Moscow's Hard Line

By John Kohan

As the foreign leaders and their ministers took their seats in the Kremlin's white-columned Hall of St. George last week, they could see the long roster of names engraved in Cyrillic script on marble tablets along the chamber's walls. The list is an honor roll of czarist military regiments, officers and soldiers who displayed extraordinary bravery in defending the motherland, or rodina, as Russians say with almost mystical fervor. The dignitaries were there to represent the nations most closely allied to the Soviet Union: its six satellites in Eastern Europe, plus three poorer relations from the Third World: Cuba, Viet Nam and Mongolia.

They had come to Moscow for the first top-level meeting in 15 years of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the Sovietled trading community. They talked about agriculture, oil prices and technology. But something even more urgent than economics underlay the discussions.

With U.S.-Soviet relations close to rockbottom, the rare COMECON meeting represented Moscow's urgent summons for present and future solidarity from its allies. The motherland needed friends and comfort.

Soviet Leader Konstantin Chernenko, who looked hale but moved stiffly in the brief conference footage broadcast over national TV, closed the meeting with a short speech calling on the Western democracies to let capitalism and Communism live in "peaceful coexistence." But he warned, "A dangerous test of strength, being imposed on us by the most reactionary imperialist circles, primarily in the U.S., is not our choice, not our policy. But we will be able to stand up for ourselves.

Let no one have any doubt about that."

Chernenko's words were echoed in the political declaration issued by the ten Communist nations after the close of their meeting. "International tension has grown substantially as a result of the course pursued by the aggressive forces of imperialism, primarily U.S. imperialism," the document charged. Ignoring the conciliatory tone of President Reagan's press conference, which had taken place twelve hours earlier, the statement went on to accuse Washington of an "escalation of the arms race" that "jeopardizes the very existence of mankind."

It had seemed at the beginning of the year that relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union could hardly become worse, short of an armed conflict.

Reagan had, after all, branded the Soviet Union an "evil empire," and Moscow had declared with convincing finality that it could no longer do business with Washington. NATO had begun deployment missiles in Western Europe, in response the Soviets had stalked away from every negotiating table where the superpowers had been discussing nuclear arms control. Yet in the four months since Chernenko succeeded the late Yuri Andropov, the chill factor from Moscow has intensified. The trend is all the more noticeable because it contrasts so sharply with President Reagan's new and uncharacteristically conciliatory tone (see NATION).

The Kremlin has gone out of its way to keep old grudges alive. Invoking flimsy pretexts, it decided to the Los Angeles Olympics. It has all invitations to return to the bargaining tables in Gene preferring to deploy new weapons in Europe and to send additional to lurk near U.S. shores. The display abroad has been by a tightening of control at including efforts to silence Nobel Prize Recipient Andrei Sakharov The Kremlin has more than matched its deeds with angry, at times hysterical, A veritable Niagara of insults and threats continues to flow from the pages of Pravda and the tickers of TASS. The Reagan Administration is accused of plotting "covert subversive activities and terrorism," engaging in a "campaign of blackmail and threats," and "thinking in terms of war and acting accordingly."

West Europeans, whom Moscow so recently was wooing, have also felt the full force of Soviet fury. While discussing nuclear arms with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti in April, So viet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko made a pointed allusion to the Roman city of Pompeii, which was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79. After West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher's visit a month later, the Soviet press published reports that West Germany's soldiers resemble a "Hitlerite army" and that the government was plotting to take over East Germany. China, which Moscow has every reason to entice away from the U.S., received a pointed snub in May with the last-day cancellation of what was to have been the highest-level visit in 15 years. The Soviet Union, concluded an editorial in the British weekly the Economist, has "gone into hibernation."

