The Maltese Summit: An Assessment Of The Damage Done To US Security Interests

(Washington, D.C.): The dust has begun to settle on the Bush Administration’s conduct of its first summit with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Consequently, it is now possible to make preliminary assessments of the damage to Western security interests that is likely to ensue from this hastily arranged and free-wheeling meeting.

The Center for Security Policy believes that the prospects for such damage arise, in the first place, from the Administration’s flawed concept for a new "partnership" with the Soviet Union. Flowing from this concept — and its faulty premises — are Bush initiatives in three areas that threaten vital, long-term U.S. (and, to varying degrees, allied) interests: Central America, economic relations, and arms control.

"The Vision Thing"

At Malta, President Bush announced the beginning of a new relationship with the Soviet Union. Put simply, the President has decided that, especially in light of the role attributed to Gorbachev in facilitating the present reforms in Eastern Europe, assisting the Soviet leader and his domestic and international agenda will be the guiding purpose of U.S.-Soviet relations. As President Bush himself put it, "I want to do everything I can to help him."

This concept of committing the United States to becoming a partner in Gorbachev’s perestroika appears to be predicated on three faulty premises:

"Stability is Paramount"

The Bush Administration appears to have accepted the notion that maintaining "stability" is of the utmost importance. As the Soviet empire is shaken by swelling demands for freedom and self-determination, the Soviets believe the definition of stability is what is acceptable to the Soviet Union. President Bush seems prepared to accept this definition; he has been at pains not to associate the United States with those like the Balts and others in the USSR whose aspirations for basic liberties and self-rule are inconsistent with the Kremlin’s views.

Unfortunately, this alignment with the Soviet communists can, at best, promote "tactical" stability. By encouraging the continued association of Eastern European nations with the Warsaw Pact, it can actually help the Soviet Union maintain its presence in and considerable control over those nations. By signalling that the United States will take a tolerant view of an internal Soviet crackdown in the name of maintaining order, the Bush Administration can help the Soviet leadership resist the sorts of demands for democracy and the abandonment of communism inside the USSR that the Gorbachev regime has apparently accepted elsewhere.

What the Bush concept fails to appreciate is that, unless the Soviet Union is radically transformed — from a political, economic and military system that brought the world the Cold War (and that still is largely intact today) to one that enables genuine, multiparty democratic pluralism and the end of the command economy — the real threat to stability will remain in place.

"Gorbachev Is Embarked on Radical Reform"

A second misconception on the part of the Bush Administration arises from its apparent belief that Gorbachev’s reform program will produce such a transformation from communism. Indeed, in making the success of perestroika an objective to which he will bend every resource, President Bush has implicitly — if not explicitly — endorsed Gorbachev’s program whose real, and oft-stated, purpose is not to bring about a new revolution in the USSR. Instead, it is aimed at making the existing Soviet system more efficient and more competitive.

The difference is one of staggering strategic significance. Instead of encouraging the creation of institutional and structural impediments to a future Soviet threat to U.S. security, "helping" Gorbachev or his program "succeed" is tantamount to ensuring that such impediments do not materialize. In turn, that amounts to contributing to the continued viability — and possibly the worsening — of that threat in the future.

"Making Deals with Gorbachev Will Pay Off Even If He Fails"

A third premise, perhaps the most insidious of all, animating the Bush Administration policy toward the USSR is that, despite the growing sense that Gorbachev’s limited reforms will ultimately fail, it is in the interest of the United States and the West to conclude as many deals — especially arms control agreements — with him as possible before that occurs.

This notion is seriously flawed on three counts: First, the Soviet Union’s belated admission that the Krasnoyarsk radar is a violation of the ABM Treaty reveals that the Soviet regime responsible for concluding an arms control agreement cannot be relied upon to honor it. It is imprudent to expect that a successor regime would behave otherwise — particularly one that may choose to disassociate itself from the policies of a previous and discredited government.

Second, this is a classic case of counting the proverbial chickens before they are hatched. Virtually any reductions agreement will take years to implement; START, conventional forces and chemical arms agreements, for example, will stipulate that the required destruction of weapons be carried out over protracted periods. In a scenario in which Gorbachev disappears from the scene in the relatively near future — or is transformed into a less felicitous character — in the near term, the effect of the agreed reductions will certainly be less than advertized.

It will doubtless be argued that this is not a serious cause for concern because cuts on the U.S. side will similarly not have gone into effect. Unfortunately, the reality is that steps that will adversely affect American security are being taken by this country now, in part motivated by the anticipation of coming arms control agreements. Actions like defense budget cuts, programmatic slowdowns and demobilization, as well as vastly expanded Soviet bloc access to militarily relevant Western technology are already beginning to degrade the U.S. posture vis a vis the Soviet Union.

