TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/83/83capmoy.3

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January 2, l984

Eight statesmen, American and foreign, suggest how to reduce
tensions

What, concretely, can the U.S. and the Soviet Union do to lower
the level of tension between them in the months ahead?  How, in
the long run, can they manage their competitive relationship
better so as to reduce the risk of armed confrontation?  TIME
asked eight statesmen, both in and out of office, to offer some
practical recommendations.

Claude Cheysson
French Foreign Minister

Enormous ideological and moral differences are at the root of the
difficulties in relations with the Soviet Union.  Nothing will
make these differences disappear in the foreseeable future.
However, we should aim to develop three types of relations:
exchanges and contacts that benefit both sides, arms
negotiations, and a high-level dialogue that will enable the
participants to explain their intentions and so avoid
misunderstandings.

Let us not overdramatize the crisis.  It is serious, but it has
not undone everything.  Trade and all kinds of contacts have not
been broken off.  The Soviets value these as do the European
countries and the U.S. in the sectors that interest them.  We
must maintain and reinforce these exchanges, exercising caution,
but without seeking to use them as instruments of political
pressure.

The thread of negotiations must not be broken.  The START
negotiations must stay alive.  In Stockholm, a conference is to
open on conventional disarmament in Europe, which has great
political importance.  There is no justification for the Soviet
Union's walking out of the INF negotiations.  We would view a
return to the negotiations not as a defeat for the U.S.S.R. but
as a reasonable exercise of responsibility by its leaders.

High-level dialogue between leaders of the U.S.S.R. and those of
the West, in particular the U.S., is badly needed at this time.
Such dialogue is indispensable if we are to prevent
misunderstandings over areas of tension leading to dangerous
confrontations.  Mistrust and suspicion have bred a vicious cycle
that has to be stopped.  Let us try to break out of it by making
the most of all the good will that exists and of every
initiative.  France will not be last in this. What we can do, we
will do without ever losing sight of the fact that overtures to
dialogue must not be confused with weakness.

In the long run, last peace has to be based on recognition of the
differences between the Soviet system and the system of countries
that want to live in peace on the basis of equal rights and
responsibilities.  This presupposes that the West will not speak
a crusading language and that the Soviets will cease to found
their policy on the certainty of the collapse of the other
system.  It further presupposes their willingness to take into
account the right of others to security instead of being content
to assert their own, and that they modify their methods in places
where the evolution of society and men's aspirations so require,
as in Poland.  With our historical links to Eastern Europe and
sensitivity to the unjust division of our continent, we Europeans
hope that the Soviet Union will gradually find a way to accept
self-determination and observance of basic human rights in the
area it controls.

Richard Nixon
Former President of the U.S. (1969-74)

There are those who believe that just acting tough and keeping
the Soviets guessing is the best way to keep them restrained.
That is a very dangerous attitude, and I speak as a hawk.  I want
the military balance restored. And I want an arms-control
agreement that denies both sides a first-strike capability.  The
leaders of the Soviet Union and the U.S. must work out a process,
rules of engagement, to prevent their mutual destruction.

The Soviet leaders may be wrong. They may be evil, and they
certainly think we are evil, but they are rational.  They are not
like Hitler.  They are concerned that the differences between the
U.S. and them may explode into war.  They want to win, but they
want to win without war.

The first thing we need to do now, on the various arms-control
fronts, is nothing.  There would be no greater mistake than for
the U.S. and the Europeans to say, "My God, we've done something
wrong, and we have to make some concessions to get them back to
the table."  That would be negotiating under duress and would
encourage walkouts in the future.  In the longer term, I think
they will come back because it is in their interest to do so.

We do need, however, to leapfrog the sterile arms-control debate
and broaden the dialogue and the agenda to include other factors.
We have to explore the possibilities of some initiatives in other
areas that might attract their interest.

On the economic front, our current trade is too small to make it
an effective weapon.  But with the Japanese and the European
shares added, it is large.  I thought it was a mistake to give
upon the grain embargo without getting something in return.  But
economic leverage must be used subtly and firmly.

On Third World problems, we share with the Soviets the desire of
not wanting to leave our fate in the hands of others.  The
proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries may be the
most important new problem of the next 20 years.  The Soviets
have as much interest as we do in seeing that controlled.  They
do not want that danger anymore than we do.

It is important to go forward without military research in space,
but this will be destabilizing unless we offer to share that
information with the Soviet Union.  As a gesture of good faith,
and as a demonstration that we are not trying to build a shield
that will lt us win a nuclear war, we should offer our
discoveries to the Soviet Union.

