Moscow fears Carter’s choice of top aide

Press, 15 September 1976, Page 20

Moscow fears Carter’s choice of top aide

By

VICTOR ZORZA in Washington

Soviet officials are afraid that if Jimmy Carter is elected President, he may appoint as his Secretary of State the man they consider as one of the most antiSoviet foreign policy experts in the United States. He is Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, of Columbia University, who began advising Mr Carter on foreign policy long before other people were taking Mr Carter’s presidential ambitions seriously. Dr Brzezinski, when told of the Soviet concern, and of the speculation that the Kremlin might try to help President Ford beat Mr Carter, reacted with characteristic vigor. The speculation in the Soviet press that Dr Brzezinski might become Secretary of State had been fueled by a number of articles in American newspapers predicting such an appointment. In the Soviet press the speculation was accompanied by two comments. On the one hand, Dr Brzezinski was said to have "made a career out of militant anti-communism.” On the other hand, the Moscow “New Times” implied, the prospect of office might be causing him to ‘‘modernise his obsolete dogmas.” Dr Brzezinski retorts that the Moscow reference to him as a possible Secretary of State is “stupid,” that it is based on “a complete journalistic invention.” Mr Carter, he insists, gets his advice from a dozen other people “who play as important a role — or more important — than I do.” Indeed, he declined to be interviewed for an article on how a boy who had arrived in Canada from Poland when he was 10 years old, in 1938, and had only gone to study in the United States in the early 1950s, had come to be considered as a possible Secretary of State. On the other hand, he was prepared to discuss at length his views on foreign policy without, refreshingly, asking even once to go off the records, as the members of the Washington foreign policy establishment habitually do. But he did insist that he

was not speaking for Mr Carter. The Russians remain unimpressed, and they claim that Dr Brzezinski wants to keep a low profile precisely because any imputation of a cold war stance through guilt by association might do Mr Carter damage in the election. If Mr Carter could be made to look like a man who might bring the cold war back, while President Ford is represented as the man who would prevent this, this might have a measurable impact on the election. I put it to Dr Brzezinski that one way in which the Kremlin might try to help Mr Ford would be by making to him the concessions which could lead to a spectacular Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement, somewhat in the manner of the Nixon-Kissinger pre-election summ t spectaculars. The Kremlin keeps saying that everything is virtually ready for a S.A.L.T. agreement and it has also proposed to the White House an agreement on limiting arms supplies to the Middle East. which could be presented as a dramatic step towards a Middle East settlement. Mr Khrushchev used to boast that his own moves had helped John F. Kennedy in an election in which a few hundred thousand votes had made all the difference — and this year's election could prove equally close. Dr Brzezinski said that he could not judge what the Kremlin’s calculations were. But, when pressed, he -concluded in statesmanlike fashion that the effect of any Soviet-American agreement would depend entirely on its substance. “I don’t think.” he said, “that one wants to make such a sensitive and critically important issue into a- matter of partisan tactics.” If it was a good agreement, then everyone would welcome it. But that is only one side of the coin. The public, he noted, had become very suspicious of agreements — “especially agreements con-

eluded by Dr Kissinger.” Because of the Soviet conduct in Angola, he said, and the effect of the recent Reagan campaign, and also if the timing, just before the election, looks suspicious, the impact might be negligible. It might, he added, “even be counter-productive.” Nor, to judge from what he says, need the Kremlin be so alarmed about the foreign policy of the United States if Dr Brzezinski were to become Secretary of State — or what is perhaps more likely, if he got the job which Mr Nixon first gave to Dr Kissinger, that of the President’s assistant for national security affairs. Dr Brzezinski believes that the Soviet Union ought to follow a more restrained foreign policy, more compatible with the world as it is today, “a highly complex and interwoven and interdependent reality.” It sounds almost as if Dr Kissinger were talking — and Dr Brzezinski is prepared to concede as much.

How, he was asked, could the Kremlin be made to come round to this view? “There is not really that much disagreement between what I say and others, including Dr Kissinger, have said on this point.” There were two approaches, which should be combined. On the one hand, one should try to obtain the Soviet Union's “constructive involvement in dealing realistically with the new global problems.” But this should be combined “with efforts to eject their power where it is either applied or asserted.”

The Russians seem to be engaged in a debate (to be discussed in a further column! about the person who could become Mr Carter’s “Kissinger,” analysing his past statements, and trying to decide whether they should, perhaps, revise their attitude. The outcome of. that debate in Moscow may well determine what, if anything, the Kremlin will do about the United States election. (Copyright 1976, Victor ZorzaJ