Carter tries a new tack toward Eastern Europe

While taking an increasingly hard line with the Soviet Union, the Carter Administration has simultaneously--and for the most part quietly--been seeking For some time to improve relations with the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe. The U.S. objective is to encourage political liberalization and relative independence inside the East bloc. Part of the reason for actively pursuing that goal is Washington's hope that some day Moscow will find itself with more to worry about close to home, and thus be less inclined to stir up trouble far away, in Africa, for instance.

Jimmy Carter's Republican predecessors also sought to strengthen ties with Eastern Europe, but they did so more cautiously and selectively, and never during a period of unusual tension in U.S.-Soviet relations. Henry Kissinger carefully synchronized his Eastern European diplomacy with the Soviet connection. He was concerned that separate overtures to Eastern Europe might provoke the Kremlin into tightening its control over the region. For that reason, Richard Nixon made the first visit by a U.S. President to Warsaw on the way home from the Moscow summit in 1972, and Gerald Ford stopped in Warsaw en route to a meeting with Leonid Brezhnev in Helsinki in 1975. Even during the halcyon days of detente, this concern in Washington over provoking the Kremlin into moving more harshly against Eastern-Europe prevailed. Yugoslavia, which is Communist but nonaligned, and Rumania, the only Warsaw Pact country with no Soviet troops on its territory, were treated as special cases because of their independent foreign policies.

Zbigniew Brzezinski came into office determined to combine a "more competitive" approach toward the Soviet Union with a "more differentiated" one toward Eastern Europe. As he told TIME: "We wanted to show that the road to Eastern Europe did not necessarily lead through Moscow." A year ago, Brzezinski prepared a classified Presidential Directive setting forth three guidelines for the Executive Branch: 1) the U.S. should cultivate a closer relationship with Eastern Europe for its own sake rather than as a byproduct of detente with the Soviet Union; 2) the criteria for deciding which countries to concentrate on should include how much they have relaxed their internal rules as well as how far they have strayed from the U.S.S.R. in their foreign policy; and 3) the Administration should maintain regular contacts with representatives of the "loyal opposition" in Eastern Europe--liberal intellectuals, artists and church leaders--as well as with government officials.

The policy quickly focused on Hungary and Poland, two countries that follow the Kremlin's general line in foreign policy but tolerate considerably more internal freedom than the Soviet Union. In Hungary the government has introduced some profit incentives and free-market forces in the economy, and visitors from neighboring Austria no longer need visas to enter the country. In recognition of these and other reforms, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance traveled to Budapest in January to return the Crown of St. Stephen, a 977-year-old treasure of the Hungarian monarchy that had been in American hands since the end of World War II. The crown is a symbol of Hungarian national pride; its "captivity"in Fort Knox for nearly 30 years had been a constant irritant in U.S.-Hungarian relations, and its return this year was a gesture calculated to hasten the strengthening of those ties. The Carter Administration also has moved to secure for Hungary most-favored-nation status, a lowering of trade barriers that the Senate is expected to approve in the next few weeks.

Brzezinski has taken a personal interest in coordinating new initiatives toward his native Poland. In the past year Washington has extended more than $500 million in grain credits to Poland, and when Carter visited Warsaw last December, he sent his wife Rosalynn and Brzezinski to meet with Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, the assertive leader of the country's 31 million Roman Catholics. In Washington, Brzezinski has received a steady stream of visiting Polish writers, academics and journalists, most recently Krzysztof Kozlowski, an editor of the outspoken Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.

The new U.S. policy has been generally well received among those it is meant to encourage. "There's no doubt the Carter Administration has changed American strategy in a very welcome way," says one prominent Polish intellectual. "Before Carter, almost all contacts were government-to-government and always with an eye to Moscow. Now the U.S. is treating us as an important nation in our own right and an increasingly pluralistic one at that. I hope Carter pursues this policy with even more vigor."

The Kremlin is worried he will do just that. During Cyrus Vance's mission to Moscow in April, a Russian listened with annoyance as a visitor from Washington remonstrated with him about Soviet intervention in Africa. Finally the Russian interrupted angrily: "How can you Americans complain so self-righteously about what we are doing outside your sphere of influence when you are making mischief right in our own front yard?"

Brzezinski and other U.S. policymakers are acutely aware of the danger that the Soviets might react swiftly and brutally, as they did in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, if their control were to be seriously subverted in Eastern Europe. But at the same time, the Soviet Union is finding it harder than ever to meet its satellites' need for better living standards. The U.S. policy is predicated on the belief that Moscow is more afraid of riots by Polish workers over low wages and high food prices than of Brzezinski's "mischiefmaking" in Poland, and therefore the Kremlin has little choice but to allow the East Europeans to turn westward for trade. That economic fact of life leads Washington to calculate that it has enough latitude to continue--and perhaps expand--its new East Europe policy.

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