To Rebuild the Image

By Strobe Talbott

Needed: a consistent foreign policy--and muscle When Americans look abroad they tend to see enemy territory. When they look ahead, they tend to see bad times and bad situations getting worse. The confidence and optimism that marked America a generation ago have given way to anger and apprehension often bordering on fear. In short, one of the most serious problems affecting U.S. foreign and defense policy these days is the national mood.

To some extent, the anxiety is understandable and justified.

America's potential enemies--most significantly the Soviet Union--are stronger and bolder than ever before. America's friendships, meanwhile, are increasingly strained, its alliances increasingly divided. The U.N. General Assembly and some other international forums are dominated by supposedly neutral nations that ritually criticize U.S. policies and reject U.S. sponsored initiatives. Pro-Western regimes in the Third World appear vulnerable to revolt and subversion. The U.S., and to a far greater extent its allies in Western Europe and Japan, depend for their very survival as economic powers on oil supplies from one of the most flammable regions on earth--the Arabian peninsula and the Persian Gulf.

Americans rejoiced in the Inauguration Day liberation of the 52 hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Nonetheless, Iran threatens to succeed Viet Nam as a symbol of American frustration and impotence. American diplomatic support and military backing could not prevent the fall of the Shah, who for decades seemed the paragon of a U.S. friend overseas. Then came the humiliation of the embassy seizure, the burning of American flags, the ritual chanting of "Death to the great satan!" by mullah-led mobs. Recent years have spawned an array offerees seemingly inimical to American interests, ranging from the extortionist pricing policies of OPEC to xenophobic Islamic fundamentalism. Iran, in a peculiarly ugly way, has managed to represent both.

In its attempts to deal with a more hostile and dangerous world, the U.S. has found that the assumptions, ideals, doctrines and instrumentalities on which it relied for decades to protect and advance its interests no longer seem to work very well --if at all. American diplomatic efforts, with few exceptions, have ended in frustration. Henry Kissinger's attempt to negotiate "peace with honor" in Viet Nam produced neither peace for Indochina nor honor for the U.S. (in part, because Congress blocked him on some key issues). The Camp David peace accords, one of President Jimmy Carter's few foreign policy achievements, have foundered on Israel's refusal to consider an agreement that would provide real autonomy for the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza.

The impression of impotence has been reinforced by evidence of military weakness. The U.S. is ill-prepared to fight a conventional war. It has not even demonstrated a capacity to conduct a successful rescue mission--as pictures of the burning helicopters and charred bodies at Desert One last April so shatteringly illustrated. Rhetoric about military preparedness has tended to accentuate the problems. By proclaiming the Carter Doctrine, which committed the U.S. to meet Soviet aggression in the Persian Gulf area with force if necessary, the former President unwittingly raised the question of whether the U.S. had the military means to make good on that commitment. The answer, at present, is almost surely no.

Twenty-five years ago, when U.S. supremacy was unquestioned, one obstacle to clear thinking on foreign policy issues was complacency. The danger today is the opposite: excessive, obsessive pessimism. As a point of simple fact, the U.S., by every nonmilitary measurement, still far outstrips the U.S.S.R. as a superpower. America's gross national product is twice the size of the Soviet Union's; its standard of living is far higher; it is the world's pre-eminent producer and exporter of food; its magnetism for would-be immigrants, particularly from Communist lands, is stronger than ever; as the awards of Nobel prizes annually prove, the U.S. continues to lead the world in everything from computer technology to medical research to the exploration of the solar system.

Legitimate American worries about Soviet military might and Soviet aggressiveness tend to obscure the reality that the U.S.S.R. has major problems of its own. It has a rigid, inefficient economic system that simply does not work and a sclerotic, unimaginative leadership tied to an ideology that carries neither resonance nor conviction. The Kremlin leaders face growing restlessness in the East bloc as well as a long-term challenge from the non-Russian, predominantly Muslim minorities of the Soviet republics in Central Asia.

In short, the years ahead will offer opportunities as well as risks for the U.S., and a revitalized foreign and defense policy must take account of both. TIME offers a series of propositions for such a policy.

I he first priority of American foreign policy is to restore a modus vivendi in U.S.-Soviet relations, which means restoring the military balance.

For the past two decades, the Kremlin leaders have been amassing arms in all categories--conventional and nuclear, short-range and intercontinental, undersea and airborne. They have built up the capability of waging everything from counterinsurgency warfare and paramilitary operations to blitzkriegs and nuclear Armageddons. The arsenal is out of all proportion to the Soviets' legitimate needs of self-defense.

Strategic parity--that is, a rough equality between the superpowers in long-range nuclear weaponry--still exists. The U.S. is ahead in the number of missile warheads, heavy bombers and bases around the periphery of the U.S.S.R., and has a technological edge in antisubmarine warfare and missile-firing submarines. These offset Soviet advantages in the number and size of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS).

In this matter, the U.S. must learn to live with parity. Whether America likes it or not, Leonid Brezhnev is quite correct in describing any U.S. quest for nuclear supremacy as misguided.

The U.S. cannot get there from here--not against a Soviet Union that is ready and able to match America in any kind of arms race. Even though the U.S. has a far stronger economy, the Soviet political system is better able to dictate--and absorb--the civilian sacrifices necessary to support a huge military machine.

While it is impossible to predict the exact composition and policies of the Politburo that will eventually take over from the gerontocracy that currently runs the Kremlin, there is every reason to expect that the younger men lurking in the background, waiting for the actuarial tables to open the top jobs, are just as committed as their elders to guns over butter.

