While I concur, I thought you would benefit from the interesting historical
framework which these two experts use to evaluate the matter.
Attachment
Paper Prepared by the National Security Council
Staff2
OBSERVATIONS ON A SUMMIT—WILLIAM L. STEARMAN
Brezhnev wants a summit meeting
in order to resurrect detente and to slow down US and NATO defense improvements. If the
President wants a summit, he might follow President Eisenhower’s example
and put a price tag on it.
Early in Eisenhower’s Administration, he was faced with the issue of
meeting with the post-Stalin leaders of the USSR. Churchill, for one, was pushing for a Four Power
summit at this time. On April 16, 1953, Eisenhower made public a list of
specific actions the USSR would have
to take before the US would agree to a summit. These included arms
control measures, a German Peace Treaty, and an Austrian State Treaty,
any one of which would pay the price of admission. After eight years of
stalling, the Soviets agreed to the Austrian Treaty, which was signed in
May 1955 and resulted in the Geneva Summit that summer.
Actually, the record of US-Soviet summit meetings would indicate that
they should be avoided altogether. With one exception, Camp David in
1959, these summits have ranged from being unnecessary to nearly
disastrous. For example, I have long believed that the 1961 Vienna
summit (in which I was involved) was largely responsible for both the
Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis. Camp David turned out to be
useful in stalling off Soviet action on Berlin until U–2 coverage
revealed there was no “missile gap” which encouraged us to take a
tougher stand on Berlin.
The Soviet leaders have looked upon summits as an essential element of
their “detente” campaigns. The “Spirit of Geneva,” the “Spirit of Camp
David,” the “Spirit of Glassboro” were touted as evidence of a
“relaxation of tensions” (i.e. detente) and were designed, among other
things, to lull the West into a false sense of security. A principal
goal of Soviet detente moves has been to encourage NATO to decrease arms expenditures. They
have usually followed periods of Soviet-induced tension which have
resulted in increased Western defense efforts: 1949, after the airlift
defeat of the Berlin Blockage and after the first SAC deployment to
Europe; 1955 (actually beginning in 1953), after our huge Korean War
buildup; 1963, after the failed Cuban missile caper
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and in recognition of the enormous US
strategic advantage; 1971–72 to control US MIRV and ABM advantages
and to gain increased access to Western technology and financing (among
other things). Brezhnev’s opening
speech at the 26th CPSU Congress3 makes it quite clear that the Soviets want
badly to resurrect detente in order to delay or fend off the announced
US military buildup and concomitant strengthening of Western European
defenses through TNF modernization,
etc. Brezhnev’s avowed eagerness
to parley with us is the clear result of a tougher US stance vis-a-vis
the USSR and an increased US defense
budget.
Apart from providing the Soviet leadership with a convenient propaganda
platform, summits present other intrinsic problems. They are perforce
short and rendered even shorter by the necessity of translation;
therefore the serious and complicated subjects, which are usually on the
agenda, can be only superficially discussed. This, in turn, can lead
(and has led) to misunderstandings and miscalculations.
Despite the pitfalls of summit meetings with the Soviets, it is probably
unrealistic to expect the President to avoid them altogether. Since we
established relations with the USSR,
every US President has met with his Soviet counterpart (bilaterally
beginning with Camp David). Presidents can scarcely resist the urge to
size up their main opponent. In addition, I would imagine that our
European allies, who live under the shadow of Soviet power, would not
want us to reject Brezhnev’s
summit proposal out of hand.
If Eisenhower’s example is followed, a number of summit price tags could
be announced, for example:
—Withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan (if we wanted to avoid
a summit altogether);
—Withdrawal of Soviet and Cuban forces from Angola and Ethiopia;
—No Soviet assistance, direct or indirect, to revolutionaries in this
Hemisphere;
—No direct Soviet military intervention in Poland;
—Conclusion of a satisfactory SALT
III Treaty.
It goes without saying that any approach to the Soviets on a summit
should be carefully worked out on an interagency basis here and then
with our allies. For the time being, our public position on Brezhnev’s proposal should remain
strictly noncommital.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTS—RICHARD PIPES
I concur in general with Bill
Stearman’s assessment of Brezhnev’s initiatives and his options. The Soviet
leaders have shown every sign of exasperation with the Reagan Administration’s casual
attitude toward negotiations with them: in part, because such behavior
deflates their global image as a “superpower” which the USA is required to take into account in
all its foreign policy initiatives, and in part because it deprives
Moscow of an opportunity to size up the new U.S. Government.
However, because the “negotiating process” is popular among
left-of-center groups in Western Europe, it would not be prudent to
dismiss Brezhnev’s summit
suggestion out of hand. “Interesting,” “worthy of consideration” should
be the U.S. reactions. In practice, the proposal should be shelved.
There is no need for a summit, at any rate now or
in the foreseeable future. Should the President nevertheless find a
purely negative stance politically ill-advised, he may want to pose very
high preconditions: sufficiently high ones to preclude a cosmetic
concession on the part of Moscow which would look like a genuine
peaceful gesture and make us look bad if we did not wind it up with a
summit.
