Time for cool U.S. talking on the hot line

Press, 23 April 1980, Page 20

Time for cool U.S. talking on the hot line

Nearly half those questioned in a 8.8. C. poll in Britain no longer expect a nuclear war to be prevented. Whatever the figures mean—and some people adopt a selfconscious cynicism when taxed with such barely ponderable questions as the future of the world—the mood of deep pessimism feeds through- into public discussion and Government policy. The unthinkable becomes thinkable, and, once thought, begins to be acted upon. Rhetoric grows louder and more shrill. A cold douche is needed to curb the spread of this dangerous condition. For 30 years world war had not been considered a serious possibility. Even at those altitudes where only nuclear strategists can breathe, the subject matter has not been an exchange of missiles, but only the theory behind the preparation for such an exchange, which is an intellectual discipline appealing to analytical minds. Certainly the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 was alarming, but not because it might end in war. It was alarming because it foreshadowed how war could happen if crisis management techniques were not refined and perfected. In fact these techniques have not been neglected. But they rely on rational behaviour from the parties to a crisis. The White House and the Kremlin would assess the possibilities open to them and recognise th<..t there were many ways of meeting them short of nuclear war.

But crisis management does assume rational behaviour. Insert a totally random element like the Ayotollah, pre-

siding over a country which could suddenly find itself at war with a neighbour or disintegrating into its ethnic components, and nothing in the White House or Kremlin manuals says what step to take next. That is the peril of Iran.

For example, the Iraqis, rightly fearing that Khomeiny's Shi’ite fervour might infect their own Shia majority, decide to invade the Iranian oil province of Khuzistan. The Iranians are long on holy wars, short on means of fighting them. The Iraqis advance. The Kurds and Baluchis see their chance to end Persian domination. Some American hostages are killed in the student outrage which, of course, blames the C.I.A. for the entire sequence of events. What chance is there of Russian and American non-intervention in the resulting chaos? At present very little. Territorial notions apart, the Russians will need their natural gas supplies across the Iranian border next winter. The Americans need their Gulf oil now.

Crisis management would require Russia and America to agree, before any further Iraqi troop movements or less foreseeable changes in the region, that they both stay out of Iran — whether the pipeline is blown up or the hostages harmed. However grave the results for both countries of such an episode in the Gulf they do not justify the first step on the ladder that leads to nuclear war. If the hot line is still working it should be used to set up such an agreement now.

So the first thing that:

needs to happen is to detach the crisis in Teheran from the parallel but not comparable crisis over Afghanistan. One is a Third world upheaval, and more of the kind can be expected. It impinges only indirectly on Soviet-Western relations. The other is a bigger challenge to the East-West order, but not a challenge of unmanageable magnitude. The Russians acted provocatively in Afghanistan, but not insanely. They did not subvert a Western ally or grab the mineral wealth of a neutral. They clamped down on a wayward client, which is both reprehensible in theory and ghastly in the way it has been done, but not totally of a different order from big power behaviour in the past. Had the United States not been so impotent to rescue its Teheran hostages its reaction to Afghanistan might have been steadier. There would still have been demands for an Olympic boycott, but they would have been orchestrated in a professional manner, not fired into the air like grapeshot. • Afghanistan demanded close probing of Russia’s further intentions, if any, once the Afghans were subdued. There has been none of that.

It is one thing to express horror — a legitimate response for a democratic government — and another to scrutinise meaning. Earthquakes are all alarming, but it is unscientific to treat a nasty Force 5 like a calamitous Force 10. If the Russians had thought of Afghanistan as Force 10 there would have been tremors elsewhere — perhaps in seismically sensitive Berlin. There have been no such tremors.

■ It strikes a defiant posture to say that the world can never be the same after Afghanistan, but unless the world is in fact kept much the same it can only go from bad to worse. S.A.L.T., Helsinki, and other areas of mutually beneficial negotiation, should not therefore be abandoned. N.A.T.0., in rearming, should not cease to emphasise to the present and incoming Russian leadership that it wants to drop the programme just as soon as it feels safe in doing so. An end to the Iranian crisis, without intervention from either side, would provide conditions in which East and West could resume their much needed dialogue. In the end Mr Carter has had to do more than wait

for Iranian sanity to return. It was the best policy he had. A sane Bani-Sadr had been elected by a sane electorate and in time would probably have found a sane solution. But five months of waiting had ended in Qom’s derisive veto.

Whatever sport the Ayatollah may make of American sanctions they cannot wholly fail to impress those Iranians who want a governable country once more, and who realise what contempt the embassy students are bringing to the name of Iran.

Would it help if America’s allies strengthened that impression by sanctions of their own? Or would such sanctions simply solidify Iranians behind the students and diminish the prospect of the hostages getting out alive?

So far American requests for European help have met polite reserve. They deserve more. It is absurd to join in the ill-prepared and so far unproductive attempt to destroy the Moscow Olympics, yet refuse to bring pressure to bear where it might have an important effect. The risk of giving further support to the students is outweighed by the importance of presenting a united front. The Ayatollah must be assumed impervious to argument, but in the power struggle which is clearly going on in Teheran there are important people who are not.

Economic sanctions would not be crippling, because although the developed countries can, for the time being, do without Iranian oil there would be no shortage of back-door customers. (There

were plenty for Rhodesian chrome.) Financial sanctions would cut both ways: investments in Iran would be confiscated as well as Iranian assets frozen overseas. But Iran would experience a degree of inconvenience all for the sake of persisting in a grossly illlegal and inhumanitarian act.

There are, however, more important reasons for supporting the United States. Mr Carter may be right or wrong in what he is doing, but even if he is wrong it is by a slight and pardonable margin of judgment. Such a small margin does not justify breaking that Western solidarity which ought to be apparent at such times. The United States has suffered a serious wound since the hostages were captured. It ought to be able to rely on its allies and if it cannot it may well ask what the alliance is for.

Moscow will be keenly interested in the Western response to Mr Carter’s moves. If that response is not united against a miserable band of student militants holding diplomats to ransom in . defiance of international law, what is it likely to.be if the Russians launch one of their foreign expeditions, this time farther afield?

This (not the Olympics) could be a critical moment for the Kremlin’s assessment of Western cohesion. Iran, we have argued, is not primarily an East-West issue. But it could quickly turn into one if, at a minor test of resolve, the European nations back out apologetically, saying it is nothing to do with them.

The United States will need the support of its allies, and a tacit understanding with the Soviet Union, to avoid the risk of nuclear war if other countries intervene in the chaos in Iran. That is the assessment of the “Guardian,” London, in an editorial reprinted here: