East-West Chips Off the Bloc

By Evan Thomas.

As a dream, it lives on in the hearts of true believers. As a strategy, it died years ago. Ever since the dark days of the cold war in the early 1950s, many Americans--especially conservative Republicans--have yearned to "liberate" the "captive nations" of Eastern Europe from the grip of Communism. That the U.S. was powerless to fulfill that wish by action short of war has not stopped various Administrations from trying at least to chip away at Soviet domination of the East bloc. Secretary of State George Shultz last week became the latest U.S. statesman to try, touring a trio of East European capitals in the hope of lifting the Iron Curtain an inch or two.

Shultz set the tone for his mission during a preliminary stop in West Berlin. A few hours after he gazed across the Berlin Wall from a makeshift scaffold, the Secretary declared that the U.S. "does not accept the incorporation of Eastern Europe into a Soviet sphere of influence." But Shultz's pronouncement did not signal a new moral crusade. As official U.S. policy, the notion of "liberation" has long since been discredited and abandoned. Administration officials now speak more blandly of "differentiation" between East bloc countries. The aim, like that of every Administration since Lyndon Johnson's, is simply to encourage pluralism in the region by rewarding countries that demonstrate independence from Moscow and respect for individual rights.

Shultz's journey, his first through Eastern Europe, took him to three countries--Rumania, Hungary and Yugoslavia--that have, in different ways, managed to deviate from the Kremlin line:

Rumania does not permit Soviet troops on its soil, and the government of Premier Nicolae Ceausescu allows Jews to emigrate more or less freely. As a reward for such behavior, the U.S. has given Rumania most-favored-nation status, entitling it to low tariff levels on exports to the U.S.

Ceausescu is desperate for more Western trade. Because his highly centralized economy has faltered badly, living standards are so low that the government requires citizens to light each room with only a single 40-watt bulb and for no more than six hours a day. Indeed, Shultz and his entourage decided not to stay overnight in Bucharest in part because they were unsure whether there would be adequate light and heat. When the Secretary's motorcade left the capital at 6 p.m., the city was already as blacked out as London during the Blitz.

Rumania's record on human rights is similarly distressing. The Ceausescu regime is among the most repressive in Eastern Europe. It has imprisoned dissident intellectuals and cracked down on Evangelical Christian sects, including the Nazarenes and Jehovah's Witnesses, reportedly even bulldozing churches.

In a conversation described by Shultz as "frank and candid," which is diplomat-speak for contentious and blunt, the Secretary warned Ceausescu that Congress is threatening to cut off Rumania's favored-nation status because of concern among conservative U.S. Christians over treatment of the Fundamentalist sects. The Rumanian Premier agreed to establish formal discussions with the U.S. on his regime's human-rights record. But some Administration officials fear that putting pressure on Ceausescu, 67, who is reportedly suffering from prostate cancer, will only backfire and drive the ailing leader into the arms of Moscow. More immediate is the fear that Rumania would retaliate by restricting Jewish emigration.

Hungary is in many ways the mirror opposite of Rumania. The government of Premier Janos Kadar, 73, dutifully follows the Soviet line on foreign policy, but has allowed private enterprise to flourish alongside stagnating state- controlled industries. Hungary has been generally tolerant of individualism, especially in the arts. The country's once robust economy has slumped lately, however, hurt in part by an embargo on high-technology exports from the West to Soviet bloc countries. Though Shultz evidently offered little hope of U.S. assistance with those problems, his mere presence was, as a Hungarian commentator put it, "a prestige item that reinforces Kadar's role as an independent loyalist," to the Soviets. Said Shultz: "Mr. Kadar is an interesting interlocutor and well worth listening to."

Yugoslavia has remained outside the Soviet orbit since 1948, when Marshal Tito, chafing at Soviet dominance, broke away from Stalin. But as a major force in the so-called nonaligned movement, the group of countries allied with neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia has managed to get along with other independent-minded governments, including those Arab states suspected of sheltering terrorists. The White House was irked earlier this fall when Yugoslavia allowed Abul Abbas, the Palestinian Liberation Front official accused of masterminding the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, to pass through the country on the way to safe haven in Iraq. Though Yugoslavia is eager to enlist Western aid for its economic woes, Shultz's discussions with the country's collective leadership were dominated by the terrorism issue.

At a press conference in Belgrade, the capital, Foreign Minister Raif Dizdarevic suggested that the Achille Lauro hijacking had to be viewed in the context of the Palestinian struggle against colonialism. That remark prompted the normally placid Shultz to erupt in anger. "Hijacking the Italian ship, murdering an American, torturing and holding a whole bunch of other Americans, is not justified by any cause I know of!" the Secretary said, slamming his fist on the table. "It is wrong! And the international community must step up to this problem and deal with it, unequivocally, firmly, definitively."

"There is a lot of potential motion" for change in Eastern Europe, Shultz told reporters when he left Belgrade. But, he acknowledged, "it will be a slow and difficult process." The momentum for change, he added, would come less from U.S. initiatives to individual Warsaw Pact countries than from a broader improvement in East-West relations. "This trip was quite educational for me," he concluded. "Whether it has advanced our interests any, I don't know."

Shultz's Eastern journey had been timed to take advantage of the postsummit mood of goodwill between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In the past, East bloc countries have felt freer to deal with the West during periods of detente. But loosening the Soviet grip can be risky. Whenever East European countries have tilted too far to the West, the Soviets have forcibly jerked them back, as they did to Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland in 1981.

The Soviets responded peevishly to Shultz's trip, and especially to his rhetoric, which the Communist Party daily Pravda denounced as a throwback to the cold war era. Soviet Americanologist Georgi Arbatov asserted that Shultz has backed down from his pre-summit posture of conciliation toward the Soviet camp and has instead bowed to pressure from "right-wing circles" that, according to Soviet demonology, control the White House.

; Kremlin propagandists insisted that the real purpose of Shultz's trip to Europe, which included stops in Britain, Belgium and West Germany as well as in Eastern Europe, was to push for President Reagan's "infamous" Strategic Defense Initiative. If so, Shultz did not fare much better with his own allies than he did with the Easterners. The West German government last week agreed to discuss participating in Star Wars research, and hence share in the funding, but pointedly refused to embrace publicly the concept of a space- based missile defense.

When Shultz flew home to Washington last week to report to the President, the first item on his agenda had little to do with his travels. The Secretary firmly told the President in private that he opposed a national security directive, signed by Reagan on Nov. 1, authorizing lie-detector tests for thousands of Government employees and private contractors who handle sensitive information. Questioned by reporters, Shultz said that he considers polygraph testing ineffective, that it often implicates innocent people and that trained spies can easily avoid detection. Asked whether he would ever take such a test, the Secretary replied, "Once." Face reddening, he added, "The minute in this Government that I am not trusted is the day that I leave."

Some Administration officials sniped at the usually circumspect Shultz for taking his defiance public and noted that Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger has agreed to take a polygraph test. But the White House hastened to head off a confrontation, explaining that the President's directive allows department heads to decide which of their employees must undergo lie-detector tests, and insisting that the plan was aimed at curbing espionage, not--as some critics suspect--unauthorized leaks to the press. Reagan told reporters at week's end that Shultz had been mollified and that the Secretary would not be asked to take a lie-detector test himself. Shultz may not have had much success at pressing human rights in Eastern Europe last week, but he did strike a small blow for individual liberties in the U.S.

With reporting by Kenneth W. Banta/Budapest and Johanna McGeary with Shultz