The Inscrutable Adversary

By Hugh Sidey

The debate in the White House always seems to come around to the same question: Can the Soviets' belligerence be explained by the fact that they feel threatened by the U.S.? Sometimes President Reagan just sits and absorbs the negative litany from diplomats and travelers who still maintain thin strands of unofficial contacts. Sometimes he shows mild irritation and gives his head a shake of disbelief while answering his own question: "I keep reading that the Soviets think we are threatening their security." Reagan has rejected that notion, and so has his Secretary of State, George Shultz.

The effort to figure out the minds of the men in Moscow preoccupies the White House. Reagan has been told there is growing evidence that power still is fragmented in the Politburo and the only proposals on which its members can agree are negative actions in the style of the cold war, an era understood and perhaps even relished by oldtimers like Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov. Any challenge to Soviet interests now, whether deploying new NATO missiles or calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire," produces intense response from the uncertain rulers, ranging from the Olympic pull-out to last week's announcement that more Soviet missiles would be placed in East Germany. "Something we do not understand fully is going on in the Kremlin," says a White House adviser. "For the first time they may really be without a leader."

Soviet authorities at virtually every level will not lunch with American friends if any U.S. Government official is present. Talks on upgrading the Washington-Moscow hotline, which for more than 20 years has been one thing both superpowers agreed on, have chilled to a discussion of the hardware.

The U.S. got word a short while back that Yelena Bonner, ailing wife of the dissident Andrei Sakharov, might seek refuge in the U.S. embassy. American officials alerted the Soviets and offered suggestions aimed at minimizing the problem. The Soviets, enraged, accused the U.S. of plotting with the Sakharovs. Shultz's efforts to open some kind of dialogue with Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin, who has been considered the Soviet who best understood American ways, have been fruitless.

Americans in the Dartmouth Group, a collection of experts on U.S.-Soviet relations, were warned before their March meeting that the Soviets would back out if the impression got around that the meeting was in any way official.

Two letters that Reagan sent--one urging resumption of the arms talks and the other giving his personal pledge assuring athletes' protection at the Los Angeles Olympics--were rudely rejected. Efforts at lower levels to revive cultural accords have also been rebuffed. "We may have to face up to the fact that for now the Soviets may not be capable of any other kind of action," sighs one Reagan aide. Not, at least, in the face of Reagan's undiminished distaste for the Soviet Union, which, ingenuously or not, is the Soviets' stated reason for their funk.

Reagan has grown quieter in public about the Soviet problem, but privately he is unchanged. He wants to improve relations, but on his terms. He is more or less resigned to little or no progress this election year. "But he has not got mad and said, 'To hell with it,' " claims one adviser.

Nor has he yet designed any political strategy on the issue for the coming campaign. That may take care of itself. The Democrats claim that Reagan, almost alone, is responsible for the current problem. Most Americans apparently disagree. A recent poll taken for the Committee on the Present Danger showed that two-thirds of the populace are disillusioned over the Soviets' actions and harbor a deep suspicion that they are once again on the prowl in the world.

The Soviets now find themselves, by accident or design, on the American political stage, illuminated by all the campaign spotlights and overheated exhortations, up for scrutiny and cold-eyed assessment as they have not been since their invasion of Afghanistan. All of which may be to Reagan's advantage. The Soviets have a terrible record in American politics.