A Sadness the World Feels

How and why U.S.-Soviet relations have sunk to the lowest point in years

There was never much doubt about the verdict, only about the severity of the punishment. The Soviets resolved that question late last week by imposing on Dissident Leader Anatoli Shcharansky a term of 13 years in prison and hard labor camp for treason (see WORLD). President Carter, who had called the trials of Shcharansky and Fellow Dissident Alexander Ginzburg "an attack on every human being who lives in the world who believes in basic human freedom," said the verdict produced a "sadness the whole world feels." In Germany for a summit conference of major industrial democracies, Carter responded to criticism of his campaign for human rights by adding: "Our voices will not be stilled."

With that clash of rival ideas, of rival systems and ways of life, the deteriorating relationship between the world's two superpowers sank to alarming depths. In the U.S., both houses of Congress overwhehnhigly adopted resolutions deploring the trials and the Soviet denial of human rights. Democratic Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson urged, in vain, that Secretary of State Vance should post! pone his trip to Geneva for a SALT conference with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko (see following story), lest the willingness to continue negotiations be interpreted as "the wrong signal at the wrong time." His fellow Senator Daniel Moynihan said that "to send Vance to Geneva is to participate in the butchery now going on in the Soviet Union." A senior White House official declared: "We're in a bit of a pushing match and we'll have to push it out with them."

In some ways the trial of Shcharansky could be seen as a personal affront to Carter, since the President had publicly denied the Soviet charge that Shcharansky was a CIA agent. Certainly the timing of the trial, in the week of the SALT meeting, was a slap in the face for the Administration. But the U.S. moved cautiously in choosing the means to protest (and there were even weekend rumors that it was negotiating some kind of exchange for Shcharansky). When the trial date was announced, the White House ostentatiously canceled trips to the U.S.S.R. by two U.S. delegations. Washington later postponed indefinitely the bilateral consultations on future U.S.-U.S.S.R. space projects.

Other measures being reviewed would hurt more. Carter is being pressed to block the sale to Russia of advanced technology, such as a $144 million plant for making oil-drilling bits that the Soviets badly need to develop their petroleum industry. Tass, the Soviet press agency, could also be prevented from buying a $7 million computerized communications system it wants for coverage of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Such measures may seem rather drastic retaliation for trials that the Soviets regard as quite within their rights. But the trials are only a symptom of a deterioration that has been going on almost from the day Carter took office--and even before. The wary cooperation between the superpowers, which was the keystone of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy and was widely labeled (somewhat to their dismay) detente, reached its peak with the balmy summit meetings of Nixon and Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev in 1972 and 1973. But detente was never a condition totally free of East-West conflicts.

Just as the U.S. has remained suspicious of Soviet intentions and good faith, Brezhnev quite possibly began to feel that Russia was being denied unfairly some of the most important payoffs he had hoped to get from detente. Russia's exports to the

U.S. did not receive the most-favored-nation status enjoyed by a great many countries. Nor did the U.S.S.R. obtain the substantial American credits on which it had counted to finance purchases of Western technology. These benefits were blocked when Congress in 1973 and 1974 linked them to the easing of Jewish emigration from the U.S.S.R., something the Soviets regard as interference in their internal affairs. In the 1976 presidential campaign, moreover, Gerald Ford publicly excised 'detente" from his vocabulary.

When Carter entered the White House, he reinstated the term "detente," and his appointment of the temperate and skillful Vance was welcomed by Moscow. Yet superpower relations soon worsened.

Part of the problem has been a case of bad personal chemistry between the aging, cautious leaders in the Kremlin and the brash, evangelistic and sometimes naive Georgians in the White House. Comfortable with the classically quiet negotiating style of Kissinger, the Russians were offended by Carter's early attempt to conduct a more open diplomacy. They were even angrier when Carter proposed that SALT II effect deep cuts in strategic arsenals; to Moscow, this seemed an attempt to rewrite an agreement that had been negotiated with Ford.

Kremlin pride has apparently been hurt, moreover, by Carter's desire to give such problems as the Middle East and U.S. relations with the developing world as high or even higher priority than U.S.-Soviet ties. Under Kissinger, Moscow Indisputably held first place. To make matters worse, in Soviet eyes, the Administration has recently appeared to be courting Peking in order, as Brezhnev angrily put it, to "play the 'Chinese card' " against Moscow. All of this has perhaps boosted the fortunes of the internal security forces within the Soviet leadership while undermining those factions favoring accommodation with the West. Most State Department analysts have concluded that in the Kremlin "the cops are exercising their authority."

Bilateral relations have also been damaged by the confusion that has characterized too much of the Administration's diplomacy. Last March, for instance, Carter delivered a tough speech at Wake Forest University, drafted primarily by National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, warning the Soviets of U.S. military power. The very next day, one of Vance's top aides telephoned the Soviet ambassador to call his attention to more conciliatory parts of the speech.

