U.S. Firm on Soviets, Reagan Assures Allies : As Summit Nears, ‘Detente II’ Cited

WASHINGTON — When Richard M. Nixon, the last American President to visit Moscow, went to the Kremlin in 1972 and 1974, that relatively hopeful period known as detente was in full bloom. And Ronald Reagan, then a voice of conservative purity crying in the wilderness of his own party, detested everything about it.

But today, as President Reagan departs for the Moscow summit, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union have grown so sunny that some are beginning to ask whether this is “Detente II” without the name.

Is Cold War Over?

Even more far-reaching, as the most outspokenly anti-Communist President in a generation goes to Red Square, some analysts are asking whether the Cold War is over.

“The winds of the Cold War are being replaced by the winds of hope,” Gorbachev himself declared last week in an interview with the Washington Post.

Whether literally true or not, the very discussion of such possibilities by experts here indicates the sweeping transformation now taking place in U.S.-Soviet relations. And it reflects the conviction that the Moscow summit, even without dramatic and substantive new agreements to sign, will represent an important symbolic codification of that change.

“Though I do value actual, specific agreements that we have signed, such as the INF (medium-range missile) agreement,” Gorbachev said in a statement, “it seems to me that the most important political result of the recent period of improvement in our relations is the regular and very productive political dialogue that we have been having.”

He added, “The important thing is that if the dialogue continues, it will lead to specific achievements.”

Both Gorbachev and Reagan, in recent appearances, have sought to diminish expectations for tangible new treaties, to reduce the risk that the summit will be seen as a failure. Both men want the series of private meetings and public appearances that begin in Moscow on Sunday to appear a success.

Gorbachev needs to sustain momentum in the domestic political battles under way there, from which the summit should be a welcome respite. The Kremlin wanted the summit scheduled for later in June, presumably closer to the key party conference meeting June 28-29, at which Gorbachev hopes to win a “second wind” for his reform efforts.

Call for Mars Mission

In the absence of a new strategic arms reduction treaty, according to Soviet expert Condoleezza Rice of Stanford University, the Soviet leader apparently wants to maintain a high profile in his relations with the United States, the most obviously successful part of his perestroika (restructuring) program. His pre-summit call for a joint U.S.-Soviet mission to Mars was viewed here in this vein.

And Reagan, for his part, wants to show that his policy of strength and negotiation--his legacy to his successor for dealing with the Kremlin--does succeed. His presence in Moscow as Soviet troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan can be portrayed as “a triumph of sorts,” according to Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former national security official in the administrations of Nixon and Gerald R. Ford.

Most specialists believe that the Red Army’s withdrawal has less to do with U.S.-Soviet relations than with Soviet domestic issues and Moscow’s relations with the Middle East nations and China. Yet even though both leaders see the pullout as a vindication of their policies, Reagan’s presence will be a “not insignificant coincidence,” said Sonnenfeldt, because the President at the start of his term set out to “slow down Soviet expansionism in the world.”

Historic Consequences

Beyond such immediate and concrete issues, some specialists in Soviet affairs are almost euphoric in anticipating what they see as the potentially historic consequences of this summit.

To Princeton University Prof. Stephen F. Cohen, it represents “the coronation of the idea that the Cold War has come to an end. Symbolically, it is a profound moment in the history of the Cold War.”

Others caution that such judgments are premature, however. “It is not certain that we are transitioning to some radically new period,” according to Rice, “or just in another phase of relaxed tensions.”

“We’ve had a remarkable run of conflict-free relations since Gorbachev came to power, more than even during the period of detente, in fact,” agrees Arnold Horelick of the RAND Corp., the Santa Monica-based think tank. “That doesn’t mean the basic conflict of interests is not still there.

‘Limits of the Possible’

“But it is true that the limits of the possible in U.S.-Soviet relations are larger, primarily due to changes in the Soviet Union, than at any time since World War II,” Horelick added. If Gorbachev’s reforms are successful, if decentralization and pluralism take hold, “Soviet leaders could be more constrained about using their resources for external assertiveness than in the past,” he said.

Beyond the status of the Cold War, a new version of detente is clearly here, according to experts. The Administration has sanctioned a considerable public relations search for a substitute for that politically charged word, but without success. It still falls back on “stable” and “constructive” to describe the relationship.

“We could call it Detente III or even IV,” said Sonnenfeldt, who is now at the Brookings Institution think tank, “depending on whether you think it started under (former President John F.) Kennedy or earlier, during (Dwight D.) Eisenhower’s term.”

“But yes, we are seeing a degree of enlargement of the range of issues in U.S.-Soviet relations that we’ve not seen before, even during detente,” he added. “In arms control, it’s broader and deeper. On regional conflicts and Soviet expansion, in the past the Soviets wouldn’t give us the time of day. Nothing is off the agenda now.

Jewish Emigration Issue

“On human rights, it was once difficult just to talk about Jewish emigration,” said Sonnenfeldt, who was a senior aide during the three U.S.-Soviet summits that took place under Nixon. “We’d read them a statement, which they’d reject out of hand, and our paper would be picked up by ‘unseen hands’ at the end of the meeting.”

But there are differences, too. Former Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev embraced detente as a substitute for attacking basic economic problems in the Soviet Union, while with Gorbachev the new period of relaxation is integral to his reform program, Sonnenfeldt said.

That is, Gorbachev sees easier relations with the West as a helpful condition for pressing his unsettling reforms at home and abroad.

Horelick cited two other differences between Detente I and II:

--The perceived correlation of forces between the two nations has been reversed; whereas Soviet power was growing stronger in relation to U.S. might during the Nixon period of detente, today it is Kremlin power that seems in a relative state of decline.

“Some people, including Sonnenfeldt, defined Detente I as the management of the rise of Soviet power,” Horelick explained. “Now it’s the other way around. Detente II can be seen as managing the relative decline of Soviet power.”

--For the first time since World War II, the two nations at the same time are primarily concerned with internal domestic affairs, rather than security matters.

“It’s very rare when the two sides are ‘in synch’ on the emphasis on domestic developments rather than external assertiveness,” Horelick said. “Typically, when the United States is on the move in the world, as after World War II, the Soviets were recovering from the war. When the Soviets were on the move in the ‘70s, we were licking our wounds over Vietnam and Watergate.”

Unlikely to Be Used

A corollary, said a senior Administration official, is that both sides are less anxious about their security than they were just a few years ago, perhaps because of a new maturity in the relationship. Both recognize that more arms, particularly more nuclear arms, are not needed because they are unlikely ever to be used.