Correspondents' Correspondence Limited Summit
HOPKINS, MARK
Limited Summit Washington—Nothing beyond the anticipated is likely to occur when Jimmy Carter and Leonid 1. Brezhnev finally meet in Vienna June 15-18 to sign the salt-II treaty. For both men could...
...According to protocol, the Parly chief should have come to Washington for the signing, since President Nixon visited Moscow in 1974, and President Ford traveled to Vladivostok that same year...
...He does, of course, have his better days —which accounts for the conflicting press reports—but on the whole he is in an extremely precarious state...
...That the Soviet leader's lack of stamina will also profoundly effect the talks themselves is clear from the agenda released on May 24...
...set to bring up the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and southern Africa...
...If all that sounds like going over familiar ground, the prospects for new advances in U.S.-USSR relations after the summit are even dimmer...
...at the beginning of the year, scoring high media points, Brezhnev did not want to spend his limited energies flying to Washington only to have America's merciless television hold him up for comparison to his clearly healthy, tireless Chinese competitor...
...In the case of the 72-year-old Soviet Communist Party Secretary and President, the problem is health...
...The most important obstacles to improved relations, though, are the political struggles both countries are about to undergo...
...Thus, should the Senate tack on amendments, Brezhnev probably would not be able to convince the Soviet bureaucracy to accept them, even if he were amenable himself...
...They will declare their commitment to certain principles in Vienna, restating their desire for detente...
...The second will concern the world's trouble spots, with the U.S...
...Indeed, their uncertain hold on power casts doubt on the fate of the arms-limitation agreement itself...
...is choosing a chief execut iv e. So\ let Party brass will be privately arranging for Brezhnev's honorable retirement...
...The long periods of rest needed by Brezhnev will leave little time for a free-wheeling exchange of views...
...But there is some Soviet unhappiness, too—muted, yet just as real...
...But six months ago the Soviets, concerned about Brezhnev's ability to travel, began planting the notion that the meeting should be held elsewhere, closer to Moscow if not in Moscow...
...The first will involve preparations for salt-III talks, limiting the sale of conventional arms, restricting the use of antisatellite weapons, and perhaps the issue of Soviet and American nuclear forces in Europe...
...In short, it would be difficult for Carter and Brezhnev to now commit their countries to courses of action that could easily be subject to review and revision by new leaderships within a year and a half...
...What happens to foreign policy in the U.S...
...and the USSR closer together.—Mark Hopkins...
...i he main immediate issue of Soviet-American contention will be out of the way, and it will be time to reorder the USSR's lagging economy...
...What is said by whom on sai t is already enmeshed in the presidential campaigning...
...And especially after Chinese Deputy Premier Deng Xiaoping had blitzed through the U.S...
...Brezhnev's physical condition in large part dictated the site of the summit...
...The aging Brezhnev coalition is in no position to tackle the job, let alone see the necessary changes through...
...American diplomats, for instance, report that Prime Minister Alexei N. Kosygin is "not well disposed" toward the agreement—a puzzling dissatisfaction considering that he has long been regarded as pro-detente...
...Until the succession is settled—and analysts here find it difficult to believe Brezhnev will be "propped up" beyond the 26th Party Congress, scheduled for March 1981—Moscow is unlikely to embark on any foreign ventures...
...At about the same time that the U.S...
...With sai l signed...
...For both men could well be out of office 18 months later...
...Although five working sessions are scheduled to be held over a period of two and a half days, the Vienna summit will be more structured than the Nixon-Brezhnev spectaculars...
...In the United States formidable opposition to salt-II is building up, making modification of the treaty a near certainty...
...In the process, he will have to answer critics of his foreign policy, including the treaty...
...French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, following an April visit to the Kremlin, reported that Brezhnev's attention span is less than two hours...
...The third will include arrangements being made to give the Soviets (and the Chinese) Export-Import Bank credits and most-favored nations status without violating the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, emigration, and the extension of existing technology and cooperation agreements...
...Much of the substantive discussion, in fact, is expected to lake place in separate meetings between Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, as well as between other corresponding members of the two delegations...
...President Carter, of course, will be trying to recapture his party's nomination and, if successful, his job...
...Brezhnev watchers here are convinced he is sinking fast under the weight of his various respiratory and circulatory ailments...
...during presidential campaigns will probably happen in the Soviet Union—namely, it will be conducted largely by bureaucratic momentum...
...Yet the odds are growing that it will be up to two different men to bring the U.S...
...Signing the salt documents will be symbolically important...
...Essentially, three areas are to be covered...
Vol. 62 • June 1979 • No. 12
