SUPERPOWER RELATIONSHIP LANGUISHING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504850025-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: March 23, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

' Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/27: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504850025-6
WASHINGTON POST
23 March 1986
Superpower
Relationship.:
Languishing
By Don Oberdorfer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Four months after Presi-
dent Reagan met Soviet lead-
er Mikhail Gorbachev at the
summit in Geneva, U.S.-So-
viet relations are suffering
from a case of the blahs.
There is increasing doubt
that a major arms control
agreement is in the making,
even an accord limited to in-
termediate-range nuclear
forces (INF) in Europe.
NEWS
ANALYSIS
I Though Gorba-
chev made sur-
prising and
seemingly sweeping proposals
in January to phase out all nu-
clear weapons by the end of
the century, his offer led to no
new Soviet flexibility in the
subsequent round of Geneva
negotiations, according to
U.S. officials.
In response to Gorbachev,
the Reagan administration
introduced new, more explicit
and difficult conditions for
agreements, including on-site
inspection requirements that
the Kremlin is unlikely to ac-
cept.
The Soviets have mounted
a sustained diplomatic and
propaganda offensive on be-
half of a total ban on under-
ground nuclear tests that has
generated irritation in official
Washington, where it is con-
sidered a "phony" issue by the
administration. The United
States demonstrated its dis-
dain for Moscow's proposal
yesterday with an undet;,
ground nuclear test in New'
da, a move that may cause the
Soviets to abandon their self-
imposed moratorium.
Both sides have called for a
meeting of U.S. and Soviet
nuclear testing experts next
month, but the terms of the
invitations are so different
that such a conference ap-
pears unlikely. What is now in
the offing, instead, is a well-publi-
cized U.S. underground test the
third week of April at which Wash-
ington will lament the absence of
invited Soviet observers.
The timing and agenda for the
next Reagan-Gorbachev summit
meeting remain unsettled, though
the two agreed in Geneva to meet
again. The Soviets have not replied
to a Reagan message last Decem-
ber that proposed a summit in
Washington this June. Even high-
level U.S.-Soviet discussions to be-
gin preparations for a summit have
not been scheduled. Eduard
Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign
minister, has ignored or passed up
American invitations to begin dis-
cussing the summit in January and
again this month. "It's now up to
them," said an administration offi-
cial in a tone of exasperation.
Yet American officials report that
the Soviets continue to repeat that
Gorbachev is committed to holding
another meeting with Reagan at
some point. This was said clearly by
Soviet Premier Nicholai Ryzhkov to
Secretary of State George P. Shultz
last weekend in Stockholm, accord-
ing to the United States.
Both sides want the results of the
next summit meeting to be "impor-
tant," Shultz said in testimony be-
fore a Senate Appropriations sub-
committee Wednesday, but added
that "I have to say that progress
since Geneva has been disappoint-
ing"
American officials now hope that
some breakthrough may be possible
when departing Soviet Ambassador
Anatoliy Dobrynin returns to Wash-
ington to heain oaving farewell calls
here. State Department sources
said they expect a Shultz-Dobrynin
meeting shortly after Shultz returns
from his current European trip
March 30, and are hoping for word
from Dobrynin then about at least
preliminary meetings toward a
1986 summit.
Officials here are intrigued by
Dobrynin's new job as a secretary
of the Communist Party Central
Committee. This is a senior post in
the Soviet leadership, but Do-
brynin's precise responsibilities
have not been explained. He is to be
involved in foreign affairs, but it is
not clear whether he will work on
East-West relations.
While summit planning is
ance, Soviet-American relations
putter along. There are both pos-
itive and negative signs in the dip-
lomatic tea leaves:
Pluses
s Bilateral relations are making
"modest progress," according to
U.S. sources. Pan American World
Airways and Aeroflot will resume
commercial air travel between the
two countries next month. Consul-
ates in New York and Kiev, which
are to be staffed with about 30 of-
ficials each, could open this sum-
mer. "People to people" exchanges
sponsored by Reagan and endorsed
at the summit are moving ahead.
^ A new round of consultations by
senior diplomats on Third World
flashpoints has begun. The first, on
Southern Africa in Geneva March
6, didn't accomplish much in the
U.S. view, but the dialogue is wel-
come. The Soviets proposed a next
meeting on Afghanistan issues later
this month, but Washington would
like this topic to be discussed at the
Shultz-Shevardnadze level first.