Preserving parity will be difficult enough. The balance of strategic forces is already being eroded, principally by the U.S.S.R.'s ongoing ICBM buildup. For some years Western experts have been concerned that the land-based portion of the American strategic deterrent--1,052 Minuteman and Titan II missiles in underground silos--might soon be susceptible to a surprise first strike by the Soviet Union's own increasingly accurate, destructive and numerous land-based warheads. Such a pre-emptive blow, if successful, would seriously weaken the ability of the U.S. to retaliate with iCBMs against Soviet military targets. The worry is this: faced with the awful choice of responding with an attack against Soviet cities--thereby inviting a Soviet "second strike" against U.S. cities--an American President might decide to capitulate instead. Whether a Soviet leader would ever take the gamble of trying to paralyze the U.S. in this way is almost beside the point. Perceptions, especially those about credibility, are the essence of deterrence. SALT II is in the best interest of the U.S.

The SALT agreements on offensive weapons, signed in 1912 and 1919, set modest but helpful bounds on the strategic arms race and high but still useful ceilings on the number of missile launchers and warheads that the Soviets could deploy. The agreements also establish some important rules for verification--that is, the ability of each side to monitor the testing and deployment of the other side's most dangerous weapons. SALT I expired 3% years ago, and SALT II has not been ratified--a victim both of mismanagement by the Carter Administration and of senatorial anger over Soviet intervention in Africa and Afghanistan.

The Reagan Administration is considering whether to renegotiate SALT II in a way that will allow it to replace Carter's imprimatur with its own or whether to let it die. It should definitely try to revive the treaty, and the less renegotiation the better, since the agreement as it stands represents a sound compromise. The treaty would not, as some critics have charged, lock the U.S. into a position of inferiority. There are things in SALT II that the U.S. does not like. There are things in it that the Soviets do not like. SALT II, among its other advantages, imposes realistic constraints on the most threatening Soviet weapons, ICBMs with multiple warheads. These Soviet MlRVed ICBMs represent the cutting edge of the strategic nuclear challenge to the U.S. since their warheads might render the American deterrent vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike, at least in the calculations of many defense planners. The treaty, moreover, does not prevent the U.S. from developing and deploying new weapons that will be necessary to keep pace with the Soviets. If the U.S. tries to extract too many additional concessions from the Soviets, it is all but certain to jeopardize the useful rules and limits already established.

Despite SALT n's relegation to legislative limbo, both sides are still abiding by its main provisions, as well as those of SALT I. The Reagan Administration should quickly seek to extend this informal adherence until new negotiations get under way. Reason: before the U.S. could decide how to cope with the total collapse of the SALT ceilings, the Soviets could easily increase both the number of launchers and the number of warheads per missile, thus tripling the present threat against Minuteman.

With or without SALT II, America's nuclear deterrent must be made less vulnerable to Soviet attack.

As part of its effort to make SALT II politically palatable, the Carter Administration ordered the development of the mobile MX, a ten-warhead successor to the three-warhead Minuteman, which would move around in a giant shell game to foil Soviet targeting. The trouble with MX is its mobile-basing mode. The system is hugely expensive (possibly as much as $100 billion) and terribly destructive of both the natural and social environment in which it would exist. More troublesome still are its military ramifications. If the U.S. goes ahead with a mobile MX, the Soviets may try to disguise the location of their big missiles. Additional uncertainty about the monitoring of Soviet missiles would compound American anxieties about the vulnerability of the U.S. land-based missile system.

There are cheaper, more sensible alternatives. One would be a stationary MX. Because the missile has more warheads than the Minuteman, fewer would have to survive a surprise attack for the U.S. to retaliate with "assured destruction" of Soviet military targets. Another possibility is to rely more on submarines, which are virtually invulnerable to pre-emptive strikes, and on aircraft (including perhaps a new supersonic bomber), which can scramble quickly the moment that the U.S. appears to be under attack. Because of improvements in satellite-guidance systems for submarine-launched ballistic missiles and in the technology of slow, low-flying, hard-to-detect and exceedingly accurate cruise missiles, the U.S. is approaching the point where it need not rely quite so much on its land-based missiles in order to maintain a credible deterrent.

As yet another option for protecting American ICBMS, the U.S. could resurrect and expand an antiballistic missile (ABM) system. The 1972 treaty limiting ABMs--the only strategic arms limitation agreement that is still formally in force--might be renegotiated so as to permit selective ABM protection of U.S. missile silos. Tampering with the present ABM treaty, however, should be considered strictly as a last resort. If such renegotiation of the 1972 treaty failed, the result might be an ABM race. That would surely accelerate the ICBM competition. It is only logical that more and better offensive weapons would be necessary to penetrate more and better defenses. It would also increase the hair-trigger mentality on both sides.

I he U.S. must narrow the Soviet lead in medium-range nuclear weapons and in conventional forces.

These are gaps of potential utility to the Kremlin in crises far easier to imagine than a direct Soviet-American nuclear showdown. The Soviets' 3-to-l superiority in tactical nuclear weapons in Europe could help the Kremlin bluff and bully the West Europeans. Therefore the U.S. should devote more of its strained defense budget to improving the ability of America's allies to counter a new generation of mobile Soviet missiles.

