Gromyko Comes Calling

By William R. Doerner

His visit stirs presidential politics and U.S.-Soviet relations

The silvery Aeroflot 11-62M rolled up to a remote corner of New York City's John F. Kennedy Airport last week, its Cyrillic letters designating it an aircraft of the Soviet Union. Out stepped the dour and durable figure of Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko, for 27 years the Soviet Union's top diplomat, who was arriving in New York to attend the 39th annual opening session of the United Nations General Assembly. Gromyko and his entourage of about 30 began walking toward an eleven-car motorcade lined up on the tarmac. Then, spotting a band of reporters and photographers on hand for his touchdown, Gromyko turned from the group of assistants and security men around him and doffed his hat in an unsmiling, enigmatic greeting.

Gromyko's arrival, though it had the trappings of diplomatic ritual, was anything but routine. A little more than a year ago, in the midst of the worldwide outrage over the Soviet Union's shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the Governors of New York and New Jersey ordered the Port Authority to deny landing rights to Gromyko's jetliner at any of its airport facilities, including J.F.K. The Foreign Minister was sufficiently incensed by their action to cancel abruptly and angrily his appearance at the U.N. Not even an offer by Washington to allow his craft to put down at a U.S. military airfield could persuade Gromyko to overlook what he clearly regarded as an officially tolerated affront to Soviet dignity. In subsequent months, he demonstrated, by words and attitude, his own displeasure with the U.S.

This year, by contrast, Gromyko was arriving not only to deliver a major address at the U.N. outlining the Soviet Union's view of world affairs, a matter of growing concern to other nations as the result of seemingly immobilized leadership within the Kremlin. He was also scheduled to meet at the White House on Friday with Ronald Reagan, thus becoming the sole high-level Soviet official with whom the President has held discussions zin more than 3 1/2 years in office. Out of that session, at the very least, will come a fresh reading on the high-stakes state of relations between the superpowers, which have sunk to their lowest point in two decades. The meeting could also show some signs of diplomatic movement, perhaps even a breakthrough agreement of some sort. Finally, it could set the tone for U.S.-Soviet diplomacy in a second Reagan Administration.

Indeed, a remarkable aspect of Gromyko's trip was his willingness to interject himself into domestic electoral politics: in addition to calling on a President actively seeking reelection, he planned to meet the preceding day with Democratic Challenger Walter F. Mondale. Rarely if ever have lines between the nation's fiercely partisan politics at home and its foreign policy become so blended, and possibly blurred, just six weeks before a presidential election.

Conveniently for both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, there is ample precedent for meetings between Presidents and Gromyko in connection with ceremonial visits to the U.N. (There is no precedent, however, for talks between ranking Kremlin officials and campaigning presidential candidates from the opposition party.) The Soviet Foreign Minister has paid calls on six previous occupants of the White House under similar circumstances. Thus Administration officials were able to claim that Reagan's invitation to Gromyko was nothing more than a traditional gesture, though they neglected to point out that Washington has not extended the courtesy since 1978. Reagan expressed cautious optimism that a session with Gromyko might lift some of the "suspicion and hostility" that have lately poisoned U.S.-Soviet relations and "maybe convince him that the U.S. means no harm." He hardly needed to add that the chance to be seen shaking hands with Gromyko in the White House Oval Office could reap rich political dividends for himself. Such statesmanlike vignettes could only provide voters with a comforting counterpoint to his recurrent image as a diplomatic gunslinger.

The Soviets, as usual, remained close-mouthed about their motives for accepting the President's invitation. To many Sovietologists, the explanation that made the most sense could be found in American political polls. With Reagan so far in front, the men in the Kremlin may have decided that their foot dragging in arms negotiations had failed to damage his reelection chances and that it behooved them to set things right before he was assured of a second term. Said one State Department intelligence analyst: "The Soviets would just as soon prepare the ground for resuming arms talks now, rather than waiting until after the election."

