Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume III, Soviet Union, January 1981–January 1983

154. Memorandum From Secretary of State Haig to President Reagan¹

Washington, April 2, 1982

SUBJECT

• U.S.-Soviet Relations Over the Near Term

I believe the attached analysis of the critical issues facing us in the U.S.-Soviet relationship is worth your personal attention. Unfortunately, it is long and detailed because of the complexity of the issues. But I would urge you to study it over the weekend, and I would like to talk to you about it thereafter.

Attachment

Paper Prepared in the Department of State²

Washington, undated

U.S.-SOVIET RELATIONS OVER THE NEAR TERM

SUMMARY

We are now at the threshold of announcing the beginning of START negotiations with the USSR, without commensurate Soviet actions to address our geopolitical concerns. Our national priorities and general policy approach are in place, but they have not yet produced the kind of Soviet restraint we can point to and follow up on to validate them. The initial regional/arms control balance of our approach to the U.S.-Soviet relationship is therefore at risk, and there is an inescapable agenda with the Soviets: if we do not drive events, there will be events that can drive us. We have the choice between: (1) proceeding case-by-case on the basis of our national priorities and present approach, hoping they will produce results on regional issues to balance the start of START; and (2) seeking to force events at a pace and in the sequence which would maintain the integrity of our approach, but without guarantees of success. I favor the latter course, and a game plan with an initial focus this spring on geopolitical issues built around our action program in Central America and early commencement of U.S.-Soviet experts’ talks on Afghanistan, to be made public in the same time frame as the START announcement. Subsequently, in late spring and summer we would add a supplementary focus on further arms control and bilateral relations.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE ISSUES

As between running in place and moving forward in a sequence of our choosing, we need to decide on the course most likely to preserve the credibility and effectiveness of the Administration’s overall approach to relations with the USSR.

THE BALANCED APPROACH AT THE CROSSROADS

We spent the first year establishing a coherent and rational approach and explaining it patiently and consistently to the Soviets, our Allies and friends, and the U.S. public.

That approach is based on the requirement that the Soviets show real restraint and accept reciprocity not just in the area they would prefer—arms control and “European security”—but in three areas of vital concern to U.S. interests—geopolitical issues, including but extending far beyond Poland; security and arms control overall; and bilateral relations.

We have jarred the Soviets from the disdain toward us they had fallen into over the past decade, without provoking them to radical new testing and challenging initiatives. But if they have been jarred, they have not been moved. They have not responded directly to sanctions nor driven bilateral relations further downhill, but they continue to arm-wrestle us for the propaganda high ground in arms control, and they continue to sustain or escalate the kind of egregious behavior in regional situations which destroyed the “detente” they are still nostalgic for. Except in very tentative fashion, e.g., in Southern Africa, we have not yet been able to create the new realities that will force them to move, and show that our approach is working.

The outlook for the next six months is not bright. It includes continuing domestic and international economic difficulties; continuing uncertainty over the fate of your economic and rearmament programs; resurgent opposition to INF deployments in Europe; tension and instability without clear direction in Poland; and mounting crisis and domestic hostility to U.S. involvement in Central America. And in this vexed situation, increasing public and Congressional concerns about nuclear weapons and the need to make the June summits successful will give new impetus to arms control negotiations.

Meanwhile, in the USSR, the Soviet leadership continues to hope that our economic stringencies and Transatlantic dissension will drive us back willy-nilly toward a version of “detente” without the need for basic adjustments from them. Our first-year approach to the Soviets has been firm and tough, but necessarily rhetorical. There has been little in it that allows them to conclude that our new approach is anything but a cover for a new Cold War, to which they must react appropriately. At the same time, Brezhnev may be failing, and in any event leadership maneuvering for the succession rose a notch with the death of Suslov. This makes it correspondingly important that we offer potential successors a plausible alternative to a neo-Stalinist retrenchment based on East-West confrontation, belt-tightening, and autarky. Although we cannot determine the outcome, we will influence it in a constructive direction only if we demonstrate convincingly that we are genuinely prepared to develop relations on the new basis we have defined.

THE SIX-MONTH AGENDA

And, meanwhile, the calendar of events on our present agenda with the Soviets is inescapable over the next six months. Issues must be dealt with in every area of the relationship.

—Among geopolitical concerns, Poland will be only one of a number of trouble spots. The others will certainly include Latin America and Afghanistan, and could well include Pakistan, Iran, and Lebanon.

—The grains issue is both geopolitical (as a potential Poland sanction) and bilateral. The extended year of the U.S.-Soviet Long-Term Agreement (LTA) expires September 30. The question of further extension must be faced in the context of Poland sanctions, a record grain harvest, rising world stocks, falling prices, Congressional elections, and a Farm Bill which raises questions about the value of an LTA as a foreign policy instrument.

—We must manage at least three strictly bilateral issues. (1) Human rights/emigration issues will inevitably take on a higher profile this year, beginning with the Pentecostalists, but very much including Jewish emigration. (2) On cooperative activities, we must decide on a short fuse whether or not to renew a fisheries agreement with the Soviets that has important advantages for West Coast fishermen and support from West Coast Congressmen, and we will face a series of similar decisions regarding activities clearly beneficial to the U.S. under agreements we have decided not to renew because of Poland. (3) There is also the question of whether to recommence the process of opening consulates in Kiev and New York, frozen by a misguided Carter Administration sanction for Afghanistan.

—In arms control, we are obliged to move on START by early summer, whether or not we can show results in other areas of the relationship.

ANOTHER GRAND DESIGN?

We have a choice between running in place and moving forward, but in either case we should proceed on the basis of the balance between regional concerns and arms control that we have defined this past year. If we choose any other basis at this point, before we can show results, the likelihood that we will sacrifice the credibility of our whole policy is almost overwhelming.

In the context of Poland sanctions and preparations for the June Summits, we can expect to hear calls for light at the end of the tunnel on arms control and European security as a tradeoff for European responsiveness to our leadership on Poland. While intellectually appealing, in practical terms the concept would require a rapid and radical departure from the Administration’s whole policy approach up to now, onto the USSR’s chosen ground. Our carrots with the Soviets are essentially in the political field, and if we offer them up in Europe before the Soviets have begun tangibly to exercise new restraint outside Europe, we will be moving, and probably irreversibly, from our agenda to theirs.

We should by all means seek to sell moves we make in the framework of our current approach to the Europeans as “light at the end of the tunnel.” But the current approach is based on solid and accurate analysis of what has gone wrong with East-West relations this last decade, and what is needed to put them right. We will not be doing either ourselves or the Europeans or in the long term the Soviets any favors if we jettison that approach for short-term Transatlantic gain. Our objective must be to control the pace of developments so as to maintain the integrity of our approach, and thus our leadership credibility. That means making sure that when we move in one area we can point to as much Soviet movement as possible on our key regional concerns. As we see it, there are only two realistic options.

ANALYSIS OF OPTIONS

Basically, we can deal with the agenda on a case-by-case basis within the context of our priorities and general approach, in the hope that our leverage on the Soviets will grow with time, or we can seek to force results in areas of our choosing which show some promise, and in the sequence most likely to keep our overall approach intact.

Case-by-case steadiness has many advantages. In particular, it would avoid the political risks of taking any new initiatives with Moscow which the other option would entail, and put off the day when we would have to decide what if any credit to give the Soviets for responsiveness on their part.

Simple steadiness also has multiple disadvantages, however. With honorable exceptions our approach has been necessarily but primarily reactive in this first year, basically a “talk-and-talk” mode, and continuation would leave most of the initiative to the Soviets. And in terms of their perceptions this has two major if alternative possible defects. On the one hand, it would consolidate Soviet hopes that our bark is worse than our bite, and that our economic and Transatlantic difficulties will chivy us back toward “detente” without substantial concessions from them. On the other hand, failing to test the seriousness of Soviet signals on geopolitical issues could consolidate the conviction in some quarters in Moscow that we are not serious ourselves about the need for regional restraint, that we are really driving for “superiority,” and that the USSR must take radical steps to defend its interests.

Result-oriented activism would require us to identify areas where the results we want—restraint and reciprocity—are most likely to be achievable over the next half year, and to make the hard decisions to go after them with the Soviets.

This option differs from “talk-and-talk” in that it would require more positive action and more initiative from us in selected areas on both the pressure and negotiation tracks. To some extent it reverses the pros and cons of the other option. But it would also give the Soviet leadership the test of our real intentions needed to avoid both complacency and dangerous alarmism as the succession proceeds.

At the same time, as a higher-risk approach the option is also demanding in specific ways. The element of strong action it requires—diplomatic, economic, but also possibly military—will frighten our Allies and sectors of our public. And the Soviets can be counted on to fan this fear, and seek to perch even higher on their preferred (and undeserved) high ground as defenders of peace and the political status quo against American adventurism and willingness to destroy the status quo. If we choose to pursue this approach seriously, therefore, we will need to establish ourselves as the real defenders of peaceful change within a flexible, internationally acceptable framework of law and comity. Practically, this means we may suspend agreements and activities, but should not abrogate them; that we should defend the Helsinki Final Act and the Helsinki process, and not denounce them; and that we should denounce Soviet violations of postwar agreements but not the agreements themselves. If the structure of international relations within which peaceful change must take place is damaged or torn down, it must be the Soviets who are—and who are seen to be—responsible, rather than the United States.