In purely military terms, it would make sense to consider development of the neutron bomb. Opponents of this highly effective tactical weapon claim it is more "unmoral" than other nuclear bombs, partly because it can kill people without destroying buildings or vehicles, and partly because it is easy to use. The accusations do not make sense, since the weapons might actually help deter a Soviet armored blitz against Western Europe and thus diminish the danger of war. The real problem with the neutron bomb is essentially political: because of internal opposition in a number of European countries to the stationing of new U.S. weapons on their soil, the key NATO allies are likely to continue to resist deployment of the neutron bomb.

Most critical of all is the Soviet conventional buildup. Not only has the U.S.S.R. acquired a lead of 50,000 to 10,900 over the U.S. in tanks, 62,000 to 22,000 in armored fighting vehicles and 3.6 million to the U.S.'s 2 million in men under arms, it has also developed an air- and sea-lift capacity to project its forces around the globe. This Soviet superiority must be countered by a substantial buildup of U.S. conventional forces (see box).

I he U.S. should have a greater capacity to react against Soviet-inspired subversion, which means removing some restraints on covert action by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The sinister handmaiden of Soviet military adventurism has been covert action and mischief-making by proxy. There are widespread reports, for example, that the Soviets encouraged Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in his recent annexation of the central African nation of Chad. Libya has long been a conduit for Soviet arms to the Palestine Liberation Organization, as well as revolutionary groups in the Philippines, Chile and Turkey. Congress should repeal or amend legislation that limits the ability of the CIA to conduct clandestine operations abroad.

As long as the Soviets countenance aggression by their surrogates, there is no reason why the U.S. should be hindered in helping to supply the guerrilla groups in Afghanistan and the non-Communist resistance to the Vietnamese-backed regime in Cambodia. Soviet planners, poring over their maps in search of targets of opportunity, should have to reckon with the likelihood that the MiGs they have supplied to some would-be invader will encounter U.S.-made surface-to-air missiles. Moscow's cloak-and-dagger agents, bagmen and propagandists should also have to contend with American operatives trying to organize pro-Western political forces. When that day comes, Thailand will be less likely to go the way of Cambodia, Niger the way of Chad, or Oman the way of South Yemen. Clearly stated declarations of U.S. commitments and vital interests would inject some uncertainty--and possibly some additional caution--into Soviet calculations.

Recent expansions of Soviet power have flagrantly jeopardized Western interests and intimidated Western friends in many regions. What is equally significant, though far less noticed, is that none of those interventions has risked a direct confrontation with the U.S. In every instance, the Soviets have moved where they were sure they would not encounter American forces or hit an American trip wire. Thus Soviet adventurism has confirmed, somewhat paradoxically, that the old men in the Kremlin are still conservative, even when throwing their weight around the world. They are willing to weather diplomatic outrage and embargoes and sanctions, but they do not want to tangle with the U.S. militarily.

Soviet strategy has been, and will probably continue to be, brazen and brutal. But it has not been, and probably will not be, reckless. In picking their targets, the Kremlin leaders chose nations that the U.S. had somehow denied as outside its area of national interest. Congress did so explicitly in the case of Angola in 1975; the Carter Administration did much the same with Ethiopia; poor Afghanistan was effectively conceded to eventual Soviet domination as far back as the '50s, when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles left it sandwiched between the U.S.S.R. and the now defunct Central Treaty Organization.

Detente needs to be redefined and rebuilt.

While the Soviet military challenge has to be met with better military deterrence, the broader, longer-range Western response must be political as well. Soviet expansion has been made possible by an increased military capacity, but it is also the result of a breakdown in the relationship known as detente. As a political slogan, detente is discredited--probably forever. One problem was that it fostered unrealistic expectations, even euphoria, about the possibilities for Soviet-American friendship. But as a concept, detente has indisputable validity. The word means nothing more controversial than the reduction of tensions between nations in order to reduce the danger of war. Each superpower may have the penultimate goal of defeating the other, but the shared, ultimate goal of both is to survive. (French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, from whose language detente was borrowed, has proposed "stability" as an alternative.) detente also implies that the U.S. and its allies can use their economic leverage. Because of the inherent weakness of the Soviet economy, the West can offer deals to induce restraint and, where possible, cooperation by the U.S.S.R. detente worked between 1969 and 1973, producing modest but tangible results in trade, arms control and emigration from the U.S.S.R. and occasionally some political accommodation as well. One small example: in 1972 the Kremlin leaders did not cancel a summit meeting with Richard Nixon, even though he had just ordered bombing raids on Haiphong harbor in which Soviet ships were damaged. Soviet intentions then were no more benign and altruistic than they are now. But the Kremlin was willing to play by a few limited rules in order to get American grain, technology and financial credits.

The beginning of the end for detente came in 1974, when Democratic Senator Henry Jackson of Washington championed legislation making freer Jewish emigration from the U.S.S.R. a precondition for tariff concessions on Soviet exports to the U.S.

The Kremlin leaders complained, with justification, that this heavyhanded attempt to link economic rewards with exit visas constituted interference in their internal affairs. This kind of explicit, narrowly defined "linkage" tends always to stiffen Soviet backs. Linkage must be an underlying factor in the calculations on both sides rather than a stark equation by itself, such as the formula that freer emigration would equal freer trade, or that a Soviet pullout from Afghanistan would equal ratification of SALT.

In other words, both carrots and sticks are necessary in dealing with the Soviet Union.

