Has Reagan Gone Soft?

By Barrett Seaman

For true believers the change could not have been more startling if Joseph Stalin had bought stock in General Motors. Ronald Reagan, who built his political career by trashing arms-control agreements and demanding a linkage between American cooperation and Soviet good behavior, appears more interested in treaties and a second summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev than in punishing the Soviets for their Daniloff perfidy.

The Reagan who in 1983 labeled the Soviet Union the "focus of evil in the modern world" has held his rhetorical tongue firmly in check since then. The President who slapped sanctions on the Soviet Union in response to the imposition of martial law in Poland waited less than 24 hours after Daniloff was set free before announcing he would meet with Gorbachev in Reykjavik to ! talk about arms control.

The network of the right has been fulminating with discontent for some time, wondering what has caused this disheartening metamorphosis in one of the nation's most fervent anti-Communists. "The center of foreign policy has shifted to the State Department," grouses Harvard Professor Richard Pipes, thus relieving Reagan of personal blame. Yet many who have watched this alteration in Reagan's approach to superpower relations believe that while the President has indeed evolved, he has hardly abandoned his visceral dislike of the Soviet system. "There's been no change," insists his wife Nancy. "His feelings go way back and are very strongly rooted."

"It will be a cold day in Hades when I go soft on Communism," the President declared last week. "I was bloodied a long time ago in that battle, and I have never changed my view." But Reagan has added a new dimension to his view of the Russians, and he believes the circumstances of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry have changed as well. The result is an apparent contradiction that should be no surprise to veteran Reagan watchers. "He wants a summit. He wants an arms- control agreement -- one that is fair and maybe even verifiable," says a close White House aide. "He doesn't want to lose the opportunity." Still, Reagan retains a deep distrust of Soviet motives and a conviction that the U.S. must stay strong and alert. The President, says one loyalist, "is carrying these two conflicting concepts in his mind. It's a two-judge court," and either judge could rule at any given time.

Foremost in Reagan's outlook is his perception that circumstances have changed in the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. The Reagan who called the U.S.S.R. the "evil empire" and chose to challenge Communism in Grenada and Nicaragua was driven by the sting of Soviet contempt, his own sense of alarming U.S. military weakness and the need to demonstrate resolve. The Reagan who now reaches out for arms accords is convinced he is dealing from renewed strength and can afford a touch of magnanimity, or at least flexibility.

Reagan's goals for arms control are, at least in his mind, quite different from those of his predecessors. Last spring he proclaimed himself free of SALT II strictures because he believed the arms-limitation process to be little more than a codification of the arms race. But he sees his own proposals, including the INF agreement now well on its way to fruition, as blueprints for actual weapons reductions.

Many who surround Reagan are convinced the 75-year-old President is thinking about his place in history, more so than he did when he took office. Though Reagan and his wife deny they have ever discussed how arms control could affect his legacy, Nancy may indeed have fulfilled her promise to Andrei Gromyko to whisper "peace" in her husband's ear each night.

Still, the staunch anti-Communist side of Ronald Reagan would have little trouble suppressing that bit of sentiment were it not coupled with a new perception of what the Soviet Union is all about. As he has grown in office, Reagan has come to view the Russians no longer as cardboard-cutout Communists but as human beings in a multidimensional society, with a history that goes back beyond the 1917 Revolution. He has learned to appreciate why the Russian people, as opposed to their Soviet rulers, are so sensitive to charges of sociopathic behavior, why their concept of homeland is so important to them and the cause of so much xenophobia.

Much of this new understanding came through Reagan's preparations for the Geneva summit meeting with Gorbachev. Experts were brought in to brief him on the interplay between Russian culture and the Soviet system. One writer with whom Reagan developed a particular rapport was Suzanne Massie, author of Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, an uplifting history of prerevolutionary Russian culture, its spiritual qualities and love of nature. Indeed, Massie has continued to visit the White House, most recently late last month, when she lunched with the Reagans. Massie sees Reagan as a man who "focuses on the individual -- that's the core of it."

That well be the key to Reagan's singular willingness to meet again with Gorbachev. Reagan has met the man; apparently he feels he understands the Soviet leader and the political dynamics in which he governs. Perhaps he even empathizes with Gorbachev's difficulties. Buoyed by the progress made on various arms-control issues, Reagan's newfound view of the Soviets as possibly malleable rivals has combined with his deeply held conviction that Russians as human beings cannot help succumbing to the irresistible benefits of American democratic capitalism. This remarkable inner confidence -- both in himself and in the system he champions -- may be the fatal flaw in the Reagan approach to the Soviets, although it served him well in Geneva in his first encounter with Gorbachev.

The two sides of Reagan -- the sympathetic optimist and the skeptic who keeps a jaundiced watch on persistent Soviet malfeasance -- will engage in an inner debate if a summit and arms-control agreements become more likely. The side that prevails may determine the President's place in history.