balance of forces and a concrete Western program for peace, all pressures within the Soviet society make for a continuation of the present course, if only as a result of philosophical and institutional rigidity.

There are some American conservatives in both parties who luxuriate in the myth of diabolic Soviet planners implementing a detailed master plan for world revolution. No one who has actually dealt with the top Soviet leadership has encountered such types. If they exist, they are well hidden from foreign visitors. The leaders one in fact encounters are tough, ruthless and persistent. But they have originated

no profound initiatives; they have usually avoided great risks. They have expanded into vacuums created by irresolution or weakness. They have systematically accumulated power not in support of a predetermined plan for aggression but rather because the notion that there may be an upper limit of usable power is foreign to them, and instinct leads them to believe that strength is directly translatable into bargaining position and political advantage.

Bureaucratic inertia reinforces ideological proclivity. The irony of communist systems is that they contain the seeds of Bonapartism. For the sole organizations outside the Communist Party with autonomous command structures are the armed forces and the paramilitary units—some 200,000 men strong—of the KGB. One way or another the armed forces emerged as balance wheels in the struggles among the hierarchies of the party; in Poland they have become the heirs of its disintegration, in the Soviet Union the head

of the secret police has taken over. Since no one can achieve eminence—much less the top spot—without military or paramilitary support, these forces are in a position to exact constantly increasing resources. The growth of Soviet military power is built into the system—if only as a result of internecine power struggles. If not matched by the West, this military expansion will inevitably create temptations for blackmail since communist ideology has no rationale for not exploiting a favorable power balance.

Only overriding necessity can alter this rhythm. Fortunately such conditions are likely to appear during the '80s. If Western policy is firm and creative, the Soviet leadership will have every incentive to consider alternatives. For one thing, Soviet foreign policy has not been a startling success. It has been said, and not only as a joke, that the Soviet Union is the only country in the world entirely surrounded by hostile communist states. The satellite orbit is an economic drain and in Poland a demonstration of political as well as economic bankruptcy. Afghanistan is a festering wound. China—whatever temporary tactical adjustments are made—is in the long term a geopolitical nightmare as its billion people modernize along a distant, disputed frontier 4,000 miles long. Lebanon has shown the near irrelevance of Soviet power and influence in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Soviet adventure in Africa has led to no break-

through. Growing pacifism in some European countries is balanced by the advent of a conservative government in Germany and by declining communist strength in France and Spain.

Moreover, the Soviet Union will not be able to evade much longer the contradictions between the necessities of a modern industrialized society and the rigidities of the communist system. What institution in the West could survive with no method for replacing a governing board whose average age is over 70? Where there is no constitutional procedure, loyalty goes to the person, not to the office; power is exercised in a ruthlessly competitive struggle for survival. Leaders dare not relinquish the positions that ensure their power and subordinates dare not urge change because their personal fate is tied to their patron. The trend is toward gerontocracy. It is no accident

that each successive general secretary has come from an age group 10 years older than his predecessor. Stalin was in his 40s when he succeeded to office; Khrushchev was in his 50s; Brezhnev was in his 60s by the time he eclipsed Kosygin; Andropov will be at least 70 before he consolidates his power. His rule will be shadowed from the beginning by the relative imminence of a new succession.

The Soviet system is also an economic disaster. To run a large modern economy by central planning is to institutionalize backwardness and inefficiency. Ironically, the attempt to achieve total predictability leads to near-absolute arbitrariness. Where managers can choose neither customers nor supplies, all incentives work the wrong way. Managers deliberately underestimate their capacity lest the failure to reach an ambitious target reflect on their political reliability. Since they cannot influence allocations except by bureaucratic maneuvers outside the economic process, they

MX-missile launch: 'The West could be heading for unilateral disarmament while sitting on the most destructive arsenal the world has seen.'