Detente--and linkage--broke down primarily because of Soviet excesses but also because some promised American carrots were not delivered. (For example, Congress overrode the Nixon Administration's recommendation on most-favored-nation trading status for the U.S.S.R.) When American inducements were made less tempting to the Kremlin, many of the same benefits became available elsewhere--technology from Japan, grain from Argentina, electronic products and computer equipment from France. Today Soviet officials say privately that the Politburo's decision to step up its African activities in 1975 was made easier by the fiasco over the Jackson Amendment, and that the decision to invade Afghanistan in December 1979 was made easier by the fact that SALT II already seemed doomed in the Senate.

Since Afghanistan, the U.S. has pretty much thrown away its carrots--SALT, grain sales, cultural exchanges, etc.--and resorted exclusively to waving sticks (and not very big ones at that). President Reagan has expressed a preference for open, Jackson-style, quid pro quo linkage. Henry Kissinger criticized this approach in the mid-'70s, but has now endorsed the Administration's position. He was right the first time.

I he U.S. should take the lead in trying to restore detente.

Bringing tensions between the superpowers back under control is a challenge to American policy that carries with it an unavoidable inequity. Because of the Soviet Union's interventions in Africa and Afghanistan, its saber rattling in Eastern Europe, its support for Vietnamese aggression in Southeast Asia, and its menacing buildup in nuclear and conventional weaponry, the U.S.S.R. is largely responsible for the crisis in East-West relations. Yet if the U.S. waits for the Kremlin to make the first move in getting the relationship back on track, and especially on the right terms, it may well have to wait much longer than it wants to or should have to.

The sophisticated qualities necessary for the prudent exercise of power and intelligent management of international relations--notably moral authority, self-confidence, respect for the rule of law, and political finesse--are stunted in the Soviet system and psychology. The present downward spiral of mutual mistrust and recrimination will clearly not lead to an inevitable nuclear apocalypse, but it can do a lot of damage just the same. It increases the difficulties and dangers involved in virtually every other international problem the U.S. faces. It thus follows that after a suitable interval the U.S. should take the initiative in statesmanship with the U.S.S.R.--not, certainly, to make concessions but as a pragmatic first step in its own self-interest.

The most obvious and appropriate area for the U.S. to make the first move in restoring detente is also both controversial and politically difficult: arms control. Jimmy Carter tried but failed to protect SALT from becoming a hostage to the overall climate of the superpower relationship. That failure resulted partly from the widespread impression that he naively viewed arms control as an enterprise distinct from--and more righteous than --defense and national security. As long as the arms controllers stereotype themselves as peace-loving good guys vs. the warmongering bad guys of the Pentagon, the good guys will come in last--especially in the present atmosphere of Soviet-American relations. The Reagan Administration has an opportunity to integrate arms control with American defense needs, but that will require flexibility and compromises on the part of both rearmers and disarmers.

Restoring detente will help rebuild the Western alliances.

Now more than ever, the U.S. needs the help of its allies in the complicated task of reinforcing Western security. It needs the British and the West Germans to shoulder more of the defense of Europe, so that the U.S. can concentrate on the Persian Gulf and other far-flung trouble spots. It needs French help in combatting the Libyans and other international muggers in sub-Saharan Africa. It needs the Japanese to assist in shoring up the security of the Pacific. These alliances are already strained, and there is plenty of blame to go around. American leadership has been erratic; the West Europeans in general have been excessively parochial; the French in particular have enjoyed the protection of NATO without active participation. There have been divergent approaches plus failures of communication and coordination on a lengthy agenda of what should be common concerns, from Middle East diplomacy to the north-south dialogue, and most importantly on the collective response to the Soviet threat. The West Europeans and Japanese do not want the new cold war in Soviet-American relations to increase because they are caught, politically and geographically, in the middle.

More specifically, they want the U.S. to keep SALT going, both as part of detente and as the bellwether for a variety of other, multilateral negotiations in which they are directly involved. For example, the British are party to the comprehensive test-ban talks in Geneva, and the West Germans have a key interest in the prospective negotiations on theater nuclear forces. As a result, the West Europeans have imposed a bit of linkage of their own. They have said they will cooperate with the U.S. in upgrading NATO's nuclear defenses only if the U.S. simultaneously pursues arms control agreements. Hard-liners in the Reagan Administration may smell a scent of blackmail there, yet the hard fact remains that the U.S. could restore a much needed degree of transatlantic calm if its fair-weather allies were not quite so nervously eyeing the thunderheads over Soviet-American relations. With calm restored, the U.S. might then be able to reassert the strong leadership and the discipline within the alliance that will be necessary the next time trouble brews between East and West.

I he U.S. should look for ways to play on Soviet vulnerabilities, particularly in Eastern Europe and China, in order to discourage Moscow's expansionism elsewhere.

To pursue adventurist policies on a global scale, the Kremlin leadership needs stability and security within the Soviet bloc; it also requires that all be quiet along the eastern front with China. It was by no means coincidental that the Soviets were receptive to the Nixon-Kissinger initiatives for detente in 1969; that year the Soviets were fighting on the border with China. Similarly, Brezhnev would like, if possible, to defuse Soviet-American antagonisms now, because a military invasion of Poland, at a time when heightened East-West tensions are still crackling in the air, could lead to a spreading of the conflict beyond Polish borders.