Finally — even if one believes the Soviets will honor their commitments to make arms cuts and that no new build-up in Soviet forces will ensue until the cuts have been faithfully implemented — it is simply wrongheaded to think the United States will be advantaged should Moscow decide again to accelerate its accretion of military power. As a practical matter, the one thing the Soviets have shown their system to be relatively good at is amassing weapons.

By contrast, the United States has never been able to compete quantitatively in arms with the USSR; it is unlikely to be able to do so in the future. Its industrial base is already experiencing significant contractions in the face of sustained budget reductions over the past five years. Moreover, congressional willingness to invest the necessary sums cannot be assumed.

What is more, as the quantities of permitted military forces are reduced by these agreements, the incentives for the Soviets to exploit their production infrastructure to establish favorable correlations of forces will only increase. In this connection, it is worth noting that the START treaty is likely to produce warhead-to-target ratios that are more advantageous to the USSR than the pre-treaty situation. Were they to choose, following an agreement, to produce larger numbers of strategic missiles than are permitted, they could do so at relatively small cost and obtain still better attack capabilities than exist at present.

The Dangerous Operationalizing of the New U.S.-Soviet Partnership

From these faulty premises and the concept of U.S.-Soviet partnership that the Bush Administration has built upon them, portentous developments emerged at Malta in at least three areas:

Central America

Based upon his own comments at the post-summit press conference and subsequent reporting, President Bush evidently acquiesced in — if he did not simply accept at face value — Soviet representations about the status of their arms shipments to (and within) the region.

Gorbachev reaffirmed his earlier pledge that the USSR’s own shipments of arms to the Sandinista regime had been halted. By any reasonable definition, that is a lie. On the eve of the Malta summit, fresh shipments of helicopters used by the Nicaraguans as gunships were dispatched by the Soviets to Managua.

What is more, Soviet client states have continued to provide arms to Cuba and Nicaragua. Interestingly, such suppliers include some of the East European countries now ostensibly being consumed by the spirit of reform and perestroika (e.g., Poland). And, as recently as several days before the summit, undeniable evidence of Managua’s role as purveyor of sophisticated weaponry to the FMLN in El Salvador became available.

Yet, President Bush went out of his way to disassociate "our Soviet friends" from complicity with the Sandinista’s subversion of Salvadoran democracy and the so-called Latin American peace process. He even appeared to accept that the USSR might not know what the status or character of Managua’s aid to the FMLN is; he implied that the Sandinistas could be lying to the Soviets — but seemed utterly to reject the notion that the Soviet leader could be lying to him.

The following are among the questions begged by the President’s stance on Central America at the Malta summit.

• Did President Bush obtain any Soviet commitments on the complete cut-off of military aid to Nicaragua, Cuba and the FMLN by the USSR and its clients?

 

• Did the President secure an undertaking from Gorbachev that the Soviets would demand that the FMLN presence in Nicaragua be halted at once?

 

• If the Soviet Union and/or its allies continue to meddle in Central America, what is President Bush prepared to do about it? Will there be any costs or impact on U.S.-Soviet relations?

 

• What will determine for President Bush whether Nicaragua’s elections — assuming they occur — are "certifiably free?" Should they be otherwise, what does the President intend to do about it?

Economic Relations

The centerpiece of the Malta summit was President Bush’s extension of the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" to Gorbachev’s version of perestroika. Far from being a modest and largely cosmetic contribution (as it is now being portrayed by some U.S. officials) to the "success" of that program, the economic, financial and technology initiatives that will flow from that action — both those to be taken by the United States and, much more importantly, those to be mounted by its allies — have the potential of greatly easing the Soviet Union’s current crisis.

These are among the highlights — and implications — of the Bush initiatives in this area:

• The negotiation of a new trade agreement which will, among other things, facilitate the revitalization of the strategically important energy sector of the Soviet economy.

 

• The granting of "observer status" to the USSR in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade after the current Uruguay Round is completed. This step offers the Soviet Union the potential, without having to adopt a market economic structure, to participate in an important international economic body — a major first step toward the "integration of the Soviet Union into the world economy." A number of possible consequences can be envisioned:
  • the creation of new opportunities for Soviet mischief-making, e.g., challenging U.S. embargoes against Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama and other, future U.S. foreign policy controls;

   

  • relaxation of the free-trade, free-market standard for other GATT member aspirants;

   

  • clearing the way for Soviet membership in other international bodies such as IMF, World Bank and raising the prospect of having to convert China’s current "observer" status in those organizations to full membership.

