Why These Crises Occur

By Strobe Talbott

When Soviet-American relations come a cropper, as they so often do, it is rarely because the White House or the Kremlin seeks a crisis as part of a grand strategy. Rather, the setbacks are like road accidents during a cross- country rally in which the contestants are continually jockeying for position. Particularly when they feel their security has somehow been threatened, the Soviets can seem like road hogs, making it all the more likely that they will cause fender benders or worse along the way. They are aggressive but not reckless drivers.

So it was with the imprisonment of Nicholas Daniloff, which jeopardized the prospect of a summit meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The cause seemed absurdly disproportionate to the possible effects: the FBI arrested a Soviet scientist who almost unquestionably was engaged in espionage, and the KGB retaliated by entrapping a U.S. journalist in Moscow who just as unquestionably was not.

It was a vivid reminder that Soviet-American relations operate according to Murphy's Law: given the depths of hostility and mistrust between the superpowers, whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Over the years a lot has gone wrong, and the timing has often scuttled the best-laid plans of statesmen, including some of the Soviet Union's own. In May 1960 an American U-2 plane was downed near Sverdlovsk, and Nikita Khrushchev stormed out of a summit meeting with Dwight Eisenhower in Paris. In August 1968, just as Lyndon Johnson and the Kremlin leaders were preparing to launch the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia and SALT was postponed. In December 1979 the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan virtually guaranteed that the U.S. Senate would not ratify the SALT II treaty. In September 1983 Soviet air-defense units shot down a Korean passenger plane, prompting Secretary of State George Shultz to throttle back his effort to re- engage the U.S.S.R. in quiet diplomacy. In March 1985 a Soviet soldier in East Germany shot and killed Major Arthur Nicholson, a member of a U.S. military liaison unit, and hawks in the Administration clamored for retaliation.

While these incidents varied greatly in nature and scope, they had key features in common: first, the Kremlin's concern with security takes precedence over propaganda and diplomacy alike; second, when the Soviet Union reacts to a perceived threat to its security, it tends to overreact, sometimes brutally; third, if the Soviets' overreaction leads to a crisis, they are quick to blame the U.S.; and fourth, the disruption has always proved temporary.

In Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, the Soviet Union saw political instability on its border and the danger of unfriendly regimes coming to power. So Moscow, thumbing its nose at world opinion, moved in with tanks and paratroopers. In the other cases, there was either an act or an accusation of spying. The Soviets are preoccupied with espionage in a way that is difficult for Americans to understand. As custodians of a closed and paranoid political system, they are obsessed with protecting their own secrets and finding out those of their enemies.

Whatever the lingering mysteries about the Kremlin's motives in the Daniloff case, there is no doubt that the crisis was precipitated by the arrest of their man at the U.N., Gennadi Zakharov. Precisely because they are so obsessive about the clandestine side of their national-security policy, the Soviets take very seriously the task of getting their spies who have been nabbed out of the hands of FBI and CIA debriefers. If retrieving Zakharov meant disrupting the chance of a summit, well, too bad. But first things first. And in this case, as in so many others before, that meant another suspenseful bit of highway Dodg'em on the hairpin turns of Soviet-American relations.