The decade ahead may see the U.S.S.R. increasingly preoccupied with suppressing unrest in the East bloc while coping with mounting Chinese obstreperousness. Together, these two preoccupations could generate a kind of self-containment. The diplomatic trick for the U.S. will be to keep the pressure on the U.S.S.R. from both directions without provoking the Soviets into attempting to eliminate the pressure points altogether.

In Eastern Europe, the U.S. and its allies should, quite literally, try to buy time for the various reformist forces there.

That means providing trade deals and even loans to the beleaguered governments--with as many strings as possible attached to prod state banks and planning agencies toward stricter accounting and sounder spending policies. Obviously, the Soviet Union will not allow its satellites to go into receivership with the West. But given its own shrinking ability to help Eastern Europe economically, the U.S.S.R. has no choice but to permit more Western involvement than it has in the past. Naturally, the West is under no obligation to bail the Soviets out of the mess they have made of the East bloc economies. But such assistance from the capitalist world might then encourage those satellite regimes to rely more and more on Western economic help as time passes. As they do, they may be more tempted to try some Western remedies, such as free-market incentives and decentralized management, as cures for their own internal economic problems.

Even if the independent unions survive in Poland, they are likely to be quarantined there. If, however, labor unrest does arise elsewhere in the East bloc, the U.S. Government and responsible private organizations like the AFL-CIO should resist the temptation to cheer on the strikers too loudly. That would not only fan Soviet paranoia but would also help the Soviets justify an intervention by claiming it was against "Western intrigues and subversion."

The amount of time that the U.S. can help buy for peaceful reform hi the East bloc is probably limited. The economic ills of the satellites are not just chronic, they are degenerative and could be terminal. East bloc governments, by and large, are unpopular. Brezhnev's successors face two bleak choices: they can accept the eventual breakup of the Soviet empire, which for them would be unacceptable, or they can keep trying to patch the cracks in the monolith by reconquering their colonies when recalcitrance gets too far out of hand. The Soviets need loyal, subservient satellites, not just as a geographical buffer to protect their security but as a basis for their claim to being the standard-bearers of an internationalist ideology. That claim is critical to the propaganda and policies they are carrying out elsewhere in the world.

Whatever form the crisis in Eastern Europe takes, the U.S.S.R. is clearly in for protracted, expensive and embarrassing difficulties that could distract it from making trouble elsewhere. The consequences for the West could be favorable: the peoples of East bloc countries, despite more than a generation of Communist rule, look to the West with aspiration, envy and a sense of kinship. The U.S. does not need actively to incite and aggravate troubles that the U.S.S.R. is in for anyway. But it can, by moving with care and sophistication, take substantial advantage of those troubles.

I he U.S. can usefully exploit Soviet fears of China, but it ought to do so extremely carefully.

America should continue to build up economic and diplomatic contacts with the People's Republic. But selling China offensive arms or entering into formal defense agreements with China would be an especially risky form of military competition with the U.S.S.R. The U.S. is already cooperating with the Chinese in gathering intelligence about Soviet military activity. To cross the threshold from that kind of defensive cooperation to arms sales would give the Sino-American relationship too much the cast of an anti-Soviet alliance. Such an alliance would be politically provocative without being militarily formidable--a highly undesirable combination. With or without U.S. assistance, the Chinese military will be extremely backward for some time to come. In a crisis (over Indochina, say) with Washington and Peking allied against them, the Soviets might be tempted to attack just China, and thus call the bluff that the China card represents in strictly military terms.

The U.S. has a considerable interest in the success, or at least the survival, of the Four Modernizations policy of Deng Xiaoping. The U.S. can help with investment, financing, technology, bilateral trade and exchange programs for scientists, scholars and especially managers. Richard Nixon, among others, has speculated about the tantalizing, though still extremely remote, possibility that Deng's program, with its stress on pragmatism over ideology, could some day even lead the Chinese to abandon not just Maoism, which it is now doing, but Marxism-Leninism. Such a monumental defection from the Red banner would be a huge setback to the Soviet Union and the cause of Communism around the world.

I here are opportunities for the U.S. to take the offensive on behalf of its own interests in the Third World.

As a result of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, its clubfooted interventions in Angola and Ethiopia, and its support for Viet Nam's subjugation of Laos and Cambodia, the U.S. has new openings in the so-called Nonaligned Movement. Afghanistan was a founding member of the movement 26 years ago; the Soviet invasion there was a devastating setback to Fidel Castro's attempt to achieve permanent leadership for Cuba in the movement and to establish a kind of godfather status for the U.S.S.R. as the natural ally of nonalignment. States as diverse as Burma, Mozambique and Guyana have begun to distance themselves from the U.S.S.R.

With a combination of propaganda, economic assistance and diplomatic massaging, the U.S. should be able to exploit these openings. Even Cuba and Viet Nam, Moscow's principal hit men inside the Nonaligned Movement, may some day be receptive to efforts by the West to lure them into positions more independent of Moscow and into roles less troublesome in their regions.

While the Soviet Union can deliver arms to national liberation movements, the U.S. and the West can deliver something far more useful in the long run: multilateral negotiated settlements that resolve regional conflicts. A recent and promising though still precarious example: the end of the Rhodesian civil war and the creation of Zimbabwe. Both events were midwifed by Britain, with American backing. The U.S. would do well to look for ways to build on that precedent.

