Problems in Afghanistan, Elsewhere Complicate Push for Arms Control : Regional Issues May Hamper Gorbachev

As he prepares to meet President Reagan at the summit Saturday, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev faces a dilemma involving the arms control issue that may may represent the two superpowers’ best chance for prompt agreement--intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

And Gorbachev’s problem illustrates the way arms control, normally viewed as the most critical issue on the superpowers’ agenda, is intertwined with the less prominent but equally urgent questions of regional tensions and conflict, such as Afghanistan.

Essentially, the dilemma facing the Soviet leader is that he has launched a major campaign to improve Moscow’s relations with Asia as well as with Western Europe, but he faces stumbling blocks not only because of Soviet involvement in Asia’s regional conflicts but also because he has refused so far to treat the two areas equally in terms of nuclear missiles.

As part of a “charm offensive” in the Far East, Gorbachev has offered to withdraw an army division from the Sino-Soviet border, has called for an Asia-wide security conference and has promised to pull as many as 7,000 men out of Afghanistan. Yet Gorbachev has rejected U.S. calls for reducing Soviet SS-20 nuclear missiles in Asia to the same 100-warhead level that he has accepted in Europe--a formula endorsed by Japan and China.

The deployment of large numbers of SS-20s, now set at 513 warheads, has come to symbolize the continuing Soviet military buildup in the Pacific. If Gorbachev holds to his present position on Asian nuclear missiles, he will substantially undermine his diplomatic efforts with China and Japan--”rip off the smiling face,” as one Asian government official said recently.

Usually Main Issue

If he accepts the cuts, however, Gorbachev reduces Soviet nuclear missiles targeted on U.S. B-52s and submarine-carried cruise and ballistic missiles based in the Far East, as well as those targeted on Japan and China. And he would get no compensating U.S. reductions in return because the American missiles are classified as strategic--not intermediate--weapons, and it has been agreed that the two types will not be linked in negotiations.

Historically, arms control has usually dominated U.S.-Soviet summit meetings. No other issues generate so much political pressure on both sides, and arms control questions may seem easier to resolve in summits because they nominally engage only the two superpowers.

Yet, as Gorbachev’s current problem demonstrates, arms control and the so-called regional issues are entangled, implicitly if not always explicitly. This is one reason why U.S. officials have continued to insist that the regional issues remain prominent on any summit agenda.

Also, conflicts in Asia, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Nicaragua and elsewhere are more likely to become flash points for superpower confrontation than are the more settled borders of the Iron Curtain in Europe. In distant parts of the globe, specialists say, the lines of U.S. and Soviet interests are blurred and can be accidentally and quickly crossed, with the potential for dangerous escalation toward real conflict.

Reminder to Gorbachev

Regional issues “are a fundamental problem that leads to distress and tension” between the United States and Soviet Union, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Tuesday. Putting these issues on the agenda represents “an attempt to move the ball forward constructively, or at least to remind the Soviet leader how critical and important these (regional) problems are and how much damage they do (to the overall relationship).”

Thus, instead of being an unimportant sideshow at the summit, U.S.-Soviet discussions on regional issues may be more relevant to the real world than the seemingly endless arms talks of the last 40 years that have failed to reduce nuclear arsenals.

Unlike arms control negotiations, the value of discussing regional problems is not measured by formal agreements signed at the summit. But this should not diminish their importance if they produce less Soviet adventurism in the Third World over the ensuing years, specialists in and out of government say.

“Ronald Reagan may be more willing to have his Administration go down in history as one which curbed the pace of Soviet expansion rather than as having signed one more arms agreement,” said Helmut Sonnenfeldt of the Brookings Institution, a former senior national security official in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Four Issues on Agenda

Moreover, as Reagan explained it earlier this week, “sometimes negotiations in other areas can assist in speeding up the arms control process. In short, doing more about arms control means talking about more than arms control.”

At least four regional issues will be discussed at the summit, according to the President. They are Afghanistan, Central America, Africa and Southeast Asia, all of which are experiencing “terrible sufferings as a result of Soviet invasion or military intervention,” Reagan said. U.S.-backed insurgents are trying to unseat Marxist governments in all these areas.