Then in Annapolis last month, Carter gave a speech that attempted to be both tough and accommodating at the same time. Moscow, predictably, chose to hear only the contentious half and issued a blast at the U.S. through Pravda. If the difference between the Vance and Brzezinski views were not enough, Moscow must have been astonished-and delighted-when Ambassador Andrew Young chose this of all weeks to venture the ab surd idea that the U.S. had "hundreds, perhaps even thousands of ... political prisoners."

The variety of conflicting signals reaching the Soviets has prompted New Times, a Moscow weekly, to complain about the "contradictory and unpredictable nature of the Washington Administration's behavior," which is as "changeable as the weather." Some U.S. allies make similar complaints. Groused West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt: "There is no consistency [to Carter's policies]. It's constant zigzagging."

Washington, in turn, has considerable reason to be irritated with the Soviets. Despite the Administration's cancellation of the B-l bomber and deferral of a decision on the neutron bomb, moves that Carter hoped might bring some corresponding gesture from Moscow, the Russians have shown little flexibility in SALT or in the talks to control conventional arms in Central Europe. Instead, they have continued expanding their military arsenals at a brisk pace. They also concealed sophisticated bugging equipment inside the U.S. embassy in Moscow and launched a campaign of harassment against American businessmen and journalists.

The Administration charges that a number of Soviet actions have violated the essence of detente, as codified by the 1972 statement of Basic Principles signed by Nixon and Brezhnev. This committed the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to prevent situations "capable of causing a dangerous exacerbation of their relations" and "which would serve to increase international tensions." Moscow has ignored that pledge by its military intervention in Ethiopia, persistent attempts to derail Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's Middle East peace initiative, and efforts to discredit the Anglo-American formula for the peaceful transfer of power to the black majority in southern Africa.

But what seems to upset the Administration most is the chronic Soviet repression of dissent--and what upsets the Soviets most is the White House attacks on that repression. Carter has insisted that his campaign "is addressed not to any particular people or area" and has brought considerable pressure on non-Communist repressive regimes in South Korea, Iran and Chile. But Moscow has seen itself as the main target. Indeed, Carter's most stirring statements and dramatic moves have involved Soviet dissidents. Shortly after taking office, the President sent a letter to Nuclear Physicist Andrei Sakharov, the U.S.S.R.'s most prominent dissident, and pledged to use the U.S.'s "good offices to seek the release of prisoners of conscience." An enraged Brezhnev warned Carter not to "interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union ... A normal development of relations on such a basis is, of course, unthinkable."

It is questionable whether the U.S. should be spending so much of its diplomatic capital in an area over which it can have little, if any, impact. The Soviets are extremely sensitive to matters affecting their totalitarian control over their people. Because Moscow regards dissent as a threat to this total control, if has suppressed dissidents regardless of international opinion and regardless of the Helsinki agreement of 1975 in which it promised to honor basic human rights.

Actually, considering that Russia is a police state, the dissidents have been allowed remarkable opportunities to protest and publicize their grievances. It is naive to believe that mere criticism from abroad can liberalize a society that has been repressive for centuries under a variety of dictatorial regimes. Foreign campaigns on behalf of dissidents may even prompt the Kremlin's leaders to react by cracking down harder. It seems strange that this Soviet attitude has not been better understood by the Carter Administration. Marshall Shulman, now Vance's key adviser on Soviet affairs, implicitly made just this point in 1974 when he told a Senate committee that a U.S. policy advocating immediate improvement of human rights in the U.S.S.R. would pose "conditions which the present Soviet regime cannot but regard as terms of surrender and of self-liquidation."

If the trials, as many experts believe, were intended to be a message to Carter that he cannot link human rights and the arms talks, then the future of U.S.-Soviet ties may well depend on his response. Some Administration officials insist that the trials have dealt Moscow a massive public opinion defeat. Said one of Carter's Georgians, in typical good ole boy style: "The Russians really pissed in their own bucket."

But continued insistence on human rights issues might trigger a resurgence of anti-Soviet feeling in the U.S. and thus hinder progress in areas that truly involve world peace, such as arms control. A senior White House aide admitted last week that SALT might become a victim to an anti-Soviet backlash on Capitol Hill.

Such a development would be unfortunate. The success or failure of SALT should depend on the merits of the points raised in negotiations and not on Washington's crusade for human rights. This is not to say that the U.S. should act meekly in dealing with the Russians, or that it needs to be silent about Soviet persecutions. The Administration has to choose carefully, however, when and where it wants to engage in what the senior White House official called "a pushing match." A tougher line against Soviet intervention in Africa or on the Indian Ocean's rim might serve the nation's interests more pragmatically-and better-than a belligerent stance over an issue that involves Moscow's treatment of its own citizens. In his Annapolis speech, Carter gave the U.S.S.R. the option of "confrontation or cooperation." But that choice is not Moscow's alone.

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