For the U.S. to backslide into isolationism, or to regard every revolutionary leader as an agent of Moscow, merely exposes the Third World to even more Soviet influence. The current tendency in the U.S. to see the developing world as a playground for Communism and as essentially inhospitable to the West risks becoming a self-fulfilling delusion. This danger is especially acute in Africa, where the U.S. has interests far broader than mere access to minerals. Sentiment has been building in the U.S. for the past year to fall back on South Africa, since it is a militarily powerful, staunchly anti-Communist nation in a politically volatile, economically vital region. South Africa also happens to be ruled by a tribe of whites transplanted from Europe. While muted, that racial factor is at least one component in the resurgence of conservative sympathy in the U.S. for the Pretoria regime.

The U.S. should keep its distance from South Africa and keep up its strong advocacy of reform there. At the same time, it should avoid heavyhanded pressure for immediate and comprehensive transformation. This approach would only reinforce the fortress mentality of the Afrikaners. The U.S. should also refrain from actively supporting the guerrillas who seek the overthrow of the South African government. Even the most eloquently indignant spokesmen for the states of black Africa do under-the-counter business with South Africa, which last year hit a record $1.7 billion in two-way trade with the rest of Africa. Many leaders may be willing to settle for internal reforms that would abolish the most hateful aspects of apartheid, at least as a prelude to the black majority rule that clearly is decades away in South Africa.

With the proper emphasis, human rights is still an important component of American foreign policy.

The Carter Administration's human rights policy suffered from being sanctimonious in tone and selective in application. Now there is a danger of overcorrection. U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick earned a place in the Reagan Administration by arguing, in a Commentary article, that the U.S. should support "moderate autocrats"--that is, right-wing regimes friendly to the U.S.--rather than allowing them to be replaced by "less friendly autocrats of extremist persuasion." But there is little reason for concluding, as Kirkpatrick implies, that the U.S. could have saved the late Shah of Iran or Nicaraguan Strongman Anastasio Somoza when they were in the throes of crisis. For decades those dictators were their own worst enemies. The U.S. failed them as well as itself by not pressing them much earlier than it did to reform their regimes, curb corruption and nepotism, and foster compromises to bridge the huge gaps that were developing between the rulers and the ruled. Had the Shah and Somoza liberalized their rules a decade ago, they might not have been faced with insurrection and revolution. Also, one reason why the regimes that replaced the Shah and Somoza were so anti-American was that the U.S. had either ignored or mishandled opposition political figures for so long.

There is an important lesson to be learned from the Iranian and Nicaraguan traumas: the U.S. should have understood earlier the nature and extent of the opposition forces, used its influence with the old regime to make the necessary changes, and if that failed, engaged in timely diplomatic actions--both open and covert--to position itself as advantageously as possible with the new order. But Kirkpatrick and other critics of the Carter human rights policy are quite right to warn that in dealing with right-wing leaders--"our sons of bitches," as Franklin D. Roosevelt is supposed to have once called them--the U.S. must avoid either the appearance or the reality of working for their overthrow.

While maintaining and even propagating its own ideals, the U.S. ought to conduct human rights policy in the context of Realpolitik. It ought to be a matter not of moralizing about the relative virtues of a particular regime, but of analyzing its ability to survive. The Reagan Administration is afraid that it inherited a set of relations in Asia and Latin America strained to the breaking point by the Carter human rights policy. It ought to worry more about the strains within those societies themselves --notably in El Salvador. It is one thing for the U.S. to help embattled client governments combat terrorism or cross-border subversion; it is quite another for the U.S. to prop up a regime that is doomed as much by its own weaknesses and excesses as anything else.

What if revolution were to engulf Saudi Arabia? The monarchy there faces threats to its survival. Some of them are external, especially from radical Arab states but also from Iran.

Some are internal: Islamic fundamentalism, corruption, internecine rivalries within the House of Saud. The U.S. should provide military protection against outright invasion and assist Saudi security forces against subversion, but it should also keep pressure on the royal family to clean up its more conspicuous corruption and help the government cope with the social turmoil that so often accompanies booming economic development. Realistically, the U.S. should recognize that this semifeudal dynasty may not last forever. Contingency planning for that day will not be easy, since it is hard to foresee what combination of forces would replace the House of Saud. At the very least, the U.S. needs to maintain strong ties with the growing number of Western-educated and Western-influenced Saudi technocrats, who will have a stake in their country's future no matter who rules it. 11 is in the self-interest of the U.S. to help Third World nations solve their problems of poverty, social unrest and overpopulation; multilateral aid programs are the best way to do this.

The Council on Environmental Quality and the State Department last year synthesized Government and academic views on the subjects of population, natural resources and environment.

Their findings, contained in a volume called The Global 2000 Report to the President, estimate that the world's population will have increased more than 50% in the last quarter of this century --from 4 billion in 1975 to 6.35 billion in 2000. Roughly 90% of that growth will occur in the so-called less developed countries (LDCs), thus widening the gap between rich and poor nations, exacerbating worldwide shortages of food, water and energy and challenging that more amorphous but equally vital resource, political stability. There is no way that the U.S. can isolate itself from those complex problems--nor should it try. Indeed, America needs to take a greater role in helping the industrialized West form a common strategy toward OPEC, which at the very least should involve conservation measures and an emergency reserve policy.

The energy resources and raw materials of the Third World are as vulnerable to the disruptions of regional politics as they are essential to the economies of the industrial West. Thus the current fears about the potential threat to Pakistan from Soviet legions on the other side of the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan may give way within a few years to even deeper dismay over Pakistan's seeming inability to heal its ethnic divisions, curb its birth rate and ultimately feed its people. The collapse of Pakistan from within--and Pakistan is just one example--could have serious repercussions throughout its region: renewed warfare with India over Kashmir, say, or the spread of tribal warfare into Iran.

