Scoop Jackson: Meanwhile, Back in Peking . . .

The Kremlin banquet was over, the plates removed, and in the spirit of good fellowship, Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev rose to toast President Nixon. Then the Soviet leader launched a few intercontinental missives at the critics of detente. "Our American guests," he declared, "know better than we about those who oppose international detente, who favor whipping up the arms race and returning to the methods and procedures of the cold war." Everyone at the table knew whom Brezhnev was aiming at: Washington Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, 62, the blunt, stubborn, increasingly powerful leader of the U.S. opposition to detente--and a hard runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976.

Jackson certainly will not be able to stop the momentum for detente, but he has raised enough obstacles to upset the White House and outrage the Kremlin. The Senator dismissed the Moscow summit as being more "cosmetic" than substantial and suggested that the President would have been wiser to stay home and tend to Watergate. Last week he also tangled bitterly with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, charging that after the SALT I arms limitation agreement in 1972, Kissinger made secret concessions to the Russians--an accusation that the Secretary fervently denied. Then, hoping to steal some of the headlines from Nixon in Moscow, Jackson took off for his own mini-summit in Peking "to learn everything I can of the Chinese view of the world."

The trip may broaden Jackson's appeal as a presidential aspirant who could deal with other world powers by showing that he is not the implacable, oldfashioned, gut-reacting foe of Communism that his critics often depict. During his week of talks, Jackson even plans to ask the Chinese leaders if they think that they should be sitting in on the U.S.-Soviet SALT discussions.

Is Jackson more trusting of the Chinese than the Soviets? Not necessarily, but, as he explains: "The Chinese are not a superpower in the strict nuclear sense, so my approach to them at this juncture in our relationship obviously involves different issues than it does with the Soviet Union."

While insisting that he is not against detente per se, Jackson contends that some of the deals the Administration is working out with the Soviets are dangerously and unnecessarily one-sided in favor of Moscow. In their eagerness to ease world tension, argues Jackson, Nixon and Kissinger are willing to give the Russians much-needed technical aid and expanded trade without seizing the chance to demand even more arms reductions. Says Jackson: "The only real charge against me is that I believe in driving a hard bargain."

By insisting on hard bargaining, Jackson, more than any other potential Democratic candidate, has staked out a foreign policy position that is different from Nixon's. The prime example of the Senator's strength is known, appropriately, as the Jackson amendment. Co-sponsored by no fewer than 77 Senators and 287 members of the House, the amendment has stymied the Administration's proposal that would reduce high tariffs on imports of such Soviet goods as machinery, cameras, pottery and vodka. Jackson's proposal insists that as part of the trade deal, the Kremlin liberalize its restrictions on emigration. That change would benefit Jews who want to leave Russia.

Nixon and Kissinger have argued, with justification, that the amendment would interfere in the internal affairs of another country in a manner that Americans would find intolerable if applied to the U.S. But Jackson has stuck to his position, encouraged by the fact that the Soviets did ease their emigration restrictions after he proposed his idea in 1972. "The Russians respect firmness, fairness and toughness," says Jackson. "They hate mush. Three days after I introduced my resolution, they started moving people out." Admitted Kissinger last week: "We are prepared to grant that his pressures have had an influence."

Before Nixon left for Moscow, Jackson and a couple of other Senators negotiated with Kissinger about the kind of emigration policy that the Senators would find acceptable. Jackson is pressing for a commitment by the Soviets to increase greatly the number of Jews allowed to leave the country--about 35,000 departed in 1973--and an end to the harassment of those who want to go. If the Soviets make a proposal that he finds satisfactory, Jackson appears willing to give the go-ahead for tariff and credit concessions to the Soviets.

Jackson attributes much of his sympathy for the plight of minorities to the fact that his own parents were immigrants (from Norway). In 1945, while a third-term Congressman, he was deeply moved by a visit to Buchenwald. He has always been a firm supporter of Israel. As the presidential race heats up next year, he will count heavily on Jewish donors to finance his campaign.

With his usual consistency, Jackson has been a hawk on many other issues. He has been deeply suspicious of the Soviets since World War II; he was an early and ardent backer of U.S. intervention in Viet Nam; and he has supported the Pentagon's requests for new weaponry, most recently the B-1 bomber and the Trident submarine. In 1968 Nixon asked Democrat Jackson to become his Secretary of Defense. He refused.

Some colleagues complain that Jackson these days wields power too ruthlessly. He can be intolerant of opposing ideas, and his arrogance some times shows. Says a Republican member of the Interior Committee: "Scoop runs that committee like it is his personal kingdom. I've seen him come into a meeting when he was the only Democrat present and defeat a Republican motion simply by voting what he said were the proxies of all the other Democrats. When we asked him to show us the proxies, he refused."

Jackson's recent clash with Kissinger began when Pentagon officials went to Jackson and the press with a complaint. Their charge: Kissinger had not told Congress about some supplemental clarifications he made with the Soviets after the SALT I treaty was signed. The main worry was that the supplemental agreements that Kissinger had reached with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin could be interpreted to allow the Soviets to build up their force of submarine missiles not to 950, as announced after SALT I, but to 1,020.

Immediately Jackson called Kissinger to testify in closed session before his Senate Arms Services Subcommittee. The room crackled with acrimony. Kissinger objected to being placed under oath and felt he was being treated rudely by Jackson. At a press conference later, Kissinger made a convincing case that nothing had been agreed upon with the Soviets that was out of line with the basic treaty. But Jackson claimed that the real issue was Kissinger's penchant for handling U.S. foreign policy as he saw fit, ignoring the bureaucracy and failing to get the approval of Congress.

In criticizing detente, Jackson faces the problem of what to substitute for the Administration's policy. The Nixon-Kissinger strategy is to take calculated risks with the hope of building a sense of trust and cooperation based on mutual interest between East and West. Jackson seems to have no patience for slow building and a more uncompromising definition of American interest. "If there is to be true detente," he says, "there must be a movement of people and ideas across international frontiers--not just cargo. When I see an arms control agreement that calls not for arms control but for disarmament on both sides, then I'll know there's been a change for the better."

Few would quarrel with Jackson's goals. But by taking his tough approach toward negotiations with the Soviets, he seems willing to risk reviving the cold war rather than trying to proceed step by step toward significant detente.

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