Enclosure
Paper Prepared by Richard
Pipes of the National Security Council Staff4
Washington, April 3, 1982
Preliminary comments on Secretary Haig’s Memorandum “U.S.-Soviet Relations Over the Near
Term” (April 2, 1982).
The basic theme of this memorandum is that the growing foreign and
domestic pressures for US-Soviet strategic arms negotiations before the
Soviet Union has shown restraint in its activities around the globe
place at risk our policy of linking these two actions. The Secretary
states that there are two options before us in meeting this challenge.
We can either deal with our geopolitical disagreements with the Soviet
Union case by case, in the hope that somehow this will produce enough
positive results to compensate for5
START. Or we can force the pace of
events that would preserve our policy by giving us (of course, without
any guarantee of success) enough so that we can enter START talks without losing face. He
himself favors the latter approach, urging commencement of negotiations
(at the “expert” level) over Afghanistan
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and some tough actions in the Caribbean to precede
announcement and initiation of START
negotiations in June of this year.
Without going into details of the Secretary’s proposals (most of which
impress me as sound and realistic) let me raise a fundamental question
about the premise which underpins it: that there must be linkage between
Soviet restraint globally and progress on arms control. I believe that
this approach is basically faulty and if pursued
further will land us in the kind of trouble this memorandum addresses
itself to, only more so. Only by decoupling arms
control from Soviet global actions can we avoid alternative
consequences, both of them unfavorable: either being forced to
capitulate on our demand for Soviet restraint, or else engaging in
adventures to prove that we are not capitulating but the success of
which, by the Secretary’s own admission, cannot be guaranteed.
The point is that the nuclear competition and the emotionalism to which
it gives rise is unlike any regional, geopolitical issue: it is sui generis. People in the free world are so
afraid of the arms race and the risk of nuclear war that they are not
prepared to stand up to the Russians on any regional issue—be it
Afghanistan, Poland, or Central America—if such resistance seems to
enhance the danger of nuclear war. Given this fact, our policy places us
at a great disadvantage because the Soviets can always neutralize a
public outcry over their actions with a campaign that to resist them
risks ultimate destruction of mankind.
It so happens that the public, both here and in Europe, believes
(unrealistically, in my opinion) that the mere act of negotiating arms
limitations or reductions between the “superpowers” attenuates the arms
race and reduces the risk of nuclear war. Given this perception it will
not do to say: we are not prepared to negotiate with Moscow on matters
of such paramount importance until it satisfies us on matters of
secondary importance in selected regions of the globe. This is a losing
position. What we ought to do is to say: “Of course, deceleration of the
arms race is so supreme an objective that we are prepared to negotiate
it at any time, any place even though our adversary behaves in an
utterly uncivilized manner.” This will go far toward defusing the public
pressures and allow us to cope with the Russians on geopolitical matters
at a time and place of our own choosing rather than in order to “prove”
that we can enter START negotiations
without having sacrificed our principles. To induce Moscow to behave
globally, we should use economic, political, and scientific levers which
can be very effective but do not become objects of massive public
opinion campaigns.
I may also add that the Secretary’s memorandum does not seem to take
account sufficiently, in my opinion, of the looming Soviet eco
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nomic and political
(succession) crises which are likely to make the Soviet leadership more
open to active initiatives on our part.