ELEMENTS OF A GAME PLAN

I favor an activist approach and a game plan for action in all three areas of the relationship. The initial primary focus is on geopolitical issues, followed quickly by an overlapping additional focus on arms control and bilateral issues coming on line this summer.

If the game plan is moderately successful in its elements and in its sequence, we will have laid the basis for proceeding toward a bilateral summit with our approach and credibility intact. At this point, committing ourselves to a summit would be disastrously premature, since it would bring with it a rush for “results” without any sound policy basis for real results. Most likely it would confirm the Soviet insistence that arms control is “central” and geopolitical worries are “secondary.” We might begin to introduce the idea of a summit into our private discussions with the Soviets, as an added “carrot” for results on our geopolitical concerns. But we must be careful to avoid loose summit talk propelling us toward either the “Spirit of Geneva”³—euphoria without results—or the “Spirit of Glassboro”⁴—sourness without results.

—Public Leadership. As a capstone and anchor for the regional/arms control balance during this difficult period, in our public declarations both you and I should register the critical importance of progress on both elements for the constructive East-West relations we seek. Your May speech, in other words, should give due weight to geopolitical issues, alongside arms control; I plan to do the same when I talk.

—Regional Issues. Over the next three months we should focus primarily on this area, beginning with Central America/Caribbean and Afghanistan. We should resist linkage among regional issues, since it leads too easily to spheres of influence, and we should be able to do so successfully, on the basis of our main message that the U.S. will create new realities by solving regional problems in their own terms.

1. Afghanistan. In the wake of Afghanistan Day it is important to keep attention focussed on this issue, and I propose to move forward on the bilateral “experts’ talks” we have been discussing with the Soviets since October in the same timeframe as the START beginning announcement. We would consult carefully beforehand with the Pakistanis, key European Allies and the Chinese, and we would let the news that the experts’ talks are beginning become public in a way that does not make Afghanistan primarily a U.S.-Soviet issue, since the Pakistanis and the non-aligned/Islamic countries should remain out front. We will also make sure we control the agenda and public perceptions of what we are doing. By putting out the news in the same timeframe as the START announcement, we will have given tangible form to the critical policy point that geopolitical issues and arms control are equally central in our approach to the Soviets.

2. Cuba in Central America. You will recall that when Phase I of our Central America game plan was before you, I insisted on how important it was for you to look down the road at the implications, up to and including Phase III. It remains as important today as it was then. We have set in train a process that is potentially explosive, and the policy stakes are very high. The Soviets will not take us seriously in general unless we can follow through at every step in Central America. The covert action program currently underway will raise the political temperature in the area to new levels over the next month. In itself it is unlikely to accomplish much, however. Thereafter I see several possible development tracks:

—In response to Nicaraguan fear, the Cubans could feel impelled to become more heavily involved in Nicaragua, and ship in MIGs, more advisors, or even whole military units. If that happens and we stand back, it will be a major foreign policy disaster: we must be prepared to react, and react strenuously.

—If, on the other hand, the Nicaraguans emerge unified from this test and feel they can manage on their own, there will not be much change on the ground. We will still suffer policy damage, but so long as the Cubans do not become more directly involved, there is a chance of success for our policy over the long haul, provided we remain involved in El Salvador, continue our multilateral efforts, and keep public support for staying the course.

—Whatever development track emerges, we must face the fact that if our negotiating scenario should fail, as it well might, we need to be prepared for the tougher, higher-risk alternative of moving against the Cubans in more dramatic ways, including military action. Once it is apparent that our basic credibility is at stake, we may have no other option consonant with the national interest.

3. Poland. In our public approach and in international fora, we should refocus attention on the real terms of this regional problem: it is the Soviets and Polish military who have made it more dangerous and intractable, and who have the responsibility to put the country on a less dangerous course. Our responsibility is to combine pressure and inducements for them to do so. Hence, we should take care to keep open the option of further sanctions even as we make clear that we are prepared to reverse sanctions and make a major contribution to Polish economic recovery together with our Allies, once the Polish regime has committed itself to real fulfillment of the conditions we have defined. The destruction of Poland’s trade with the West in the wake of sanctions is our major lever for a moderate course. It works both ways: to go beyond talk of debt default would hurt us more than it hurts the Poles and Soviets, but discussing it keeps the issue alive as pressure, and could lead us easily into discussion of debt rescheduling—an inducement—if conditions warrant.