 

 

• The waiver of the Jackson-Vanik amendment at the June summit, enabling the Soviet Union to obtain most favored nation status. This action would appear to reflect at least a partial abandonment of the conditions previously stipulated by President Bush for making such a waiver. While the Bush Administration continues to insist that legislation providing for free emigration be enacted by the Supreme Soviet, it seems to have dropped the requirement for a sufficient period during which such legislation’s faithful implementation is demonstrated.

 

• Exploration with Congress of the possibilities for lifting congressional restrictions (i.e., the Stevenson and Crane amendments) on U.S. government guarantees of export credits to the Soviet Union made through the U.S. Export-Import Bank. This will open the way to considerable taxpayer exposure in connection with risky transactions with, and ultimately, investments in the Soviet Union and will give important impetus to increased U.S. private bank lending to the Soviet Union.

 

• The identification of specific projects that the U.S. government and private sector would undertake in such areas as finance, agriculture, statistics, small business, budget and tax, anti-monopoly and stock exchanges. To the extent that these undertakings are principally with the Soviet government — as opposed to individuals or independent organizations, their ability to contribute to the structural transformation of the Soviet Union will be severely circumscribed.

 

• Progress on resolving the outstanding issue of defaulted czarist bonds and other Soviet debts that currently preclude the USSR from selling its "perestroika bonds" in the United States. This step will greatly facilitate Soviet penetration of U.S. financial institutions and the creation of substantial new constituencies (e.g., mutual funds, pension plans, insurance companies and private investors) with a literal, vested interest in accomodationist policies toward the Soviet Union.

 

• Continued signals of U.S. willingness to consider more liberalized access to advanced Western "dual use" (i.e., militarily relevant) technology. In recent months, the United States has begun to relax controls on such technology both unilaterally and in conjunction with its COCOM partners. Currently, the West is considering, among other things, giving Poland and Hungary preferential access to sensitive technologies currently controlled — despite the fact that both nations remain part of the Warsaw Pact and are integral elements of the Soviet Union’s worldwide intelligence apparatus.

These initiatives — and the presidential commitment from which they flow — amount to a very significant, if preliminary, program for bailing out the Soviet Union. It represents essentially unconditional aid, a multifaceted blank check in support of perestroika.

By failing to stipulate clear conditions, declining to demand discipline or transparency in the transactions that will ensue or striving for a coherent allied approach, the Bush Administration has not only missed an opportunity to tie such assistance to the needed transformation of the Soviet system. It has offered the Soviets the promise of breathing space, a slackening of the present, acute pressure that will likely diminish the felt need by the leadership for further reform in the USSR.

What is more, to the extent that the Administration has signaled that Soviet repression within the USSR in the name of "maintaining order" will not carry costs in terms of the Kremlin’s access to this Western cornucopia, it makes such repression all the more likely. At the same time, the negotiation of trade agreements, signature of binding contracts and acceptance of Soviet membership into international organizations greatly diminishes the United States’ future latitude in responding to Soviet repression when it occurs.

Arms Control

The Malta summit also saw significant and regrettable Bush Administration moves on the arms control front. As noted above, these appear motivated by the dubious proposition that getting hastily drafted agreements with Gorbachev, resulting in deep cuts in and other dislocations of U.S. forces, is vital — even though there is continued Soviet noncompliance with existing agreements and growing uncertainty about who would be in place in the USSR to oversee the implementation of future ones by the Soviet Union.

In this spirit, President Bush set aside the opposition he expressed only a few months ago to the setting of artificial deadlines for completion of arms control agreements. In fact, he put the prestige of his office on the line in agreeing with Gorbachev that a START agreement would be finished quickly, if not by the time of the June summit, then shortly thereafter. The President also accepted the Soviet proposal for a 35-nation European summit to serve as the signing ceremony for the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) talks next fall. Similarly, a deadline has been established for completion of two protocols related to verification of treaties on limiting nuclear testing.

Even more troubling, Mr. Bush preemptively abandoned a position he had taken just last September, that would ensure the United States retained a reliable deterrent to chemical warfare until every nation capable of producing chemical arms became party to a "global and verifiable" agreement banning such weapons. The President has now committed the nation not only to a chemical weapons ban treaty that will be neither "global" nor "verifiable" but also to ceasing upon signature CW modernization efforts needed if the those stocks to be retained until the treaty is fully implemented are safe, reliable and effective.

These Bush initiatives are troubling for two reasons. First, they reflect a lack of seriousness about the stakes involved for U.S. security. One cannot talk about "providing political impulses" to accelerate the work of arms control negotiators and "beating up the bureaucrats" in order to get treaties rapidly completed without adopting a cavalier attitude about the content of the agreements being prepared. The signal being sent of indifference to the details, and fixation with the political talismans of signing ceremonies, can only have a deleterious effect on the substance of such accords and the likelihood that they will advance U.S. security interests.