James L. Long Associates

31

REAGAN AND THE RUSSIANS

ment of the Soviet Union without insisting on some linkage to restrained geopolitical conduct? But tying sanctions to Poland only obscured this more basic issue, which would have had to have been confronted whatever happened to Solidarity. The promised studies of the East-West trade problem can lead to a more unified strategy of economic diplomacy only if our allies do not use them solely to gain time to tranquilize us and if we, for our part, are prepared to include measures that will require sacrifice from us as well, such as limiting grain sales. Both arms control and trade policy need to be freed of the penchant for spasmodic one-shot action and must be made part of a coherent national-security strategy.

The United States must learn to combine military strength with a strategy for peace. A positive diplomatic program is the prerequisite for maintaining public and allied support for a strong defense and foreign policy. It could help us avoid the danger that our body politic will be torn between peace movements advocating forms of escapism and official policies neither supported nor understood by our public. Alternating bellicose rhetoric with sudden concessions only raises doubts about our

steadiness among supporters and will be dismissed as mere tactics by opponents. The United States should not be reluctant to make the opening move. Every successful East-West negotiation in the postwar period has resulted from American proposals. Conservative critics cite this as a sign of the West's tendency toward appeasement. And it is true that the free countries' impatience with deadlock enables the Soviets occasionally simply to sit back and elicit even more favorable Western offers. But this is particularly true if the public debate turns on whether to negotiate at all.

If, however, we pre-empt the negotiating process with a bold program, we have a chance to dominate both diplomacy and public discussion. Soviet bureaucratic rigidity is hostile to imagination—in diplomacy as in other fields. Not infrequently they are better placed to respond with a

counterproposal than to originate an offer. We should seize every opportunity to put before them negotiating proposals that reflect our definitions of genuine arms control, proper economic relations and restrained international conduct. It can only be to our advantage to negotiate from our agenda, not theirs.

Thoughtful, concrete proposals prosper better in quiet diplomacy than in dramatic public presentations that invite a propaganda battle. We must persevere in them for the time it takes to test the real, not the propagandistic, Soviet reaction. They must reflect a clear view of our own purposes, including what we will not accept. Our policy must be based on strength to discourage adventurism yet at the same time offer a vision of a better world for all peoples, including the peoples of the Soviet Union.

At home this requires an armistice in the debate that has rent our country for over a decade—between those extreme conservatives who reject all negotiations as a trap and every agreement as a

surrender and those extreme liberals who insist that most of our dangers are self-induced, to be remedied by unremitting pressure on our own government. The administration has the obligation to put forward an intelligible strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union. Until now it has alternated intransient assaults on a caricature of the détente policy of the 1970s with sweeping gestures better suited to fend off pressures than to achieve any permanent result.

But while the administration—as all new administrations—could benefit from greater coherence, it deserves recognition for having created the building blocks of a promising foreign policy. Its firm tone has prevented major Soviet challenges. Beneath the often exuberant rhetoric, the administration's actions have almost invariably been restrained and responsible. The major need is to relate the pieces to each other and to place them under unified strategic and tactical control. There exists, then, every reason for reconciliation.

Without reconciliation there can be no continuity. Without continuity we risk growing irrelevant. Americans do not always understand to what extent our freewheeling process of arriving at decisions unsettles those who have staked their political survival on us. When a foreign statesman follows our lead, he ties his reputation to our judgment. When we reverse course, we in effect undermine him. This happens almost across the board when

administrations change and, too frequently, even within administrations. The history of SALT and of various weapons deployments is replete with examples of key foreign leaders having been left high and dry by sudden and unilateral American reversals of positions. Over time they will seek to free themselves of such risks, thereby reducing our influence and pushing us to the sidelines.

It is equally crucial and more difficult to create a consensus among allies. Right now the allies are divided over the assessment of Soviet conduct, military strategy, important aspects of arms control and many issues outside the NATO area. These divisions invite the Soviets to apply détente selectively in order to split the West so that it can avoid having to face its own dilemmas. It is in fact conceivable that Soviet leaders can project Western disintegration

as a mirror image of Soviet trends described earlier; in that case they will seek to outwait us.

