1999 (28 page)

On these issues, we must seek to negotiate not permanent solutions—such goals are unachievable—but to restrain the means by which both sides pursue their conflicting goals. We will never succeed in negotiating a once-and-for-all arms-control agreement and certainly never succeed in eliminating nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. But we can succeed, through tough, skillful diplomacy, in striking an arms deal that will stabilize the strategic balance so that neither side stands vulnerable to a first-strike attack. We will never succeed in negotiating a permanent settlement in the world's flashpoints. But we can arrive at a common understanding of the rules of engagement by which we conduct our continuing competition without resorting to nuclear war.

Human rights also fall into the first category. We seek to promote respect for human rights in the Soviet Union, but Kremlin leaders will never willingly grant their peoples freedoms that would result in opposition to and eventual overthrow of communist rule.
No communist regime will agree to commit suicide. A leak in the dike of censorship would produce a flood of recriminations against the party and the state. A crack in the door barring emigration would result in a tide of humanity seeking a better life abroad. We therefore cannot realistically demand in our negotiations that the Soviet Union adopt Western-style democracy or respect all the freedoms embodied in the Bill of Rights. But that does not mean that we should abandon the issue. In our private negotiations, we should press the Soviets to increase emigration, to release specific dissidents, to increase the flow of information from Western sources, and to live up to its obligations as a signatory of the Helsinki agreements. We cannot expect to achieve all that we want, but what we do achieve can mean a lot in the lives of the oppressed peoples of the Soviet Union.

In the second category of issues, there are important ones like increasing commercial ties, controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons, reducing risks of accidental war, creating means for resolving incidents at sea, opening up cooperation to protect the environment. There are also less important but still significant issues, like expanding cultural exchanges. On these matters, the United States and the Soviet Union can reach agreements that will serve our mutual interests.

We might even be able to cooperate in combatting terrorism. While Kremlin leaders have actively aided terrorist groups over the last twenty years, the time may soon come when Moscow itself becomes a victim, and the rapid advance of technology may make that cooperation imperative. We live in an age when technological miniaturization could someday make it possible for not only countries but also individuals to break the nuclear threshold—a sobering thought for any country in which an unarmed Cessna airplane could land in the front yard of the Kremlin.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the number of possibilities for greater cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. But it would be a far greater mistake to overestimate the significance of that cooperation for the U.S.–Soviet relationship. In the 1970s, the fact that the renowned Bolshoi Ballet danced in Washington did not stop the Red Army from waltzing into Afghanistan.

Our track record of negotiating with the Soviets is not good. They are the best in the business at extracting the most from their adversaries while giving up the least in return. Churchill might have said about them that never have diplomats won so much for so little. It is therefore imperative that we develop a better understanding of how to negotiate, on both the strategic and the tactical levels.

To understand the strategic importance of negotiation requires an understanding of statecraft. Statecraft is something that Americans have traditionally failed to appreciate. None of the graduate schools that train our foreign-service officers, military leaders, and intelligence analysts teach comprehensive courses on statecraft. They produce graduates who know everything about small details and nothing about the big picture. None of our foreign-policy bureaucracies have any talent for statecraft. They are long on expert specialists but short on expert generalists. Yet in the years ahead no capability will be as important as statecraft.

What statecraft involves is not simply the intricacies of patching together a diplomatic communiqué or striking a trade deal, or the complexities of the military science needed to maintain deterrence at all levels of a potential conflict. Instead, statecraft is the capacity to integrate all our capabilities—military power, economic clout, covert action, propaganda, and diplomacy—into a policy that serves our overall strategy. As an element of statecraft, negotiation is the art of political maneuver at the highest level.

No administration, including my own, has ever explicitly developed—on paper—an American strategy encompassing our military, economic, and political instruments of power. Whenever we have articulated a national strategy, it has tended to be in terms of military power, slighting or ignoring our economic and political assets. Some Presidents have done better than others in shaping a more comprehensive strategy in practice. But we need to create a process for systematically developing American statecraft.

In negotiating with Moscow, we need to develop the capacity to craft proposals that both achieve our goals and create political pressures on the Soviets to accept our terms. In essence, it involves
making an offer the other side does not want to accept but feels it cannot refuse. We need to present the Kremlin with choices structured so that rejecting them would hurt the Soviet Union politically but accepting them would run against Moscow's instincts. If Kremlin leaders turn us down, we gain in the political competition; if they take up our offer, we gain our objectives.

In the recent arms-control agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces, Gorbachev proved to be a master at this kind of maneuver. When the United States proposed the zero option in November 1981, it did so not because policy-makers thought that such a solution served Western interests but because they expected the Soviets to reject the idea and be hurt politically for doing so. It was assumed that the proposal would score political points in Europe and would enable the United States to station INF forces in NATO countries. That tactic worked as long as the Soviet Union fell into the trap and remained obstinate at the negotiating table.

