America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

After years of carnage, all is relatively quiet on three fronts in the cold war. The Afghan city of Jalalabad is still holding out against a rebel siege. Most Nicaraguan insurgents are sulking in their tents in Honduras. The various factions in Cambodia are spending at least as much time these days maneuvering against one another at international conferences as fighting in the jungle.

The mujahedin, the contras and the Cambodian guerrillas are all foot soldiers of an American policy whose architect has left office -- the Reagan Doctrine. To punish Leonid Brezhnev for fomenting trouble in the Third World back in the 1970s, Ronald Reagan launched a global counteroffensive in the 1980s. By helping to arm virtually any group aiming to topple one of the Kremlin's clients, Reagan gave new force to the old U.S. strategy of "containing" Soviet expansionism.

Then along came Mikhail Gorbachev, who has his own reasons for scaling back the U.S.S.R.'s foreign entanglements: they are expensive, diverting resources that might otherwise go to domestic reform; and they provoke worldwide antagonism at a time when Moscow is looking for capitalist goods and credits. So Gorbachev has withdrawn Soviet troops from Afghanistan, encouraged the Vietnamese to end their occupation of Cambodia and warned Fidel Castro that the Kremlin will not indefinitely underwrite the export of revolution in Latin America.

George Bush has acknowledged this turnaround in Soviet policy by proclaiming it an opportunity for the U.S. to move "beyond containment." Already there has been a shift in U.S. policy toward diplomatic compromise in all three of the principal regional conflicts. In Nicaragua the Reagan Administration wanted to overthrow the Sandinistas; the contras were a means to that all-or- nothing end. The Bush Administration, by contrast, is seeking a political settlement that would entail some sort of power sharing between the Sandinistas and their opponents. During consultations on Cambodia in Brunei last week, Secretary of State James Baker made it clear that the U.S. is more willing than it was a year ago to accept the current Vietnamese-backed leaders in Phnom Penh as part of a future coalition -- and more committed than before to preventing any return by the genocidal Khmer Rouge.

As for Afghanistan, American hopes for a quick, easy mujahedin victory have faded. A protracted civil war might favor the more fanatical, anti-Western elements among the rebels. The U.S. has just said good riddance to one ayatullah in Iran, and the last thing Washington wants is a Khomeini-like figure in Afghanistan. There are also 3.5 million well-armed Afghan refugees who are an increasing worry to Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. On a visit to Washington last month, she persuaded Bush to endorse publicly a "political solution," implying an internationally brokered deal that might allow some Afghan Communists to remain as part of a new government. Baker has privately told his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, that the U.S. "has no interest in seeing a leadership in Kabul that is hostile to the U.S.S.R." Such assurances, Baker hopes, may lead Moscow to persuade its clients to accept a deal.

If these trends continue, it could mean truce, then peace on these far-flung battlefields. Wars, including cold ones, don't end until people stop dying in them. By folding up the Reagan Doctrine, the U.S. can provide some cover for Moscow's retreat, perhaps helping end the expansionist phase in Soviet history. Such a strategy might even come to be called the Bush Doctrine.