Talking Tough to Moscow

Carter emphasizes U.S. strength--and offers an olive branch Moscow was angry, and the transatlantic rhetoric was rising to "chilly war" level. White House aides had privately suggested that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had lied to the President. Washington's allies were wondering just who was speaking for the Administration. Was it National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who seemed willing to match the Soviets decibel for decibel? Or was it softer-spoken Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, ever the conciliator? Unmistakably, it was time for Carter himself to speak up and clear the air.

Last week the President did so. Addressing a graduation class at his alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Carter talked straight to Moscow in some of the harshest words used by a U.S. President since John Kennedy in 1961 charged the Soviet character with being "stamped for all time on the bloody streets of Budapest." At the same time, he offered the Russians an olive branch of potential good will from the U.S. side, if only they would make the right decision. "The Soviet Union can choose either confrontation or cooperation," said Carter at the climax of his speech, adding soberly, "the United States is adequately prepared to meet either choice."

Some of Carter's bluntest phrases were directed at Moscow's repressive treatment of internal dissent. Clearly referring to the seven-year sentence recently imposed on Helsinki Human Rights Monitor Yuri Orlov, Carter declared that the Soviets' abuse of such rights had earned them "the condemnation of people everywhere who love freedom." "By their actions," Carter added, "they have demonstrated that the Soviet system cannot tolerate freely expressed ideas, notions of loyal opposition and the free movement of peoples. The Soviet Union attempts to export a totalitarian and repressive form of government, resulting in a closed society."

Carter reaffirmed his Administration's own commitment to human rights and extolled the U.S. philosophy "based on personal freedom, the most powerful of all ideas." In a cutting dig, Carter noted that "even Marxist-Leninist groups no longer look on the Soviet Union as a model to be imitated."

Carter also emphasized U.S. economic and military strength. Still, he left open to the Kremlin the door to mutual cooperation. He reaffirmed detente as "central to world peace," but added that it must be "reciprocal." The President offered Moscow a wide variety of potential areas for working together with the U.S., ranging from joint solution of political problems in Rhodesia, Namibia, even Ethiopia, to further development of trade, cultural and scientific exchanges. Even the prospects for a SALT II agreement, noted Carter in an upbeat section of his speech, were "good."

Moscow's reaction to Carter's address was no more acrimonious than could be expected. His words, observed Tass with pique, were "strange, to say the least." Moscow scored his criticism of the Soviet system as "inventions, which are standard for present American propaganda." At the same time, the Soviets were showing their disdain for foreign criticism. Even as Carter was speaking, a prominent Moscow dissident, Electrical Communications Engineer Vladimir Slepak, 50, was under arrest on charges of "malicious hooliganism." Slepak had applied without success a dozen times since 1970 to emigrate to Israel; in final desperation he had demonstrated publicly from the balcony of his Moscow apartment. At week's end there was indication that the Soviets might soon bring imprisoned Dissidents Alexander Ginzburg and Anatoli Shcharansky to trial.

Carter's firmness was greeted with approval, and some relief, by key Western Eureopean governments, which have been seeking a more positive token of leadership from Washington. Said a senior British official: "In essence, the President's description of the state of American-Soviet and East-West relations is very much as we see it."

In Paris, where five NATO allies met last week to work out plans for helping Zaire, the response was favorable. French officials were happy that Washington shared their growing sense of unease at the African policy of Moscow and its Cuban client.

Even West German officials, who have in the past taken a more jaundiced view of Carter's leadership than most Western allies, seemed a little reassured. Said one of the Annapolis speech: "It was more measured, more thoughtful and more balanced, less preachy and moralizing." Added another: "Now, it seems that the Brzezinski school has won and the President is following that line."

White House aides insisted that Carter's speech was more of a consensus than anything else. In the view of some, the address expressed Brzezinskian themes in Vancian tones. It was, in fact, Vance who encouraged Carter to talk about the Soviet Union at Annapolis. But before he left for a quiet weekend of preparation for the speech at Camp David, the President canvassed five top Administration foreign policy leaders for their views on the growing East-West tensions: Vance, Brzezinski, Defense Secretary Harold Brown, U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young and CIA Chief Stansfield Turner.

In the seclusion of the Catoctin mountains, he mulled over their opinions, then wrote out his first draft. At a White House lunch on Tuesday, the day before the Annapolis graduation, there was speculation among some of his advisers on how the address would be interpreted in the press. One suggested a pool on the subject, which led another to propose, jokingly, that the official getting the most credit should then resign. In the end, the address went through a mere three drafts compared with six or seven versions for previous important speeches Carter has made.

After the address, Carter seemed jovial. Later in the week he even found time to chase a Frisbee on the White House lawn. His aides, meanwhile, professed to be surprised that most commentators were more impressed by the hard language than the olive branch. Some of the phrasing undoubtedly fueled the worries of Carter's critics about U.S.-Soviet relations. Idaho's Senator Frank Church grumbled: "We are hearing the old tactic, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, and it is being used with disturbing frequency."

On Capitol Hill, Carter's congressional allies were sounding a different refrain. The chilling-over of Moscow-Washington relations in recent weeks, they said, would make it very hard for the Administration to command the two-thirds Senate vote needed for ratification of a SALT II agreement. The danger was a real one. Observers in Washington noted with concern that further deferrals of a SALT agreement would unleash an uncontrollable new round of arms programs.

Evidently, this was a message that Carter tried to send from Annapolis to the Russians last week when he warned that "sharp disputes, or threats to peace will complicate the quest for an agreement." The Kremlin was being served notice by the Carter Administration that neither a SALT II agreement nor other cooperative adventures could survive a continuation of the sharp tensions that have arisen between the two superpowers.

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