Analysis : Boost for Gorbachev : Soviet ‘Peace Drive’ Keeps Its Momentum

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze’s performance at the United Nations on Tuesday, coupled with his earlier meetings with President Reagan and others in Washington, marked the continuation of a “peace offensive” that the Kremlin hopes will strengthen its hand in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Begun several months ago with diplomatic overtures in each ofthose strategically critical regions and followed up with apparent concessions on arms control, the Kremlin campaign appears designed to enhance Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s standing at home while preparing the ground for increased trade and technological imports from Western Europe, Japan and possibly the United States.

The Kremlin’s new look--in sharp contrast to its saber-rattling of three years ago--also serves to calm fears of its East European allies and to reduce support for military spending programs in the West, according to several U.S. government and non-government experts on the Soviet Union.

What is not certain is whether Moscow seriously intends to carry through with its many overtures to actually ease tensions with significant new agreements with the United States.

Senior U.S. officials said Tuesday that they believe the Soviets are serious about pursuing substantive agreements and seeking a new summit meeting between President Reagan and Gorbachev, without letting the case of U.S. News & World Report correspondent Nicholas Daniloff get in the way.

Protecting Flanks

At the same time, Moscow--like Washington--showed itself determined to protect its flanks as the two superpowers paraded their differences at the United Nations in the last two days. While neither wanted the fragile new dialogue to collapse, each was intent on ensuring that blame falls on the other if the projected summit meeting and arms agreements are aborted, as Dmitri Simes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace observed.

“Neither is prepared to accept blame,” Simes said. “At a minimum, neither wants to be part of the problem with one guy able to point his finger at the other guy.”

Reagan showed this strategy Monday in delivering a generally upbeat assessment of prospects for new arms agreements, while accusing the Soviets of casting a “pall” over the future with the arrest of Daniloff in Moscow on spying charges.

Shevardnadze, for his part, responded Tuesday with a more-in-sorrow-than-anger rebuttal that sought to divert attention from Daniloff by ridiculing Reagan’s “stirring and heart-moving stories” of a space defense network emerging from his “Star Wars” program. That vision is an insane nuclear gamble that threatens to preclude new arms accords, Shevardnadze charged.

But the Soviet foreign minister was also positive about prospects for a new summit, in contrast to Moscow’s statements only three weeks ago--before Daniloff’s arrest Aug. 30--when the Kremlin appeared to be dragging its feet by setting conditions for the top-level meeting.

And his attempt to brush off the tension over Daniloff as a minor affair that could be quickly settled if Washington wished suggests that the Soviets are backing off in this confrontation lest it interfere with the broader goals of their “peace offensive.”

This offensive has consisted of:

--Offers to pull back token military forces from the border with China and from inside Afghanistan, as well as a visit to Japan by Shevardnadze, which signaled the greatest sympathy Moscow has shown in 25 years for Tokyo’s concerns--including the status of its four northern islands occupied by the Soviets since World War II.

--The first-ever meeting between a senior Soviet official and the prime minister of Israel, which positions the Soviets for greater involvement in the Mideast. After Shevardnadze met Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at the United Nations, the Israeli leader said that the two “agreed to try to take the necessary steps to normalize relations.”

Mideast Peace Talks

Radio Moscow said Shevardnadze emphasized the need for an international peace conference on the Mideast that would include Soviet participation. The absence of diplomatic relations with Israel since 1967 has handicapped Soviet desires to play a greater role in the region.

--Concessions in the arms control field that have resulted in a new agreement in Stockholm on confidence-building measures in Europe, as well as improved prospects for the first Soviet-American nuclear arms pact in seven years, a reduction in intermediate-range missiles in Europe and Asia.

The Soviets could have had the Stockholm agreement two years ago if they had conceded, as they now have, on the issue of on-site inspection, on command, by either side, according to William Hyland, a top national security official in the Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford administrations who is now editor of Foreign Affairs Quarterly.

Several more reasons for the new Soviet stance have been identified:

Most importantly, Moscow needs a respite from international tensions to permit Gorbachev to tackle domestic economic and political problems and to win new trade and technology exchange deals, particularly with Western Europe and Japan.

Also important, according to a senior Administration official, Gorbachev is using the peace offensive to assert his leadership at home with a new, visible and popular policy, thereby strengthening his ability to influence Soviet society with his calls for less absenteeism and drunkenness among workers. It may even enhance his power in the Politburo.

“Whether you call it a ‘peace offensive’ or something else, this Kremlin is interested in a period of relative calm to tackle its massive and pervasive problems,” according to Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former senior national security official in the Nixon Administration who is now at the Brookings Institution.

“You just have to watch Gorbachev on Soviet television trying to exhort people to work harder, stop lining up for vodka, produce better goods, to appreciate the enormous inertia of the people there and the size of the mobilizing effort he’s taken on himself,” added Sonnenfeldt, who has just returned from Moscow.

Another benefit from the softer Kremlin line now, he said, is calming Eastern Europe, which was very restive three years ago with the war psychosis generated by Moscow in its vain attempt to halt U.S. deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe.

Finally, the new Soviet policy can be expected to pay dividends in exploiting fissures between the United States and its European and Asian allies and in reducing support in the U.S. Congress and allied parliaments for defense spending.

How far the Soviets will go in following through on the rhetoric with substantive new agreements is a major imponderable.

The new Stockholm accord suggests that Moscow seriously intends to go at least part of the way toward significant accords, and the Administration is convinced that Gorbachev does want a summit, despite his earlier equivocation, the senior Reagan Administration official said.

‘Climate Very Important’

But “new arms agreements are likely to be limited because they are very complicated and, anyway, the climate that goes with any deal is very important, perhaps most important to the Soviets,” Sonnenfeldt said.

“In the 1970s, the Soviets exploited the improved East-West climate by building (military forces) energetically,” he added. “However, my feeling now is that the Soviets would like to level off, too, rather than exploit (a new detente).”

Simes, of the Carnegie Endowment, was also guarded about prospects for comprehensive new arms treaties. While the Soviets want such treaties in the long run, “they realize the ‘grand compromise’ (of trading ‘Star Wars’ defenses for cuts in offensive weapons) is not in the cards now, and so in the short run will settle for stabilizing the U.S.-Soviet relationship,” he said.

Against this background, the arrest of Daniloff remains a major puzzle, just because it happened at all.

Analysts say it is not conceivable that the KGB acted without Politburo authority in detaining Daniloff--who was seized after he accepted from a Soviet acquaintance an envelope that was said to contain secret material. Yet it is difficult to believe that Gorbachev approved the move that now threatens the fruits of his peace program.

The incident raises a question about whether Gorbachev is the master in the Kremlin or so beholden to the security forces, led by the KGB, that he is more severely limited, in matters such as negotiating substantive new arms agreements, than his public statements claim.

Not surprising, given the lack of information from inside the Kremlin, the Daniloff case can be seen as representing an ineffectual Gorbachev, a weak Gorbachev or a strong Gorbachev.

The White House, for example, tends to excuse Gorbachev from personal responsibility. Both he and his chief adviser on U.S. affairs, former Soviet Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin, were away from Moscow on vacation when the incident began, a senior official said.