A Veteran Kissinger Team Takes the Wary Route to Arms Control

With an apparent nod to the Realpolitik of Henry A. Kissinger, the incoming Bush Administration is deliberately slowing the pace of detente with Moscow, arguing that it would rather “stay one step behind than be one step ahead” in the new warming relationship.

And in the grim calculus of global politics, the new Bush team received an assist from a tragic event in Armenia. Even with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s announcements of 14% defense-budget cuts last week, the earthquake stalled the Soviet overseas peace offensive. And it slowed Gorbachev’s domestic pace by dramatizing many of the basic problems he faces in his campaign of perestroika , or restructuring.

The Bush team now has more time to review policies before resuming nuclear arms talks, starting conventional force cuts negotiations and addressing a host of other issues in U.S.-Soviet relations. The review could take two months or extend much longer, although James A. Baker III, the secretary of state-designate, told his confirmation hearing Tuesday that he doubted it would stretch out a full year.

The Bush Administration’s strategy represents a potentially dangerous gamble with the tides of history. If he moves too slowly and the window of opportunity should close, George Bush could stand accused--first by allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, then by disenchanted American voters--of booting the best chance for settling the Cold War in 40 years, perhaps the best chance for peace in the 20th Century.

History shows that Gorbachev-like openings to the West are a recurrent feature, in czarist Russia as well as in the Soviet Union. As one of Bush’s senior aides said recently, “You can relate what’s going on there now clear back to Peter the Great,” when Peter sought to modernize 18th-Century Russia with Western help.

But history also teaches that such thaws tend to be followed by backlashes of xenophobia. If Gorbachev should begin to slip while the new White House is still reviewing options, a priceless opportunity could be lost.

In the prevailing view of the Bush team, Gorbachev is likely to survive for at least several years, despite opposition to his reforms in the military and the Communist Party. “In a few years,” Baker said, “we could know whether a lasting, constructive relationship with the Soviet Union is possible.”

The senior Bush aide, who asked not to be identified, said that for now the United States should encourage Gorbachev to pursue his “remarkable new realism” in foreign affairs. At the same time, he said, the United States must be careful about its own moves so that “if things turn sour,” America can recover “without great agony.”

This cautious approach is identified with members of the new team who were associates of former Secretary of State Kissinger. Notable among them are Brent Scowcroft, Bush’s choice for national security adviser; Lawrence S. Eagleberger, who will be deputy secretary of state, and Thomas R. Pickering, who will be ambassador to the United Nations.

They will be very influential very early. Baker, one of Bush’s two key Cabinet members in the field of national security, is a newcomer to the field. The other, Defense Secretary-designate John G. Tower, is a latecomer to the team: His nomination was delayed by security investigations and cancer surgery has prevented him from putting his own Pentagon team together.

Some “Kissinger men” have argued that in some respects the Reagan Administration went too far too fast with the Soviets. They criticize the U.S. commitment to attend a conference on human rights in Moscow in 1991, a conference that one Bush nominee has called “an atrocity.”

They also question Reagan’s acceptance of the low ceiling of 1,600 delivery systems (missiles and bombers) in the strategic arms reduction (START) negotiations. They would prefer 2,000, arguing that the larger ceiling would produce greater stability between the two sides.

But the Bush team, this nominee said, will “take a deep breath and move on,” rather than try to reverse important Reagan decisions.

In this respect, Kissinger’s men are also reflections of Bush: experienced in foreign affairs, moderate and pragmatic, attuned to power politics and without ideological hang-ups. Indeed, some conservatives are alarmed that a second Kissinger era may be dawning, a period without the ideological moorings provided by the conservatives Reagan appointed to key national security posts in his first term.

Liberals, by contrast, express concern that Bush will pay too much attention to the Republican conservatives who will be outside but promise to be highly vocal.

They complain that conservatives have used reviews of U.S.-Soviet affairs, like the one now to be undertaken, as delaying ploys. And they point out that Bush has already thrown a bone to the right with his first significant foreign-policy move, a public promise of continued military and diplomatic support for Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi.

To buy time for review, Bush postponed resumption of the START negotiations beyond Feb. 15, the date suggested by the Reagan Administration and accepted by the Soviets.

Among the critical issues for review are whether to permit mobile land-based missiles and nuclear ship-launched cruise missiles, whether to scale down Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) and how much verification will be necessary to police a new arms-control treaty.

The decision on mobile land-based missiles, in particular, will have powerful consequences. For the last 20 years, no new intercontinental ballistic missile silos have been placed in U.S. territory, because of public opposition and disagreements on the type of mobile ICBM to be built. Scowcroft and others would like the Bush Administration to develop a coherent weapons strategy and nuclear doctrine before moving ahead with arms-control talks.

But critics argue that it would take a year to hammer out such a coherent strategy and Bush cannot afford that much time. START cannot be postponed even six months, as once suggested by Tower, without appearing to freeze the negotiations, a senior U.S. official said.

“Hard decisions of those kinds are reached only when you have negotiations deadlines,” another senior official said. “That was true in START, and that will be true with conventional force talks.”

Whatever the outcome of policy review, it will directly affect the NATO allies that depend on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for protection. They are already feeling more vulnerable because of the recent treaty banning medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe. Most of NATO wants the remaining short-range nuclear weapons modernized, but West Germany wants reductions, not improvements.

That split could have major repercussions, even as NATO celebrates its 40th anniversary. Rather than viewing further arms-control talks as an opportunity to create a new security system in Europe, NATO is apprehensive about them.

Senior U.S. officials here speculate that the new Administration will agree to starting the conventional force talks early, in the spring. The Administration can then resume the START negotiations later, perhaps in the early summer, without undo pressure from Democrats or NATO allies.