1999 (27 page)

That does not mean negotiations are unimportant. They can reduce
the risk of a nuclear war between the superpowers. They can also have a profound effect on the fate of millions of people. We must remember that Moscow won Eastern Europe without firing a shot. Stalin's victory came across the conference tables in Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam, not on the battlefields of Central Europe. In the years before 1999, we therefore need to be able to negotiate effectively with Moscow. In order to do so, we must understand why we should negotiate, what we should negotiate, how we should negotiate, and how we should conduct negotiations at the level of American–Soviet summits.

There are two extreme views on the question of whether we should negotiate with Moscow.

At one extreme, some argue that any negotiations with the Kremlin are useless at best and dangerous at worst. They point out, correctly, that our goals for negotiations are totally different from those of Moscow. They cite Stalin's aphorism, “A diplomat's words must have no relationship to action; otherwise, what kind of diplomacy is it?” Soviet leaders use negotiations to win victory without war; too often we use negotiations only to achieve peace without victory. Negotiations for them are a means to an end; for us they tend to be an end in themselves.

Those who hold this view also argue that the negotiating process itself is skewed in favor of the Soviet Union. While Kremlin leaders can totally ignore the views of the Soviet peoples, popular hopes and expectations for better East–West relations put enormous pressure on Western leaders to make unilateral concessions in order to conclude agreements. In addition, they point out that Soviet leaders are diabolically clever, duplicitous, and untrustworthy. They have relentlessly preyed upon Western hopes for peace, ruthlessly exploited ambiguities in the language of treaties, and repeatedly violated agreements in order to further their interests.

There is an element of truth in these contentions. But five overriding reasons exist why their basic prescription for American policy—the less negotiating with Moscow, the better—needs to be rejected.

First, it would be irresponsible for the two superpowers—each with the capacity to destroy the other and the rest of the world—not to explore every way possible for reducing the risk of nuclear war. Communication does not produce peace, but it does enable each side to get a clear measure of the other and thereby reduce the risk of a miscalculation leading to war. Without communication, we would put our relations in a highly combustible atmosphere of semibelligerency, with both sides building up armaments without restraint while firing salvos of hot rhetoric. Our interests would inevitably rub together in the powder kegs of the world like the Middle East, possibly sending off a spark which would ignite a nuclear war.

Second, it would be difficult politically to sustain the policies necessary for deterrence and competition without a negotiating initiative. If an American President maintained a posture of diplomatic belligerence while the Soviet leadership beckoned for him to come to the negotiating table, his policies would be incomprehensible to the American people. They do not expect a breakthrough in U.S.–Soviet relations, but they do expect their leaders to make every reasonable effort to reduce the risks of the nuclear world. As a result, a President who opposes negotiations
per se
would see his policies inevitably undercut in Congress.

Third, it would be impossible to hold together the NATO alliance in the absence of an active policy of negotiation. Alliances are primarily held together by fear. The threat of Soviet expansionism has been a major factor in holding NATO together for forty years. But today in Europe the fear of nuclear war has eclipsed the fear of Soviet aggression, even though the Kremlin's military power is massively greater than it was when NATO was founded. Gorbachev's brilliant public-relations “peace” campaign and President Reagan's belligerent rhetoric about the Soviets during his first term have contributed to this problem. This has prompted a majority of Europeans, except in France, to believe that Gorbachev is more committed to peace than Reagan.

To keep the alliance together, therefore, we must appeal to reason, not just fear. We could never have made the initial deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles in 1983 without the parallel track of negotiations to reduce the level of intermediate-range nuclear
forces in Europe. Our policies must convince the peoples of Western Europe that the dual threats of Soviet aggression and nuclear war exist and that the United States and the alliance have adopted the measured and prudent policies to deal with both. American–Soviet negotiations are indispensable toward that end. Hope for peace is essential if the people of Europe, as well as the United States, are to continue to support the military strength necessary to maintain the deterrence upon which stability depends. Over the long haul, the absence of hope for peace fuels the forces of appeasement.

Fourth, we must recognize the simple fact that even with communists, statecraft counts. Negotiations can make a positive difference. It was American–Soviet negotiations that led to the 1955 Austrian Peace Treaty, which brought about the withdrawal of Soviet occupation forces from half the country, including Vienna. Those who oppose all negotiation with communists opposed any contacts with communist China. But the world is a better and safer place with a strong and independent China that has good relations with the West than with a weak and pliant China tied to the Soviet Union.

Fifth, a reduction in East–West tensions divides the East more than it does the West. Since Moscow justifies its iron grip over the other members of the Eastern bloc and over the Soviet peoples as a necessary response to the East–West conflict, a policy of active negotiation undercuts that rationale. It becomes ever more difficult for the Kremlin to legitimize its oppression. That, in turn, leads to a subtle process through which the satellite states gradually increase their room for maneuver. A renewed Cold War, with a high level of international tension, would make positive peaceful change impossible. Confrontation strengthens a dictatorship. Contact and negotiation can weaken it.