Whether this happens is largely up to us. The West is in the fortunate position that its problems—major as they are—almost without exception can be remedied by a new effort of unity, coherence and will on the part of the democracies. The Soviet Union cannot make this claim; its problems are systematic, structural and fundamental. If we can rally ourselves and develop a vision of a better future, a broad and comprehensive East-West negotiation could be within our grasp.

Henry Kissinger was national-security adviser to Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1975 and secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. In two subsequent NEWSWEEK articles, he will discuss in more detail what a Western negotiating position might include and the political implications of the global economic crisis.

Tass from Sovfoto

Soviet mini-bus factory: 'Shortcomings in Soviet technology cannot be remedied by pep talks; they require a structural change in the Soviet economy.'

NOV. 18 '82 10:49 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.02

11/18/82

# Dealing With the New Soviet Leadership

## The Challenge

The leadership change in the Soviet Union--only the fourth in its 65-year history--has produced much speculation about possible new opportunities for a breakthrough towards peace. In an age shadowed by the threat of nuclear catastrophe, the hope is natural; some of the arguments in support of it are unfortunately all-too-familiar. It is time, so the argument runs, to prove our devotion to peace. The new Soviet leader, it is said, could be more flexible and conciliatory than his predecessor; he listens to classical music; he is relatively humane to dissidents. We must strengthen, we hear, the "doves" against the hawks who even in the days of Stalin's rule have been thought to be lurking in the dark recesses of the Kremlin and menacing the "reasonable man" who was the incumbent Soviet leader.

NOV. 18 '82 10:50 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.03

2

I believe there is an opportunity during the '80s to
make major progress in negotiation with the Soviets, in arms,
trade and even a code of international restraint. The arms
race contains too many uncertainties, especially for the Soviet
Union. Recession in the industrial democracies and stagnation
in the Communist world will tempt a reexamination of priorities.
Unconstrained
/global tensions involve the risk of a crisis escalating out
of control as did World War I.

But these prospects are not enhanced--they are in fact
threatened--by a vague psychiatric diagnosis of a particular
Soviet leader or unprovable assumptions that some faction
in the Kremlin is devoted to peace in the abstract. To rely
on the personal convictions of a new Soviet leader is to seek
substance in illusion. I do not pretend to know what Andropov's
convictions are. I am certain that nobody in our government
knows either. Only a few short weeks ago Western statesmen
who had dealt with Soviet leaders were nearly unanimous in

NOV. 18 '82 10:51 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.04

3

their conviction that Brezhnev was the principal advocate
of detente in the Kremlin--a theory to which with qualifica-
tions I subscribe myself. Why then should his death improve
the prospects for a relaxation of tensions? How did the man
who headed the Soviet secret police for 15 years--suppressing
dissidents and inventing such "humane" devices as mental
hospitals for intellectual critics--suddenly graduate to the
position of closet liberal? And what would be the implications
if he were? The power of the General Secretary in the Communist
party as it has evolved since the death of Stalin in 1953
is far from absolute--especially at the beginning of his term
of office. It is doubtful in fact that the General Secretary
in many fields of policy has the discretionary power of the
American President. The General Secretary has been raised
to the heights by suspicious colleagues hardened by the power
struggles of a lifetime, jealous of prerogatives which reflect
the huge, unwieldy bureaucracies they control. He can nudge

P.05

4

them in his preferred direction through control of the agenda
of the Politburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committee.
Dramatic change hazards his position--Krushchev's fate defined
the risks of unorthodoxy for his successors. Brezhnev, in
any event, never seriously tested these limits. And one cannot
ignore the fact that Western calls for new initiatives, for
an olive branch, for new departures have so far found no echo
in Moscow; the new General Secretary in fact assaulted the
imperialists in his maiden speech and proclaimed that peace
must be founded on the might of the Red Army.

