The four 'detentes': that old summit magic.

THAT OLD SUMMIT MAGIC

THERE'S AN irresistible charm about Summitry. By the time this issue goes to press, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev will have performed the sacred rites of that old Summit magic: hands will be shaken, glasses clinked; the sun will shine a little brighter, hearts rest a little easier, because in faraway Moscow two men who hold the fate of the world in their all-too-human hands will have signed a communique or perhaps some new agreements. The substance of such agreements seems hardly to matter. In this style of diplomacy, it is the "new spirit of peace," not the details, that counts.

Those who are not connoisseurs of the arms-control process may be surprised to learn that the current flirtation with Moscow is the fifth in a long line of sequels. Nowadays, the term detente is usually reserved for the prolonged period of "eased tension" inaugurated by Richard Nixon and continued during the Ford and Carter Administrations. But a careful look at the history of Soviet-American relations since World War II shows that detente is not an isolated phenomenon, but a recurring temptation: in at least three other periods, Washington attempted friendly relations with the Kremlin. Each period was marked by Summit meetings, arms-control accords, and high expectations of a new era of cooperation. (See chart, pp. 38-39.) Each was ended by an act of Soviet aggression. And, when the dust settled, each period of detente left the West in a relatively worse position. By contrast, the interludes between detentes--periods of more normal relations with the Soviets--seem to produce consistently better foreign-policy results.

The first period of detente (1943-48) began with the 1943 Teheran Summit, at which Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met to plan the postwar internationa order. Stalin's presence indicated that Western leaders expected the wartime alliance to blossom into a cordial peacetime relationship. "Never before have major allies been more clearly united not only in their war aims but in their peace aims," Roosevelt announced to Congress two years later, upon his return from Yalta.

Detente continued into the Truman era with the Summit at Potsdam. Under Truman, the U.S. slashed its military forces from 12 million during the war to under two million in 1946. The Truman Administration also proposed giving up America's nuclear monopoly by placing all atomic weapons under international control (the Soviets rejected the plan).

For their part, the Soviets retained some four million men under arms and launced a crash program to build their own A-bomb. With Stalin's help, Communists took power in Eastern Europe and launched guerrilla wars in Greece, China, and Vietnam. The fellow feeling was disappearing by the spring of 1947, when Truman promised to aid governments resisting Soviet subversion and promulgated the Marshall Plan. Detente I came to a crashing close in 1948 as a result of the Soviets' double whammy: the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February and the Berlin blockade in July.

Stalin's death ushered in the second period of detente (1953-56). President Eisenhower called for improved relations with Moscow, and the long-stalled Korean truce talks resumed; an armistice was signed in July 1953. The following February, a Big Four (France, Britain, U.S., USSR) foreign ministers' meeting formally initiated Detente II, which continued through the Geneva Summit of July 1955. It ended in November 1956, when Soviet troops invaded Hungary.

Detente III had the shortest run. It began in May 1959 with the lengthy negotiation among the former Allied powers over the status of West Berlin. Other notable events during this period were the "informal" Eisenhower-Khrushchev Camp David Summit, and the June 1961 Kennedy-Khrushchev Summit in Vienna. American hopes for good relations were, again, soon disappointed: in August 1961, the Soviets built the Berlin Wall, and then detonated four H-bombs (breaking a moratorium on atmospheric nuclear testing). In 1962, the Kremlin began secretly placing medium-range ballistic missiles armed with H-bombs in Cuba.

The most recent era of detente began in 1972, when Nixon traveled to Moscow to meet with Brezhnev and sign the SALT I and ABM accords. It ended in December 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

HAVE WE GAINED anything from these repeated unilateral attempts at mutual admiration? Well, in 1955, in the midst of Detente II, the Kremlin withdrew its occupying troops from Austria and agreed to respect that country's neutrality. An important success, to be sure, especially for the Austrians. But it is disconcerting to find that, after all the hopes we've repeatedly hung on detente, Austria's liberation thirty years ago remains the West's sole unambiguous gain.

The arms agreements of the 1970s, usually considered the crown jewel of the detente process, haven't benefited the West at all. SALT I, which limited the number of launchers but not the number of hydrogen bombs, failed to slow the Soviet arms buildup. The unratified SALT II treaty, which the U.S. observed until 1986, "limited" the number of H-bombs deployed to about 13,000 for each side--that is, about six times as many as either Washington or Moscow had deployed on strategic missiles when arms talks began.

