Struggle over agenda.

FOR TOO LONG the White House had given the Soviets a free ride on agenda-setting for the coming summit, seeming not to realize that the agenda is a political matter, perhaps the decisive political matter, or that it is set not only in discussions between Secretary Shultz and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, but also in the public imagery projected. As the date for the summit approached, Mikhail Gorbachev and his propaganda tacticians had succeeded in making "arms control" the centerpiece, perhaps the only piece; and this version of the agenda, solidifying, received the bemused backing of our NATO allies and their media, and of our own major media, emphatically including the New York Times. It was as if a huge megaphone kept chanting, "Arms control.... Arms control.... Arms control."

The Soviets want the focus to remain on "arms conrol"--a term that means very different things depending on the context--for very good reasons indeed. 1) In the present context, "arms control" means negotiating about Star Wars; that is really the only item the Soviets want to control--i.e., block--and the only substantive reason there is going to be a summit in the first place. 2) "Arms control" is the only item on which the Soviets calculate that they will not be on the defensive and that, indeed, they have much to gain (they do not want, say, Afghanistan and similar items highlighted). 3) By focusing on "arms control" they enlist the support of many in the West who would be much less enthusiastic about matters such as shooting the Pope, invading Afghanistan, or sponsoring worldwide terrorism. And 4) Star Wars threatens virtually the only basis of the Soviets' superpower status. Take away their ICBM threat and they are only a regional power, another India. Mr. Gorbachev is not as skeptical about Star Wars as the Union of Concerned Scientists is. He thinks it will work, or he would not have offered an unheard of reduction in Soviet land-based missiles.

In his UN speech, the President finally moved to alter this agenda. He did not even mention "arms control"--not once. The power of its absence produced global shock waves.

Carefully considered, the speech did not indicate that "arms control" is "unimportant." Rather, in the jargon of today's new literary critics, it de-prioritized it, challenged its privileged status. Mr. Reagan stated, in effect, that Star Wars is far too important to arms-control it away.

Moved up on the political agenda by the speech were some items Mr. Gorbachev would rather not discuss: the presence of Soviet troops or Soviet auxialiries not only in Afghanistan, but in Angola, Ethipoa, Cambodia, and Nicaragua, to mention only Mr. Reagan's shopping list at the UN. Judging by their reaction, Western political leaders and the Western media are only slightly less enthusiastic about ventilating such subjects than Gorbachev himself.

The President, indeed, dared to utter some truths seldom heard at the United Nations: that weapons, including nuclear ones, do not cause war; that the threat of war derives from political conflict; and that today's political conflict results from the nature of the Soviet system. The President quoted from Andrei Sakharov's Nobel Peace Prize message: "International trust, mutual understanding, disarmament, and international security are inconceivable without an open society with freedom of information, freedom of conscience, the right of publish, and the rigth to travel and choose the country in which one wishes to live." We are not threatened with nuclear war by either Frnace or England; were they dictatorships, they could easily practice nuclear blackmail.

Never, perhaps, has the accuracy of the Hive analogy been so thoroughly demonstrated as in the reaction to this speech. Moscow commented as usual in its controlled press that Reagan had ignored the "burning problems of nuclear disarmament" and instead had defended his policy of "international banditry." Daniel Ortega said that Reagan's policies are "against God," using an uncharacteristically religious vocabulary. Europeans were "disappointed" by his omission of "arms control" and his willingness to raise divisive issues like Afghanistan and human rights. The New York Times editorialized in weary tones that Reagan did not "enhance his credibility" and thought he "threw away a precious chance to bid for the moral high ground with his global audience." The phrase "moral high ground" here must mean Gorbachev's agenda. Clearly, taking the moral high ground does not consist in speaking the truth, as Reagan did, about the nature of the Soviet sysetm and its effect upon international relations.

The pressure to bargain away Star Wars for some illusory reductions in Soviet missiles will mount inexorably. It will--it already has--become more intense than the pressure over the neutron weapon, the freeze, or the Pershing II deployment. You do not see Robert Jastrow on the CBS Morning News. You see Paul Warnke and William Gerard Smith in total agreement that Star Wars is a bad idea. (Gorbachev does not think it's a bad idea, only bad for him.) Some 1,600 academic scientists have indicated that they will not work for Star Wars.

The President's UN speech indicated that he is not going to be conned. Oremus.