All this argues that there needs to be a relationship between the
Soviet Union and the U.S. at the highest level, a relationship of
hardheaded detente.  Since the Secretary of State or the National
Security Adviser are too busy, I think a special person should be
named by the President to focus entirely on the relationship with
the Soviet Union.  The Soviets should have a similar person.
Then there could be summitry without the leaders themselves.

Finally, it is vitally important the these two men, Reagan and
Andropov, meet.  I don't want them to meet just to shake hands,
but they can meet to agree on a process whereby more negotiations
will take place on arms control and other matters.  But because
it is the right thing, my instincts tell me it will happen.

Bob Hawke
Prime Minister of Australia

We should not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by a sense of
global pessimism or imminent disaster.  Australia does not accept
that the nuclear-weapons states alone have the right to determine
these issues.  Their calculations--or miscalculations--could have
terrible consequences for all of us.  We do not consider that
unilateral disarmament would be an effective way of bringing
about an end to the arms race.  What is required is realistic,
concrete and balanced proposals that have at their heart a
recognition of the national security interests involved.

The Australian government has greatly elevated arms control and
disarmament goals within our foreign policy.  As a member of
every multilateral disarmament body, Australia is promoting the
negotiation of treaties to  end nuclear testing and to ban
chemical weapons, and space.  We are also helping to strengthen
measures against the spread of nuclear weapons.  For countries
such as our, there is no substitute for the hard slog of
multilateral negotiations designed to engage the interests and
support of the superpowers.  We recently encouraged by a U.N.
vote in which this year the U.S. changed its vote, thereby
bringing us closer to negotiation of a comprehensive test-ban
treaty.

The withdrawal of the U.S.S.R. from the INF talks of course
worries us.  The Soviet position on this seems to me to overlook
the fact that their deployment of SS-20s threatened the balance
of power in Europe in the first place.  I urge Mr. Andropov to
think again on this.  In the longer term, I believe that both
superpowers have compelling reasons of acute national interest to
pursue arms-control agreements.  Progress will probably be
achieved in gradual steps and only after difficult negotiations.

I would stress that adequate and effective provision for
verification is the crucial precondition for progress.  Australia
wants to make a constructive and realistic contribution within
our means.  In this connection, the joint U.S.-Australian
facilities on our soil play an important role in arms-control
verification as well as maintaining Western security.  We are
upgrading our capacity to monitor nuclear explosions by seismic
means.

On the assumption that the more lurid public accounts of disarray
in the Soviet leadership are not true, I would like to see a
properly prepared summit between Presidents Reagan and Andropov
next year.  As well as putting arms control back on track, I
would be looking for some sign of greater understanding between
them on the  Middle East in particular.  Frankly, the convergence
of superpower rivalry and indigenous instability there at the
moment worries me more than the arms race itself.

Zbigniew Brezezinski
National Security Adviser (1977-81)

The U.S.-Soviet relationship is today quite normal, and this is
all to the good.  Unlike the past, when American public opinion
tended to swing from euphoria about detente to hysteria about the
cold war, the public correctly perceives Soviet-American
relations as basically antagonistic and competitive, though
linked by a common interest in survival.

We should have no illusions, however, that the antagonism will
quickly wane.  Our histories, geographies, politics and global
interests are so varied that for a long time to come we will
remain rivals.  Regional conflicts in the Middle East and Central
America will continue to fuel that global rivalry.  Accordingly,
we should concentrate on what can be done to minimize the chances
of a direct collision.  three initiatives would help:

1.  Instead of seeking a comprehensive and complex START treaty,
with all its negotiating and verification pitfalls, we should
settle for a limited, interim agreement.  For the time being, I
would forgo the more ambitious Reagan proposals for across-the-
board reductions, including major cuts in throw-weight and
warheads.  Instead, I would accept the most recent Soviet counter
proposal for a mutual scale-down to 1,800 launchers, but with
added joint limit of, say, 7,500 warheads.  Such a simple interim
agreement would break the logjam, be easier to verify, provide
the basis for a wider treaty later, and we could have it by next
summer.

2.  Initiate genuinely consultative annual U.S.-Soviet summits.
I first proposed this back in l977, and the idea has been
endorsed recently by both Mr. Nixon and Mr. Mondale.  Our leaders
should simply get together once a year for three or so days of
truly informal talks so that we gain gradually better
understanding of our differences, but without expecting
unattainable accommodations.  Greater mutual sensitivity to our
conflicting positions would in itself help to keep the
competition more stable.

