The Second Nixon-Brezhnev Summit

...ternational—each of which makes a U.S.-Soviet accord a matter of imperative urgency for the Soviet leadership in general and particularly for Brezhnev, who has staked his personal political fortunes on progress in American-Soviet relations...

...Thus, not only will the negotiating postures at the coming summit differ from earlier Cold War top-level meetings, but they will reflect the declining centralily of American-Soviet relations in world affairs...

...Two poor harvests, prompting hard-currency payments for foreign grain, have made the situation more acute...

...This situation enormously strengthens Brezhnev's bargaining hand...

...Such an attempt to set the U.S.-Soviet relationship in a broader perspective would be helpful, too, in offsetting the anxieties of third parties about the significance and meaning of any accommodations contrived during the course of the White House meeting...

...The adoption of a Five Year Agenda, specifying the issues and the targets to be tackled, with some notion of the time-frames involved, would give the two participating nations and the world at large a better sense of what can be realistically expected from their efforts to structure a more stable and enduring relationship in the context of some continuing disagreements...

...Brezhnev obviously wants to focus on trade (based largely on American credits), but with neither side able to press for one-sided concessions, seeking a broader and more balanced, even if somewhat more modest, accommodation would make great sense, and might even lay the basis for a more enduring detente...

...One useful device the two leaders might consider would be to end their conference with not only the usual communique, claiming historical significance for the agreements actually reached, but also a long-term schedule for the subsequent development of American-Soviet relations...

...The second major weakness involves the rising national tensions in the Soviet Union...

...in both the arms race and the space race has been the intensifying economic crisis in the USSR...

...and some dramatic steps in that direction would have the desirable effect of distracting public attention from domestic issues...

...The latter is especially important to Brezhnev because the Kremlin is very anxious to put the American-Soviet relationship on a higher plane than the developing American-Chinese relationship...

...The cumulative effect of these demands, paradoxically, is to make the Soviet leadership more fearful of needed economic reforms, especially decentralization, lest they strengthen local nationalisms...

...gradual progress on a wider front is to be preferred to a major agreement in one area alone...

...acceptance of the Soviet sphere of predominance in Eastern Europe but remain unwilling to seek an accommodation in the Middle East (Radio Moscow has lately been urging the Arabs to use their oil as a political weapon...

...Brezhnev is coming to Washington in the context of acute difficulties at home that are essentially systemic yet could eventually also threaten his own personal power...

...Though the negotiating relationship described above tends to give Brezhnev a short-term advantage over Nixon, it also places him at a longer-range disadvantage...

...These fears have been reinforced by the unanticipated pace of the Sino-American accommodation...

...Even Petr Shelest, the recently sacked Ukrainian leader and otherwise rigid neo-Stalinist, has not been unsympathetic to Ukrainian aspirations for greater autonomy...

...The Soviet system is today faced with basic weaknesses on three fronts—the economic, the national and the inZbigniew Brzezinski is Director of the Research Institute on Communist Affairs at Columbia University...

...His claim all along has been that he is engaged in building a "generation of peace...

...It would be wrong, however, to assume that all of the negotiating assets are on the Soviet side...

...Moscow has obviously derived much political benefit from having reached military parity with Washington, even though it has not been able to erase the American lead in space...

...A Washington-Moscow summit ending only with generalities and banalities simply will not satisfy Nixon's needs...

...In addition, Brezhnev will insist that some of the asymmetries accepted transitionally in SALT I be reflected in any eventual agreement in SALT II...

...In short, we can expect the Soviet Party chief, a skillful and tough negotiator, to try to extract the maximum advantage from his visit, subtly playing on Nixon's unavoidable anxieties...

...Moreover, given the obvious linkage between progress on economic matters and political issues-and the last are very much conditioned by the American public's feelings about questions like human tights...

...One consequence of the Kremlin's massive effort to match the U.S...

...Finally, there is the painful question of China, where two developments of grave concern to the Soviets promise to intersect soon: The approaching succession crisis increases the Kremlin's temptation to influence internal Chinese affairs, while China's acquisition of long-range hardened-site missile capability intensifies Soviet fears...

...The course of the negotiations will depend a great deal on the political as well as psychological stamina of the two leaders...

...In some respects, however, their mutual weakness might make for a more fruitful negotiating relationship, with neither side able to press its demands too far...

...With the Soviet growth rate sharply dropping, the economy needs American know-how and credits, for which it can offer only a long-term promise of natural resources...

...The remarkably courageous self-assertion of the Jewish community has set an example for the other non-Russian nations, and many of them are beginning to escalate their political demands...

...Finally, he will strive to get a more explicit U.S...

...as late as last January, Soviet Americanologists were telling Brezhnev no further improvement in U.S.-Chinese relations was to be expected...

...This is a matter of particularly great importance to the United States, for it is not in the American interest to intensify Western European, Japanese or Chinese fears of a Washington-Moscow arrangement...

...But these massive campaigns have carried a heavy price, especially for scientific-technological innovation, largely because the Soviet economy is so highly compartmentalized that there are few industrial spinoffs from its ultra-secretive military and aerospace research and development...

...NEGOTIATING FROM WEAKNESS The Second Nixon-Brezhnev Summit BY ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI When Richard Nixon greets Leonid Brezhnev on the White House patio, the two leaders of the world's most powerful nations will be confronting each other from positions of unprecedented weakness...

...By and large, they do not seek secession but they do want greater autonomy...

...This should make for a particularly interesting negotiating relationship, since the conventional wisdom during the Cold War has been that one must negotiate only from a position of strength...

...He will want from Nixon a generous and far-reaching economic agreement, including large American credits, as well as a broad-ranging political declaration committing the United States to the notion that the American-Soviet relationship is the principal axis of world affairs...

...The American President's basic weakness is personal, while the Soviet Secretary General's is systemic...

...Indeed, as the Cold War declines in intensity, the U.S.-Soviet relationship loses some of its preeminence, and America's relations with Europe, Japan and China rise correspondingly...

...The on-going crisis over the Watergate affair has put a premium from Nixon's standpoint on a spectacular U.S.-USSR accommodation...