EAST AND WEST: THE TROUBLING AMBIGUITIES

WHILE politics preoccupied the nation last week with the approach of the conventions, Lyndon Johnson's energies were absorbed by problems on two broad fronts of foreign policy. At midweek, he flew off to Honolulu to discuss the problem that one of the presidential candidates will undoubtedly find uppermost in his mind the day after inauguration--Viet Nam. Even as Johnson was conferring with South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu, the showdown over Czechoslovakia brought a sobering reminder that, for the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. alike, Europe remains a potentially dangerous arena. It was also a reminder that despite the relatively restrained policies of Russia's present leaders, a serious drive for freedom inside Communist countries remains a nearly intolerable irritant to Moscow (see THE WORLD).

Absolute Tommyrot. All sorts of rumors of a new U.S. peace offensive over Viet Nam preceded the two-day Honolulu conference. Before leaving for a war tour a fortnight ago, Defense Secretary Clark Clifford gave many the impression that he might seek South Vietnamese approval for a full halt to U.S. bombing of the North. Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy hinted that a bombing pause would indeed be a key issue at Hawaii. Cyrus Vance, No. 2 man on the Paris negotiating team, emphasized the recent lull in fighting around Saigon, feeding speculation that it might prove to be the reciprocal gesture the U.S. has long demanded from Hanoi.

Johnson did his best to silence the talk. "The big rumors about meeting here to discuss stopping the bombing or to pull out," he said, "are just pure, absolute tommyrot and fiction." Taking extraordinary precautions to preserve secrecy in his first talk with Thieu, he not only banished his advisers, but also did without the customary interpreter--Thieu has a good command of English. After 50 minutes, Secretary of State Dean Rusk was called in for a ten-minute briefing on the Paris talks.

Afterward, Johnson declared that there was nothing "very exciting to report." If so, why had he traveled so far for so little? The messages of friendship, trust and support could almost have been summarized in a letter-most of the five-page communique issued after the talks, in fact, was written in advance. Both Johnson and Thieu denied that a full bombing pause was even discussed. Both repeated statements that they had made a dozen times before. South Viet Nam would be fully represented at Paris, if and when real negotiations start, and there would be no coalition government "imposed" on Saigon. Yet it was almost inconceivable that new peace overtures had not even been touched upon, and reporters--fully aware of Johnson's love of dramatic surprises--came away unconvinced that they had been told the full story.

Two Debits. It is no secret around the White House that the President earnestly hopes to finish his term with a flourish that would include both a Viet Nam settlement and a broad rapprochement with the Soviet Union, topped off with a visit to Moscow. Honolulu did nothing to further the first wish. Developments in Czechoslovakia did nothing to hasten the other.

Both sets of events might be looked upon as debits in what one top American official calls the "double-entry bookkeeping" that governs U.S.-Soviet relations. For a balanced view of the true state of American-Russian affairs, both sides of the ledger must be examined. In one column are the credits: the nonproliferation treaty, the new cultural agreement, the Moscow-New York air flights, and the decision to hold disarmament talks. In the other column are considerable debits: Berlin, the Middle East, Cuba, Russian backing of North Viet Nam--and now Soviet threats to Czechoslovakia.

It is a mistake, says Harvard Political Scientist Henry Kissinger, to think of peace as some final state of nirvana that beckons seductively somewhere around the bend. "We have to get rid of the idea that there is some terminal date," he says, "after which we live with a consciousness of harmony." In fact, Moscow and Washington seem to have come to much the same conclusion. "The Russians," notes an American delegate to the 18-nation Geneva disarmament conference, "can be bitchy about Berlin or Czechoslovakia while at the same time wanting to move ahead on disarmament." The U.S., he might have added, can behave in precisely the same compartmentalized way.

Likeliest Guess. Between the two sides there still exists what one Soviet expert calls "a limited adversary relationship." It is not clear why the Russians chose to make some of their conciliatory gestures on nuclear arms. The likeliest guess remains the most obvious: prudent self-interest, a desire to avoid the scattering of nuclear weapons to small nations, and a grim, costly race between the U.S. and Russia to build antiballistic-missile systems. But there is a more intriguing theory--that the Russians acted now because they are concerned about the prospect that Richard Nixon may be the next President. "You can say they are doing it to prevent Nixon from being elected," declares Columbia Sovietologist Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Humphrey adviser. "And you can say they are doing it because they think that if he's elected, tensions will increase." "They are concerned," adds Yale Political Scientist Frederick Barghoorn, "about creating pressure against anyone who is for a hard-line American policy. If they could swing a couple hundred thousand votes against Nixon, they would do it." Other Kremlinologists doubt, however, that the Russians would base their policy on so uncertain a premise.

Partly because of Viet Nam, Russian diplomats long described their dealings with the U.S. as "frozen." The Paris peace talks helped to warm things up a few degrees. Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia would once again seriously chill the diplomatic atmosphere. It was Russian tanks in Budapest, in fact, that abruptly froze a momentary thaw in 1956. The difficult balance between deep-freeze and detente can be frustrating, says Harlan Cleveland, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, since it offers none of "the clarities of either unambiguous war or unalloyed peace." But, troubling as the ambiguities of Honolulu and Prague may be, they are obviously preferable to the cataclysmic clarity that a conflict between the superpowers would afford.

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