To attempt to found a relaxation of tensions on changes
in personality undermines the very real opportunities for
peace in two ways: it tempts the Soviet leaders into deferring
the fundamental reexamination of their priorities and strategy
without which atmospherics overwhelm substance and the real
causes of tension will continue unrelieved. And it demoralizes
the democracies by trivializing the issue; we cannot ask our

NOV. 18 '82 10:52 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.06

5

people to sustain the exertions and perils of a prolonged
struggle if the issue is a personal quarrel.

The beginning of wisdom is therefore to admit to ourselves
that there are genuine causes for tension which is another
way of saying that we must abandon the masochistic obsession
of too many with finding all fault on our side. In the last
seven years we have seen Cuban troops supported by Soviet
logistics in Angola and Ethiopia; the establishment of Soviet
military bases in South Yemen; the pouring of Soviet military
equipment into the rogue state of Libya; the occupation by
the Red Army of Afghanistan following a Communist coup there;
political and military support of the Vietnamese occupation
of Cambodia; and intelligence support for terrorist groups
in many parts of the world. All this has been buttressed by
a relentless military build-up that antedated the upsurge
in military spending of the Reagan Administration and which
was in fact accelerated when the West, for whatever reason,

NOV. 18 '82 10:53 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.07

halted its own build-up in the Seventies. This is not to
deny mistakes on our side of the line: exuberant rhetoric
unrelated to sustainable strategy, rash actions and above
all divisions about our purposes both within and among free
countries. It is possible to explain this or that Soviet
move as a reaction; it requires more wishful thinking than
is safe to ignore the pattern which whether by design or momentum
is a threat to the global equilibrium and hence to the security
of free people. It is this assault that must be ended and
reversed if progress towards peace is to be reliable.

Any serious effort to improve relations with the Soviet
Union must therefore begin with an analysis of realities--
those that impede progress as well as those which properly
managed give up reason for hope. Among the factors that make
for tension, ideology still plays an important role. Even
in the current phase of intellecutal lassitude it provides
a rote impetus to undermine the industrial democracies, to

NOV. 18 '82 10:54 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.08

divide them and to exhaust them psychologically. It also
produces an approach to negotiation peculiarly resistant to
the propensity of democracies to identify relations among
states with relations among people. It cannot be an accident
that those Presidents most eager for an improvement of relations,
most prone to personalize their diplomacy, most resistant
to the concept of balance of power, suffered a shipwreck with
the Kremlin--see Jimmy Carter. While Richard Nixon, avowedly
unsentimental, insisting on strict reciprocity conducted the
most successful diplomacy so far. The reason is that no Soviet
leader can justify concessions on the basis of the personal
good will or sincerity of a Western leader. To do so would
be a denial of all Marxist teachings. To a Marxist peace
is neither a personal affirmation nor a static condition.

It reflects "objective conditions" which in Communist philosophy
are material not psychological--the balance of power, the
state of the economy or technology. Soviet negotiators make

NOV. 18 '82 10:55 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.09

8

concessions to reality not to personalities. They understand
concrete proposals based on reciprocity; unilateral gestures
of goodwill are likely to be interpreted as a trick or as
a confession of weakness. Absent a balance of forces and a
concrete, detailed program for peace by the West all pressures
within the Soviet society make for a continuation of the present
course if only as a result of momentum and administrative
rigidity. The perception of the extreme wing of American
conservatism of diabolic Soviet planners implementing a detailed
master plan for world revolution has been confirmed by no
one who has actually dealt with the top Soviet leadership.
If such planners exist they are well hidden from foreign visitors.
The leaders one in fact encounters make an impression of tough,
even ruthless persistance without much imagination. They
have originated no great initiatives; they have usually avoided
great risks. They have expanded into vacuums created by
irresolution or weakness. They have systematically accumulated

NOV. 18 '82 10:56 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.10

power not in support of a predetermined date for aggression
but rather because of their faith in "objective factors."
The notion that there may be an upper limit of usable power
is foreign to them--it is strenuously denied in all Soviet
military writing. Even in the absence of a clearcut plan
Soviet leaders are convinced that power strengthens their
bargaining positions; that somehow it will be translated into
political advantage.

