TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=90TT1505> <title> June 11, 1990: The Last Picture Show </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990 June 11, 1990 Scott Turow:Making Crime Pay </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> NATION, Page 14 The Last Picture Show </hdr> <body> Summit excitement is no longer fed by cold war tensions, and future meetings should become routine. As the Soviets say, Khorosho! (Great!) By George J. Church--Reported by Michael Duffy and Dan Goodgame/Washington and John Kohan with Gorbachev The pomp and circumstance were once again glittering, the crowds excitable, the television and press coverage exhaustive. But it was all a bit out of proportion. The electricity generated at past superpower summits by the prospect of mortal enemies edging toward peace was blessedly missing. This time the meetings were between two world leaders whose nations are fully at peace but have conflicting interests and needs. The grand gesture was replaced by haggling over money and politics. Even the word summit is a questionable description of where the two leaders stood. The peaks they each dominate are much lower now, and there are other leaders on other mountains with power and influence to reckon with. This time nobody could pretend that George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev were determining the future of the world. That is, frankly, beyond their control. There was a sense in Washington of the leaders' looking over their shoulders--to Bonn, where Helmut Kohl is marching Germany toward unification; to Moscow, where Boris Yeltsin is boosting his own brand of perestroika; even to the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, where economists track America's federal deficit as it slips further out of control. Both Presidents face more bothersome troubles at home than they have with each other. Even friendly American-Soviet meetings can never be unimportant; the two nations are still the key players in constructing a post-cold war world. "When the President talks about `Who is the enemy?' these days, he says it's uncertainty, unpredictability and instability," says White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. "Those are the enemies that both of these gentlemen will be dealing with." Like a married couple facing tough times, Bush and Gorbachev seem determined to make the relationship work despite their difficulties. After wrestling for two days with intractable problems, the two Presidents simply set their differences aside and exchanged signatures on a variety of halfway measures. When their negotiators got hung up once again on the details of arms reduction, Bush and Gorbachev instead signed a joint statement to slash the numbers of strategic nuclear warheads, and they inked formal pacts to eliminate most of their arsenals of chemical arms and to verify limits on nuclear testing. Those, however, were old, well-worn issues; progress came harder on the newer, post-cold war problems. When they could find no common ground between the West's insistence that a united Germany be a member of NATO and Gorbachev's refusal to countenance any such arrangement, the two Presidents bucked the subject down to the ministerial level for further discussion. Trade unexpectedly turned out to be the touchiest subject of all. In Moscow last month, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze told Secretary of State James Baker that the Kremlin understood American reluctance to sign a comprehensive trade deal while Moscow continues its economic embargo of Lithuania. But Gorbachev last week would not let the subject drop. In a sharp exchange with congressional leaders Friday morning, he expressed particular irritation that the U.S. still denies most-favored-nation trade status to the U.S.S.R., though it has just renewed that status for China despite last year's massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing. Said the Soviet President, with heavy sarcasm: "What shall we do for you to give us MFN? Maybe we should introduce presidential rule in the Baltics and at least fire some rounds." In private talks with Bush, Gorbachev's tone was more pleading--a sharp change from December's Malta meeting. As soon as the two leaders sat down Thursday morning, the Soviet President gave a gloomy appraisal of his economic woes. He told Bush he realized a trade deal would deliver little immediate practical relief, but added that he needed the political symbolism of bringing home some bacon. Bush reiterated that the U.S.S.R. must first pass a law guaranteeing free emigration, and even then it would be "extremely difficult" for both the Administration and the Senate to approve a trade deal unless Moscow eased its sanctions against Lithuania. Gorbachev protested that he could not do that just yet, lest he encourage separatists and anger his conservative critics. The Soviet leader buttonholed Bush again at the state dinner Thursday night and argued that if the U.S. President was serious about wanting perestroika to succeed, he must provide economic help. He made a third try at a one-on-one session Friday morning. This time Bush yielded. He told Gorbachev he would sign a trade treaty but would not send it to Congress until the U.S.S.R. passed the emigration law. He added that he expected Gorbachev to show the same understanding of U.S. concerns about Lithuania that the White House was showing for the Kremlin's economic needs, but apparently got no explicit promise in return. Gorbachev got the deal, says one U.S. official, in part because "he played Bush's game, appealing to him personally in the one-on-one sessions and at dinner," rather than in group negotiations or at press conferences. Another reason: Gorbachev's aides dropped heavy hints that they would hold up a grain-purchase agreement that the Administration and American farmers very much wanted. After more than an hour's delay in the treaty-signing ceremony, Bush appeared with Gorbachev in the East Room of the White House to announce agreements on both grain and trade. None of which means that this summit can be termed either a flat failure or a big success. Some of the agreements on arms control and nuclear testing would have seemed a stunning accomplishment a few years ago. Now, even taken together, they appear anticlimactic, a useful but unexciting clearing away of some leftover parts of the U.S.