By Emily MacFarquhar with Peter Ross Range, Kenneth T. Walsh and Louise Lief
The third Reagan-Gorbachev summit could be historic if the two leaders decide that the way to a safer world lies in obeying arms-control agreements as well as signing their names to them
An encounter between superpower superstars is bound to let off sparks and dazzle. As Washington readied itself for the Mikhail Gorbachev roadshow -- its first by a Soviet party boss in 15 years -- the challenge for summit impresarios was to keep prospects bright but not blinding.
As senior U.S. officials told it, the five working sessions planned for Ronald Reagan and the Soviet General Secretary between December 8 and 10 were simply to build on preordained success; even a follow-up meeting in Moscow next spring was held to be "just about a sure thing." Still, it will hardly be a reunion of old friends; it is, in the words of one White House aide, "a summit between old enemies."
The bitter aftertaste of the previous summit at Reykjavik -- when an underprepared American President confronted an unexpectedly ambitious Soviet leader -- sobers American summit planners, although history has been rewritten to portray the October, 1986, weekend as a retrospective triumph. The crash drafting in Iceland did indeed lay the groundwork for the outcome of this summit: The treaty to eliminate intermediate-range missiles (INF) that the two leaders are to sign under crystal chandeliers in the White House on December 8, and the successor treaty to have long-range strategic missiles (START), which may be ready for another signing party next spring. The U.S. has eased the way by softening its demands that the Soviets reconfigure as well as cut their strategic forces.
Who's the great Communicator?
Every effort has been made to prevent a Reykajavik II. But the President's ramblings in a televised chat with four anchormen last week -- including a renewed defense of his arms sales to Iran -- were less than reassuring, compared with the vigorous footwork of his Soviet counterpart in an hour-long dance around Tom Brokaw of NBC two days earlier. In that presummit week, Reagan endured two briefings by his Secretary of State and two by National Security Council officials, along with cross-country forays to proclaim that his Strategic Defense Initiative has not become "a bargaining chip."
Gorbachev -- an emerging U.S. media star, according to the polls -- put down his own chips on NBC, confirming, to White House delight, that the Soviets are working on their own version of Star Wars. The Soviet leader suggested that the whole subject of space defenses can be bypassed, provided Reagan signs up for a strict reading of the Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty (ABM) for a fixed period. It was on this point that Reykjavik hit the rocks.
Bedfellows on SDI
The gap between Americans and Soviets on SDI has since narrowed and is now precisely the same as the distance between the White House and the Capitol, where congressional leaders have used their budget power to mandate strict adherence to ABM, strictly interpreted, for another year. The administration now admits that this hotly fought move has proved a gift to summit strategists. "It gave us time to see if we could negotiate a deal with the Soviets," declared a senior official. "We believe the broad interpretation is the correct one, but we don't need it yet." Postponing the battle over SDI now looks like the chosen White House stategy.
Secretary of State George Shultz has been preaching a mutual need for predictability -- precisely the same buzz-word the Carter administration invoked, in vain, to sell Salt II. This time it is a pre-emptive defense of ABM against conservatives who want to abandon it altogether. The administration also seemed to be setting up a fallback option: Call it a fudge. However, arms experts, from Geneva negotiator Max Kampelman to Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, are saying that agreeing to disagree on SDI would be the worst, and probably most dangerous, of all worlds (see page 30).
Both sides seem determined to stop SDI from scuttling a second summit. But it may yet block at START agreement, which anyway throws up huge verification hurdles. While congratulating itself on extracting rigorous verification hurdles. While congratulating itself an extracting rigorous verification measures for INF, the Reagan administration issued a reminder of Soviet perfidy in the form of a list of violations of previous arms treaties, including ABM. This mixed message was at once a sop for the right wing, a sign of interagency struggle and an attempt to have it all ways.
Even so, Reagan remains under heavy assault from the conservative right inside and outside Congress. The President, said conservative activist Howard Phillips last week, has become a "useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda." Still, the verification clauses in the INF treaty are expected to muzzle the guns of most potential opponents, though only George Bush among the six GOP presidential hopefuls favors the deal. Reagan's aides think they have the necessary 67 Senate votes for ratification but are concerned about senators attaching reservations, some of which could require renegotiation. Among those said to be contemplating such "killer" amendments are the majority and minority leaders.
For all the attempts to keep this summit on a well-oiled track, it is in the nature of meetings between the strong-willed and powerful that the unexpected can happen. Arms negotiator Kampelman admitted that the U.S. hadn't "the slightest indication of what they will be coming with" on arms control. Two near surprises anticipated from Gorbachev are a unilateral cut in conventional arms in Europe, where the Warsaw Pact has a preponderance of heavy weapons, and a timetable for the withdrawal of the Soviets' 115,000-man army from Afghanistan.
The Soviets want out
Gorbachev has called the Afghan war "a bleeding sore" for the Soviet Union. He confirmed in the NBC interview that he is "looking for ways to bring about an earliest prompt solution." Soviet officials have been hinting that they may even shorten the one-year withdrawal target offered by their client in Kabul and that they may leave him to save himself, without insuring Communist dominance of a replacement government. What Gorbachev wants from Reagan is a promise to push resistance leaders to the negotiating table and to keep the American commitment, through U.N. mediators in Geneva, to stop aiding the rebel fighters as soon as an agreement is signed and withdrawal begins. Reagan and his briefers have now muddied these waters by insisting that military aid to the rebels would not necessarily stop, even after the last Soviet soldier had withdrawn to Tashkent.
Afghanistan is both the most troubling and the most solvable of the regional issues, which an administration spokesman calls "the biggest hindrance to improved relations" between the Americans and the Soviets. Angola, the Gulf, Nicaragua, Berlin and Cambodia are all on the agenda but with no expectation of breakthroughs. The same applies to human-rights concerns, though after attacking Americans for fomenting a Soviet brain drain, Gorbachev made a presummit gesture by giving exit visas to five or six dozen refuseniks.
Gorbachev's trip to the summit comes on the heels of a recent dust-up back in Moscow. His sacking of outspoken Moscow party boss Boris Yeltsin suggested that many old-line conservatives in the Kremlin still have problems with the pace of the Soviet leader's economic-reform program, or perestroika. Mikhail Gorbachev, in short, needs to keep an eye on his right flank. By most accounts, he has more freedom of movement on foreign-policy matters -- and he plainly means to use the Washington summit to give peace a chance. So, too, does Ronald Reagan. The buck goes nowhere if they fail.