THE NUMBER of nuclear warheads on Soviet land- and sea-based strategic missiles increased from 2,445 in 1972 to 8,900 by 1985. The Soviets' conventional-arms buildup, of course, also continued unabated. And the Soviets have repeatedly violated the terms of the accords, from their promise at the 1972 Summit to observe "norms of international conduct" (which the United States understood to mean an end to subversive aggression), to the 1975 Helsinki humanrights guarantees. From these experiences Moscow has learned one very bad lesson: there is no penalty for refusing to abide by agreements. Our passive response to each set of Soviet violations makes it less likely that the next agreements will be observed.

Overall, Moscow has done very well indeed during periods of detente, making its greatest gains during the two longest episodes. During Detente I (between 1943 and 1948) the Soviets engaged in direct or indirect warfare against Western allies in at least a dozen different countries. In 1944, Stalin told Communist guerrillas in Greece and Yugoslavia to prepare to seize power at war's end, and Radio Moscow began urging Poles to rebel against the Nazis in order to aid the approaching Red Army (which he then ordered to halt for two months while the Nazis exterminated the Polish resistance fighters). In late 1945, Stalin began military aid to Communists in China and Vietnam, and tried to annex northern Iran; only Truman's threat to launch a nuclear strike halted the latter scheme. By 1947, Communists, aided by Soviet occupation troops and making use of secret police and fraudulent elections, had seized control of most of Eastern Europe. North Korea had joined the Soviet bloc, and the Chinese Communists were well on the way to victory (attained in 1949). The Soviets made gains during the shorter periods of detente as well, notably in acquiring Cuba and North Vietnam as client-states.

The years of Detente IV were again a period of sustained growth for Soviet influence and a veritable bull market for Communist terrorism. During the 1970s the Soviets gained ten new client-states in Asia, Africa, and Central America: South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, South Yemen, Grenada, and Nicaragua. Following established patterns, most of these new Communist regimes then turned to subverting their neighbors. The Sandinistas gave military support to guerrillas in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras; Grenada aided subversives in neighboring Caribbean democracies; and Ethiopia provided material support to guerrillas in the Sudan and Somalia.

Compare this glowing record to what the Soviets were able to achieve during periods of normal relations. Following the collapse of Detente I, the U.S. led in establishing the Organization of American States (1948) and NATO (1949), among other regional security organizations. In 1950, America urged the UN to respond militarily to North Korea's invasion of South Korea. And America fostered democratic, pro-Western governments in Japan and West Germany.

After Detente II, the West repulsed Khrushchev's attempts to absorb Berlin, and it established the European Economic Community (1957). In the ten years following Detente III, no new pro-Soviet regime took power, and the Soviet-backed Communist insurgency in Vietnam was stalemated (with help from the United States). During the six-year period of normal relations following Detente IV--the Reagan era--the West has gained on several different fronts. Twelve countries (ten of them in Latin America) have made a transition to political democracy. More than 350,000 anti-Communist resistance fighters have taken up arms in six of the ten Soviet client-states established in the Seventies. America, overturning the Brezhnev doctrine, drove an established Communist dictatorship out of Grenada. Communist guerrillas in El Salvador and Guatemala faced significant setbacks. And all these gains were achieved without a single serious U.S.-Soviet military confrontation.

During each period of detente, the West, desperately clinging to the illusion of friendly relations, has ignored or downplayed hostile Soviet actions. In each instance, Moscow has taken advantage of our rose-colored glasses to help its proxies grab additional territory. Agreements are cheap, when violating them costs nothing. The current effort at detente is likely to prove a reprise of the past. Who are the probable casualties? Resistance fighters in Nicaragua, Angola, and Afghanistan for starters. And then countries, like Pakistan, that are likely to bear the brunt of Soviet-sponsored international terrorism. Vulnerable democratic movements in Central and South America will also suffer, as will blacks in South Africa, who may be forced to endure, as their brethren in Ethiopia and Mozambique have before them, the brutality of Communist rule.

THE POSTWAR record suggests that normal, realistic relations with the Soviet Union best serve our national interests and preserve the international order. What are the hallmarks of a realistic foreign policy? Realism requires that we recognize hostile actions throughout the world and help our friends defeat them, and that we withhold from the Soviet Union all economic preferences and credits, which give it the hard currency it needs to maintain its global empire. Realism allows cooperative efforts such as verifiable bilateral reduction in offensive nuclear and conventional forces. But it cannot rest on the belief that the USSR--which defines itself as our enemy and daily carries out indirect aggression against our allies--has somehow been transformed into a friend.

Since 1945, four attempts at detente have failed, badly. Our fifth fling with detente will end the same way, unless we realize that prudent realism, not wishful thinking, is the best path to peace and freedom. When Moscow ends its hostile international actions, complies with its treaty obligations, and negotiates deep cuts in offensive weapons, then a genuine U.S.-Soviet detente may evolve. Until then, vigilance, not relaxation, must be the watchword.