After Moscow's Frost, a Thaw in Geneva

On the first day a U.S. spokesman noncommittally described the talks as "businesslike." Next day they were "intensive." By the third day they were "worthwhile." In the artfully nuanced language of diplomacy, that signals progress. Indeed, a tender springtime bloom seemed to have returned to U.S.-Soviet relations as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and U.S.S.R. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko huddled last week in Geneva. Their meeting spanned a diplomatic climate more congenial to detente than the chill that had engulfed Vance's abortive mission to Moscow at the end of March.

In some ten hours of negotiations, the two diplomats put the long-stalled Strategic Arms Limitation Talks back on course. Declared their joint communique: "The differences between the two sides ... have been narrowed." While a number of unresolved political problems (Africa, the Middle East) and deep ideological differences still plague U.S.-Soviet ties, SALT is an area of potential agreement and thus a barometer of detente. Because of last week's progress, it has become much more likely that a SALT II treaty will be ready by Oct. 3, when SALT I's interim limit on offensive weapons expires.

It now seems that SALT II will probably follow the general formula approved at the November 1974 summit in Vladivostok--just as Soviet Boss Leonid Brezhnev has been insisting it must. While the relatively high ceilings (2,400 strategic launchers for each side) permitted by the Vladivostok guidelines may be lowered a bit in SALT II's final draft, the very substantial slashes in the U.S. and Soviet arsenals sought by President Jimmy Carter will have to await SALT in.

The U.S. reluctantly accepted the Moscow position only because the Soviets agreed to issue, at the time of SALT it's signing, what Vance described to newsmen in Geneva as "a statement of general principles which will govern the conduct of SALT III." According to the Secretary, this would amount to a Soviet "commitment" to negotiate deep cuts in strategic arsenals. As for the U.S. cruise missile and the Soviet Backfire bomber--contentious issues that have contributed significantly to the 2 1/2year deadlock in the arms talks--it was apparently decided to ignore them in a SALT II treaty. Instead, development and deployment of these new weapons will probably be restrained somewhat by a separate protocol that will run for only about three years; this will give negotiators time to find a permanent formula to regulate them.

The progress in Geneva had been heralded by early signals that the Soviets and the U.S. were eager to thaw the frosty legacy of the Moscow meeting. The week before Vance arrived in the Swiss city, chief U.S. SALT Negotiator Paul Warnke and his Soviet counterpart, Vladimir ("Iron Pants") Semyonov, moved closer to an agreement on a number of the so-called secondary issues (TIME, May 23). Then Vance and Gromyko deliberately launched their own talks on an upbeat note by signing an extension of a treaty to cooperate in space science and medicine and to exchange data on missions to the moon. The two men even tried to foster cordiality by a little banter in the presence of newsmen. As lightning flashed among the Alpine peaks across Lake Geneva, Vance said to Gromyko: "Did you hear those thunderbolts? I was throwing them at you." Gromyko chuckled gamely.

Much of last week's progress may have been the result of a change in Vance's style. Shelved, at least for Geneva, was the wide-open diplomacy that had so irritated the Soviets during the ill-fated Moscow meeting. Vance avoided almost all contact with the press in Geneva. So, of course, did Gromyko. As he and Vance posed for photographers beneath a big portrait of Brezhnev at the Soviet mission, a reporter asked him how the talks were going. Said Gromyko: "We are silent like fish." Equally pleasing to the Soviets must be the recent low-decibel level of the Administration's human rights drive.

On small matters last week, Vance seemed determined to accommodate the Soviets. The American delegation, for instance, wanted to talk first about the situation in the Middle East and then about SALT; the Soviets wanted the agenda reversed. Result: they began with SALT. Normally, each superpower is host to alternate SALT sessions; the Soviets complained, however, that the Americans' quarters in the Inter-Continental Hotel were too likely to be bugged by the agents of some other country. Result: the Soviets were hosts to the negotiations on SALT, while the delegates repaired to the Inter-Continental for two hours of talks on the Middle East (see cover stones).

This series of concessions was a key element of Vance's negotiating tactics. Reports TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott from Geneva: "There was a consensus among American policymakers that the U.S. made a mistake by putting the Kremlin on the defensive before and during Vance's mission to Moscow. Therefore the Americans decided to. let the Soviets recapture some initiative and prestige. By yielding on procedure, protocol and publicity, U.S. officials hoped for a trade-off in the form of greater Soviet flexibility and receptivity at the negotiating table."

Vance's tactics apparently have had some success. But SALT "breakthroughs" have been heralded before, only to come to naught. Indeed, as he was about to depart for Moscow, a sour Gromyko cautioned that his discussions with Vance were "just a station along the way ... major and serious difficulties remain." Some of these difficulties will be attacked this week as Warnke and Semyonov resume their talks. The toughest issues will undoubtedly require higher-level bargaining; thus Vance and Gromyko plan to meet again, on a yet undetermined date.

The Administration unquestionably regards the SALT process as the best means for maintaining the "rough parity" between the American and Soviet strategic arsenals. But if progress at SALT falters, Carter has made it clear, parity can also be maintained by continuing to modernize the U.S. arsenal. This was resoundingly seconded last week when the Senate, by a nearly unanimous 90-to-3 vote, authorized the Pentagon to spend $35.9 billion in fiscal 1978 on developing and procuring weapons and equipment. This is actually $60 million above the Administration's total request, which includes some $10.6 billion for new strategic systems, such as the B-l supersonic bomber and a deadly accurate guidance mechanism for the Minuteman III intercontinental missile. The House of Representatives had already approved an almost identical military authorization bill. Whether Carter gives the green light to the new systems could depend in large part on the final shape of SALT II or the prospects for comprehensive arms cutbacks in a SALT in.

Steps were also taken last week to counter the U.S.S.R.'s continuously expanding conventional war machine. During a meeting at NATO headquarters' in Brussels, U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown persuaded the Alliance's defense ministers to promise they would aim at an annual after-inflation increase in defense spending "in the region of 3%." At the same time, however, the ministers acknowledged that "for some individual countries [specifically Italy and Britain], economic circumstances will affect what can be achieved." Repeatedly warning that the Soviet arms buildup in Europe had become ominous, Brown declared that "the NATO countries have no alternative other than to try to respond in part to [it]. The competition is not going to be one-sided." He urged the Alliance to "carry out force improvements at a rate and to a degree that will enable them to deter a Soviet military threat and to prevent the Soviet Union from gaining political advantage through intimidation based on a military preponderance."

Brown also persuaded his colleagues to approve an immediate "quick fix" program that would 1) increase the Alliance's supply of antitank missiles, 2) stockpile added munition reserves in forward areas, and 3) improve the means of rushing reinforcements to the front in the event of an attack. The defense ministers then endorsed Brown's call for a long-range program to improve, among other things, NATO'S air defenses. If the Alliance seriously starts moving toward these ambitious goals, the Soviet Union will be facing an increasingly credible conventional deterrent to an attack. One other possible benefit: such a display of NATO resolve might make Moscow more willing to compromise at the long-stalemated Vienna-based East-West talks on mutual force reductions in Central Europe.

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