Fatal Understandings

The theory of "convergence," most notably propounded by dissident Soviet Physicist Andrei Sakharov, argues that the U.S. and the Soviet Union are moving increasingly together, the result of their common thrall to similar technological, military and environmental problems. Perhaps so, said Georgy Arbatov, head of Russia's United States Institute and Moscow's leading America watcher, on a recent visit to California's Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. But Arbatov disagrees with those who believe that convergence must somehow serve to improve international relations.

"I do not believe it would at all," he said. "We have a number of examples in history where it was precisely the similar societies that had the worst relations. The First World War began among similar countries, not those that had basic differences. Take the Christians. In their relations with Buddhists and pagans, they simply tried to convert them. Sometimes ruthlessly, of course. But when there was controversy within the Christian world, it led to the most terrible of wars."

Arbatov confessed: "I don't want to make an absolute law for international relations out of it--especially in view of some neighbors we have," presumably meaning those troublesome Chinese. His theory is a sort of global extension of the fact that most murders occur within families or close circles of acquaintances. It also contains a beguilingly sinister suggestion that mutual understanding, that canon of civilized thought, can be fatal.

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