Sow Today, Reap Tomorrow

Soviet-American relations--as seen from the Kremlin

As Leonid Brezhnev's cordial meeting with Senator Charles Percy indicated, the Kremlin leaders want to appear willing to improve Soviet-American relations, despite the hard-line rhetoric by President-elect Reagan and his advisers. For political and economic reasons, they would generally like to restore detente--on their terms. But their conciliatory tone also has a propaganda motive: if relations worsen once Reagan enters office, the Kremlin wants to be in the best possible position to blame the U.S. Amplifying the signal Moscow has been sending Reagan, Brezhnev's chief spokesman, Leonid Zamyatin, last week released exclusively to TIME an official statement reviewing the relationship between the superpowers as seen from Red Square:

Experience shows that among nuclear powers it is the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. that share the main responsibility for the development of events in the world. They possess the major arms potential, and therefore the levers of influence on world development are in their hands. This is not a hegemonism of some nations over others. But the truth must be faced squarely that it is with the active participation of the Soviet Union and the U.S. that a number of treaties and agreements have in the past few decades been signed that restrain the proliferation of nuclear weapons, ban hostile changes in the environment and outlaw bacteriological arms.

We have agreed with the U.S. to avert an accidental outbreak of a nuclear war; we also signed with it a treaty on limiting strategic offensive weapons, which is called SALT I, and in June 1979, after almost seven years of work, a second treaty of the same type. Along with quantitative, this treaty sets qualitative limits to the effort of the sides in the military sphere. The system of SALT treaties has brought the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. to a point beyond which real disarmament, the actual reduction of military confrontation levels, begins.

If we ask what the cause is of the current situation and why much that gave both sides definite mutual advantages--political, as well as trade and economic--was disrupted, the answer should not be sought in Moscow. American policy has had its zigzags in the past, but in the past few years the U.S. leadership has in general taken a course hostile to the interests of detente, toward the arms race.

After the signing of the SALT II treaty, the U.S.A., instead of cutting down the American nuclear potential, say, in

Europe, began to build it up. This is being done in both quantitative and qualitative terms, which is a departure from the policy of reaching arms limitation agreements. Does this not harm the policy of detente?

Today all attempts to achieve military superiority are doomed. We may surpass each other in the production of a specific type of arms, but when we speak of the approximate parity of forces, both in your country and ours, we consider the totality of all the weapons that the Soviet Union, the U.S. and their allies possess.

Unfortunately, the policy of the U.S.A. and other NATO countries has recently exhibited a sharp turn toward upsetting the existing approximate balance of forces in the world. They want to revive the cold war against the Soviet Union. But we already once went through such a period, and it brought neither the U.S.A. nor the U.S.S.R. any good.

The very fact of Soviet-American understanding on key issues has always exerted a stabilizing influence on the international situation. At difficult moments this made it possible to act to prevent dangerous developments.

The objective truth is that we must hold discussions all the time, and do so on a wide range of questions: bilateral relations, international issues or the problem of disarmament. That is the way it should be. But there are different kinds of discussions. They are most productive when the underlying wish is to seek and find a solution. Yet it is quite another thing when negotiating partners are politicians who seek their own advantage in disadvantages for others, or who, having signed an agreement today, take a diametrically opposed decision tomorrow.

While negotiating on a broad range of issues, the parties should not rigidly link them together. Discussions must consider all the issues, but the way to settle them is in a parallel and consistent manner. Experience shows that this method produces effective results.

Of course, continuity in politics is also essential. This is the only basis that can assure stable development of mutual trust and confidence in each other's intentions.

Arms reduction and the other side of this issue, namely the safeguarding of each country's national security, are to a certain extent interdependent. That is why it is essential to conduct negotiations without upsetting the achieved balance. It is equally essential to leave landmarks in the course of negotiations in the shape of concrete agreements and understandings, rather than declarations of intent to tackle these issues. The efforts in the sphere of disarmament and in preventing the possibility of confrontation must advance at an ever higher pace. Only then will these efforts outpace the rate of the development of military-technological ideas and their implementation and lead to a reduction of the arms race. This is essential for the general process of arms reduction and preventing an armed confrontation.

The leaders of our country have repeatedly stated that we are in favor of good relations with the U.S. These are not merely words. We have confirmed this with practical deeds and keep doing so. As emphasized by Leonid Brezhnev, any signs of a sober and constructive approach to the settlement of international issues will meet a positive attitude on our part. The Soviet Union has consistently stood for detente and for revitalizing it. This is exactly where we see the only opportunity for preventing a retreat to the cold war period.

There are, unfortunately, many hot spots in the world these days. There has been an aggravation of the situation in the Middle East. Actually, the U.S. has in effect given up the search for a just and comprehensive Middle East settlement through joint efforts of all parties concerned. It has wrecked the settlement machinery of the Geneva Conference, where the Soviet Union was meant to play no small part.

Tension has been increased in Southwest Asia as well--owing to a sharp deterioration in Iraqi-Iranian relations. Just like any other part of the world, the Persian Gulf is the sphere of interest of the countries located there. No one has the right to interfere in their affairs. It is imperative to bring this crisis to the earliest political settlement through negotiations between the warring sides.

The opponents of detente are trying to use the Afghanistan events to fan up international tension. The fact is, however, that the pressure on Afghanistan started immediately after the April revolution of 1978 and was directed from Pakistan. In plain words, it is with active American and Chinese participation that armed formations are brought into Afghan territory from Pakistan. American politicians have not concealed that they would like to see the Afghanistan situation turn this country, traditionally friendly to the Soviet Union, into a hostile outpost of imperialist forces on the southern border of the U.S.S.R.

It has become fashionable in the U.S.A. to proclaim whole regions of the world as zones of "vital interests." Why can the simple truth not be understood: though the Soviet Union is far from proclaiming some regions as a zone of its vital interests, it cannot at the same time remain indifferent when on its borders, be it in the south, west or east, attempts are being made to create regimes hostile to it? Wfe have had some experience--a rather grim one at that--prior to World War II when there were efforts to create a so-called sanitary cordon around the U.S.S.R. What it resulted in for the whole world has not, probably, been forgotten in the U.S.A.

The actions the Soviet Union has taken to render assistance to the Afghan government are purely defensive. These actions pursue one aim: protection of our friends and the security of our southern frontiers. No more than that. The U.S.S.R. has repeatedly emphasized that it stands for a political solution to this problem. Washington knows well that if the U.S.A. ensured the complete termination of outside interference in the affairs of Afghanistan and effectively guaranteed, together with Afghanistan's neighbors, that such interference would not be resumed, the reason for keeping Soviet troops in Afghanistan would be eliminated.

Washington shows particular zeal in trying to justify its actions against Afghanistan and in spreading the allegation that the U.S.S.R. threatens the oil supply lines on which Western countries depend. Our country does not have the slightest intention to encroach upon energy sources in the Middle East. And it is not Soviet forces that are stationed in the region.

There is yet another question. In the past few years, the U.S. side--let us put it that way--has been actively trying to demolish the edifice of American-Soviet economic relations, the edifice that was erected by both sides under the predecessors of today's President. It is easy and irresponsible to destroy all this. But it will take much time to restore it. To sow enmity between our nations means resorting to methods that harm not the Soviet Union but the prestige of those who use such methods.

The U.S.S.R., as before, believes that the only reasonable way is to lessen tension and limit arms, and that bilateral problems should be settled on a just and mutually advantageous basis. The stable development of trust and confidence in each other's intentions is possible only on this basis. What we sow today will sprout tomorrow.

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