At the other extreme, there are those who believe that through negotiations and agreements the United States and the Soviet Union can overcome their mutual misunderstanding and suspicion and bring about peace. That view is also wrong. We must disabuse ourselves of the notion that the differences between the Soviet Union and the United States stem from a giant misunderstanding and that they can be overcome through a grand compromise. We
do not have differences because of our misundertandings. We have misunderstandings because of our differences. The American–Soviet conflict is rooted in the profoundly different ideologies, interests, and intentions of the two superpowers. We must understand that negotiations can never produce a permanent, perfect peace.

Gorbachev understands that, but the question remains whether Americans do. There are two kinds of peace: pragmatic peace, which means conflict without war, and perfect peace, which means a world without conflict. Gorbachev seeks only the first kind. Too often Western leaders sappily emote about the second. As a Leninist, Gorbachev does not believe in the possibility of perfect peace as long as noncommunist states exist in the world. In my meeting with him, he plainly acknowledged that some differences between the two sides were so deep that they would probably never be settled. For him, the decision to forgo overt military aggression results not from dewy-eyed sentimentality but from a hardheaded calculation that the present balance of power, or correlation of forces as he calls it, makes such a policy unprofitable. He engages in negotiations not to open a new era of perfect peace—which he considers an illusion—but to improve the Soviet military and political position in the world.

That approach is most evident in arms control. If the Soviets are behind numerically, they demand equality. If they are ahead, they demand equal cuts that improve their relative position. If the United States is poised to exploit its superior technology—as with the SDI—they demand that such advances be banned. If the United States is prepared to modernize some of its weapons systems, they demand terms which have the effect of preventing or minimizing those deployments. Meanwhile, new Soviet deployments are nonnegotiable or are allowed under the Soviet terms for an agreement, and Soviet research programs for new technologies, like strategic defense, are not even acknowledged to exist.

This is not to say that we should refuse to negotiate on arms control, but rather that we should sign only agreements that are in our strategic interest. There is a legitimate role for arms control. Without it, the number of U.S.–Soviet nuclear warheads will continue to multiply. Without SALT II, whatever its flaws, the Soviet
Union would have built even more destabilizing weapons systems than it did. Without arms control, there is the danger that the Soviets will sprint ahead in the arms race while the United States jogs along at a slow pace. Given our economic power, we can win an arms race with the Soviets—but only if we race. Given the vagaries of defense budget appropriations in a democracy, whether we will race is always an open question.

In negotiating, if we pursue an unrealistic perfect peace while Moscow seeks to capture concrete advantages, we will simply be making ourselves an easy mark for some of the best geopolitical hustlers in history.

Our approach to negotiating with Moscow must chart a course between these extremes. We need to negotiate, but we must be realistic about the limits of what we can achieve through negotiations. We must base our approach on a firm recognition that the U.S.–Soviet conflict is not a problem but a condition. A problem can be solved; a condition can only be treated. Our struggle with Moscow will not change until the aggressive nature of the Soviet Union changes. If such a transformation ever does occur, it will come about over the course of generations. We must not delude ourselves into thinking that an American President can transform the Kremlin's character by personal charm or by sliding a more attractive set of negotiating points across a conference table. If there is one lesson I have learned over the forty years I have been in the political arena, it is that negotiating with a Mikhail Gorbachev is a lot different from negotiating with a George Meany.

While we cannot negotiate an end to the American–Soviet conflict, we must not underestimate the potential importance of negotiations, both in competing with Moscow and in tamping down the danger that our competition could lead to war. Soviet leaders consider negotiation to be a key tactic in their struggle with the United States. American leaders too often tend to equate superpower agreements with progress toward perfect peace. In negotiations, our purpose too often is just to strike a deal; theirs is to strike a deal that serves their larger strategic purposes. As a rule we should not model our actions on the Kremlin's statecraft, but we must in the years ahead match the Soviet capacity to integrate negotiation into overall strategy.

We must begin by defining the kinds of issues we should negotiate about and the kinds of goals we should set. There are two basic types of U.S–Soviet issues. The first are those in which our interests conflict and therefore cannot be resolved through negotiations. For these, the only realistic purpose of negotiation is to reduce the chance that our differences will erupt into armed conflict. The second are those on which our interests run parallel. In these cases, negotiations can potentially produce agreements that will serve our common interests.

In the first category, the key issues are arms control and the political conflicts, like the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Central America, that could lead to the use of arms. Soviet objectives on these issues are military superiority and geopolitical expansion, and ours are military stability and political self-determination for the peoples of those regions. There is no middle ground—no difference to split—between those propositions. Our differences are simply irreconcilable. With or without negotiations, the Soviets will pursue their goals with their characteristic relentlessness, and we must be sure that we do so as well.