3.  Widen the annual economic summit with our principal allies
into a strategic-economic summit, so that we can review together
more systematically how best to handle the East-west
relationship, thus minimizing the differences among ourselves,
which the Soviets are always tempted to exploit.

In brief, in order to avoid a head-on collision we have to
collaborate with our political enemy even while competing
assertively.

Richard Von Weizsacker
Major of West Berlin and sole candidate for election as President
of West Germany

We must concentrate our efforts on conducting a positive policy
vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, today more than ever.  This means on
the one hand that we must not tempt Moscow into regarding our
defense capacity as something we are prepared to compromise.
Thirty-eight years of experience have taught Berliners better
than anyone else that the protection of our freedom rests above
all on the American commitment.  For this help and engagement, we
are deeply grateful.

But a decisive point is that we use our freedom to achieve good
relations with the Soviet Union, rather than confrontation.
East-West relations today are preoccupied with disarmament,
rearmament or arms control.  Experience teaches that it is not
disarmament that points the way to peace, but rather that
peaceful relations open the door to disarmament.  States arm
themselves against one another when there are poor relations
between them, when they have no common interests or when they
have no common interests or when these are not developed, when
cooperation is rejected or not even attempted.  But where
concrete fields of cooperation are exploited or created, arms
problems present a smaller obstacle to peace.  Neither rearmament
nor disarmament. neither confrontation nor peace movements,
neither hawks nor doves bring about peace.  Peace is the
consequence of practical cooperation.

The Helsinki accords divide East-West relations into three
categories; security, cooperation and the free movement of
people.  Wisely, it was agreed that all three categories should
be regarded only in context and as being of equal value.
Security matters, taken on their own, offer too little chance of
success.  The same applies to an isolated policy concerning the
free movement of people.  Cooperation is of paramount importance.
If we succeed in extending, step by step, cooperation in the
fields of science, food, ecology, transportation, economics,
energy and development policy, then arms control and  even free
movement of people will ultimately come into the range of what is
possible.  However, if we refuse to cooperate with the Soviets in
these field, in which they have always lagged behind, and if we
instead demand concessions in the only area in which they are
equal or superior to the West, namely in armaments, we shall have
to wait a long time for security, human rights and a secure
peace.  Our goal is a policy that combines strong defense and
cooperation with the Soviet Union.

Francis Pym
Former British Foreign Secretary (1982-83)

My first recommendation is to stop shouting.  A period of
relative silence would be healthy.

My second is to begin a process that will lead to increased
dialogue.  After recent years, that would take time anyway:
Andropov's illness means to the Soviet Union has a leadership
problem in the immediate future.  That has to be understood and
may cause delay.

My third is for us in the West to be ready for the time when the
Soviets return to the negotiating table, which in my judgment is
likely to happen by the summer months, and be prepared, if that
were helpful, to continue medium-range missile talks in a
different arms-control format, possibly through the START talks.
In the meantime, NATO should mount a major drive in all 16 member
countries, with the total support of each government, designed to
explain and explain again to our electorates the strategy of
deterrence and its effectiveness in influencing the Soviet Union
not to attack us.  Confidence must be restored in the minds of
our peoples.  Nuclear weapons induce fear.  Of course, so does
some rhetoric.  When confidence is restored and calmness returns,
there will be a better environment for dialogue.

More attention must be given to European-American relations.
Misunderstandings abound.  To many Europeans, Reagan looks like a
warmonger.  To many Americans, Europeans seem unaware of the
Communist threat from the Soviet union and contribute too little
to NATO.  The causes of such misreadings are clear, but we cannot
afford them.

We must coordinate more closely our perceptions and handling of
regional disputes.  The very interdependence of our world means
that the interests of the West may be as directly threatened by
events outside the NATO area as inside it, and I feel it may be
time we reviewed our crisis management mechanisms.  Each
component of the alliance, while accepting that agreement will
not always be possible, should at least ensure that the others
know the course of action it intends to pursue and try to evolve
joint reactions.

The Soviet Union has enormous problems: economic, political and
social.  It will not solve them buy continuing the political
doctrine that created them.  Let us understand, therefore, the
nightmare that faces the Russian leaders and leave them alone to
sort themselves out.

Dean Rusk
Secretary of State in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations
(1961-69)

The U.S. and the Soviet Union share a massive common interest--
the prevention of an all-out nuclear war.  We are the only two
nations that, if locked in deadly combat, could raise a serious
question as to whether this planet can any longer sustain the
human race.  It follows that Washington and Moscow bear a heavy
and special responsibility toward the peace of the world and the
survival of the human race.  That should be the beginning of any
consideration in both capitals of our mutual relations.