The INF Treaty negotiation was proof positive of this proposition. By agreeing in mid-October 1989 to have a summit to sign an as yet-unfinished treaty, the United States fell prey to the old adage "you want it bad, you’ll get it bad." In important respects, the treaty that resulted was seriously flawed as a result of decisions taken in the feverish chaos of the artificially constrained "endgame."⁽¹⁾ It is inconceivable that agreements vastly more complex and strategically sensitive — like START and CFE — will come out better for being negotiated in a similar environment.

Second, these decisions are being taken against the backdrop of a campaign to present the Soviet military capabilities and threat as dramatically reduced. Recent statements by Administration officials and leaks of classified intelligence assessments serve up an image of Moscow’s diminishing military investment and the Soviet Union’s declining ability to strike quickly and with little warning.

While there have been noteworthy changes in Soviet forces and, particularly in the Eastern European theater of operations, that may affect some aspects of the USSR’s military power, the portrait of Soviet capabilities now being painted is misleading. In point of fact, in important respects, the legacy of the Gorbachev era has thus far been to add greatly to the military potential of the Soviet Union. Importantly, even if Gorbachev fulfills his pledge to reduce defense spending by 14.6%, given that he has presided over a roughly 3% real growth in such spending for each of the past five years, the net result will be to return Soviet investment in the military sector to roughly what it was under Brezhnev and still far in excess of genuinely defensive needs. By contrast, U.S. and allied defense spending is in a free-fall; as talk grows of "peace dividends" and wish-lists are compiled of other ways to spend defense outlays, it is impossible to calculate how profoundly Western military capabilities will be impaired.

It has become increasingly apparent that the reason for much of the unjustified hyping of declining Soviet military potential — like the impetus for the feverish pursuit of hastily crafted arms control agreements — has to do with the U.S. budget crisis. The reality is that some in the Bush Administration appear to prefer to savage American military capabilities (in the vain hope that by so doing a measurable impact can be made on the federal deficit) rather than revisit the president’s stated pledge not to raise taxes in order to meet other spending needs and Graham-Rudman targets.

In other words, much of the Bush Administration’s rhetoric about the diminishing Soviet threat, rhetoric that is having far-reaching impact in shaping policy and programmatic choices, is really political cover for steps that might otherwise be seen as premature, if not irresponsible. It appears that Vice President Dan Quayle and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft have, in recent days, undertaken to leaven somewhat the effusiveness of that rhetoric that characterized the Malta summit and early post-mortems. The difficulty remains, however, that the President himself has charted the present course and, unless he alters it, there is little likelihood that the necessary adjustments will be made to keep American security interest from foundering on the shoals of inflated expectations and ill-conceived policy.

Conclusion

The Center for Security Policy believes that President Bush must reconsider his open-ended commitment to helping Gorbachev and his program succeed. Instead, U.S. policy should be aimed at ensuring the success of those who wish to bring about the sort of truly fundamental structural changes in the Soviet Union — like a multi-party system and the de-collectivization of agriculture and industry — that Gorbachev is pleased to take credit for permitting to occur in Eastern Europe.

In particular, the following principles should be applied:

• The United States should not permit concern about short-term "stability" in Soviet terms to be the be-all-and-end-all of American policy. Doing so obliges an alignment with those who would suppress democracy and stymie reform, not those who demand it.

 

• Our policy should instead be aimed at bringing maximum pressure to bear to effect the fundamental structural transformation of the Soviet Union’s political and economic systems on a scale comparable to developments in Eastern Europe. Leverage arising from the Soviets’ desperate need for aid, trade and access to Western technology should be exploited, not squandered through the sort of undisciplined, uncoordinated and non-transparent approach now being adopted by the United States and its allies.

 

• In particular, Western willingness to help resuscitate the bankrupt economies of the USSR and its allies must be predicated on the immediate cessation of activities by the military and intelligence apparatuses of those countries inimical to our interests. Litmus tests of such a policy would include the termination of Soviet support for Cuba and Nicaragua and the end of all material, logistical and intelligence support for those regimes on the part of East European and other Soviet allies.

 

• Arms control should clearly take a back seat to other means of transforming the Soviet threat. Specifically, the United States should avoid negotiating under deadlines, or effecting deep reductions in or the irreversible dislocation of its forces under present circumstances.

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1. See two reports by the American Enterprise Institute Working Group on the INF Treaty. "Article-by-Article Review of the INF Treaty," American Enterprise Institute Occasional Papers, 3 February 1988 and "A Further Review of the INF Treaty: Seven Critical Issues."