Time for renewed dialogue

Press, 26 November 1982, Page 17

Time for renewed dialogue

By

MARK FRANKLAND,

the London

“Observer” specialist on Communist affairs

The death of a Russian leader — be he tsar or great commissar — is an awesome event. Leonid Brezhnev may have been the closest thing to a consensus ruler has ever had but his death creates a new moment in Soviet affairs which can be turned to good or bad purposes. This places a heavy burden of responsibility on both the new Soviet leaders and statesmen in the West. The present tough stance of the United States, elaborated by the Reagan Administration but taking shape even while Jimmy Carter was President, has been justified by fears of the expansion of Soviet power. President Reagan’s tactics are to change the behaviour of the Soviet Union by applying painful pressure: forcing the Russians into an expensive arms race if they will not accept American arms control proposals; exacerbating wherever possible the problems of the Soviet economy and empire. There were no signs that these tactics were working while Brezhnev was alive. Most watchers of the Soviet scene — apart from those crusaders around the White House — never thought it would. But the American President may now be

tempted by the hope that a Soviet Union • caught in the unpredictable currents of a Kremlin succession may be more vulnerable to such pressure.

This would be a gross miscalculation. In recent weeks Brezhnev and some of his most senior colleagues in the Politburo spoke with unusual sharpness of the Soviet Union’s determination to match American toughness with its own brand. Perhaps this was connected with an apprehension that Brezhnev’s poor health was bn the point of collapse and a desire to show Soviet’policy to be rock hard at a time of crisis.

There is every reason to suppose the post-Brezhnev politburo will continue in this spirit if it deems it necessary. No one man or group ambitious to come out on top can afford to seem even fractionally soft at a moment like this.

President Reagan’s policies have had the effect of strengthening the hand of the generals and their sympathisers in Kremlin counsels. Would-be successors dare not cross them — yet. Brezhnev's death does, however, present the West with an opportunity of a different kind. It springs from both the achievements

and failures of the Brezhnev era. The recent failures of Soviet farming and the overall slowdown of the Soviet economy have made us 1 forget that Brezhnev until recently presided over a period of impressive development.

The Soviet consumer is much better served than when Khrushchev was overthrown in 1964. Massive investment in Soviet farming has produced results: what it has not been able to achieve is truly efficient farming that can withstand bad weather.

Brezhnev also presided over the emergence of the Soviet Union as a military superpower equal to the United States and an unprecedented expansion of its global reach.

It was these Soviet achievements, most dramatically the creation of a Soviet “minibloc” in Africa after revolutions in Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique, that turnned detente into the new dirty word of American politics. More recently all these Soviet achievements have

been shown to be more < limited than alarmists in the West supposed. Economic growth seems to demand a reorganisation of the economy that must have political side-effects in a highly centralised State. The Russians are also learning — in Cuba, in Vietnam, and in Afghanistan — the cost of supporting clients; while in Africa they have discovered that even selfstyled Marxist-Leninist regimes do not wish to become controlled members of the Soviet bloc like Bulgaria or Czechoslovakia.

■ Apart from its military strength the Soviet Union has not yet acquired either the economic or cultural allure that are needed to establish an easy hegemony over its clients. The near collapse of communism in Poland has just forced this unpleasant truth on the Soviet leadership. The appearance of immu--1 tability, which was cultivated in Brezhnev’s last years, was deceptive, for the Soviet establishment has been pond-

ering these problems. The signs are that much thought has already been given by specialists to questions of economic reform.

Although Soviet pronouncements on foreign policy do not admit the possibility of Soviet error, it would be odd if some Russians are not rethinking how to achieve a stable strategic relationship with the West now that their old approach to detente has failed. It is here that the West’s chances lie. An arms race and "East-West confrontation will riot allow the Russians the time and sense of security needed for domestic changes of the scope that Russians, privately, talk of as essential. It should be the task of the West European governments to argue the point in Washington. The counter-argument — that you should press your opponent when he is in trouble — is specious. It is attractive on'y to those who believe that it is the West’s mission to change the Soviet system rather than contain it, and who. do not understand that this is a recipe only for counter-pressure from Moscow.

Engaging ■ the Soviet interest in East-West dialogue

will at first be largely a matter of atmospherics, of American speeches that treat Russia as the puzzling and uncomfortable great power it has long been and not as an opponent to be pushed to the wall This does not mean that only the West, above all America, should try to use this new moment in Soviet history to work towards a more secure world. The Russians themselves are at a crossroads both in the direction of their internal affairs and how they live with the rest of the world. Their old version of detente in which they saw themselves replacing the Americans as the historicallyordained new world leaders, while America sat by and watched, was and is a delusion.

The world belongs to neither, and it is precisely to avoid catastrophe arising from its uncontrollable turbulence and surprises that the Soviet and American alliances must have a working relationship. But the Russians will not a’drriit the need to think again about their side of the East-West bargain if all they hear from the United States is the rhetoric of undeclared warfare. Copyright — London Observer Service.