-Soviet agenda. But one of the accomplishments of the White House and the Kremlin has been precisely to move toward an atmosphere in which the leaders can get together almost routinely, without any prospective spectacular agreement or deep crisis to justify a meeting. There is talk of two more meetings this year to complete and sign agreements reducing both strategic and conventional weapons. Chances are that political and institutional pressures will continue pushing the superpowers and their leaders together until American-Soviet summits become as common--and as unexciting and ambiguous in outcome--as, say, top-level Western economic conferences. Barring some cataclysmic reversal of Gorbachev's fortunes and reforms, the two sides have so much invested in each other that in the long run they seem, in the words of Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, The Soviet leader badly needs some international successes to prove to the Soviet populace that it is getting something in return for the present pain and uncertain future reward of perestroika. At a minimum, he cannot afford to add a crisis with the U.S. to his domestic woes. Bush is riding high in the polls but knows full well that one major reason is the relative serenity of U.S.-Soviet relations on his watch. Moreover, after an initial dubious period, he has come to view Gorbachev as more likely to foster peaceful relations with the U.S. than any other potential Soviet leader. Over the past year, says a senior White House official, "Bush has gone from saying, `We can't base our policy on one man,' to saying flatly, `This is our guy.'" In fact, one of the frustrations of superpower diplomacy for the White House has been the belief that it has a huge stake in the success of perestroika and the survival of Gorbachev, and the simultaneous conviction that there is not a great deal the U.S. can do to ensure either. Another frustration has been Bush's difficulty in forging any warm man-to-man relationship with Gorbachev. A high personal-comfort level is a hallmark of Bush's governing style. Whatever their political differences, he seeks to cultivate friendships with foreign leaders, with the leaders of various Republican factions and powerful Democrats--anybody with whom he must negotiate. Says one longtime adviser: "Bush wants to have a personal relationship with someone first. Then he can really deal, instead of just sticking to the line he's putting out in public." With Gorbachev, this effort at intimacy hasn't got very far. One indication: before the summit, White House aides asked Soviet officials what their boss would like to do for recreation between rounds of talks about the future of superpower relations. Pop up to Kennebunkport, Me., perhaps, for a spin on the presidential speedboat, with Bush at the throttle? Go fishing? Play tennis? None of the above, replied the Soviets. As Yuri Dubinin, former Soviet ambassador to the U.S., once put it, "Gorbachev has only one hobby: perestroika." The visitor from the Kremlin politely declined to go to Kennebunkport at all, or even to stay overnight at Camp David. The most he would agree to was eight hours of informal talks with Bush there Saturday. Still, the leaders and their aides did shed coats and ties in Maryland, and Gorbachev told a few of the salty jokes that Bush enjoys. The President took Gorbachev on a tour in a golf cart, and later the Soviet leader and his wife, while strolling along, paused to toss a few horseshoes. The lack of a deeper rapport should be no surprise. For one thing, there has been little time to develop any. Counting Gorbachev's trip to New York City in December 1988, when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly and visited briefly with Reagan and the then President-elect, he and Bush have seen each other only three times in the past year and a half, and until last week they had been alone only for about an hour. They have not even heard each other's voices very often. Though Bush incessantly telephones other foreign leaders, he has called Gorbachev only three times in 17 months. More important, Bush and Gorbachev are men of totally different upbringing, education, habits and turn of mind. Bush loves sports and entertaining friends. Gorbachev is far more formal. Says one U.S. official who studies him closely: "He's not at all stiff, and he's able to make an occasional wisecrack, but he rarely takes his jacket off or puts his feet up." When Ronald Reagan told his patented funny stories, says one American who attended their summits, "Gorbachev would roll his eyes, and you could see him thinking `Oh, no, not another story!'" The Soviet President enjoys discussing the theory of social change in the East and West, and has spent many happy (if hotly