Gorbachev has them all guessing

Press, 12 May 1987, Page 17

Gorbachev has them all guessing

PATRICK BROGAN

writes from Washington that the great foreign policy

question these days is what to make of the Soviet leader.

What is Mikhail Gorbachev up to? What are his chances of succeeding? What does it mean for the West? Is there anything the West can do to promote desirable change in the Soviet Union?

They may be the key questions of - the day. Henry Kissinger, foreign affairs adviser to President Nixon, suggests that one of the great missed opportunities occured when Stalin died in 1953. His sucessors were confronted with horrendous domestic problems, and the whole course of the “cold war” might have changed if they had been offered an olive branch by the West

This was the course recommended by Winston Churchill, in his last period as Prime Minister, but it was turned down flat by President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. They insisted on pursuing a policy of continuous confrontation.

Dr Kissinger speculates that a similar opportunity may be opening up now. The Soviet Union was in the grip of stodgy conservatism for nearly 25 years, from the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The Soviet Government decided then to take no risks, but to build up its armed forces to surpass America’s, and to seize whatever political opportunities came along. This led to a stupendous increase in military power, adventures in Africa and Afghanistan, Soviet presence in Central America and South-East Asia, and a steady erosion of the economic base that sustained it all.

Standards of living have not improved in 20 years, the overseas adventures have brought huge costs but no perceptible advantage, and the mili-

tary build-up at last provoked the Americans to begin an equally extravagant build-up of their own.

This was the situation Gorbachev inherited two years ago and that he is trying vigorously to change. So what to make of it? There is every shade of opinion.

• On the extremes, peaceniks in the United States and in Europe proclaim that the millenium has arrived and want instantly to dismantle all Western nuclear defences. • Off in the other direction, old-fashioned ideologues have constructed their world-picture around the proposition that all evil In the world is co-ordinated from Moscow, and “detente” is the greatest snare facing the world today. They cannot bear any suggestion that things might be otherwise.

There is no consensus about Gorbachev’s position. The most pessimistic view, which filters out of the Soviet Union itself, is

that he is a genuine reformer without a coherent policy for reform. The Czechs in 1968, the Hungarians, the Chinese under Deng, knew exactly what they were up

to. The pessimists say that Gorbachev and his supporters have no programme beyond attacking alcoholism, inefficiency, and corruption, and greatly reducing political censorship. The more extreme pessimists push a step further, and say that social and political tensions at home may lead to adventurism abroad — and that the Gorbachev generation is much less cautious than their predecessors.

The optimists turn that argument on its head. They say the social and economic difficulties of the Soviet Union are so dire that Gorbachev will be bound to try. radical reform. There is no alternative. Therefore, the West’s best interest is to give him a foreign policy success, sign a limited arms control agreement, and reinforce his domestic position.

Kissinger’s view is that there is a simple way to measure whether Gorbachev is a real reformer who is in control of his government If the Soviet Union withdraws from Afghanistan, then the West can do business with him.

It is not just an academic debate. The United States and the Soviet Union are on the verge of an agreement to eliminate all medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe. Beyond that there is at least the possibility of an agreement to reduce the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles by half. Gorbachev has now accepted the Reagan proposal to eliminate all medium range missiles in Europe (the zero option) — to

the dismay of the N.A.T.O. high command and a number of European politicians. The man who will finally decide which way to go is Ronald Reagan, who has his own domestic reasons for needing a foreign policy success. No-one knows what he will finally decide — but there is at least the possibility he will seize the opportunity that Eisenhower refused.

Copyright — London Observer Service. ■