Bureaucratic inertia reinforces ideological proclivity.
The irony of Communist systems is that they contain the seeds
of Bonapartism. For the only organization outside the Communist
party with an autonomous command structure is the armed forces.
One way or another the armed forces emerge as balance wheels
in the struggles among the hierarchs of the party; in Poland
they have become the heirs of its disintegration. Since no
one can achieve emminence--much less the top spot--without
military support, the Red Army is in a position to exact

P. 11

constantly increasing resources in return. Soviet military power is therefore likely to grow whatever the Soviet master plan--if only as a result of internecine power struggles. And most important, if not matched by the West this build-up will inevitably create opportunities for blackmail even if the original momentum derived from internal politics.

Only overriding necessity can alter this rhythm. The Eighties are likely to impose that imperative--or at least a consideration of it.

For one thing Soviet foreign policy has not been a startling success. It has been said that the Soviet Union is the only country in the world entirely surrounded by hostile Communist states. The satellite orbit is an economic drain and in Poland a demonstration of political bankruptcy. Afghanistan is a festering wound. China--whatever tactical adjustments are made--is for the Kremlin a geopolitical nightmare as its modernization proceeds along an unrecognized frontier of three

NOV. 18 '82 10:57 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

11

thousand miles. Lebanon has shown the irrelevance of Soviet power and influence in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Soviet adventure in Africa has led to no breakthrough. Growing pacifism in some European countries is balanced by the advent of a conservative government in Germany and of declining Communist strength in France. The Soviet Union remains formidable and we cannot afford to take its challenge lightly. Still a Soviet leader need not be a devotee of peace in the abstract to reach the conclusion that his country is overextended and must retrench somewhere.

This will be all the more likely because the Soviet Union is approaching the point where it will not be able to evade much longer the incongruity between the necessities of a modern industrialized society and the rigidities of the Communist system. What organization could survive with no system of replacing a board of directors whose average age is over seventy? The Soviet system dooms itself to stagnation partly because

NOV. 18 '82 10:58 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.13

12

it leaves no room for spontaneity and talent, even more so
because it lacks any regular constitutional procedure. Loyalty
is to the person, not to the office; power is exercised in
a ruthlessly competitive struggle for survival. Leaders dare
not relinquish the positions which ensure their power and
subordinates dare not urge change because their personal fate
is tied to their patron. The trend is towards gerontocracy.
It is no accident that each successive General Secretary has
come from an age group ten years older than his predecessor.
Stalin was in his forties when he acceded to office; Khrushchev
was in his early fifties; Brezhnev close to sixty; Andropov
will be at least seventy by the time he consolidates his power.
His rule will be shadowed from the beginning by the relative
imminence of a new succession. And as the various contenders
position themselves they will do so inevitably in terms of
national priorities--a debate which the increasingly evident
failure of the Soviet economic system imposes whatever the

NOV. 18 '82 10:59 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.14

13

claims of ideology or the preferences of the Communist
oligarchs.

For there can no longer be any question that to run a
large modern economy by central planning is to institutionalize
backwardness and inefficiency. Ironically, the attempt to
achieve total predictability leads to near absolute arbitrariness.

Where managers can choose neither customers nor suppliers
all incentives work the wrong way. Managers deliberately
underestimate their capacity lest the failure to reach an
ambitious target reflect on their political reliability.

Since they cannot influence allocations except by bureaucratic
maneuvers outside the economic process, they will hoard labor
and materials at the cost of productivity--to avoid being
caught short by sudden bottlenecks outside their control.

Thus that hallmark of the bizarre Soviet system: shortages
and surpluses existing side by side as well as congenitally
inferior quality of goods for which there is no real customer.

NOV. 18 '82 11:00 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.15

14

How else is one to explain the amazing phenomenon of a super-power that produces quite capable intercontinental missiles but not a *single* industrial commodity that is competitive with even newly developed market economies like South Korea and Singapore, not to speak of the mature industrial democracies of Western Europe, Japan and the United States?