Moscow's continuing allusions to war could be dismissed as so much propaganda if the nuclear threat facing both superpowers were not all too real. After a decade and a half of tortuous talks, the process of arms control is at the moment essentially dead (see following story). Meanwhile, the U.S. and the Soviet Union stand on the threshold of a revolution in nuclear technology that will vastly complicate future negotiations. The U.S. moved a step closer to Star Wars weaponry last week when it successfully tested a new defensive missile.

Although the twelve-man Politburo makes its decisions collectively, the new ultrahard Line is widely identified with the growing influence of one man: Andrei Gromyko (see box). The combination of Chernenko's rumored weakness as a leader and his lack of experience in foreign affairs appears to have given Gromyko more power than at any other time in his 27 years as Foreign Minister. Foreign delegations that have traveled to Moscow in the past few months have been startled to observe how Gromyko interrupts Chernenko during meetings. In private sessions with Westerners, Soviet diplomats, journalists and academics disparage Chernenko in an unprecedented fashion.

Diplomats who for more than a quarter-century have learned to read the lines on Gromyko's face for clues about Soviet moves abroad have noticed that the fleeting smile that he would offer during the halcyon days of detente has turned to a quasipermanent scowl. His lips seem pursed to utter a defiant nyet at a moment's notice. Says a West German official recently returned from Moscow: "His is the first face you see when you arrive and the last face you see when you leave. These days it is not a pleasant face."

Western diplomats who met privately with Gromyko at the Stockholm Conference on Confidence-and Security-Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe last January found him keeping three Reagan speeches close at hand. The text of the President's "focus of evil" address seemed to be particularly dog-eared. Gromyko's repeated references to those speeches underscored the degree to which the U.S. President's slaps at Soviet power and prestige have stirred anger and animosity in Moscow. Few Soviet officials like to be reminded that they once considered Reagan a potential "closet" Nixon who might correct the foreign policy zigzags of the Carter Administration and return to something like detente.

The obsession with Reagan goes well beyond his words. Soviet officials view the President's commitment to a $1.6 trillion military buildup as evidence that the U.S. is determined to achieve military superiority over the Soviet Union. (When asked at his press conference last week whether the Republican Party platform should call for "parity" or "superiority," Reagan answered that he would prefer "we not ask for superiority.") They accuse the Administration of having presented deliberately lopsided proposals in nuclear arms talks in order to prevent any agreement from being reached. Soviet officials tirelessly repeat the argument that the new Pershing II missiles that NATO began deploying in West Germany last November are first-strike weapons capable of reaching Moscow in eight minutes (in fact, the new missiles cannot reach the Soviet capital from their present launching sites).

Recalling the famous statement by Reagan that Marxism would be consigned to "the ash heap of history," Moscow accuses him of wanting to do nothing less than overthrow the Communist regime. One Soviet official advanced the following frightening hypothesis last week: "Reagan has tried to create an image of the Soviet Union as a hostile and inhuman country. It looks to us as if he is preparing the home front, because people must be taught to hate the enemy before a war can be launched."

In retrospect, one of the most vexing realizations is that there was a brief time recently when the U.S.-Soviet relationship stood a chance of improvement. Early in 1983 Reagan informed Andropov in a personal letter that the U.S. was interested in responding to Soviet calls for better ties. Some tentative signs emerged in the summer of 1983, when the two nations signed an agreement under which the U.S. would sell a minimum of 9 million tons of grain to the Soviet Union over a five-year period. Talks were under way to upgrade the Moscow-Washington hotline and to open consular offices in New York and Kiev. But then, on Sept. 1,1983, a Soviet interceptor jet shot down a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 that had strayed over Soviet territory on Sakhalin Island, killing all 269 aboard. Reagan responded with particular fury, accusing the Soviets of committing "a terrorist act to sacrifice the lives of innocent human beings."

