European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - October 12, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes saturday october 12, 1985 James Reston Geneva Summit talks May be headed for score Ess tie most of thl. Spa i next month s t . Sum Mit meeting in inc i h is been negative if Noi downright pessimistic and it scan to understand Why but an argument can be m Ide Tor a Lillic patience if n for optimism. Public diplomacy which is a contradiction in terms clearly fascinates both president Reagan and general Secretary Gorbachev taking their minds Uff their immediate prob lems Ai Home but inc propaganda and the endless analyses of the two Leader personalities cannot reliably predict the Summit s outcome. Geneva is not merely a meeting of two men with different personalities and philosophies and political techniques but of two states at the Summit of world Power. Though icy May disagree about How to Deal with each other on Larth or in the ars. They have a common interest in avoiding clashes of nuclear Power and Trade Power and of unleashing Tenor an chaos in the world. Maybe the present gloom a ill be justified but this is probably a time to wait and see and particularly to gel inc secretaries of stale Ami defense and Robert Mcfarland of the National Security Council off the weekend television shows for a while and Down to settled nuclear policy. So far this has not been Dune. The presi Dent s aides arc giving him do ens of position running to hundreds of pages which hell probably never read Fine tuning him. As they Sny Ai if he were a machine or a fiddle. This is probably a bum idea. No doubt the president needs technical and political help on All mysteries but he is no it a i ilor and with All his divided advisers at his Side in Geneva tug Ging him this Way and thai on details i might not be a bad idea to leave him to his hopeful generalities. The question for both Reagan and Gorbachev is not whether they will come to some dramatic agreement about soviet offensive missiles or wars de lenses so clime in the future it s merely whether they can Knock off the propaganda for awhile and after Geneva get some sensible officials together to consider the George will facts and begin serious negotiations. Summit inc tips arc Noi the place to negotiate the intricate and m stifling tangles of nuclear weapons. There Wilt be too Little time in a Day or two at Geneva too much hoopla too Many interminable translations too Many state dinners press interviews and phony courtesies and Loo Lillic Lime for the definition of policies Washington and Moscow could depend upon for the rest of the Century. Yet these Summit meetings have in viruses. When Gorbachev went to Paris he had to listen to the objections of president Mitterrand and submit himself to the questions of the French press about the threat of soviet missiles targeted on Paris and the violence of inc soviet stat against i Lipins who dissent and arc m Pri Mcd for it. Tins is Noi much but it s sum citing. In Washington As usual there s mime honest confusion about shul Gorbachev s Smil ing be approach Means and about How the president should approach him at the Summit. Some of the president s aides re Gard the whole Gorbachev exercise As a cunning propaganda trick. Others agree it May be so. But prefer to wait and St a. Kratian is rather Good at dreaming and switching. He does t Fol Low Gorbachev s statements or even his own very carefully which is not necessarily n bad thing. President Kennedy failed in his 1961 Summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna partly because he paid too much attention to detail and tried to go it alone. He had been told trial president Eisen Hower did t impress the soviet leaders at inc Summit because he always turned to Secretary of slate John Foster Dulles for answers. Kennedy took on Khrushchev personally sometimes Wilhour any advis ers and the meeting was a disaster. So the administration probably right to discourage great expectations Unwar ranted by the intricacies and dangers of inc problems. If they can agree on the procedures for continuing the nuclear talks that in itself will be useful. The bet in this Corner a Dollar to a Ruble which is pretty Good Odds is that Geneva will be something of a scoreless lie. No great breakthroughs no great disasters. C new York times Nevi service Ammasi Meskins you up Here plan for peace is a lot of propaganda Little balance Gwynne Dyer Mas seen the future and docs not like in one bit. In his seven episodes of the series War which began oct. 1 on Public television he says we arc doomed to nuclear a incr unless we scrap the whole system of nation states. In episode seven he lays a solution is at in the United nations. In the Book Dcri-.en1 Fumii the series. Dyer perversely applies a principle of Naihe ii at a to political affairs for the purpose of to Vancief to Agenda. Any even thai has a definite protus Ieuv Lum Cir Small that docs nol decrease with Mil occur. So nuclear Waris a statistical " unless inc probability is de creased. But he a s. I to prerequisite for that decrease Isth dissolution of National sovereignly. Wearing a Sci Trotsky Beard and dressed in the designer proletarian style favored by Europe s Middle class leftists jeans leather jackets turtlenecks never Necktie Dyer a Canadian sounds at the ragged Edge of weariness and sarcasm. It is evidently a tiring business being one of the few sensitive people on the planet. Here is a representative judgment from the Man who finds almost everyone else morally obtuse it is impossible to care much about who won Theattle of Megiddo in 1479 both sides lived Long ago and far away and most of what they cared for. Has vanished utterly. This is not at All the Way we feel about the Normandy invasion of 1944, but if history goes on Long enough the Day will come when Megiddo and Normandy will seem on a Par equally futile and equally meaningless. That War of 3,400 years ago was obviously a Mere Power struggle with no moral justification whereas any War our nation becomes involved in today will be just and necessary. The soldiers who were killed on the Battlefield of Megiddo died in vain but if today s generation of Young men have to die on the Central front in Europe it will decide the moral Fate of Mankind forever and i am the Queen of working Back from thai sophomoric ending through the caricature no one says any War Settle Mankind s Fate forever. Dyer s message is thai the War against Hitler was meaningless because All wars Are morally identical Power struggles. He says Britain s resistance to Argentine aggression in the falklands had madly the same effect As the aggression in under mining International order. He uses the word All relentlessly to deny moral distinctions thai interest reasonable people. We All live in fortresses we Call Well Fine but if he wants to turn fortress into a classification thai docs no classify he could at least notice the some of us think morally significant differences Between the internal arrangements and external Aims of the world s More than160 fortresses the israelis live much the same say everybody of Dyer lives in Placid London. All soldiers belong to the same profession and be Neath the uniform there is very Little difference " com menting on film of soviet soldiers. Dyer says that had their parents emigrated to America the soldiers might be serving in the . Army. When he joins two ban 1 ties yes. Young men everywhere Are physically similar yes they join the armies where they arc born to an assertion vague to the Point of Hitler s and Lincoln s soldiers were in inc same profession he inadvertently raises an interesting question is this Why we have Public television to treat grave subject flippantly being a determinist of the most childish Stripe he argues that the system of nations of Mill tary mud serial complexes churns along autonomously manufacturing concepts such As Honor and valor for manipulative purposes. The soviet and american Mili tary Indus Nal complexes Are exactly the both sides m the cold War Are morally equal because both Nave chemical warfare capabilities. He does not men Tion that the soviet Union using both sides have provisions for protecting National leaders. He docs not say to