So long as these incongruities fell mostly on the Soviet consumer they could be born more or less indefinitely by a society used to tightening its belt--though even a dictatorship must sooner or later establish some relationship to the aspiration of its peoples. In any event the poor performance of the Soviet economy has had two important corollarys relevant to foreign policy: they have forced the Soviet leaders to insulate their people from contact with other societies to keep them from making unfavorable comparisons. And they require the invocation of a foreign danger to explain the backwardness of a system claiming to represent the forces of history and

P.16

15

the disproportionate resources devoted to military preparedness.

But the imbalance in the economy must raise serious
doubts about the Soviet ability to sustain an arms race
indefinitely and hence doubts about long term Soviet security
under current conditions. The Soviet build-up of the Sixties
and Seventies occurred from a low base, with relatively simple
technology, during a period of relative economic growth. This
may not be sustainable in the Eighties and Nineties except
perhaps by efforts that distort the Soviet economy even further.
The performance of the Soviet weapons against American weapons
in Lebanon could be a straw in the wind. Weapons that had
exacted a serious toll in Vietnam and the Middle East war
of ten years earlier proved almost totally vulnerable to American
technology and Israeli tactics. This not only weakened the
Soviet position in the Middle East, it devalued as well the
single most important Soviet export. Soviet weapons so
painfully accumulated over the past two decades gradually

NOV. 18 '82 11:01 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.17

16

become obsolescent. If the Soviets continue to refuse realistic
limits on the arms race, they doom themselves to repeating
the whole anguishing cycle of austerity and weapons development
under much more difficult and far more problematical
circumstances. In that sense Brezhnev's last major speech
to his generals expressing his determination not to fall behind
in technology had something of the quality of whistling in
a graveyard. For it is inconceivable that the Soviet military
establishment had not already utilized every available resource
to support is scientific and technical research. Shortcomings
in Soviet technology cannot be remedied by pep talks; they
require a structural change in the Soviet economy.

This leads to the third unsolved Soviet dilemma: what
to do with a Communist party that has no function except to
safeguard a stagnant and increasingly irrelevant ideology
or to watch over a plan which is itself an obstacle to
economic growth. The Communist party has no constructive

NOV. 18 '82 11:02 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.18

17

task. It is not needed either for administration or for economic management yet it dominates both without contributing to either.

Communists in Communist societies are in danger of becoming supernumeraries; a class with a vested interest in crises to justify vigilance but without the ability to solve these crises.

And all this occurs against the background of an ominous sociological fact: in the foreseeable future the non-Russian population of the Soviet Union will be a majority raising new problems of productivity and control.

Inevitably at least some of the new Soviet leaders will seek for means to escape these dire prospects. It requires no abstract dedication to peace; no analogies to Western peace movements to impel those hardened evaluators of objective factors to reassess their course. Therein lies our opportunity for a diplomatic breakthrough.

NOV. 18 '82 11:03 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.19

18

Where Do We Go From Here?

But the opportunity will not present itself unambiguously or painlessly. The Soviet leaders will not easily turn to structural reform. They will surely explore the easier way out which is to tranquilize us by conciliatory rhetoric while continuing to amass arms and maintaining the diplomatic status quo. They will try to split the alliance by peace offensives aimed at Europe and ease their position by a relaxation with China. They will almost surely seek to tempt us with high level meetings and partial measures. All this requires a leadership on our part of firm purpose, clear concept and steadfast strategy. Critics do the cause of peace no favor by identifying foreign policy with psychiatry pretending that tensions result from misunderstanding, from personalities or from our own inadequacies. The Administration will lose what may be a non reoccurring opportunity if it tempts the Soviets into the belief that we will hand them their objectives

NOV. 18 '82 11:04 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.20

19

because a prolonged stalemate is psychologically unbearable
for us and that we prize dramatic public impact above long
term construction.

It is our duty to see to it that in the prolonged transitional
period ahead of us the Soviets will discern no advantage
from pressure and a clearcut benefit from a genuine relaxation
of tensions.