In addition, two Middle East areas--the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict and the long-running Iran-Iraq war in the Persian Gulf--as well as Korea are likely to be covered.

While the Administration blames the Soviets for failure to resolve many of these issues, others have criticized the White House for dragging its feet in some cases.

--Southeast Asia: The Soviet-backed Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia continues to bedevil Soviet relations with China as well as with the United States. China’s three conditions for resuming normal relations with the Soviets include an end to this Soviet support for Vietnam, Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and reduction of Soviet forces on their common border. The United States fears that Cambodian refugees spilling over into its ally, Thailand, will spark a Thai-Vietnam conflict into which both superpowers could be drawn.

--Korea: The divided peninsula remains the most dangerous of all the regional issues, with the Communist north and the economically booming south allied directly to Moscow and Washington. While the border has been relatively quiet in recent years, the north has switched to terrorism to harass the Seoul regime. The south, for its part, faces a particularly turbulent period over the next two years as it prepares to host the Olympics and to adopt a democratic constitution, both in 1988.

--Afghanistan: This problem appears to promise the earliest movement toward resolution, Shultz indicated, although he said it was far from clear that this promise will be realized.

With 118,000 men still fighting there more than seven years after the Soviet invasion in 1979, Gorbachev has referred to Afghanistan as “a bleeding wound.” He appeared this week to be making good on his promise several months ago to withdraw six regiments of up to 7,000 men, and he has even invited Western and Asian reporters to watch the departing troops march out.

Whether it will be a real drawdown or, as once before, only a “media withdrawal” that will be quickly reversed by the reintroduction of at least an equal number of troops, is not yet clear, U.S. officials said. In any case, most of the Soviet troops belong to air defense units, which have seen no action against rebels--who have no air force--and so the move is “militarily insignificant,” the officials said.

In political terms, the Soviets have been talking of accepting a new, broad-based government in Kabul that includes non-Communists. But U.S. officials said Moscow has yet to recognize that Afghanistan cannot become part of the Soviet Bloc, like East European nations. The Administration contends that an Afghanistan that is part of the Soviet Bloc would be unacceptable to the Afghan rebels, would be rejected by the international community and would result in the million or more Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran staying out of the country.

--Iran-Iraq: Discussing the continuing conflict, Shultz said that “both of us (the U.S. and the Soviet Union) would like to see it end without a victim or vanquished.” Neither superpower would like a triumphant Iran, which could export violent Islamic fundamentalism through the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. Iran appears to be the most intransigent regarding a peace settlement, so the United States wants to reduce arms shipments to the Tehran regime. Most of these now flow from Soviet client states in Eastern Europe and North Korea into Iran, and Washington has been urging Moscow, without much success, to close the supply route.

--Southern Africa: Shultz called it a region where “discussions might get somewhere.” He blamed the presence of Soviet advisers and Cuban troops in Angola for preventing reconciliation between the two sides in that country’s civil war. Their withdrawal would not only help settle the Angolan conflict but would permit implementation of the United Nations’ call for independence for Namibia, which South Africa now occupies, he said.

Besides aiding Angola, the Soviets have a defense agreement with Mozambique and are blamed for providing arms to the African National Congress, which conducts terrorist bombings inside South Africa. All of this stokes Pretoria’s fears of a black invasion tide at its borders, making concessions on apartheid more difficult, U.S. officials argue.

Others, however, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser in the Carter Administration, criticize the Reagan Administration for failing to encourage greater racial accommodation in South Africa, thereby encouraging Afrikaner intransigence on racial issues.

--The Middle East: The Israelis and Egyptians appear to be moving toward improved relations, but prospects for a broad peace conference including the United States and the Soviet Union appear to hinge on whether the Soviets establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

Here, too, Brzezinski blames the Reagan Administration for having been “almost passive” in the Middle East for six years, allowing the momentum of Camp David to fade toward regional stalemate rather than solution.

--Nicaragua and Central America: This is the final regional issue on which U.S. and Soviet officials have held discussions in recent months, with no sign of diminished Soviet or Cuban aid for the Sandinista regime in Managua. The problem posed by direct and indirect Soviet arms shipments into the Western Hemisphere could become an increasingly volatile issue if, as some specialists fear, Mexico is drawn into the turmoil owing to its economic and other difficulties.