Thawing the U.S.-Soviet Chill
HOPKINS, MARK
A MIXED REPORT IN GENEVA Thawing the U.S. - Soviet Chill BY MARK HOPKINS Moscow It was not the raid-May weather alone that warned up in Geneva when Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and Foreign...
...While he had completed some agreements on secondary issues, such as a ban on underground nuclear tests and on antisatellite weapons, it was apparent that detente, already suffering a coolness brought on by the human rights controversy, was moving toward the freezing point...
...He whipped off his black-rimmed glasses to peer earnestly...
...In addition, the Soviets were opposed to the demand that their relatively new Backfire bomber be calculated as part of the allowed force levels...
...It was the 67-year old Gromyko at his best, a best seldom exhibited publicly...
...The Geneva parley had assumed special significance in the light of Vance's initial abortive attempt at an accord...
...Evidence accumulates (most recently from the London-based Institute for Strategic Studies) that the Soviet Union has embarked on a military modernization program of significant proportions, and the buildup of Warsaw Pact forces has already drawn comment from President Carter...
...They point to the greater secrecy that surrounded the discussions as proof that the two sides are beginning to understand each other better...
...That same night, as stories of the Soviet rejection were being broadcast throughout the world, Gromyko's "show" replaced the evening news on Moscow television...
...By March 27, specialist journalists who had been briefed in Washington no doubt knew more about the contents of Vance's briefcase than did Brezhnev and Gromyko, and this was not the way the Kremlin liked to do business...
...Mark Hopkins is a specialist in Soviet and East European affairs...
...Salt has become the bellweath-er of Soviet-American relations, and the tentative three-tiered framework for producing a treaty that was fashioned during the Vance-Gromyko meeting last month in Geneva is an indication of how much both sides would like to prevent those relations from deteriorating further...
...He wagged his linger in warning and slapped his hand on the table in anger...
...Although diplomatic style and human rights surely played a part, the major issues separating the U.S...
...meddling in Soviet internal affairs could ultimately damage relations...
...Vance and Gromyko agreed that the Geneva peace conference should be resumed this fall, but Menahem Begin's victory in the May 17 Israeli elections could create difficulties that might add to U.S.-Soviet tensions...
...And Carter had done all this despite a Kremlin-cleared Pravda warning that U.S...
...initiatives, and Vance was boarding his plane for the trip home...
...Last March 27, trailed by a battery of aides and newsmen, the Secretary arrived in Moscow carrying two proposals for a new treaty...
...Shortly after touching down in the Soviet capital, Vance held the first of four press conferences and told the gathered correspondents he was sure the Kremlin had familiarized itself with the U.S...
...The upcoming exchange is certain to spark a new round of bitter East-West polemics...
...And they are hopeful that besides producing a salt agreement before the October deadline, this will ultimately lead to a detente that is more substance than theater...
...Since that dazzling week of March 27-31, when the nuclear arms debate went public, the Kremlin had been playing the injured, wiser father, making clear that it felt the Carter Administration would have to grow up and come to its senses if meaningful dialogue was to take place...
...At his final press conference, the Secretary of State announced with obvious disappointment that his last—and only second—meeting with Brezhnev had ended in rejection of the U.S...
...Never before in the history of salt had the decision-making process been so publicly paraded...
...With Soviet and other correspondents comfortably settled into red upholstered chairs, the Foreign Minister held forth for nearly an hour and a half on where the blame really lay...
...As a sign of how stunned the Politburo was, within 24 hours Andrei Gromyko entered center stage in a luxurious theater in a huge government villa overlooking Moscow...
...Quoting selectively from American statements on the Moscow talks, the Soviet press contended that even in the United States the Carter proposals were seen as unfair, and that Washington could scarcely have expected anything except rejection...
...The "fallback" package did not include the American Cruise missile, a sophisticated and extremely accurate low-flying pilotless bomber that the Soviet Union wants in the weapons quotas...
...More than 200 newsmen were lectured on the injustice, nay, trickery, behind the American proposals...
...Better than 60 years of prodigious efforts at portraying the Soviet Union as the peacemaker, and over 10 years spent building Brezhnev's image as a man of peace, suddenly, in the glaring light of TV cameras, seemed in danger of going down the drain...
...Vance's response to the breakdown of negotiations produced even greater consternation among high-level Soviet officials...
...Then came what to the USSR was a distressing method of conducting diplomacy...
...As far as Party chief Leonid I. Brezhnev and his Politburo cohorts were concerned, Jimmy Carter had done almost nothing right...
...He put the matter pleadingly to his audience...
...and the USSR in the Moscow talks were purely military: Neither Carter Administration proposal fit the Soviet design...
...U.S.-Soviet relations—chilled in recent months by what many observers here saw as the Carter Administration's lack of experience in dealing with the Kremlin—seemed to feel the touch of spring, too...
...The "comprehensive" package went far beyond the 1974 Vladivostok guidelines—regarded here as the sole possible basis for negotiating a new treaty—in calling for large cuts in the 2,400 long-range bombers and nuclear missile launchers now permitted each side...
...He raised his eyebrows in wonderment...
...Moreover, concentration on the disarmament talks has tended to obscure other important areas of potential friction...
...Yet it is precisely because of this atmosphere, many Western diplomats here maintain, that the Vance-Gromyko meeting represented an important step forward despite its seeming inconclusiveness...
...The President had not only scored the Soviets for human rights violations and sent a personal letter to dissident leader Andrei Sakharov, but had dropped in on a chat between Vice President Walter Mondale and Vladimir Buk-ovsky, a man the Soviet press had taken pains to portray as a terrorist and common criminal...
...He explained patiently...
...proposals, because they had been fully outlined in the press...
...Soviet Chill BY MARK HOPKINS Moscow It was not the raid-May weather alone that warned up in Geneva when Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko hammered out the "framework" for a compromise on renewing the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (salt...
...The caution expressed by the two men about a final agreement, though, also suggests how much hard bargaining remains to be done before a compromise can be reached and the long-awaited Brezhnev-Carter summit can be held...
...The Middle East is still an extremely volatile spot...
...Nor—in the unkindest cut of all?had Lenin's heirs ever been so be-lievably cast as the spoilers, the obstacles to peace...
...Soviet leaders, long accustomed in years of private talks with President Nixon and Henry Kissinger to extraordinary secrecy about the sensitive nuclear arms negotiations, had learned about Carter's salt plans only from the American press...
...The Soviet Union and the Eastern European bloc have worked diligently on their own list...
...U.S.-Chinese friendship continues to worry the Kremlin, where the belief is that China wants war and is encouraging conservative leaders in Western Europe in a grand strategy to flank the Soviet Union...
...Even a partial list is formidable: ?The Belgrade review of the 35-nation Helsinki agreement begins this month...
...Four days later negotiations had broken off, the Soviet leadership had forcefully rejected the U.S...
...That was precisely the problem...
...The admittedly qualified success of the talks, convened to break the deadlock on salt before the present five-year interim agreement expires in October, as well as to discuss resumption of the Middle East peace conference, is nonetheless viewed as the beginning of a thaw between the two superpowers...
...proposals...
...The United States and Western Europe have their list of grievances and violations prepared...
Vol. 60 • June 1977 • No. 12