This presents American diplomacy with a profound challenge.
There is every need for a credible deterrent. But its reverse
side must be a plausible peace policy. Every East-West deadlock
in the postwar period has been broken by American proposals.
Conservative critics cite this as an example of the West's
tendency toward appeasement. And it is true that the free
countries' impatience with deadlock enables the Soviets
occasionally simply to sit back and elicit even more favorable
Western offers. It need not be so, however. Soviet
bureaucratic rigidity is hostile to imagination--in diplomacy

NOV. 18 '82 11:05 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

20

as in other fields. Sometimes it can better respond with
a counterproposal than originate an offer. We should seize
every opportunity to put before the Soviets negotiating proposals
that reflect *our* definitions of arms control, proper economic
relations, and restrained international conduct. It can only
be to our advantage to negotiate from our agenda, rather than
the Soviets. Passivity and verbal intransigence on our part
will only tear our body politic between peace movements advocating
forms of escapism and official policies which are alternating
between bellicose rhetoric and sudden concessions to gain
maneuvering room or to tranquilize the public. Such a roller-
coaster will be neither understood nor sustained by American
or allied public opinion. Serious, concrete proposals are
best advanced in quiet diplomacy than in dramatic speeches
which invite rejection. They then must be persisted in for
the time it takes to test each; the alternative is a propagandistic
Soviet reaction. They must reflect a clear view of our own

P.22

purposes--not an attempt to charm the new Soviet leaders.

They must be based on strength to discourage adventurism yet at the same time offer a vision of a better world for all peoples, including the peoples of the Soviet Union.

This requires first of all a moratorium to the debate which has rent our country for over a decade between those who ridicule detente, reject all negotiations as a trap and every agreement as a surrender and critics who pretend that most of our dangers are self-induced, to be remedied by unremitting pressure on our own government. The result is a polarization in which extremes of intransigence alternate with excesses of conciliation. The Administration has the principal obligation to put forward an intelligible concept. Until now assaults on a version of detente drawn from campaign rhetoric have alternated with sweeping proposals to restore balance and public support--witness the offer of

NOV. 18 '82 11:06 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.23

20 million tons of grain while sanctions were still in force, an offer more sweeping than any imagined by the original proponents of detente. In military policy we have increase every weapons category without defining their relationship to each other. While much of leadership opinion favors a shift of emphasis to conventional weapons and church groups stigmatize nuclear weapons, Congress presses for a reduction of our budget which will make continued reliance on a nuclear strategy inevitable. We could thus be heading for psychological unilateral disarmament while sitting on the most destructive arsenal the world has seen. This will reduce Soviet incentives to limit arms. In trade policy we asked the right question--of the degree to which our economic strength should be made available without political concessions-- in the wrong context of Polish sanctions. Arms control policy needs to be freed of the penchant for spasmodic one-shot declarations and made part of a coherent national security

NOV. 18 '82 11:07 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.24

23

policy. There needs to be greater staying power once a course
has been adopted. The tale of the sanctions will handicap
other policy initiatives.

But while the Administration--as all new Administrations--
could benefit from greater coherence, it deserves recognition
for having created the building blocks of a promising foreign
policy. Its firm tone has prevented major Soviet challenges.
Even critics of the exuberant rhetoric must admit that its
actions have almost invariably been restrained and responsible.
The major need is to relate the pieces to each other and to
place them under unified strategic and tactical control.

Equally crucial and more difficult is to create a consensus
among allies. Right now the allies are divided over the
assessment of Soviet conduct, military strategy, important
aspects of arms control and many issues outside the NATO
area. All this invites a Soviet selective detente designed
to split the West and to avoid having to face its own dilemmas.

NOV. 18 '82 11:08 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.25

24

The enumeration of these difficulties gives us reason for hope because their solution is largely within our control. Almost without exception they are amenable to policy decision or conceptual breakthrough. No other nation--surely not the Soviet Union--can make this claim; its problems are largely structural. Alone among the nations of the world we can say that we can chart the road to peace by travelling it.

I shall deal with this in more detail in a subsequent article.