But Gorbachev soon figured out that a zero–zero solution ultimately favored Moscow, eliminating U.S. capabilities to retaliate from Europe without affecting Soviet capabilities to hit Europe. When he accepted the American offer, the Reagan administration felt it had no choice but to proceed with the agreement, despite the serious reservations of the Department of Defense, former NATO commander Bernard Rogers, and the allies in Europe. One of the principal reasons reluctant supporters of the accord used to rationalize their position was that refusing our own offer would be too costly politically in terms of public opinion in Western Europe. Through Gorbachev's shrewd negotiations, Moscow won its objective.

A bare-bones analysis of how to integrate negotiation into our overall strategy requires us to answer three basic questions:

1. What do we want from the Soviets? We should not enter negotiations willy-nilly. Instead, we need to define in very specific terms what we would like to bring about. In talks on strategic weapons, it makes no sense to pursue an across-the-board reduction of 50 percent in the arsenals of the two superpowers. Our primary goal should be to achieve a large cutback in Soviet first-strike weapons so that Moscow does not ever have enough for a
credible first-strike capability. In negotiations on the balance of forces in Europe, it makes no sense to pursue an elimination of tactical nuclear weapons, because they are needed to counter the Warsaw Pact superiority in conventional weapons. We should instead pursue reductions in their conventional forces to the point where NATO could, if necessary, defend itself without nuclear weapons.

2. What are we willing to give up to get what we want? Gorbachev is neither a philanthropist nor a fool. It is a waste of time to try to convince the Soviets that we should both pursue an abstract concept like strategic stability. They do not think in those terms. Gorbachev is not interested in what we think is “good”—but rather in what he thinks he gets. In order to achieve the zero–zero INF deal he wanted, he was willing to give up several times as many warheads as we did. If we do not have something to offer, it is a waste of time even to enter into negotiations. Kremlin leaders will strike deals, but they will never give anyone something for nothing.

3. What moves can we make to put political pressure on Soviet leaders to make the deal we want at the price we want to pay? That is not easy, but it is possible. It requires, first, that American policy-makers understand Soviet motivations and vulnerabilities. It also requires a keen sense of gamesmanship. Most of all, it requires an ability to package our proposals with a sense for public relations. We cannot negotiate successfully unless the peoples of the West support our initiatives. Otherwise, the pressure to make a deal at any price can overwhelm the better judgment of policymakers. At the same time, a united front of Western powers—which a politically attuned proposal can galvanize—places maximum pressure for the Soviet Union to negotiate on our terms.

Zbigniew Brzezinski has spelled out an idea for conventional arms control—a deep reduction in tank forces in Europe and a tank-free zone in Central Europe—that fits the bill. While military experts need to flesh out the specifics of an actual proposal, it has great potential. It isolates the key problem, the offensive threat inherent in Moscow's overwhelming superiority in tank armies, and proposes a diplomatic response capable of mobilizing public support. It educates Western public opinion about the real threat
we face on the conventional level. Most important, it puts the heat on the Soviets by focusing attention on the
Soviet
policies that threaten peace and that need to be changed. If Moscow rejects the idea of a tank-free zone, we should not back off from it. Instead, we should point out at every turn that Soviet leaders refuse to take steps to lessen the danger of a major war. We should constantly emphasize that as far as Europe is concerned the only reason we need nuclear weapons is because the Soviets have superiority in conventional weapons.

We should quickly move in that direction to take advantage of Gorbachev's statements at the Washington summit in December 1987 to the effect that the Soviet Union accepts the principle of asymmetrical reductions. He said that in areas where Moscow held an edge he would be willing to make greater reductions to reach a balance. We should use these statements for political leverage. President Reagan should tell Gorbachev about the American aphorism about “putting your money where your mouth is” and suggest that he put his tanks where his mouth is. The fundamental premise of an acceptable conventional arms-control agreement is that the Soviet Union must reduce its offensive tank forces so that a balance exists between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

Unfortunately, such strategic thinking almost never surfaces in our foreign-policy bureaucracies. George F. Kennan's containment policy, which led to the Marshall Plan and NATO, was a notable exception. As President, I met many very able individuals who worked in the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency, but I do not recall a single instance when those bureaucracies generated a truly innovative approach on a major issue. That is why we had to develop our initiatives in the White House. When presented with a problem, the bureaucracies dust off their folders and trot out their standard school solution. Their thinking is dominated by a curator's mentality. They treat current policy as if it were a museum piece to be preserved at all costs, and they view a new idea as a mortal threat to their prized artifacts. They are experts on tactics but neophytes on strategy. We must not fall victim to this fossilized thinking. It is a deadly prescription for competing with Moscow in a rapidly changing world.

It is not possible to implement good strategy without good tactics. But good tactics are useless unless they are part of a good strategy. Our strategy determines what negotiations we should go into, and our tactics determine what kind of deal we come out with.

An administration will never succeed in negotiations at the tactical level without establishing a solid foreign-policy process. Above all, this requires a President who understands the essentials of foreign policy in enough detail so that he can make an informed decision among the available options. Most of America's foreign-policy disasters in this century—for example, Wilson at Versailles in 1919 and Roosevelt at Yalta in 1944—have resulted when the President was naive about those with whom he was negotiating or was not adequately informed about policies vital to our national security. In the presidential election this year, Americans should make competence in foreign affairs the prime consideration in deciding for whom they will vote.