European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - October 5, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes sunday october 1988 George f. Will it was Reagan not the soviets who blinked president Reagan now admits that he should not have said the soviets they probably did but Only in elated administration having linked cases it said would nol be linked and having accepted an equation it termed unacceptable of a spy and a journal stand having eviscerated a principle no trading of innocent hostage for spies in a Swap it says is nol a Swap is reeling toward Summit it says is no Summit. Embarrassment produces insincerity from which flows mangled language. That must be remembered when the administration turns to setting the agreements reached at the Summit. Agreements Are guaranteed. Having paid Ransom to the hostage Laker the administration is travelling to Iceland As a payment to get Mikhail Gorbachev to do what he said Al the Geneva Summit he would . Gorbachev agreed to come to a Summit in the United states. Now he is attaching a condition we arc scrambling to meet he must be guaranteed a pc engineered Summit that will yield arms control agreements he can be comfortable Geneva Gorbachev also agreed to the principle of to percent reductions of Force Levels. The United Stales has acquiesced in a soviet Retreat toward to percent. The administration says 30 percent is an interim step. Administration acquiescence is another at tempt to Purchase partial soviet compliance wit agreements so that other soon to Bush bedded agreements can be produced. The administration expert at producing deficits is running a humdinger Wilh the Soviel Union. Administration outlays far exceed receipts in transactions with Moscow in the Dan Iloff debacle the administration made in Cessions regarding soviet spies on the United Lions payroll one fourth of which comes from . Taxpayers. The details of the concessions Are unclear Only to . Taxpayers the Soviel Union knows. In fact the concessions arc probably not yet administration should at least have made the soviets release As Many dissidents As there Are spies allowed to remain Al the United nations. It should have secured the release of the Man now dying in a Moscow Hospital the Man who two years ago refused to help set up an arrest of Nicholas Daniloff. Senior administration officials say solemnly that a rogue Kab May have arrested Dan Iloff 10 Embarrass Gorbachev. Let s see Gorbachev is the Kab Patron who was a protege of Yuri Andropov the head of the Kab. And Gorbachev has increased the Colora Tion of the politburo. Yet the Kab May be trying to undermine him we re absence of intellectual Ballasi in the administration is also apparent when Donald Regan says that in the Daniloff Case the Soviel Union lost the Public relations Battle because now everyone knows what they let s see after 69 years and scores of Mil Lions of corpses the soviet regime has suffered a significant Public relations setback. Regan a Man from Wall Street thinks the struggle of the 20th Century is a Andrew j. Glass saving face matter for Madison Avenue. Administration spokesmen celebrate the Iceland Summ what is not a Summit because the president is a great communicator who can use the occasion to convince Gorbachev that the United slates is sincere about arms reductions. The logic of that line is that therms race and inferentially the cold War is merely the result of a misunderstanding a failure to communicate. Hitherto less communicative presi dents have failed to assuage Soviel anxieties about american intentions. President Reagan has been sold a soothing theory that explains the dynamic of the soviet state in terms of anxieties and paranoia rather than an ideologically driven Pursuit of Power. The theory is that the Soviel Union is what it is armed to the Teeth waging War on its population and aggressive at every turn because ii has had a hard history and has not had democracy to teach it civility. This interpretation of the Central drama of the Century the struggle Between democracy and totalitarianism is of almost Antic superficial Ity but it plays to two perennial american weaknesses parochialism and vanity. Intellectual parochialism causes americans to be Lieve that everyone is like us or can be made to be likes by us. Americans do not take ideology seriously so neither do the soviet leaders the administration believes that Gorbachev wants to end the arms race so he can raise his people s Stan Dard of living. The administration believes Rait Kcf no better reason than that american politician att or Marily concerned with living Standard. The for nuts traction partakes of the National vanity of Beuving but if soviet leaders just see our supermarket and twin Ming pools they will Sec the Folly of trying to win an arms race with a nation this Rich. Never mind that Soviel leaders know that the crucial and a impressive variable is Congress willingness to compete with soviet military spending the administration believes the impediment to so Viet reasonableness is soviet euro ii. A therapeutic . Policy can dispel thai especially a policy by a great communicator especially one who knows communists from the experience of labor Union strife in Hollywood 40 Yean ago the attitude ascribed 10 the admin Utra lion in the paragraphs immediately above May teen like caricatures of american innocence. However the administration proclaims them and they explain recent events. Reagan wants a Summit in order to practice therapeutic policy. Gorbachev wants a Ummil because he dines on people who think like thai. Friendly elves May be what this Summit needs a recent Survey by the univer sity of Iceland found that 55 percent of icelanders believe in elves. In the old Norse Tongue still spoken on that North Atlantic Island elves arc known As hut Kufalk the hidden Given the underlying Spur stale of american soviet relations it might help to have a Friendly Elf or two scattered among the assorted journalists publicists and Security agents when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev Confer in Reykjavik. The Road to Reykjavik lies strewn with blunders hurled from both sides of Ibe East West Divide. Now the american president and the communist party Gen eral Secretary have called their own num Bers As it were to see if the damage can be contained. The problems Are partly systematic. They can be traced to the seemingly contradictory negotiating strategy which the masters of the Kremlin have employed often successfully since the Rise of soviet Power under Lenin. First they conduct their serious bar gaining under pressure of a deadline and in an atmosphere of mounting tension in the often accurate belief that such tac tics offer them a competitive Edge against their Western adversaries. Second the soviets want to know what they re buying before plunking Down their rubles. Josef Stalin once re fused to enrol a postwar Russia in the planned United nations unless Franklin Roosevelt agreed to Grant the .s.h. 16 votes one for each soviet Republic in that body. Stalin finally settled for three votes which was still two too Many but Only after . Said he would claim 48 . Votes one for each stale then in the Union finally decisions of any con sequence arc reached in Russia by Only a handful of people perched at the Apex of Power people who need t respond As . Presidents often must do to n testy press to a recalcitrant Congress and Toan Independent judiciary. Mark Palmer a Young state depart ment aide involved in the most recent round of pre Summit bargaining with the soviets recalls what he d been told by Armand Hammer an octogenarian Busi Nessman who has been dealing with mos Covite overlords since Lenin s Lime. He said to me that they Are a sys tem under which everybody is afraid of the Man next above him until fou get All the Way to the very top and it s Only the very lop Man who really a unmake decisions on anything of any importance. And i would say f Ajmer concluded that is the critical it Asp for sum Mitry. You be got to Aljen you want to do something big and ambitious you be got to get to that Man. Everyone Down below is More or lets a nervous bureaucrat and in t willing to take that kind of big Well the big step to be taken in Iceland assuming All goes Well there is to set a Date for a Washington Summit a meeting which supposedly had been All sewn up in Geneva nearly a year ago. The soviets would t commit to Ken selves to a Date however until they knew More or Tecsi what they Loyld expect to Cone away with. And the Ameri cans insisted that unt Iund Inlew a firm Date was in hand the Wuhan cum poli by taking apparatus fractured under the genial auspices of at Oard chairman of a president could rtt Hope to resolve the question of what we to be resolved at the next sunni in a so now it s up to the top Mea to make Deal about they Are going to make. Then their respective put Doc tors can portray to a Witt ing world beyond successive teams of could t Teal that bargain. Nor could their Tang Bora. Secretary George Shultz and soviet foreign Minuter Eduard Shevardnadze. Perhaps Reagan and Gorbachev and the local elves can melt the ice until that ii the next East West freeze occur. L