Despite the extraordinary timing, there is certainly no lack of issues that are due, and in some cases dangerously overdue, for top-level discussion between the superpowers. Negotiations over nuclear arms control have been at a standstill since late last year, when the Soviets broke off talks involving both strategic and medium-range weapons to protest the arrival of new U.S. missiles in Western Europe (see box). In June, Moscow proposed holding yet another round of discussions, this one aimed at preventing the militarization of outer space. But when the Reagan Administration quickly accepted, on the condition that the talks be broadened to include offensive weapons, Moscow in effect withdrew the invitation. The effort to limit the doomsday arsenals of both sides has been stalled ever since.

A week of diplomacy and political drama was set to begin Sunday, with Reagan playing host at a reception at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for 150 leaders of delegations to the General Assembly session. Among other heads of state who planned to attend were Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte, Argentine President Raul Alfonsin and the Sultan of Brunei. Gromyko planned to lead the Soviet delegation. Though it would be undiplomatic of Reagan and Gromyko to talk business at a social event, they will doubtless begin sizing each other up during small talk.

On Monday, the President was to deliver a major address before the General Assembly, his third appearance at the U.N. Though Reagan planned to touch on a number of world trouble spots, White House aides expected him to refrain from finger pointing and instead express confidence that progress can be achieved through good-faith negotiations. The second half of his speech was to be devoted to U.S.-Soviet relations. Reagan planned to open this section by reasserting his commitment to negotiation rather than confrontation as a means of settling disputes. He was expected to list three short-term U.S. goals in dealing with Moscow: a series of discussions on regional crisis areas, including Afghanistan, Central America and southern Africa; comprehensive arms-control negotiations; and wider agreements on trade, cultural and scientific affairs.

On Wednesday, Gromyko planned to spend much of the day--at least four hours and possibly up to eight--with Secretary of State George Shultz at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. The Americans wanted to raise a wide variety of regional and bilateral issues during this session, including such disagreeable matters as Soviet aid to antigovernment rebels in El Salvador, Moscow's ties to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and the continuing crackdown on freedoms in Poland. Shultz was prepared even to broach the subject of human rights in the Soviet Union, according to a senior White House official, primarily to satisfy various East European constituencies that take note of such frequently hopeless exchanges. Said a U.S. diplomat: "We will have our say, and Gromyko will just have to listen." The specific U.S. objective that Shultz wanted to emphasize most strongly was Soviet agreement on further, regular meetings between the two sides at the ministerial level. These would cover a range of subjects, most important a continuing search for ways to resume arms-control talks.

Gromyko's session with Mondale on Thursday was almost certain to be short on substance and long on exhortations for both sides to resume negotiating. For Mondale even to hint that he was actually dealing with Gromyko on matters about which he and Reagan are known to disagree would cause a political fire storm, throwing the Democratic challenger open to the charge of disloyalty. Mondale was the first to disclaim any such intention. "America has only one President at a time," he said he would tell the Soviet Foreign Minister. "When Mr. Reagan speaks to you on the 28th, he speaks for all Americans." Added David Aaron, Mondale's chief foreign affairs adviser: "He will support the idea of talks, period."

Mondale also intended to ask the Soviet Foreign Minister for his views on major issues, and perhaps to respond to them as a private citizen. But primarily he was determined to use the meeting as a reminder of his experience in East-West affairs, pointing out that as Senator and Vice President he had three discussions with Gromyko. The Soviet Foreign Minister, who in all probability viewed his meeting with Mondale mainly as a courtesy gesture, was unlikely to offer anything not already passed on to Shultz. By mutual consent, no communique describing either the tone or the content of the meeting was planned.

Gromyko gets a chance to speak his mind to the General Assembly on Thursday. The address had originally been set for Tuesday, before he sat down with either Shultz or Reagan. But after his arrival in New York, Gromyko cagily rescheduled to the later date for "technical reasons." That would give him the option to tone down the expected tough line of the speech if he wanted to respond favorably to Reagan's address or to overtures made by Shultz in private. Most analysts predicted that Gromyko would stick to his original text. "He will probably give us a good deal of tough stuff and lay out old positions as new Soviet initiatives," says a senior Kremlinologist in Washington. "But there may well be a subtle line or two indicating whether the Russians are ready to do some real business."

