Potlatch--Indians’ Gift to the Nuclear Age

The failure of last Sunday’s summit conference makes it embarrassingly obvious that in matters of arms control the Soviet Union and the United States haven’t yet attained the sophistication of the aboriginal Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Had either of the technocratic states learned even the rudiments of the art, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev would still be in Iceland, entertaining one another at a succession of ceremonial feasts.

The Indians were as much preoccupied with questions of comparative power as any modern government or gossip columnist, but the wisdom of the tribes held that men fought with property, not with weapons. The pronouncement accords with the materialist faith implicit in both capitalism and communism, and I’m sure that the sophists on Reagan’s political right could figure out a way of adapting it to real-estate speculations, corporate mergers and campaign speeches.

Given their belief in the supremacy of property, the Indians displayed their magnificence at feasts known as potlatches. The word means “giving,” and the host of a potlatch established his dominion by giving away or destroying an abundance of precious objects. If he could afford to bestow costly gifts--blankets, slaves, furs, gallons of fish oil, war canoes--or, alternatively but just as impressively, if he could afford to smash or burn an equivalent store of goods, then clearly he was a man of godlike power. The Indian who could not do likewise (who proved himself so miserly and poor in spirit that he wished to keep his furs and slaves and war canoes) lost face.

Let the great nations of Earth imitate this old and admirable example, and I can imagine a summit conference well worth the trouble of broadcasting on prime-time television.

Iceland provides an appropriate setting for such an entertainment. The winter is long and cold. And the absence of lesser distractions might inspire Reagan and Gorbachev to heroic feats of munificence. I see them in a small wooden house, sitting on opposite sides of a stone fireplace, wrapped in sealskin robes and surrounded by a retinue of secretaries, ministers, deputies and aides de camp.

I like to think of Reagan beginning the ceremony with a fairly dramatic gesture, perhaps by throwing into the fire the secret archives of the Central Intelligence Agency. Gorbachev might respond by granting the release of Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia from the jurisdiction of the Soviet secret police.

By November, I assume that the potlatch would have acquired a set of protocols. Maybe each man would be allowed to make three gifts or order three destructions during the course of any one evening. While waiting for inspiration, they could drink heavily or stare at each other across the fire, but they couldn’t speak, not even to their own generals and policy advisers.

After a solemn, opening silence, for instance, Gorbachev might suddenly announce the firing of 3,000 ICBMs into outer space. An hour later, Reagan might make Gorbachev a present of the U.S. Army stationed in Europe. Not to be outdone, and again after much thought and another bottle of vodka, Gorbachev might order the sinking of the Soviet fleet.

During the first weeks of the potlatch, of course, a number of officials traveling with Reagan and Gorbachev could be expected to object to the proceeding, and I can easily imagine somebody like Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger or Secretary of State George P. Shultz whispering desperately in the President’s ear, urging caution and restraint, reminding him of the trouble in Congress when American soldiers begin writing letters to the newspapers about their new postings in Byelorussia or the Ukraine. I also could imagine extreme conservatives going so far as to talk about committing the President to an asylum.

But once the media had gotten hold of the story, the potlatch would be hard to stop. The firing of 3,000 ICBMs into outer space presents an extraordinary photo opportunity; so does the sinking of the Soviet fleet. So great would be the rejoicing of the world’s peoples, and so extravagant the fees charged for the television commercials, that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Let Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev stay the winter in Iceland, and they would return to Washington and Moscow not only triumphant but also, as the Pacific Northwest Indians thought befitting of great chiefs, empty-handed.