Baker Calls for New Soviet Relationship

Secretary of State James A. Baker III called Monday for a new strategic relationship with the Soviet Union on a “sound political footing” that will make possible broader and more enduring arms control treaties.

Baker said last week that Washington had concluded that perestroika , the Soviet reform process, is a fundamental and far-reaching phenomenon not aimed at lulling the West before a new round of confrontation.

On Monday, he declared that the political underpinning for radical change in the U.S.-Soviet security relationship is emerging and that “it would be folly to miss the opportunity” to lock Moscow into new arms agreements.

The two speeches provide the policy basis on which the Bush Administration will approach the Soviet Union and its president, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in the coming years.

They come nine months into the Administration--months during which Bush and his aides have emphasized caution rather than creativity in dealing with the revolutionary changes taking place in the Soviet Union.

Now, whether to counter criticism that it has been too timid and reactive or because the full weight of Soviet events has been examined and assessed, Baker has laid out a framework within which the Administration hopes the new U.S.-Soviet relationship will evolve.

Baker’s speech to the Commonwealth Club here had been scheduled for last Thursday but was postponed because of the earthquake. “. . . You requested that I fulfill this commitment,” he said, “and that is a telling sign of your character.”

He paid tribute to the courage and resilience of San Francisco in the face of the disaster--resilience, he said, “that is capturing the imagination of the whole country.”

Baker’s thesis was that arms control does not proceed in a political vacuum and that until now, fundamental and sustainable accords were impossible because of the underlying political antagonism between the superpowers.

“Over the last 40 years,” he said, “arms control played only a limited role in shaping the U.S.-Soviet security relationship because our political differences were simply too wide to allow enduring and substantial progress. . . .

“Now, perestroika in Soviet domestic and foreign policy could, in part, lift the shadow of opposing values and threatened conflict. The political prerequisite for enduring and strategically significant arms control may finally be materializing.”

Baker acknowledged that the success of the reform process led by Gorbachev is “far from assured.” But that uncertainty, he added, is “all the more reason, not less, for us to seize the present opportunity.”

“For the works of our labor--a diminished Soviet threat and effectively verifiable agreements--can endure even if perestroika does not,” he said. “We can take advantage of the new political climate to consolidate deterrents at lower levels of risk.”

He said that by insisting on changes in the size and goals of Soviet military forces, “we can help to codify political progress into military reality.”

Baker outlined four principles in the search for a new strategic relationship: Cuts in surprise-attack capabilities; greater openness; a broader arms control agenda, including efforts to curb chemical weapons, ballistic missiles and nuclear technology, and making changes permanent by verifying that weapons that are removed are in fact destroyed.