Then, on Friday, Gromyko heads for the main event of the week: his discussion with Reagan at the White House. The President prepared for his first encounter with high-level Soviet officialdom by reviewing thoroughly the numerous proposals made by the U.S. over the past ten months to get arms negotiations back on track, as well as memos from Shultz and former Secretary of State Alexander Haig on their previous conversations with Gromyko. As has been the case throughout his Administration, Reagan received conflicting advice from two ideologically opposed schools of influence around him.

One, grouped within the civilian quarters of the Pentagon, urged Reagan to avoid offering any concessions in his arms-control approach, arguing that no progress at all is preferable to an agreement that might preserve the Soviets' lead in the arms race. The other, centered in the State Department, counseled flexibility if the Soviets should prove willing to open wide-ranging negotiations. Says a top White House aide: "It's the same old story--State versus Defense on the question of whether we should make a proposal to the Soviets."

The specific provisions envisioned by advocates of flexibility vary significantly, but one possible future sequence of tradeoffs might go like this: if the Soviets agreed to resume START, the negotiations aimed at reducing strategic nuclear weapons, the U.S. might consider limitations on antisatellite (ASAT) weapons, particularly those aimed at high-altitude satellites. ASAT is a key Soviet concern because a space race would be extremely costly and American technological superiority might give the U.S. a decisive edge in the competition for military domination of the heavens. However, Washington would not do so until after the testing later this year of a fighter-launched antisatellite weapon. The State Department group hopes that the talks would eventually be expanded to include most other issues on the arms-control agenda, including the suspended negotiations on medium-range weapons (INF) and new strategic defenses, space based and otherwise.

The hard-line faction opposes any new arms-control measures on the ground that military competition is inherent in the superpower relationship, and the U.S. should not be fettered by arms-control agreements as it tries to match or surpass the Soviets. As one hard-liner put it early in Reagan's Administration, "Arms control is bad medicine; it is, ipsofacto, bad." Some of the arms-control opponents urged Reagan to use the meeting with Gromyko as a high-level gripe session to complain about a number of Soviet transgressions, prominently including alleged violations by Moscow of previous arms-control agreements.

The intramural dispute came to a head last week at a meeting of the National Security Planning Group, an informal panel of top advisers that deliberates with the President on major foreign policy and national security questions. After hearing the arguments from both sides, Reagan chose to steer a center course, but one that will leave him with little leeway to make new proposals for arms control. He decided against offering any specifics to the Soviets at this time, which State Department moderates had been advocating as a way of drawing the Kremlin back to the bargaining table. This was in line with Reagan's tendency over the past two years, encouraged by National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, to split the difference between competing factions.

More broadly, Reagan vowed to maintain a posture of maximum flexibility. A key Reagan adviser paraphrased the President as saying: Look, I am ready for a very rich discussion with the other side on arms control. But after this long hiatus, we first have to clear the air. We have to see if they're ready to talk seriously on several problems.

Accordingly, said this adviser, Reagan was eager to talk expansively about the range of issues that the U.S. is prepared to discuss further. His openers: a willingness to negotiate limits on space-based weapons, a declaration that the U.S. has some new ideas about cutbacks in strategic forces, and an offer to work out a new negotiating format if the Soviets want it. But the President ruled out specific quid pro quos for getting talks started again, such as agreeing to a moratorium on testing antisatellite weapons in exchange for a Soviet return to START. That much of the decision pleased the hardliners. Some other elements did not. Reagan turned aside their advice to spend much of the meeting airing anti-Soviet grievances. Moreover, he specifically declined to make public the Administration's list of suspected Soviet arms-control violations. That, said Reagan, would amount only to a gratuitous provocation on the part of the U.S.

The one thing that could conceivably change this fairly cautious approach would be a specific overture of some kind from Gromyko. U.S. officials candidly admitted that they did not have the slightest notion of what, if any, initiatives the Soviets were bringing with them. It is possible that Gromyko could table some specific proposals in his session with Shultz that would cause the U.S. side to regroup hastily. Said a senior State Department official, hoping that this would happen: "Whether it makes sense to talk specifics depends on whether the Soviets are prepared really to re-engage on arms control." But if Reagan holds to his decision to deal mostly in generalities, he is unlikely to elicit much movement from the Soviet side.