4. Southern Africa. Here we should continue to test the meaning of Soviet “proposals” on behalf of Cuba while proceeding apace with our action track, the Namibia/Angola negotiations. In its own way, the Soviet approach resembles our approach to Afghanistan, and we should be wary of linkage. Our objective should be to secure Soviet agreement not to block the peace process, but also to keep the Soviets out of it until we have a settlement in hand.

During the late spring and early summer, we should add an additional focus on arms control and bilateral issues.

—Security/Arms Control. The Soviet “peace offensive” and our own pressures and interests all point to the need for early forward movement beyond our current firm but low-key approach to arms control. We should accept this, and make it our objective to control the process within our overall policy approach. Hence the initial focus on Central America and Afghanistan, as balance-wheels for arms control movement. But we should also engage now in intensified internal preparations on both arms control and bilateral relations.

1. START. Your personal involvement will be needed if we are to have in hand an agreed, politically rational START opening position which would permit us to begin negotiations this summer. To bring the Allies along on defense measures, to help the INF deployment decision, and to counter the “peace offensive,” we should aim to announce a starting date for START at the earliest reasonable opportunity, and well before the June summits. Negotiations could then begin in mid-to-late June.

2. INF. For the time being we should proceed on our present course, and the last thing we need at this point is more hype in Europe or within the USG on INF. By the fall, however, we will urgently need a political strategy for ensuring deployment in at least the UK, the FRG and Italy, even if the Dutch and Belgians drop out, and a political strategy for repairing the damage if the hemorrhaging goes beyond the point of no return.

3. MBFR. A significant new approach is being prepared with the UK and FRG, and depending on Polish developments, it could be tabled soon.

—Bilateral Issues. Pacing will depend somewhat on the course of the Polish crisis, but in general these issues will need to be dealt with in the summer, before the UNGA opens. Decisions will be needed primarily in the June–September period.

—1. Grains. We will need to deal with extension of the U.S.-Soviet LTA beyond September 30. At this point I am inclined toward simple extension for another year on the same basis (6 mmt. minimum, 8 mmt. maximum without consultations). As the optics will be unfavorable in Western Europe, the state of play on Poland-related measures will be an important variable regarding timing.

2. Cooperative Activities. We are moving to renew our fisheries agreement with the Soviets, but only for one year. It must be submitted to Congress by April 30 if it is not to lapse, and we must therefore propose this solution quickly to the Soviets. It would preserve the advantages our fishermen enjoy under the joint venture provided for by the agreement and signal our commitment to structures, but it would also signal to the Soviets that they are on a short leash until relations improve. The dilemma is typical of bilateral cooperative activities in general, and there will be at least one more test case this summer:

—Our review of activities under the sanctions program is concluding that a strong case can be made that the Space Agreement whose termination was announced December 29 is on balance strongly advantageous, in terms of benefit to programs and scientists, to the U.S. In its way, the sanction is as misguided as its Carter Administration analogue, the Kiev Consulate. If conditions in Poland permit, we should make it the first concrete example of reversibility of sanctions against the Soviets, and negotiate extension of the agreement.

3. Kiev and New York Consulates. There is a strong case for reversing a wrongheaded Carter sanction (especially as we commence experts’ talks with the Soviets on Afghanistan) and restarting the process leading to establishment of a U.S. official presence in the heart of the Ukraine. The Soviets are pressing us to fish or cut bait on a fine Kiev consulate building they have prepared for us but we have neither occupied nor made payments on. But there is a downside. The intelligence community is lukewarm in its support for our establishing in Kiev. The FBI was resigned to opening in New York before, but now is opposed to an additional Soviet presence there. We will draw some political heat in any event by a decision to move forward on an Afghanistan sanction, much less after Poland. After considering the pros and cons, I would propose to risk the building by telling the Soviets we would like to keep it, but are not in a position to move forward to negotiations on reopening now.

1. Source: Reagan Library, Executive Secretariat, NSC: Country File, USSR (04/01/1981–04/05/1982). Secret; Sensitive. An unknown hand wrote at the top of the memorandum: “President has seen.”
2. Secret; Sensitive.
3. Reference is to the so-called Big Four Summit at the Geneva Summit in July 1955.
4. Reference is to the Glassboro Summit in June 1967.