^ Some movement on human rights
issues in the Soviet Union, including
the release of Anatoly Shcharansky,
the medical-related travels abroad
of Yelena Bonner (wife of Nobel
laureate Andrei Sakharov) and ap-
proval for about 40 members of di-
vided families to emigrate to the
United States, close to one-fifth of
those on the U.S. divided-family
list.
^ A "good first meeting, with very
little polemics" on the subject of
preventing proliferation of chemical
weapons held March 5-6 by U.S.
and Soviet diplomats in Bern, Swit-
zerland. Like the other topics
above, the chemical-weapons dis-
cussions were given impetus by
agreements at last November's
summit.
Minuses
^ The U.S. order presented Marc
7 That ~f n viet Mig inn to th
United Nation aces.
rom 275 to 170 officials in two
pars, basic administration de-
cision to demand a~ntended
to iminish Soviet espionage activ-
itv in New York. was made eV-
tember wlth its imp~tnpntatinn
delayeduntil the end of the diet
Par tv Congress The Soviets have
pro estedgorously. But Premier
Rvzhkov did not mention the issue
in last weekend's meeting. _wiith
Sh , 11 C nfficials said-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/27: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504850025-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/27: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504850025-6
^ The probe by U.S. warships into
Soviet territorial waters March 13
to Rather mte ence and test So-
viet defenses. The Soviets pro-
tested the incident, calling it "clear-
ly provocative," but the Pentagon
said the U.S. ships were exercising
"the right of innocent passage."
^ Reagan's harsh anti-Soviet rhet-
oric in recent televised speeches
justifying his $320 billion military
budget request and his request for
$100 million in U.S. aid to anticom-
munist rebels in Nicaragua. Reagan
used similar anti-Soviet arguments
in speeches in earlier years on the
same topics, but that was before the
Geneva summit, hailed as "a new
start" on U.S.-Soviet relations.
The Nuclear and Space Arms
Talks in Geneva are central to the
prospects for major improvement in
the Washington-Moscow relation-
ship, according to both sides, and it
is here that unhappiness in both
capitals is strongest.
The view in the Kremlin, as ex-
pressed Feb. 6 by Gorbachev to
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-
Mass.), is that the Reagan admin-
istration has no serious intention of
reaching an arms control agree-
ment. Gorbachev told Kennedy,
according to an account of their
meeting, that he had made the Jan.
15 arms offers to demonstrate to
the world that the Soviet side is
serious, even if Washington is not.
Reagan, who initially said he was
"grateful" for the Jan. 15 proposals,
decided in late February to respond
by testing Gorbachev's intentions in
vigorous fashion.
An intimate discussion by Reagan
and a few top advisers aboard Air
Force One while flying to and from
Grenada Feb. 20 resulted in a pres-
idential decision to propose that all
U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range
missiles worldwide be eliminated
within three years, two years ahead
of the somewhat visionary schedule
for elimination of European- INF
missiles proposed by Gorbachev.
Administration sources said the
three-year timetable for a "zero-
zero" INF plan had not been recom-
mended to the president by any of
his advisers, but seems to have
been Reagan's personal, spur-of-
the-moment contribution.
The decision to promptly table a
specific proposal for verification of
an INF treaty also emerged from
the airborne policymaking session,
sources said. The proposal sub-
mitted early this month that U.S.
inspectors be allowed on-site to
count Soviet missiles and monitor
Soviet military production was not
likely to be accepted, administration
officials acknowledged, but was in-
tended to "smoke our the Soviet
position in light of statements by
Gorbachev and others recognizing
the importance of verification.
The next round of the Geneva
negotiations is scheduled to begin
May 8. Before then, Reagan is ex-
pected to decide whether to contin-
ue observing the terms of the un-
ratified 1979 SALT II strategic
arms treaty by taking two more
U.S. Poseidon nuclear submarines
out of service to make room for a
new Trident submarine's 24 mis-
siles. If the Poseidons are not de-
molished, the Trident will put the
United States over the SALT II
limits.
The SALT II decision, and the
renewal of testing by the United
States, will help establish a new
climate for the next phase of the
superpower relationship.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/27: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504850025-6