Much depends on Gromyko's reaction to any new approaches suggested by Reagan. Longtime observers of the Soviet Foreign Minister have nicknamed him "Grim Grom" for his stony demeanor and negative responses to pleas for Soviet compromise. Says a U.S. diplomat: "He loves to put you on the defensive." At his last meeting with Gromyko, this past January in Stockholm, Shultz found his Soviet counterpart in such profoundly bearish spirits that he decided against bringing up an exploratory arms-talks proposal, which he had been authorized to present only after considerable infighting within the Administration. A display of Grim Grom behavior at the White House would almost certainly strengthen the hand of the Pentagon hard-liners in a second Reagan Administration.

Even a moderately positive signal of Soviet willingness to explore new avenues of negotiation would boost the influence of arms-control moderates. Such a sign would not necessarily or even probably indicate a major turn-around in Soviet attitudes toward the U.S. Indeed, a Western diplomat in Moscow cautioned that "it is probably a mistake to build a universal field theory" around the outcome of this week's meeting, whatever it turns out to be. But an upbeat response would at least indicate that the Soviets have decided to abandon their present policy of icy silence. Said Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt, a leading advocate of a somewhat more flexible U.S. negotiating stance: "I would argue at this stage that the Soviet Union recognizes that it must have a dialogue with the U.S."

A sign that the Soviets grudgingly realize the need for contacts with the U.S. appeared two weeks ago in their domestic press and on the TASS foreign wire. In a historical analogy that would be hard to decipher anywhere outside the Soviet Union, the state media sought to justify Moscow's infamous 1939 nonaggression pact with Hitler as an attempt to avert a world war, and pointedly added that the lessons of that period were pertinent. Only an audience that has heard and read almost daily allusions to Reagan as a power-mad ideologue intent on crushing the Communist system would recognize the editorial as Moscow's way of preparing the Soviet citizenry for news of the Gromyko-Reagan meeting, which has still not been officially announced. Whether this awkward analogy was intended to justify anything beyond the need to meet was not clear, but the context in which it placed the whole affair was hardly cause for encouragement. Nor for that matter was the blizzard of cartoons that continued to appear in Soviet periodicals depicting Reagan in grotesquely bullying poses.

From the beginning, the idea of holding high-level talks with the Soviets owed less to any encouragement from them than to the onset of the U.S. political season.

Reagan's campaign advisers began warning him more than a year ago that his primary weakness in the polls involved foreign policy areas, particularly those pertaining to war and peace. Voter doubts about the President's ability to keep the nation out of military entanglements have persisted throughout the campaign, even as Reagan's popular edge over Mondale has widened in most other respects.

The most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, for example, in which the President recorded an overall lead of 16 points, showed that voters had more confidence in Mondale than in Reagan, by 47% to 41%, as a leader who could keep the U.S. out of war.

"No question," says an Administration official, "on the war-and-peace issue, Reagan was vulnerable."

The President began toning down his anti-Soviet rhetoric in January with a speech from the East Room of the White House in which he said that the U.S. "must and will engage the Soviets in a dialogue as serious and constructive as possible." That was followed by two big setbacks: Shultz's inability in Stockholm to sound out Gromyko on a possible fresh approach to START, and Moscow's scuttling of its own offer to discuss in Vienna the militarization of space. But Shultz was determined to keep his lines of communication open, primarily through Soviet Ambassador to Washington Anatoli Dobrynin and the U.S. envoy to Moscow, Arthur Hartman. Finally, State Department officials hit upon the idea of getting Reagan and Gromyko together by reviving an old custom: extending an invitation to the Soviet Foreign Minister during his visit to the U.N. Reagan enthusiastically approved the plan. Says a senior State Department official: "The really important thing was that this was something Ronald Reagan really wanted to do."