The Kremlin stonewalled, charging that the civilian airliner had been on a U.S.-inspired spy mission. Responding to popular anger in the U.S., the Governors of New York and New Jersey barred Gromyko's aircraft from landing at Kennedy and Newark international airports when he was scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly. Deeply stung by the decision, Gromyko decided not to come at all, even though the U.S. offered the use of a military airfield near New York if the Soviet diplomat would arrive in a military aircraft. Finally, when NATO went ahead with its plan to deploy the first of 108 Pershing II and 464 cruise missiles in Western Europe, the Soviets walked out of the intermediate-range missile talks, later vowing not to return unless the missiles were withdrawn. They also suspended strategic-arms negotiations.

Since Chernenko's assumption of power, the Kremlin has heaped scorn on every initiative advanced by the Reagan Administration. It rejected a U.S. proposal presented by Vice President George Bush in Geneva last April to outlaw production of nerve gases and other chemical weapons as "deliberately unacceptable for the Soviet Union and many other states." When Reagan responded two weeks ago to a longstanding Soviet initiative by offering to negotiate a pact barring the first use force, Moscow said the idea was "hypocritical."

Meanwhile, the Soviets have conspicuously flexed their military muscles. In April the Soviet navy held its largest maneuvers ever in the North Atlantic. About the same time, Soviet forces in Afghanistan launched their fiercest offensive against guerrillas since invading the country. In May, Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov outlined the deployment of additional tactical nuclear weapons in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, and announced that two Delta-class submarines, carrying longer-range missiles, had joined the Soviet subs already cruising off the U.S. coasts.

The Soviet bluster, some argue, may be little more than a negotiating tactic. This view is held by many in the Reagan Administration. By deliberately fostering an atmosphere of tension, the argument goes, the Kremlin might exact concessions it could not gain through diplomatic channels. Given Moscow's almost pathological antipathy for Reagan, the Soviets could also be trying to influence the outcome of the U.S. elections by allowing the Democrats to paint the President as a man not to be trusted with his finger on the nuclear button. One significant danger of the present situation, according to an American specialist in Soviet affairs, is that the U.S. "can no longer count on measured and rational responses" from the Soviets. Says he: "There is no taut line of control in Moscow. The soft leadership situation means that we cannot extrapolate their responses from past behavior."

Ever since Leonid Brezhnev became seriously ill, the Soviet Union has had no strong direction from the top. As Brezhnev's health deteriorated, decision making was virtually paralyzed. His successor, Andropov, began his tenure by projecting a forceful image, particularly in cracking down on corruption, absenteeism and economic inefficiency. But soon he too was mortally ill; from Aug. 18, 1983, until his death last February, he was not seen in public. Again, decisions were postponed as his colleagues waited and presumably maneuvered for position.

The Kremlin's leadership crisis became even more apparent when, after four days of deliberation following Andropov's death, the Communist Party Central Committee announced that Chernenko had been named to the top position. Known more for his loyalty to Brezhnev than for his expertise in any area except the party bureaucracy, Chernenko had been conspicuously passed over 15 months earlier when Andropov succeeded Brezhnev; indeed, there was some speculation that Andropov had shunted his erstwhile rival aside.

The consensus among Western experts today is that although Chernenko quickly collected all the titles that Brezhnev and Andropov held (General Secretary of the Communist Party and President, as well as Chairman of the Defense Council), he in fact merely shares power with Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov and Foreign Minister Gromyko. It is the latter who, after more than a quarter-century as the executor of other men's policies, is thought to have been most instrumental in shaping the current hard line. There seems to be no one powerful enough to rein him in. Adam Ulam, director of Harvard's Russian Research Center, suspects that "Gromyko is making up for the time he was an errand boy for Khrushchev and Brezhnev." Says Richard F. Staar, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution: "Gromyko has always been a hardliner. He's delighted now to perform that function as the official spokesman for the party."

An important factor in the deterioration of superpower relations is what might be called the Great Misunderstanding of detente. The Kremlin saw detente as a way to gain access to Western markets and technology. Through negotiations, Moscow also hoped to limit the development of troublesome new U.S. weapons systems. But the Soviets also saw detente as a way ultimately to secure equal standing with the U.S. as a superpower. The high point came in Moscow in May 1972, when Richard Nixon and Brezhnev signed a declaration of principles that committed the superpowers to the principle of "equality" and to the promise not to seek "unilateral advantage at the expense of the other."