contentious) hours in just such debates with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Bush has little patience with theoretical discussions; his bent is toward solving immediate practical problems. Bush is a cautious politician dedicated largely to making relatively minor adjustments in the status quo. In his Inaugural Address he asserted that "there are times when the future seems thick as a fog; you sit and wait, hoping the mist will lift and reveal the right path." It is impossible to imagine Gorbachev uttering a sentence like that. He sees himself as a revolutionary shatterer of the status quo who would insist on pushing ahead through any fog. Finally, Gorbachev does not share Bush's conviction about the importance of personal relationships in foreign affairs. The Soviet President's policy is not immune to the influence of likes and dislikes--far from it. The deadlock between Moscow and Vilnius has been worsened by Gorbachev's distaste for Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis, whom he calls the "musician" (that was in fact Landsbergis' initial profession, but Gorbachev uses the term scathingly to imply a bumbling amateurism in politics). In summitry, however, the Soviet President's motto could be the Russian proverb "Sluzhba sluzhboi, druzhba druzhboi" (Business is business, friendship is friendship). If the two happen to coincide, so much the better, but one cannot do business only with friends. On that basis, Bush and Gorbachev can do business. If there is little personal warmth between them, they respect each other as able politicians who come to the bargaining table well briefed. One senior White House official goes as far as to say, "They are different in many ways, but in the meetings I think each President sees his mirror image. They're both aggressive and competitive. They know their details and do their homework. They both take notes in their little notebooks. They both probe each other. They both lean forward across the table." Soviet officials appreciate Bush's restraint in not attacking their chief on issues like Lithuania at a time when he has been vulnerable. Says Dimitri Simes, a Russian-born Kremlinologist at the Carnegie Endowment: "They are grateful at being treated not as a declining superpower but as a major player." Nor does Bush's lack of the "vision thing" bother Gorbachev's advisers. One member of the Soviet summit entourage last week paid the U.S. President a somewhat left-handed compliment: "Bush is just the right man for us at this time. He is prudent and cautious. The worst possible thing would be to have an American President with lots of grand ideas for the development of Europe." In any case, Bush may overestimate the importance of personal relationships. They can help ease leaders through a tight spot, and certainly a relationship of suspicion and distrust can lead to disaster. But the fact that Deng Xiaoping called Bush "old friend" counted for hardly anything during the Beijing massacres a year ago: the Chinese leader would not even return the American President's phone calls. Nor did Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat have to turn buddy-buddy in order to end their countries' inveterate enmity and sign a peace treaty. The interests of the U.S. and the Soviet Union dictate a similar attempt to bury old animosities and evolve a new, businesslike and cooperative relationship. That in turn dictates a long series of meetings, which, like last week's, will undoubtedly become more and more routine. So much the better: anybody who remembers the tension-ridden atmosphere and fears of nuclear war that were rife as recently as 1983 ought to welcome a touch of dullness in U.S.-Soviet encounters. If it happens to be accompanied by growing friendship between the leaders, fine. But if not, so what? Sluzhba sluzhboi, druzhba druzhboi. THE BOTTOM LINES ON THE TOP ISSUES The 16 accords signed last week include methods for verifying limits on nuclear testing and agreement on cutting U.S. and Soviet stockpiles of chemical weapons. Here is what the two sides accomplished in other areas: ARMS CONTROL Bush and Gorbachev signed off on major elements of a strategic-weapons reduction treaty, START, expected to be signed later this year. In addition to a previously negotiated 10% overall cut in the U.S. nuclear warhead count and a 25% cut in Moscow's arsenal, they agreed to new limits on mobile ICBM warheads (1,100 apiece). Biggest remaining obstacles: limits on the range of the Soviet Backfire bomber and an on-site inspection regime to prevent cheating. CONVENTIONAL FORCES The two sides will "intensify the pace" of talks to equalize and reduce limits on conventional forces in Europe; significantly, the Soviets agreed that such a deal should precede the 35-nation conference on European security scheduled for this fall. The arms accord being negotiated by NATO and Warsaw Pact nations in Vienna is expected to cap tanks, artillery, helicopters and troops. Main stumbling block: Moscow insists on clarifying the nature of future links between NATO and a unified Germany. TRADE New accords will triple airline capacity between the two nations and increase Soviet purchases of U.S. grain from 9 million to 10 million tons annually. U.S. companies will also get stronger protection for intellectual property. At the least, however, the Soviets must adopt a liberalized emigration law before Washington gives Gorbachev his main objective, most-favored-nation status, which would give the Soviets full access to American commercial and financial markets. </body> </article> </text>