It is conceivable that World War III could start with the U.S. and Soviet Union taking sides, however reluctantly, in such a regional brawl. One possible site is the volatile Horn of Africa, where the forces of instability are as much demographic as geopolitical; famine and tribal vendettas might turn out to be as destructive as Kremlin scheming. The superpowers might be drawn in, since Soviet as well as Cuban forces are entrenched in Ethiopia, while the U.S. Rapid Deployment Force has access to bases in Ethiopia's hostile neighbor, Somalia.

In short, helping LDCS head off disaster--much like a sophisticated human rights policy --is not just a humanitarian ideal but a matter of reality. Unfortunately, foreign aid is now the object of widespread disillusionment both at home and abroad.

Retiring World Bank President Robert McNamara and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in their valedictories last year both decried that trend as "disgraceful." And so it may be. Foreign aid is not a "giveaway" but an indispensable tool of U.S. policy. But the public attitude is also understandable, given the galling hypocrisy of Third World leaders who ritualistically excoriate the U.S. even as they accept American handouts. Inevitably, perhaps, the U.S. is widely identified with the prosperous and often profligate elites of poor countries.

That fact alone largely explains why there are so few self-styled popular political forces in the Third World that are unabashedly pro-American. Happily, one such rarity emerged triumphant in last year's Jamaican elections, which brought Prime Minister Edward Seaga to power.

Despite their rhetoric, many Third World leaders recognize that the "imperialist" West is far better able than the "progressive" East bloc to help in their economic development. As decolonialization, like colonialism before it, fades in Third World memories, economic development may gradually replace armed struggle as the order of the day. Even Fidel Castro last year warned his proteges, the Sandinistas of Nicaragua, to beware of Cuba's mistake of mortgaging the country's economy to the U.S.S.R. in exchange for an ideological blessing, military aid and political support.

In asking for Western economic assistance, the Third World --an artificial term that lumps together countries with quite different economic and political philosophies--must readjust some overly ambitious goals. Many of these nations are asking for massive transfers of goods and services and seemingly want to readjust the north-south economic imbalance overnight. They also need to face up to the problem of paying off the debt they already owe the West; the more than $400 billion borrowed by LDCs in the past decade, if defaulted, would threaten the very institutions that can provide the funds for further development.

Still, the U.S. should recommit itself to foreign assistance on a realistic basis so that aid will 1) regain the political support it needs in the U.S., and 2) be effective overseas. In the 1950s and '60s, U.S. aid was largely a matter of bilateral, oneway gifts. Such assistance has too often proved harmful to the LDCs: it discourages economic innovation and national self-esteem while feeding corruption and resentment on the part of the recipient. Some outright government-to-government grant assistance will still be necessary. The real emphasis, however, should now be on private-sector investment by multinational corporations and on highly conditional, firmly supervised loans, channeled through such international financial institutions as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and various regional development banks.

Reagan and his advisers seem to favor bilateral deals, with the U.S. lending directly to a poor country. Such loans not only would be easier to monitor but they also could serve as rewards for political behavior that the U.S. considers friendly. But precisely because such bilateral deals offer an opportunity for obvious political manipulation, they are almost sure to be resisted not only by Third World countries but also by America's principal economic partners. The West, to use its wealth effectively, needs a common investment strategy. Hence a more prudent course would be to strengthen internal tional financial institutions. That means using America's still dom inant position on the governing boards of those bodies to improve their ability to tie -- and occasion ally yank -- the economic strings that must be attached to loans and aid programs.

It also means bringing con certed pressure on pro-Western members of OPEC, to recycle more of their petrodollars and petro-yen through the multilateral institu tions. Venezuela, a founding member of OPEC, has been assist ing the poorer nations of the Car ibbean basin, and Saudi Arabia spends about 3% of its G.N.P. on aid programs for such relatively poor Islamic states as Pakistan, Syria and Jordan. But Saudi Ara bia's vast wealth represents a global problem and not just a re gional one, since it has accumulat ed that wealth partly at the ex pense of oil-importing poor countries around the world.

Therefore, the Saudis share the responsibility of major industri alized countries to help the international financial institutions as sist the LDCs. In the long run it is in the interests of the West and its wealthy friends in the Third World to wean the poorer na tions from their current paradoxical addiction: socialist nostrums at home financed by capitalist largesse from abroad.

I n the perennially troublesome and potentially explosive Middle East, the focus of U.S. diplomacy should shift to Jordan.

The American foreign policy dilemma is a familiar one: how to maintain the U.S. commitment to Israel's existence within secure, internationally recognized borders while seeking to regain influence in the Arab world by contributing to a just solution of the Palestinian problem. In their public statements, leaders of the Arab world unanimously insist that there is only one solution: establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Privately, at least a few Palestinian leaders are willing to concede, albeit reluctantly, that this goal cannot be realized in the foreseeable future. No Israeli government could possibly accede to the creation of such a state, even with international safeguards for Israel's security needs, and hope to survive. Yet continued occupation of the territories is as objectionable to many Israelis as it is to all Arabs.

