1999 (30 page)

Linkage is inherent in the way the world works, but to benefit from linkage the United States must practice it. We must impose iron links between progress toward better overall relations and
Soviet global behavior. We must not move forward with arms control and increased trade if the Soviet Union persists in threatening U.S. interests with aggression in Afghanistan or by pumping hundreds of tons of arms into Central America. If we enter major agreements while ignoring Soviet conduct, we will be sending the wrong message to Moscow. We will be saying that aggression pays, and we will be facilitating our own destruction.

Ironically, the arms-control lobbyists who most oppose linkage have the most to lose if we fail to link issues. Linkage is a fact of international life. We can negotiate arms-control treaties in spite of Soviet expansionism. But there is no way the Senate will vote to ratify such treaties if at that time the Soviet Union is trampling over Western interests. After all, it was Moscow's invasion of Afghanistan that torpedoed any chance for ratification of SALT II. If we want genuine and enduring improvement in U.S.–Soviet relations, we must link progress in arms-control talks to progress in the political conflicts that could lead to the use of those arms.

Moscow has made arms control its first priority in U.S.–Soviet negotiations in part to distract attention from the vital political issues. We must not allow them to achieve this objective by treating the questions of Soviet expansionism and repression as secondary concerns and as unfortunate obstacles to progress in arms control. We must force the Kremlin to address our concerns, and linkage is our only means of doing so. If they are to benefit the cause of real peace, arms deals must be accompanied by changes in Soviet policy. As Brian Crozier wrote, “What the Soviets or their surrogates do in Central America or southern Africa is the substance; the arms deal is the shadow.” If the Reagan administration goes forward on arms control without linkage, it risks creating a dangerous euphoria in which anyone who dares raise the issue of Soviet aggression around the world will stand accused of poisoning the atmosphere of U.S.–Soviet relations.

But linkage requires subtle execution. An American President cannot step before the cameras and announce that he intends to hold the next arms-control agreement hostage to Soviet capitulation on one or another issue. He must enforce linkage in private negotiations. This is particularly true on the issue of human rights. As a result of private pressure from my administration, the Soviet
Union increased Jewish emigration from 400 in 1968 to nearly 35,000 in 1973. When Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment explicitly tying trade to Soviet emigration, the Kremlin leaders slammed the door shut again. No powerful state will ever allow another nation to dictate its internal policies.

We need to press the Soviets on this issue, not only for humanitarian reasons, but also because Soviet human-rights violations affect the chances for improving overall American–Soviet relations. But we must undertand that private pressure, not grandstanding, has the best odds for success.

Economic power.
Our biggest chit in U.S.–Soviet negotiations is our economic power. That is especially true with Gorbachev. He has made it clear that his top priority is to jump-start the Soviet economy. He knows that if he fails, the Soviet Union will be eclipsed as a great power in the next century. To succeed, he desperately needs access to new infusions of Western technology and credits. As a result, we possess greater negotiating leverage today than we have ever enjoyed before.

Trade should be a major subject on the agenda of the next U.S.–Soviet summit. The possibilities for increased trade are enormous. Our trade with China, which still has primarily an agricultural economy, was $10 billion last year. Our trade with the Soviet Union, a major industrial power, was about $2 billion. Economically, this does not make sense. But we must remember that it was only after China opened its doors to the West and discontinued its expansionist policies that bilateral trade took off. Trade in nonstrategic goods can also be a powerful incentive for the Soviet Union to adopt more humane policies at home and a less aggressive policy abroad. As our relations improve, the administration should ask the Congress to give the Soviet Union most-favored-nation status. This would open the door to a significant increase in Soviet–American trade in nonstrategic goods.

Moscow needs trade with the West more than the West needs trade with Moscow. We know it, the Soviets know it, and we should make use of it. The United States and the Soviet Union largely trade Western technology for Soviet raw materials. We can buy their products elsewhere if necessary, but they have no alternative suppliers for ours. That gives us leverage. We should use it
to extract concessions from them on other issues. We should sell Moscow Western goods, but we should stamp them with a political price tag as well as an economic one. Gorbachev has a choice. He cannot trade and invade at the same time.

Trade should be a key element of our relationship with the Soviet Union. But we must disabuse ourselves of the myth that trade brings peace. Nations which traded with each other killed each other by the millions in World War I and World War II. Alone, trade cannot produce peace or prevent war. Many argue that if we increase trade with the Soviets, they will become less aggressive. But the Kremlin will not be bought off. In the late 1970s, they showed that they
would
both trade and invade. The bottom line is that economic relations can never substitute for deterrence or competition. If properly implemented, however, they can reinforce it.

If we are going to increase trade, we must do so in a way calculated to create incentives for the Soviet Union to desist from its aggressive policies. It makes no sense to give the Kremlin leaders what they most want without getting something we want in return. If we fail to use our economic power, it will show that the Soviets can win gains simply by improving the atmospherics of our relationship, even while seeking other gains through aggression. That is a precedent we cannot afford.

We cannot take advantage of our economic power without the cooperation of our NATO and Japanese allies. The collective economic power of the West dwarfs that of the East because our economic system works and theirs does not. NATO and Japan outproduce the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies by a ratio of over five to one. But we will fritter away that superiority if we do not coordinate our policies for trading with Moscow.

At a minimum, that coordination must involve a tight control over the export of militarily useful technology and an end to providing subsidized export credits to the Soviet Union. Beyond that, we also need to cooperate in regulating the level of East–West trade. It is imperative that we get our act together immediately. Gorbachev has been talking explicitly about greater trade as the economic consequence of reduced tensions. Soviet trade delegations have already started crisscrossing the West. We therefore
need to establish a Foreign Economic Policy Board, not only in the United States, but also for the Western alliance as a whole. It would act as the vehicle for coordinating our use of economic power vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.