The invitation was passed through normal diplomatic channels in late August and was accepted within a few days. Apart from whatever internal Kremlin politics was involved in the decision to agree to the meeting, Western diplomats in Moscow speculate that the Soviets were in effect acknowledging their responsibility for a diplomatic misfire in proposing, then canceling, the offer of space-weapons talks in Vienna. "If they had really wanted negotiations, they didn't go about it in a way that would lead to negotiations," says a Western diplomat in Moscow. "They really couldn't say no this time." Observes Arnold Horelick, a Rand Corp. expert on the Soviet Union: "The Kremlin leaders are sensitive about being depicted as sulking, hunkered down and petulant. It would have been awkward for the Soviet leadership to turn down such an invitation."

Gromyko's meeting with Mondale, by contrast, was offered by the Soviets, according to the Democrat's aides. Contact with the former Vice President's campaign was made in Washington on Sept. 10 through Barry Carter, a Mondale foreign policy adviser, by a Soviet academic. Over coffee the Soviet, whom Carter had known previously but declines to identify, said that if Mondale would like to have a chat with Gromyko, a meeting could be arranged. The offer was presented to the candidate by Aaron on a campaign flight. Mondale pressed Aaron on whether he thought the Soviet proposal was serious, mulled over the political implications, then made up his mind to pursue it. "I've thought about it for a couple of days and decided this was something I could do that probably no one else could do," Mondale told TIME last week. "I think the Soviets and maybe many others misunderstand our campaigns and our two-party system. I wanted them to know that we want these talks to succeed." Administration officials seemed unperturbed by the prospect of Gromyko sitting down with the political opposition. Said Burt: "I hope Mondale softens him up."

Gromyko's scheduled sessions with the American leaders were very nearly waylaid by a totally unexpected diplomatic incident in the far northern reaches of the remote Bering Sea. There, on Sept. 12, the Frieda K, a 101-ft. supply vessel with five Alaskans on board, accidentally strayed inside Soviet territorial waters and was seized by a Soviet border-patrol boat. The Americans, who were on a routine trip to carry supplies to a seismographic research vessel in the Bering Strait, were taken to the bleak Siberian outpost of Ureliki on Provideniya Bay and confined. Only after the U.S. launched formal protests in Washington and Moscow last week did the Soviets become cooperative in releasing the Americans and their ship. Captain Tabb Thorns and his crew of four were finally put aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Sherman during a prearranged rendezvous in international waters. The episode underscored the propensity of the Soviets to overreact to even the most innocent intrusion into their territory.

Reagan's move toward election-year moderation has influenced not only his attitude toward U.S.-Soviet relations but foreign policy in other areas. In El Salvador the Administration has basked in the success of Duarte's firm governing hand since his election in May.

In Nicaragua, Reagan has carefully muted his rhetorical support for the U.S.-backed contras in their effort to overthrow the Sandinista government, and in June he dispatched Shultz on a surprise trip to Managua in an effort to open negotiations with the Marxist-led regime. Even Mondale's advisers admit that the President has succeeded in lowering the profile of the Central American issue. "He's calmed it down," says Carter. "There are no Army maneuvers in Honduras now."

Reagan has talked even less about, some other areas of foreign policy, notably the Middle East, because he has little to show for U.S. efforts there. The vaunted Reagan peace plan has been rejected by both the Arabs and the Israelis, and the "vital American interests" he once spoke of in Lebanon are a shambles. Last week's car bombing of the U.S. embassy annex in Beirut was a tragic reminder of similar attacks that took the lives of 278 Americans there last year, and the subsequent U.S. withdrawal from Lebanon (see WORLD). It was also stark testimony to the possibility that events beyond U.S. control may yet undermine Reagan's strategy of down-playing foreign policy.

But for the moment, the combination of soft talk and more moderate policies seems to be playing well. "I don't think we will be hurt by foreign policy," concludes a top adviser. "I just don't feel a lot of unrest out there."

Mondale is doing his best to prove otherwise. After first reacting to the latest Beirut car bombing with a statement of sympathy for the victims' families and support for the President, Mondale harshly criticized the Administration for failing to anticipate the attack. The U.S. had received clear-cut threats that terrorists planned to strike at a U.S. installation in Beirut, Mondale said, and it knew from prior experience that a car bomb was the most likely weapon. In addition, he said, some of the security measures recommended by the Long Commission, established in the wake of the Marine barracks bombing to study ways of preventing future attacks, had not been carried out at the Beirut annex. Charged Mondale: "Based on what we have learned over the past 24 hours, the Reagan Administration failed to respond properly to all of these warnings."

