Monday, Apr. 18, 1977

The Quiet Buildup to SALT II

A week ago, the sad ending of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's mission to Moscow seemed to herald a critical break in Soviet-American relations--an end to SALT, perhaps, if not an end to detente. The Soviets had rebuffed as unacceptable new strategic arms proposals offered by the Carter Administration. In addition, there was a continuing volley of and-American rhetoric in the Soviet press and the angry diatribe by Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko (TIME, April 11).

By last week there was growing evidence that all the early alarms had been much too strident. To begin with, the Soviets indicated that they might have overreacted to the Administration's position. The decidedly mellowing tone was set during a Kremlin dinner for visiting Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, at which Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev suggested that the Moscow chill had not been intended as a deepfreeze. He referred to the U.S. as "our partners" and scolded the Americans for "losing their constructive approach" and for adhering to a "onesided position." A "reasonable accommodation is possible" in arms limitation, he declared, if the U.S. would only seek "mutually acceptable solutions, not in words but by deeds."

Tn Washington, meanwhile, Vance stressed the Administration's conviction that negotiations over SALT II have only just begun (see interview). He said both sides would be working quietly toward the next meeting in Geneva in late May. President Carter too insisted that SALT II is still on target and predicted that the chances of reaching a new arms agreement before the expiration of SALT I in October are "much better than fifty-fifty."

There were more specific indications that both sides had read the danger signals correctly and decided to shift their diplomacy into a lower key. At midweek Vance received Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin at the State Department for an unannounced and fruitful meeting. Later, Carter disclosed that he had received personal assurances from Brezhnev that the Soviet Union was as serious as the U.S. in its pursuit of a new agreement. Then, in a statement that was both conciliatory in tone and extraordinary in concept, Carter declared that if the Soviets gave him evidence that the U.S. proposals presented at Moscow were inequitable, he would consider changing them when the talks begin next month in Geneva. With dizzying speed, the diplomatic chill turned into a spring thaw. The Moscow "failure" might yet prove to have been a successful first step.

Meanwhile, foreign policy experts continued to analyze the three general criticisms of the Administration's approach to the Moscow meeting: 1) 1) THAT WASHINGTON HAD ALARMED THE NOTORIOUSLY SECRETIVE SOVIETS BY PUBLICIZING THE DETAILS OF ITS NEW PROPOSALS BEFOREHAND.

Everybody from Gerald Ford to hard-lining Senator Henry Jackson agrees with this. (A corollary, held by several senior policy experts, is that Carter underestimated the extent to which paranoia is a factor in Soviet strategic thinking.) Ford told a student group at the University of Michigan: "I believe there was too much public rhetoric" be fore and during the Moscow meeting. Jackson told newsmen: "Everything is out in the sunshine, and that was something new for the Soviets. The style took them aback."

In his first public speech since leaving office, Henry Kissinger discreetly took the same view. He declared at Georgetown University: "Negotiations must proceed in a calm, nonconfrontational way, without self-imposed deadlines or rhetorical battles that publicly stake the prestige of both sides." Later, at a party, he bluntly if good-naturedly told a member of the Carter Administration: "Your position is pretty good. Now why don't you just shut up for a while?" By late last week there was ample evidence that the President planned to do just that.

2) THAT CARTER'S HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN ANTAGONIZED THE KREMLIN AND IMPAIRED SALT PROGRESS.

Carter disagrees, and so do most analysts. "The human rights argument would not be accepted by the Soviet Union if it came from a less powerful country," suggests a French Foreign Ministry official. "Since it comes from the U.S., the Soviets know they must be realistic about it." Taking the same position, Columnist Andre Fontaine of the influential, left-leaning Le Monde adds: "It would be paradoxical if the Soviets, who succeeded in coming to an agreement with an inveterate trickster like Mr. Nixon, were unable to do the same with an honest man." Some analysts even believe that by introducing the human rights issue early on, Carter successfully "tested" the Soviets before they had a chance to test him. As Kremlinologist Carl Linden of George Washington University sees it, Carter's opening sally threw the Russians off balance--but so what? "After all," he observes, "they've always felt entirely free about attacking the foundations of Western democracy, so Carter's opening moves have really been a matter of playing the Soviets' own game."

3) THAT BY OFFERING RADICAL NEW PROPOSALS, CARTER MADE IMMEDIATE PROGRESS UNLIKELY.

Says a West German foreign relations official: "The categorical and sweeping quality of the American package, on top of the human rights issue, was too much for Moscow." Agrees a NATO expert: "The Kremlin assumed the chess moves would be the same as in the Kissinger era. They weren't ready for an entirely new game." What was startling and, by Carter's own characterization, drastic about the "comprehensive" proposal was that in its call for a sweeping reduction in nuclear arsenals, the U.S. went far beyond anything ever tabled during almost eight years of SALT talks. This alone could have unhinged the Soviets. But some military analysts contend simply that the Russians rejected Vance's package on its merits; they believed that it gave the U.S. an unfair advantage. For instance, Richard Burt of London's International Institute for Strategic Studies notes that the U.S. package not only was designed to limit strategic forces generally, but also was aimed particularly at reducing the land-based missiles on which the Soviet Union places extremely heavy reliance. To the Russians, Burt argues, the new proposals may have seemed to be "an attempt to channel superpower strategic competition into an area geographically and technologically dominated by the U.S."

The prospect now is for a period of quiet diplomacy leading up to the Geneva talks in May. The Carter Administration is determined that these talks --or subsequent ones--shall succeed, but it is also determined to halt what it perceives to have been a strategic tilt in the Soviets' favor in previous SALT understandings. In all likelihood, the emphasis on the human rights issue--not to mention the alarm engendered by the recent freeze in Moscow--will recede as behind-the-scenes negotiations become more intense.

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