We made a major mistake when the Reagan administration removed the grain embargo imposed by President Carter after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan without any corresponding concession. It was compounded when the United States signed a new grain deal with no linkage to other issues. It is also unfortunate that the administration's trade officials have followed the flawed axiom that the only limit on our trade with Moscow should be Soviet port capacities. The next administration should abandon that approach. It should first pull together the economic assets of the West and then sit down to negotiate with Moscow about the political conditions for an increase in trade.

Lenin contemptuously remarked that capitalist countries were so shortsightedly greedy that they would sell the Soviet Union the rope by which they themselves would someday hang. Unfortunately, some Western political leaders and businessmen fit the bill. They would sell the Soviets not only rope, but also the scaffolding and a how-to book for the hangman. We must reject the counsel of those whose narrow minds consider the bottom line as the only guide for our East–West trade policy. If we accept their view, a few in the West will profit financially, but only the Kremlin leaders will profit geopolitically.

Tenacity.
In the revolutionary times of turn-of-the-century Russia, the Bolsheviks prevailed over other leftists by outlasting them in meetings. Lenin's followers would pick over the most trivial debating point
ad infinitum
, while the opposition tired and some of its delegates wandered away. As soon as the other side's numbers had dwindled sufficiently, Lenin's party would call a vote and would win, even though the Bolsheviks were a minority at the outset. Today's Soviet negotiators have not lost that talent for victory through verbal endurance.

Our diplomats have tended to make two fundamental mistakes in dealing with Moscow. First, they have tended to underestimate the adversary. They have often looked down on the Soviets as clumsy, boorish and uncivilized but have failed to recognize that
style has nothing to do with capability. Stalin might not have been as stylish as President Roosevelt, but Stalin won Eastern Europe at Yalta. Our negotiators must prepare painstakingly for their encounters, and they must have tenacity, intensity, patience and stamina. Among his many talents, these were Henry Kissinger's major strengths in his negotiations with the Soviets, the Chinese, and the Vietnamese. Max Kampelman has demonstrated those qualities in his marathon arms-control negotiations in Geneva. It is not arguments across the table but political decisions from above that move Soviet negotiators toward concessions. But our team must be capable of fighting an indefinite holding action in order to induce the Kremlin to fall back from its initial positions. We should never negotiate against a deadline. If we appear to be in a hurry, the Soviets will gladly rush us into a bad deal.

Second, our diplomats have a pervasive tendency to negotiate with themselves on behalf of the Soviets. Every hard-line negotiating option discussed within the U.S. government encounters a chorus of derision on the grounds that “the Russians will never accept it.” Gaggles of foreign-service officers, with assistance from their friends in Congress and the media, then urge modifications in our position—before negotiations even begin—to make our proposal more palatable to the Kremlin. That is utter folly. We must never modify our proposals based on whether its terms are acceptable from the Soviet point of view, but only on whether they are desirable from ours.

Moscow's diplomats are total professionals in the political trench warfare of U.S.–Soviet negotiations. They dig into their positions, devise scores of potential lines of debate as verbal fortifications, and fall back only after repeated frontal assaults by the opposition. Even then, our side will have to root out their positions one by one, because as they retreat on one front they will create false points of contention on another in order to win real concessions on a third. Soviet negotiators are among the world's ablest. They can certainly watch out for Soviet interests. We need not help them do so with preemptive concessions on our part.

If we have a strong, logical position, we should stand our ground. As a veteran Moscow correspondent, Joseph Galloway, wrote, “You should state your purpose, your aims, and your
course clearly and firmly at the outset and then hew to that line with every ounce of determination and doggedness you can muster. If you bend even the smallest of your principles, you convince the other side that there is at least a chance you will bend on the larger ones. That is enough to keep the Russians working on you forever.”

Our negotiators must learn to put our general interests over their desires to conclude an agreement. The SDI is a case in point. Within the foreign-policy bureaucracy, there is a constant harping about the need to make concessions to the Soviets on SDI in order to get a START agreement. They treat SDI as if it were a problem for us. In fact it is a problem for Moscow. We should not wring our hands and ask ourselves what we are going to do about SDI. Instead, we should sit back and ask the Soviets what
they
are going to do about their superiority in strategic nuclear weapons, which is the reason we are developing SDI.

Our cardinal rule must be, Give nothing without getting something in return. We must never give the Soviets a free ride. If we toss out concessions intended to win goodwill from Moscow, the Soviets will gather up the loose change and ask for more. As one experienced American negotiator once commented, the Soviets seldom pay for services already rendered.

Talk soft, act tough.
Diplomatic machismo may make points at home but it serves no useful purpose abroad. The Soviets are masters of the bluff. As any poker player knows, one who uses the bluff can generally detect one when it is used by his opponent. The best way to deal with the Soviets is to talk softly and act strongly.

Unpredictability.
Our diplomats tend to lay their cards out on the table before seeing the Soviets' cards. They should have in mind the golden rule of diplomacy in dealing with the Soviets: Do unto them as they do unto you. Gorbachev is a master at making the surprise move. We should be just as unpredictable as he is.

If we learn to combine a tempered tone and tough actions and to employ flanking actions, linkage, economic power, tenacious bargaining, and unpredictability, we can get good deals out of the Soviets on trade, arms control, and other issues. But the task of negotiating with Moscow does not stop there. It requires the United States to scrutinize Moscow's compliance with the agreement.
That means, first of all, that all agreements must be written with extremely tight verification procedures. From the record of SALT I and SALT II, we have learned that the Soviets will ruthlessly exploit even the smallest of loopholes.