Mondale has been making some mid-course adjustments to his foreign policy positions, though aides insist they do not add up to the "move to the right" that some analysts have claimed. "There's a different political context from the primaries," says Carter. "He's saying the same things with a different emphasis." Even so, in an interview with the New York Times last week, Mondale said that as President he would have used force in Grenada "to go in there and protect American lives," just as Reagan did last October. He did not say so at the time, Mondale explained, because he was not sure U.S. lives were at risk; he is now satisfied that Americans on the Caribbean island "were in trouble."

Discussing what he would do if his proposed negotiations with the Sandinistas should fail and Nicaragua continued to interfere in the affairs of its neighbors, Mondale gave a startling answer that kept him and his aides backpedaling furiously for much of the week. The candidate first said he would "continue to interdict" and would apply pressure through European allies and the Contadora countries (Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela), measures that he had previously mentioned.

Then he continued, "And we should try to quarantine Nicaragua if it uses force outside of its borders." A military quarantine is generally considered an act of war, and it is a far more drastic step than any so far advocated by Reagan, making Mondale sound more hawkish than his opponent. Mondale twice amended the answer in later remarks, saying he had meant that a quarantine would be a legitimate response to the establishment of a Soviet or Cuban military base in Nicaragua, and then only as an "option" to be used in consultation with U.S. allies in the region. But the hedges, and his frequent reliance on aides for clarification, only served to undercut his charge that Reagan is "essentially absent" from the formation of U.S. foreign policy.

Mondale has been especially tough on Reagan for his failure to improve relations with the Soviets. He has effectively attacked him as the first President since Eisenhower who has failed to negotiate some measure of arms control, and the first since Hoover who has failed even to meet with top Soviet officials. He has taken the President to task for approving offers in arms-control negotiations that Reagan's own military advisers warn have no chance of Soviet acceptance.

Reagan's earlier failure to meet with Soviet officials will automatically become a muted issue after Gromyko's visit to the White House. The big question is whether Mondale's other charges will as well.

Conceivably, the former Vice President could benefit politically from a failed Reagan-Gromyko meeting, particularly if the President is seen as overdemanding or arrogant. In virtually any other circumstance, however, Mondale has little choice but to offer his support of the U.S. position. Says a Reagan campaign official: "Either Mondale ends up looking like he's being played as a patsy, or he looks like his position is not that different from Reagan's on arms control."

For Reagan, the meeting with Gromyko carries far greater political rewards, though the chance for failure still exists if the two sides find themselves further apart than ever.

Any decrease in U.S.-Soviet tensions achieved as a result of the session would be a campaign lotto prize, one more piece of happy news to include in Reagan's list of reasons for feeling good about America.

The White House is also ready to prevent Reagan from being damaged by a display of recalcitrance on Moscow's part. Should the talks fail, says a White House aide, "the President will have tried his best, and we'll stress that fact. It takes two to make a deal. The people know that." Only if Reagan comes across as the uncooperative negotiator would he be likely to suffer in voter esteem, and his stage manager's role as host of the meeting should enable him to prevent that negative impression.

Politicians speak, alternately with dread and delight, about a campaign's "October surprise," the unexpected element thrown into a race just far enough ahead of Election Day to have an impact.

For a sitting President it generally comes in one of two forms: an overseas crisis beyond his control, or a bold stroke, at home or abroad, at his own initiative. Two months ago, almost no one would have predicted that 1984's October surprise not only would arrive near the end of September, but would show up in the form of an invited diplomatic guest from Moscow.

For Ronald Reagan it could be the crowning piece of his fabled political luck, ensuring another term in the White House. For the nation, provided Reagan uses his luck skillfully, it could mark a new beginning in the urgent task of controlling the runaway nuclear arms race.

--By William R. Doerner. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Johanna McGeary/ Washington and Jack E. White with Mondale

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, Johanna McGeary/Washington, Jack E. White, Mondale