Diplomatic Dissonances

Top officials disagree on how to deal with the Kremlin

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, 61, and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, 50,* came into office good friends and close colleagues--and they were determined to remain so. They have stepped in to squelch attempts by their underlings to pick fights between the State Department and the National Security Council. The two men have roughly equal access to the President: Brzezinski briefs him early every morning, while Vance's last official act of the day is usually to prepare a confidential memo on late developments for Carter's bedtime reading. But Vance and Brzezinski have had their differences on matters of policy, notably on the question of how the U.S. should deal with the Soviet Union. They still do differ, reports TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott, perhaps now more than ever.

Vance is worried that detente between Moscow and Washington has been strained to the breaking point. He has warned President Carter that the dialogue between the superpowers is deteriorating into mutual recriminations. What the relationship needs now, Vance believes, is more cool-headed diplomacy and less scolding rhetoric. Brzezinski, by contrast, favors a more competitive approach. He feels that the Soviets are acting and talking tough and that Washington should respond in kind.

The difference of opinion is not surprising, given the two men's personalities and backgrounds. Vance is a low-key lawyer who has always been most comfortable--and most effective--working quietly behind the scenes. The Polish-born Brzezinski was a pyrotechnic lecturer at Harvard and Columbia and is still a sharp-tongued debater.

But their disagreement concerns the substance as well as the tone of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union, particularly with regard to two specific issues:

P: SALT: Vance believes that the most urgent priority in American foreign policy is to conclude a new strategic arms limitation treaty with Russia, to slow down the arms race and improve U.S. security. He is anxious not to let the growing domestic controversy over SALT influence the Administration's position in the negotiations. He believes that U.S. public statements on SALT should not foreclose further compromises on both sides. Brzezinski, on the other hand, has been saying that the U.S. has given all it can, and that further movement is up to the Russians. While Brzezinski supports the prospective SALT treaty, he has warned the Russians that the treaty could become a casualty of anti-Soviet domestic political sentiment.

P: China: Vance and Brzezinski are both committed to the eventual normalization of relations between the U.S. and China, but they disagree over how that card should be played. Vance is sensitive to Soviet paranoia about Sino-American "encirclement" and not eager to exacerbate the Kremlin's fears at this time. Brzezinski sees the Peking connection as an opportunity to keep the Russians off balance. Partly for this reason, he is hoping to visit Peking later this year.

Somewhat to the embarrassment of both men, the Vance-Brzezinski disagreement has broken into the open. On SALT, the Horn of Africa, and the European security conference in Belgrade, the statements coming out of the National Security Council have been so much tougher than those from the State Department that Brzezinski and Vance seem almost to be contradicting each other.

At Wake Forest University last month, in a speech that Brzezinski helped write, Carter criticized Soviet military policies and threatened to order a new U.S. defense buildup. Tass, the official Soviet news agency, denounced the speech as missile-rattling. Last week some Vance aides were urging the Secretary to "balance" Carter's hard-line Wake Forest speech with an appeal for arms control and a reaffirmation of detente. While on the trip to Latin America and Africa with the President, Vance reviewed the draft of an arms-control speech he may deliver to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 10. Vance plans to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Moscow at the end of April to try to break the SALT deadlock.

Vance's right-hand Kremlinologist, Marshall Shulman, is a leading proponent of what another high State Department official describes as a "more carefully calibrated and modulated Soviet policy than Brzezinski seems to be advocating these days." Shulman, 61, is no stranger to collegial debates with Brzezinski. The two men have known each other for 25 years. They taught together at Harvard and Columbia, were both directors of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, and consult with each other as often as a dozen times a week.

"Zbig has a probing mind and a gift for synthesis with a touch of provocation that enlivens any discussion," says Shulman. "There have sometimes been differences of emphasis between us but never anything ad hominem. Besides, I think it's a good and healthy thing for the Administration to have within it some give and take around a range of views."

An honest disagreement between the Secretary of State and the National Security Adviser would indeed be healthy if it guaranteed a wide array of options from which a decisive President could choose. But Carter has to date failed to find his own voice. Only last week, in a lengthy critique of U.S. policy in Pravda, the Kremlin's chief America-watcher, Georgi Arbatov, concluded: "Washington has entered a period of vacillation." That is a view that neither Vance nor Brzezinski wants to encourage.

*Both men last week celebrated their birthdays within a day of each other while on a tour of Latin America and Africa with President Carter.

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