Iron and Velvet

Mixed signals for the Soviets

Since Ronald Reagan took office, his Administration's attitude toward the Soviet Union has read like a fever chart. At the outset, he branded the Soviets as a band of liars and cheats. But in January 1982, one month after martial law was declared in Poland, he dispatched then Secretary of State Alexander Haig to Geneva to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. After Haig left office, Reagan continued his anti-Soviet rhetoric, going so far as to denounce the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" in his "Darth Vader speech" last March. But even while lambasting the Soviets in public, Reagan made the unusual gesture of receiving Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin in his private White House quarters.

Despite past zigzags, there were indications last week that the Administration was inching toward a thaw in East-West relations. In a letter to Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov, congratulating him on his election as President of the U.S.S.R., Reagan wrote: "I hope that together we can find ways to promote peace by reducing the level of armaments." In testimony delivered before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State George Shultz also struck a note of tentative conciliation. "We do not accept as inevitable the prospect of endless, dangerous confrontation with the Soviet Union," he declared. "We now seek to engage the Soviet leaders in a constructive dialogue."

His 35-page statement, which was personally cleared by Reagan, was the first comprehensive statement of U.S. policy toward the Soviets since Shultz succeeded Haig almost a year ago. The warmer tone, however, did not stop Shultz from castigating the Soviets for their arms buildup and "unconstructive involvement" in unstable areas of the world. He came close to accusing the Soviets of testing new intercontinental ballistic missiles in violation of the unratified SALT II agreement, and excoriated them for human rights "infractions." In the past decade, he said, "the changes in Soviet behavior have been for the worse."

Shultz outlined a carrot-and-stick approach that drew selectively from Truman's containment strategy and Nixon's détente. "Our policy, unlike some versions of détente, assumes that the Soviet Union is more likely to be deterred by our actions that make clear the risks their aggression entails than by a delicate web of interdependence," he said.

Unlike Haig, who was preoccupied with Soviet involvement in international terrorism, Shultz placed human rights front and center as a test of Soviet intentions. Said he: "The need for steady improvement of Soviet performance in the most important human rights categories is as central to the Soviet-American dialogue as any other theme." In a break with past Administrations, Shultz argued that arms control should not be the centerpiece of U.S.-Soviet relations. "As important as it is," he said, "arms control has not been—and cannot be—the dominant subject of our dialogue with the Soviets." Indeed, he painted a pessimistic picture of arms negotiations, saying that the U.S. "should not anticipate early agreement" with the Soviets.