For Moscow that meant the right to cultivate client states in the developing world just as Washington had. But that was not the U.S. intepretation. When the Soviets and their Cuban proxies became involved in Ethiopia and Angola, the U.S. charged them with violating their pledge not to make geopolitical gains at Washington's expense. In addition, some Americans naively believed that detente meant the Soviets would change their behavior at home. That hope began to go sour as early as 1974, when Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which tied preferential trade terms to freedom of emigration from the U.S.S.R. The Soviets angrily rejected the demand as interference in their internal affairs.

Gromyko was intimately involved in the formulation of detente, though he was then clearly subservient to Brezhnev. Thus Gromyko, perhaps even more than his Politburo colleagues, feels betrayed by what Moscow perceives as Washington's repudiation of the sacred principle of superpower equality. In various ways and at various times, Gromyko has asked rhetorically and sarcastically of the U.S., "Are you going to allow us to have any foreign policy at all?"

Many experts conclude that detente could never have lasted, considering the different interpretations of it by the two superpowers. Says French Kremlinologist Helene Carrere d'Encausse: "We keep asking ourselves if the hardening of Moscow's attitude is a parenthesis in a period of detente. I think we've got it backwards. Detente was the parenthesis." Other analysts argue that detente might have been stabilized and institutionalized had it not been for the collapse of the Nixon Administration, which had sponsored the policy.

To make matters worse, Gromyko and his colleagues now look out over the Kremlin's medieval battlements at an increasingly hostile and threatening world. Rebellious Poland has barely been pacified. China is experimenting with economic reforms that are anathema to true Marxist-Leninists, and has made diplomatic overtures to the U.S. and Japan. No end is in sight to the war in Afghanistan. The Islamic fundamentalist regime of Iran's Ayatullah Khomeini is almost as hostile to the Soviet Union as to the U.S. Cuba, which has advanced Soviet aims in the Caribbean and Africa, was humiliated by the successful U.S. invasion of Grenada, and it now seems possible that Cuban troops may leave Angola as part of a broader peace agreement in southern Africa. "It illustrates that despite a great power's strength there are limits to what you can do with military force," says William Hyland, a former Kissinger aide who is now editor of Foreign Affairs. "This is frustrating to a country that arrived to full superpower status in the '70s."

At home, mounting economic troubles are straining Soviet resources. A younger generation enamored of things Western, from rock music and blue jeans to U.S. Army fatigues, is alienated from an increasingly xenophobic leadership. Says a senior European diplomat: "Frustration and uncertainty seem to dominate the Kremlin mood. The current collective leadership cannot point to a single success in the present, and the future can only make them uneasy."

No setback has rankled the Kremlin more than the failure of the Soviet propaganda campaign against the deployment of NATO missiles in Europe. On the eve of West Germany's 1983 elections, Gromyko tried to strengthen the peace movement and swing the electorate against Chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose conservative party supported the Alliance's plan. In a statement in Pravda, the Soviet Foreign Minister condescendingly told Europeans that rejecting the NATO missiles would be an "indication of political maturity." The strategy misfired badly, and Gromyko's threats may actually have helped Kohl's coalition win a parliamentary majority. The huge peace offensive that was expected to produce violent antimissile demonstrations last fall in Europe never materialized. In a further setback, the missile decision won support from the government of French President Frangois Mitterrand, which includes four Communist ministers. Last November giant U.S. C-141 StarLifter and C-5 Galaxy transports delivered the first new weapons to their bases in Britain and West Germany.

