Taking the Measure of Helsinki

Amid glowing pledges to promote ''better relations among nations," 35 heads of government* gathered in the capital of Finland one year ago this week to sign a document that a small army of negotiators had taken two years to prepare. Today the vaunted Helsinki agreement remains what it was from the start: more ceremony than substance. There has been so little improvement in East-West relations that can be credited to the accord that the spirit of Helsinki has become increasingly dispirited.

The anniversary is being observed enthusiastically enough in the Soviet Union, which is celebrating the occasion with special television programs, endless newspaper articles and the publication of a book. After all, the Russians were the original sponsors of Helsinki, and their dominance of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, a fact for more than a generation, was legitimized by the accord. This kind of quasi-juridical sanction had long been a major goal of Kremlin foreign policy.

Unfounded Fears. In the West, and most notably the U.S., where President Ford has banned the word detente from his political year lexicon, the anniversary is being all but ignored. One reason is that some of NATO's initial hesitations have been justified: the gains of Communists in Southern Europe are partly attributable to the post-Helsinki mood, in which the threat of international Communism has appeared to be further diminished. Yet the West's main fear, that a Helsinki-inspired euphoria would lead to sharp cutbacks in defense spending by NATO nations, seems so far to have been unfounded.

In return for the West's ratification of Soviet post-1945 territorial gains, Moscow and its allies had to pledge, among other things, increased East-West cultural and human contacts. Cultural exchanges have indeed burgeoned, as measured by the rising East-West traffic in groups involved in sports, art and other fields, and tourism within the Soviet Union is being expanded. But Western scorekeepers fault the Soviets in other areas, notably human rights, including the treatment of political dissidents and would-be emigrants. Although the Kremlin has cut the price of emigration visas by onefourth, to 300 rubles ($405), and allowed some dissidents and relatives of those outside to emigrate, people who apply for the visas are usually penalized immediately by a loss of their jobs.

After a period of petulance over criticism of its record on human rights, Moscow early this year switched to a policy of visible compliance with Helsinki through what are known in diplomatic parlance as "small steps," such as eased travel restrictions on foreign newsmen and inviting Western observers to Soviet military exercises. More recently, the Soviets have been marking time on new Helsinki initiatives of their own, while rapping Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, which broadcast into Russia and Eastern Europe, and Washington's public opposition to Communist participation in Western European governments, as violations of the Helsinki pledge of noninterference in other countries' affairs. Another complaint: the difficulty European Communists have in visiting the U.S. Concedes one U.S. official: "Our self-righteous position is not as credible as we'd like to think."

That reflects what many regard as the Helsinki accord's main value: as a yardstick for measuring East-West relations, and thus part of the process of refining them. The accord's clearest failing has been its inability to bring East and West any closer to reducing or limiting their levels of armaments. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, for example, have been almost completely deadlocked since President Gerald Ford and Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev met at Vladivostock in November 1974. There also has been little progress in the three-year-old Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR) talks in Vienna between the twelve NATO nations and the seven Warsaw Pact states. It has been the dual aim of the NATO negotiators to reduce the number of troops based in Central Europe and create parity between East and West in that region. But even as the MBFR talks have been in session, there has been a buildup of armed forces in that area--almost all by the Soviets.

In what some observers view as a sign of progress, Moscow for the first time revealed the pact's force levels in Central Europe: 965,000, v. 977,000 for NATO. This means that parity already exists. NATO experts, however, question the Soviet figures and reckon that the pact really stations some 1,125,000 troops in that region. Until both sides agree on how large the pact's forces are, there may be little progress with MBFR.

Moscow may be tempted to make some concessions soon, in order to show progress in arms limitation in time for next June's Belgrade conference, at which the first two years' experience of the Helsinki accord is to be assessed. Unless there is progress on SALT or MBFR and an improvement in Soviet treatment of human-rights cases, it is likely, as a West German official predicts, that the "tone of the Belgrade meeting is not going to be very upbeat."

* Representing every European state (except Albania), as well as the US and Canada.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.