Gambling Big in Foreign Policy : Is Reagan Really Taking Risks, Thinking Soviets Are on Run?

A few days ago an anonymous Administration official told an interviewer that President Reagan now figures that he has the Soviets on the run and therefore feels free to pursue a more assertive foreign policy around the world.

Generally speaking, people shouldn’t pay too much attention to source-unnamed newspaper stories of this sort. Frequently they reflect nothing more than the ruminations of one official who may or may not really be on the President’s wavelength.

In this case, though, there is a growing body of evidence to support the thesis of a new presidential inclination toward river-boat gambles. Considering the potential cost of miscalculation in today’s world, let’s hope that it’s a passing phase.

There is, of course, a positive side to the Administration’s performance.

In recent weeks Washington has played a laudable role in helping to nudge two nauseous dictators--Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier of Haiti and Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines--into involuntary retirement.

Meanwhile, despite continuing differences over Reagan’s “Star Wars” program and the best strategy for dealing with international terrorism, relations with Western Europe are unusually good. The anti-nuclear movement has been fragmented, and U.S.-made missiles are being deployed in Europe pretty much on schedule.

The Soviets, having walked out of the Geneva arms-control talks, ultimately walked back into them on more or less the President’s terms. While the November summit meeting between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev didn’t produce concrete accomplishments, the two chiefs of state at least vowed to continue talking.

The U.S. President bears his share of the blame for the lack of progress since the summit meeting, but so does Gorbachev. Congressional observers in Geneva confirm, for example, that Gorbachev’s reasonable-sounding public utterances have not been reflected in actual Soviet proposals in the arms-control talks.

The calm self-confidence with which Reagan fends off Soviet propaganda ploys is appropriate--within limits. But it would be mistaken and downright dangerous for self-confidence to degenerate into complacency and arrogance.

Taken one at a time, not much of what has happened lately is especially disturbing in this regard.

A U.S. naval squadron deliberately sails inside Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea, drawing a Soviet protest. But of course the Soviet navy has exercised the same right of “innocent passage” close to U.S. shores in the Gulf of Mexico.

Given Moscow’s habit of using Soviet diplomats in New York as spies, the United States was justified in its decision to require the Soviet Union to gradually reduce the size of its mission to the United Nations.

The U.S. adventure in the Gulf of Sidra may not have made sense as an anti-terrorist move. But this country had a clear right to move its warships into the gulf, which is recognized as international waters by almost everybody except Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi, and to shoot back when fired on.

Maybe the Administration’s lack of enthusiasm for a nuclear-test ban is mistaken. But the U.S. nuclear test conducted last month in the face of a renewed Soviet call for a test ban was no more or less reprehensible than similar tests conducted by the Soviet Union before Moscow’s declaration of a unilateral moratorium last August.

Viewed in isolation, not one of these actions is remarkable or reckless. But, taken together, they add up to just what Administration officials are telling news people they are: an increased assertiveness in the style and substance of U.S. foreign policy.

Prudence requires that the White House keep in mind how the overall pattern of recent U.S. actions, with their emphasis on military muscle-flexing, may look to the xenophobes who run the Kremlin. The President should also ask himself whether the net effect on Soviet behavior will be what he bargained for.

According to unofficial explanations, Reagan is now confident that his arms buildup has eroded the Soviets’ perception of their own military superiority, and that the Soviet Union’s severe economic problems constrain its freedom to maneuver.

In short, the President is said to feel that the Soviets are on the defensive and less likely to make a serious response to American actions that it doesn’t like. So he is seizing the opportunity to demonstrate to Libya, Nicaragua and other Soviet client states that Moscow will do little in their behalf except file loud protests.

If Reagan is truly acting on that assumption, he is taking a major gamble.

The evidence does suggest that Gorbachev prefers to de-emphasize the U.S.-Soviet rivalry at present. The military establishment did not regain its seat on the ruling Politburo at the recent Central Committee meeting. Gorbachev, in his address to the 27th Communist Party Congress, failed to trumpet the usual vows of support for “national liberation movements.” Rightly or wrongly, President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan has joined the ranks of those who believe that the Soviets are shopping for a face-saving way out of their war in Afghanistan.

But great powers, like little boys, do not respond well when challenged to step over a line drawn in the dirt.

Moscow’s response to Washington’s recent decision to provide shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to the Afghan guerrillas was to warn Pakistan that it could suffer “disastrous” consequences if it cooperates in the delivery of these weapons. It may be an empty threat, but again it may not.

Loose talk among Reagan subordinates about having the Soviets on the run does not make it easier for a Soviet leader to cut off arms support to Nicaragua, even if he wanted to.

As for the tilting of the military balance away from the Soviets, it may be true--although that isn’t what Reagan says when he is trying to persuade Congress to increase defense spending. But when the balance favored the Soviets, Reagan didn’t become a pacifist. He ran for election on a platform of rearmament, despite heavy budgetary pressures in the other direction. There is no reason to believe that the Soviets will respond any differently.

It is hardly in the American interest to goad the Soviets into behaving worse than they already do. That, unfortunately, could be the result of the Administration’s new chest-thumping style in foreign policy. Whatever happened to the old idea of carrying a big stick but walking softly?