One possible goal of U.S. policy in the ongoing peace talks would be a demilitarized West Bank, politically federated with Jordan (but with a large measure of local autonomy) and economically linked with Israel. Achieving that admittedly difficult goal would depend, of course, on getting Jordan's King Hussein to join the Egyptian-Israeli talks. Hussein so far has adamantly refused to do so. After the January summit of Islamic leaders in the Saudi Arabian city of Taif, the King once again insisted that the P.L.O. was the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people; nonetheless, he has never entirely given up his interest in the West Bank, which Jordan ruled from 1949 to 1967.

Involving Hussein is important not only because of his potential ability to serve as a surrogate for West Bank Palestinians. It is also important that the Arab-Israeli peace process take on a more multinational cast, thus easing the onus on Egypt's Anwar Sadat as the odd man out in the Arab world. Sadat's isolation makes him politically vulnerable both to internal enemies, like Muslim fundamentalists, and to external foes, like the irrepressible Gaddafi. Sadat's troubles are economic as well as political; he would be in a better position to deliver his long-promised peace dividend to his overpopulated, impoverished country if an Arab-Israeli settlement extended to the West Bank as well as the Sinai. Sadat might then also be able to count on more economic assistance from the Saudis; as long as he is a pariah in the Arab world, they are constrained from helping him very much. A Jordanian "solution" for the West Bank will become more feasible if Shimon Peres succeeds Menachem Begin as Prune Minister in Israeli elections this summer. Peres and his Labor Party have expressed a willingness, under certain circumstances, to return much of the West Bank to Jordanian sovereignty.

No matter how Israeli internal politics and the diplomatic drama in the region unfold, the U.S. cannot escape a central, active role as a mediator in the Middle East. The U.S. is the only superpower that has any influence at all with Israel and Egypt, even as it struggles to maintain the trust of all the other moderate Arab states. That trust would be important to the U.S. even if oil were not involved. Despite its vital interests in the Middle East, the U.S. should resist the temptation

to establish bases either in Israel or in pro-Western Arab states, assuming one were willing to accept an American military presence. A base in Israel would antagonize moderate Arabs; a base in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, say, might add to the isolation and vulnerability of these countries' rulers. Guaranteed access to bases in case of conflict, plus the advance positioning of supplies, should serve the needs of the Rapid Deployment Force when it becomes fully operational. --} ince foreign policy begins at home, there must be improvements in a wide range of domestic attitudes and institutions.

There is no sure way to protect foreign policy from meddling and obstructionism by congressional cliques. U.S. diplomacy, however, would almost automatically become more consistent, credible and effective if Congress, at its own initiative, demonstrated discipline and bipartisanship in offering advice and consent to the Executive Branch. The new Administration, in turn, could help by being more solicitous and skillful in its liaison with Capitol Hill than has recently been the case.

The Secretary of State should be given greater authority and responsibility than he has had in the immediate past. As the senior Cabinet officer, the Secretary of State is considered first among equals in various councils and committees. But that arrangement still leaves too much room for bureaucratic and personal rivalries; it also too often puts the Secretary of State hi the position of representing his own department's sometimes parochial interests against those of Defense, Treasury or Commerce. One solution would be for the Secretary of State to wear a second hat, analogous to the CIA director's additional title of Director of Central Intelligence, which charges him with coordinating the intelligence work of the entire Government.

As chairman of an interagency Cabinet-level body, the Secretary of State would have formal supervisory power over any activity by any Government department that has consequences beyond the water's edge. Reagan's National Security Adviser, Richard Allen, has promised that his office would return "the functions of formulating and implementing policy" to appropriate departments. That vow, if kept, would go a long way toward ending the who's-in-charge confusion that at tended U.S. policymaking during the Vance-Brzezinski and Rogers-Kissin ger years.

The U.S. must attract more and better young officers into its diplomatic corps and intelligence services. That means raising both pay scales and mo rale; it also means increasing the size and quality of the talent pool from which those services draw. There is a desperate need for a new commitment by Government and the private sec tor alike to foreign-language and area-studies programs in high schools and colleges. However far removed this is sue may seem from the crisis of the mo ment in the Persian Gulf or Eastern Europe, the ability of the U.S. to deal with those regions ten or 20 years from now will depend hi part on the vigor of Arabic and Slavic studies around the country. A presidential commission correctly concluded hi 1979 that "American incompetence in foreign languages is nothing short of scandal ous and it is becoming worse." One so bering example: when a Soviet soldier hi Afghanistan briefly sought asylum at the U.S. embassy hi Kabul last Sep tember, not one American official there could communicate with the would-be defector in Russian.

An urgent problem affecting both foreign and defense pol icy is the degree of alarm that has characterized domestic crit icism of incumbent Administrations in recent years. During the Viet Nam War, many on the left bewailed what they consid ered the immorality of American policy. Destructive self-crit icism continued long after Viet Nam, but this tune it came from the right and was directed against the perceived impo tence of American policy.

The nation has a chance to put behind it the self-flagellation of the past 15 years. The U.S. is clearly eager for a more positive approach toward the troubles -- and the opportunities -- facing it around the world. Reagan won his presidency in part because he capitalized successfully on a national nostalgia for what seem, in retrospect, simpler, less troubled times. Americans should not be nostalgic for a lost, largely illusory and certainly irretrievable tune when the U.S. always got its way in the world. The more worthy and certainly more salutary objects of nostalgia are a mood of cautious optimism and a can-do faith in American abil ities. That mood and that faith can be restored. Once restored, they will help greatly hi defining a new role for America as a super power.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.