Hold the Cheers on Afghan Pullout : Soviets Won’t Go Until They Realize Gains of Their Adventure

After eight years of conflict the Soviet Union says that it wants out of Afghanistan. That would be its first acknowledgment of military failure since the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk took it out of World War I. Therefore the cheering must wait until the deed is done.

Soviet leaders long ago gave up pressing for military victory in Afghanistan. Casualties mounted beyond the political worth of the objective. The Soviets have frequently been buffeted by global public opinion. And Mikhail S. Gorbachev, cultivating his image as a man of peace, cannot afford the Afghan albatross.

Thus the Soviet foreign minister, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, recently expressed the wish that Soviet troops can leave in 1988 and withdrew Moscow’s commitment to the current government in Kabul. For its part, the U.S. government has promised to halt aid to the Afghan moujahedeen when it becomes clear that Soviet troops are leaving.

Nevertheless, Moscow is unlikely to pursue peace at any price. Indeed, it is the price--compared to potential gain--that must be the subject of inquiry.

In their military actions the Soviets still seek to improve their bargaining position by changing facts on the ground. So, too, in diplomacy.

In October Congress temporarily stopped aid to Pakistan because that country appears to be developing nuclear weapons. Washington sought Moscow’s help in persuading India to sign the non-proliferation treaty--Pakistan’s condition for doing the same. The Soviets demurred. They have no interest in helping the United States retain Pakistan’s cooperation in providing support for the rebel Afghans. And Pakistan is now increasingly taking the Soviet view of Afghanistan’s political future.

Moscow has also tried cultivating the regime in Tehran. Besides other strategic objectives, the Soviets want Iran to seal its border with Afghanistan--a significant but little-noticed source of support for the Afghan rebels. Given the character of Iran’s Islamic regime, however, this ploy is unlikely to succeed.

Two issues have most inhibited a change in the Soviets’ policy toward the war. First has been their classic fear of instability along their borders--the original reason for their invasion of Afghanistan. They want to ensure that any government left behind would survive, pose no threat to their interests and, if possible, be proSoviet. Yet this cannot be guaranteed. After nearly a decade of tribal warfare, creating a viable, enduring coalition could be impossible.

The departure of Soviet troops, therefore, would signal a four-part strategic calculation:

--The potential effect on Afghanistan of ferment in Iran, so palpable during the hostage crisis in 1979-81, has largely subsided. Thanks in part to U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf, the Soviets expect to make gains in that part of the region.

--Despite the Soviets’ efforts, the Afghan government that emerges after the dust settles could be neither pro-Soviet nor dominated by the Communists. It could be Islamic fundamentalist. Even so, the Soviet Union has already weathered the appeal of Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in its Muslim Central Asian republics. It may be willing to gamble on containing the spread of a similar “infection” from Afghanistan.

--However ignominious its departure, the Soviet Union will still be a potent force. With its proximity and with the decline of American influence in the region, not least in Iran, Soviet primacy as an outside power in affecting the future of Afghanistan would not be seriously challenged.

--Gorbachev will seek offsetting gains in his campaign for peace. For example, it was no coincidence that after the latest round of Soviet diplomacy on Afghanistan Gorbachev proposed a Sino-Soviet summit meeting. Along with a reduction of Soviet troops along China’s border and making the Vietnamese leave Cambodia, a withdrawal from Afghanistan is Beijing’s key condition for improved relations with Moscow.

Another issue has inhibited a change of the Soviets’ policy. If they remove their troops and the Afghan government falls, other communist states will draw appropriate lessons. Moscow never formally applied to Afghanistan the Brezhnev Doctrine, which held that any state once communist should remain communist--if need be with Soviet help. But in Eastern Europe and elsewhere this could be a distinction without a difference. Withdrawal from Afghanistan would still erode the Soviet Union’s reputation for perseverance and its ideological pretensions.

These are weighty matters. Thus the departure of Soviet troops from Afghanistan would be clear evidence that Gorbachev’s foreign policy is more than just a shifting of Soviet tactics. He will also lay the basis for improving relations with the United States--while, ironically, gaining some relative advantages elsewhere in the world.

Washington is correct to aid and abet the Soviet departure: to reduce the suffering, to end the risks of wider conflict and to increase the domestic political legitimacy of arms-reduction diplomacy. But Washington must not become more eager than Moscow to see the Soviet forces leave. It should not help the Soviets gain through withdrawal what they could not gain through war.