A ‘Peace Dividend’ With No Dollar or Ruble Price Tag : Third World: An agreement between the superpowers to allow safe passage of food and medicine through battle lines would cost nothing but could save millions of lives.

It would be a mistake to think of the “peace dividend” only in terms of ledger lines and cash flow. There is more to any peace dividend than cold currency. The very absence of an atmosphere of flammable tension is itself a dividend that could be put to use now, and in doing so we would save more than money. Without costing our Treasury a dime, the superpowers could spend a dividend of cooperation on the Third World and save lives.

In the Horn of Africa, for example, the situation in Ethiopia has reached a near-crisis stage. Current estimates place almost 5 million people at immediate risk of famine. Like the crises of 1984 and 1987, the direct cause of the problem is drought and crop failures, exacerbated by seemingly endless war and civil strife. Unlike the 1984 episode, this time relief arrived before the famine, yet it hasn’t been delivered to all the people in need.

The missing element is an agreement between government forces and Eritrean separatists to establish “corridors of safe passage” through which food and medical supplies could be safely delivered across the battle lines, directly to the population at risk.

The rebel armies in Eritrea and Tigre province have shown a willingness to agree to safe passage; the only holdout is the government of President Mengistu Haile Mariam. With aid unable to reach the people, they will soon begin to leave their homes in search of food and safety, leaving no one to plant next year’s crops. These migrations are already beginning. Soon television will again bring us the horrifying spectacle of children dying, and the nation of Ethiopia will again become synonymous with famine.

The United States has pressed the Ethiopian government to agree to corridors of safe passage, the Soviet Union has not. We don’t have as much influence over Mengistu as the Soviets, largely because they continue to deliver weapons to Ethiopia. The Soviets have agreed to halt the arms shipments by the end of next year, but there is much more they could do.

A non-cash peace dividend of cooperation could save hundreds of thousands of lives now. In the new spirit of cooperation, why not a joint public statement by Secretary of State James A. Baker III and his Soviet counterpart, Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, stressing the importance of relief corridors, and promising vigorous diplomatic efforts by both countries to secure them?

We could choose to continue foreign policy as usual, and hundreds of thousands of people would die unnecessarily over the next six months in a sad, distant list of places: Angola, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan.

Or we could decide that this is where our peace dividend could be spent, at no cost to either government in dollars or rubles. President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev could endorse the Bellagio Declaration, a call made recently by a prestigious group of development experts to eliminate “deaths due to famine among the 15 million to 35 million people at risk” in the Third World. Both the United States and the Soviet Union could pledge to use diplomatic efforts to assist and expedite the work of private relief organizations fighting famine and disease in the Third World. As simple as that sounds, it would be a tremendous step forward and would literally save lives.

Until now, the superpowers have exacerbated the problems of developing countries by treating them primarily as surrogate battlefields for competing ideologies. Now, a new reality is within reach; many lives could be spared if Americans and Soviets quickly agreed to cooperate in multinational efforts to end famine deaths. It is ultimately in neither nation’s interest to allow needless Third World suffering to continue.

Events in Eastern Europe and relations between the superpowers have been moving faster than our ability to shape them. In this, the warmest winter of the Cold War, we have the chance to get ahead of history with respect to nations below the Equator not to react to events as opposing forces, but to join together as a humanitarian force to prevent unnecessary suffering and death.