The rhetorical level between Washington and Moscow has reached
unusual levels of acrimony.  Both capitals should take care
because there is a self-hypnotic effect in rhetoric that could
cause one or both to begin to believe their own excessive
vituperation and lead to dangers that we ought to try to avoid.
We now have put behind us more than 38 years since a nuclear
weapon has been fired in anger, despite many serious crises we
have had since 1945.  The Soviets have no more interest in the
destruction of our beloved America.  Both sides must avoid the
game of "chicken"--pressing to see how far one or the other can
go without crossing that lethal threshold.

An urgent and immediate problem is to find some way to put a
limit to what is becoming an insane race in nuclear weapons.
Such negotiations cannot be easy, but the effort has to be made.
Both in the Soviet Union and in the U.S. the influence of
military thinking seems to be in the ascendancy, if for different
reasons.  Both capitals must find a way to put a brake on the
demands of their respective military purposes.

An immediate problem that needs the most serious attention is the
prospect that we shall be moving the arms race into outer space.
Without getting into the scientific and technical debate as to
whether antiballistic missile capabilities are possible through
such esoteric space weapons, two things should be clear.  First,
we must assume that the Soviets will be able to do whatever we
manage to do, after spending hundreds of billions of dollars in
the effort.  Secondly, we can be sure that if we or the Soviets,
or both, begin to approach success in devising such space
weapons, there will be a frantic race on both sides to devise
offensive missiles that can penetrate or evade such defenses.
The prospect is, therefore, that we shall be spending hundreds of
billions of dollars, perhaps trillions, with no perceptible
underlying change in the strategic relations between the two
countries.  Before we pollute the wondrous heavens with the folly
of man, surely we should put our heads together to try to find
some way to avoid this dismal prospect.  As common members of
Homo sapiens, perhaps we can also find a way to put our heads
together to address some of the urgent problems to be faced in
the coming decades by the entire human race in such fields as
energy, the environment, the population explosion and world
hunger.  Little by little such common necessities may lay a
restraining hand upon the forces that would move us toward
violent conflict.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada

Following the commitment made by leaders of seven industrialized
nations at the Williamsburg summit last May to devote our full
political energy to the search for peace, I undertook a personal
initiative to seek ways to improve East-West relations.  When the
two largest military powers each have over 20,000 nuclear
weapons, any one of which is many times more powerful than the
bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their relationship
is of vital interest to all nations.  I believe each individual
leader must see the search for stability as a personal
responsibility.  It is far too important to be left to the
superpowers alone.

Despite periods of fruitful negotiations, and despite some
valuable treaties, both sides bristle with nuclear arms, the
number and sophistication of which increase every year.  In
seeking to reduce world tensions it is not sufficient to deal
with abstract equations and the relative capabilities of this
weapon over that.  What is at issue is not just the capacity of
these weapons for destruction, but the intentions of the
governments that control them:  the superpowers must each be
convinced of the good intentions of the other.

I have met with NATO leaders in Europe, the Commonwealth heads of
government in New Delhi, as well as Japanese and Chinese leaders,
and most recently with President Reagan in Washington.  I shared
with them amy conviction that we cannot hope to see real progress
in the negotiations for arms control and disarmament until there
is an injection of high-level political energy into these
negotiations and into the East-West relationship itself.

I am very encouraged by indications that the process has now
begun.  At their recent meeting in Brussels, NATO foreign
ministers accepted the need for mutual respect for the legitimate
security interests of both superpowers.  they reiterated their
belief in genuine detente and a relationship between East and
West based on equilibrium, moderation and reciprocity; perhaps
more important, they eschewed aspirations to military
superiority.  The Western agreement to send political leaders,
rather than diplomats, to Stockholm in January and NATO's
commitment to make a new political effort at the Vienna
negotiations on conventional forces indicate a growing acceptance
that political leaders must personally involve themselves in the
peace process.

It is also heartening that President Reagan, in his recent speech
in Japan, stated his belief that a nuclear war is not winnable
and must never be fought, noted his desire to eliminate all
nuclear weapons and stressed his willingness to compromise in
order to achieve significant reductions in the level of armaments
threatening mankind.  These are positive indications that
improvements in the relationship are possible.

I believe that the Soviet Union shares the desire for peace, and
I hope we will soon see similarly positive signs from them that
we might aspire, not just to a more stable balance of terror, but
to a real and lasting peace.