The failure to prevent NATO's deployment came as a major blow to Soviet prestige. With their bullying tactics, moreover, the Soviets have put themselves in a position from which they will have difficulty recovering without serious loss of face. In a system where longevity is a virtue and innovation an ever present danger, substantive changes in policy do not come easily. Thus the present period of tension could last for some time. Says former Secretary of State Vance: "We're in for a long, cool, difficult period that will extend beyond the fall elections."

Administration officials insist that if diplomatic ties are not as warm as they could be, routine business is going on as usual. Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin still goes regularly to see Secretary of State George Shultz, even if he no longer enters by the underground-garage entrance to the State Department that he used until Alexander Haig suspended the privilege. Gromyko continues to receive U.S. Ambassador Arthur Hartman in Moscow. The superpowers have just renegotiated a 1972 agreement to diminish incidents at sea, and American farmers are once again selling their wheat to the Soviets. "Relations are not frozen," says Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt. "We don't have a Cuban missile crisis on our hands or a 1973 Middle East war in which there was a call to battle stations. The last thing the Russians want now is a crisis."

Beyond a productive summit meeting, the single most encouraging step would be for Moscow to return to the nuclear arms negotiation table. To do so would require a degree of flexibility that the current Kremlin leadership may not be capable of; yet there have been hints that the U.S. would be willing to make concessions that would allow the Soviets to return gracefully to Geneva. One positive indication is that Chernenko has been pressing particularly hard for an agreement to ban weapons in space. "Tomorrow it may be too late," Chernenko declared last week. The Reagan Administration, which had rejected the proposal on the grounds that any agreement would be unverifiable, acknowledged at week's end that the idea was worth exploring.

There are other steps the U.S. could take to improve the East-West climate without giving Moscow the mistaken impression that it can get what it wants by belligerence. One would be to curb the cold war rhetoric, which may play well on the campaign trail during an election year, but echoes stridently abroad, alarming foe and friend alike.

Reagan has taken a large step in that direction by moderating the language that he uses to describe the Soviet Union and by dropping hints of the kind that emerged from his press conference last week. U.S. policymakers should also examine what is to be gained from an improvement in relations with the Soviet Union, then actively pursue those goals. The fallacy of detente was that it led Americans to expect too much, too soon. Little steps, not giant strides, may in the long run be more effective. Says Marshall D. Shulman, director of Columbia University's Harriman Institute for the Advanced Study of the Soviet Union: "The U.S. should seek a modus vivendi based not on illusions or domestic politics but on our own self-interest."

But much more movement must come from the Kremlin. So far, the Soviet leadership seems to be devoting its energy to staying rigidly in place. Gromyko is a grand master of that tactic. Notes a NATO ambassador: "He is content to do nothing, and that is rare in diplomacy." In addition, no other diplomat can claim to have his insight into East-West affairs. "We have to keep remembering that this is not the first round for Gromyko," says former Kissinger Aide Hyland. "He has seen Soviet foreign policies shift. He has seen us shift. He is enough of a professional that he knows what happens."

But one thing Gromyko should have noticed is that his intransigent attitude is not playing well in Western Europe, where leaders are now far less inclined than they have been in the past to hold Reagan responsible for the souring in East-West relations. "We saw that at the summit in London," says a top State Department official. "There will be some who blame Ronald Reagan's rhetoric, but the fact is that Western leaders understand what is taking place in Moscow. It is becoming clear that no matter what the U.S. does, the Soviets will not respond."

As comforting as the new display of Western solidarity may be, it carries its own risks. The more isolated the Soviets become, the more unpredictable their behavior. By going out of their way to alienate the nations that surround them, the Soviets are only making their paranoia about encirclement self-fulfilling. "One of the puzzling things," says a senior Western diplomat in Moscow, "is that the Soviets appear to be acting against their own self-interest." If Gromyko wants to be remembered for something more substantive than his longevity, he will have to apply his considerable talents to the search for a more stable and less dangerous U.S.Soviet relationship.

--By John Kohan.

Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow and William Stewart/Washington, with other bureaus.

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow and William Stewart/Washington, with other bureaus