December 19, 1974
Page 41308
SENATOR MUSKIE'S ADDRESS ON DETENTE
Mr. HUMPHREY. Mr. President, I would like to bring to the attention of my colleagues a recent address delivered by my friend and colleague from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE). This thoughtful and cogent analysis of the process and goals of detente should be read carefully by those who are both supporters and skeptics of improving Soviet-American relations.
I can only voice my fundamental agreement with Senator MUSKIE that detente is a process – not a single accomplishment, and that mutual restraint in the arms race must remain a focal point of the process. Despite the emphasis often given to improving economic and commercial relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, I believe the most important goal to be achieved is limitation of an arms race which has cost the people of both countries billions of dollars and rubles which can be better spent on the improvement of lives.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. MUSKIE's address be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the address was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
DETENTE: THE BALANCE SHEET
(Remarks of Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE at the Eighth Atlanta Forum on National and International Affairs, Atlanta, Ga., November 14, 1974)
The central foreign policy debate in Washington today concerns the policy of detente: its purpose, its accomplishments, and its future.
It is not an issue which has been widely or passionately debated in our recent political campaigns. In one sense, the American people – beset by inflation, recession, and a massive Watergate hangover – are finding foreign policy issues relatively remote from their day-to-day struggle to make ends meet.
But in another sense, there is an understanding that the state of the world and the quality of our lives at home are interrelated. The effect of world affairs on the average family budget is illustrated by such obvious examples as the price and availability of oil, or the taxes we must pay to provide for our nation's defense in a troubled world community.
The American people understand this relationship. And they also understand that the Soviet- American relationship is a determining factor in the preservation of international stability – or, in a more hostile environment, as an engine of world conflict.
So the debate over detente is something more than an isolated, theoretical argument among foreign policy elites in Washington and New York. The debate has an attentive – and deeply concerned – national audience.
My remarks tonight are intended to be a defense of the policy of detente. At the same time, my views are tempered by a certain respect for the arguments of those skeptics who are on the other side of the issue. We should begin, perhaps, by summarizing the points of view on both sides of the debate.
I
Secretary Kissinger has described detente as a process, not a permanent achievement. But the process has already produced results – in the form of several U.S.-Soviet arms control agreements; in the Berlin settlement; in negotiations on mutual force reductions in Europe; and in a whole series of cooperative agreements between ourselves and the Soviet Union which have turned Soviet-American relations in a far more positive direction. In short, we have moved from an era of confrontation to an era of negotiation.
Clearly, these limited accomplishments do not guarantee peace. But Kissinger has argued that they have served to lessen the rigidities of the past, setting a new trend which has markedly changed the character of international politics.
The main purpose of detente, from our point of view, is to reduce the sources of potential conflict. The record so far, as Kissinger's critics point out, is mixed. And the future of detente is also uncertain, depending on the outcome of ongoing, difficult negotiations which involve the vital interests of both powers.
But if detente is to survive as the guiding spirit of Soviet-American relations, our negotiations must continue to produce result, in several interrelated areas:
First, there must be mutual restraint in the arms race – and a renewed effort at the SALT negotiations to agree on comprehensive and equitable strategic arms limitation, at significantly reduced levels.
Second, there must be a satisfactory completion of negotiations on mutual force reductions in Europe, and a positive outcome in the Conference on Europe Security and Cooperation.
Third, there must be new efforts to convert the recently negotiated threshold ban on underground nuclear testing into a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. This must be part of a continuing Soviet-American commitment to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to additional states.
Fourth, there must be mutual restraint in areas of Soviet-American political competition, and a determination to resist all temptations to seek unilateral advantage in crisis situations. In addition, there must be real cooperation in removing the causes of crises – most urgently, for example, in the Middle East.
Fifth, there must be a normalization of U.S.-Soviet trading relations on a basis which provides concrete benefits both to the United States and to the Soviet Union.
The critics of detente are distrustful of Soviet intentions and skeptical that negotiations will produce meaningful results in these areas. They argue that the Soviets view detente simply as a tactic in the continuing struggle against the West. Even the New York Times has argued that the Soviets are much more interested in trade than in the political or military component of detente, and that "the desperate driving impulse of detente is access to Western advanced technology." (New York Times editorial, September 26, 1974. )
So it is not comforting to those of us who have defended detente – and who have urged a normalization of trade relations – to recall Lenin's words in 1921, when he wrote:
"The capitalists of the entire world, and their governments, in the rush of conquering Soviet markets, will close their eyes to the realities, and will thus become blind deaf mutes. They will open credits which will serve as a support for the Communist Party in their countries and will provide us with essential materials and technology thus restoring our military industries, essential for our future victorious attacks on our suppliers. Speaking otherwise, they will be working to prepare their own suicides."
One might dismiss this quote as the rhetorical zeal of another era. Unfortunately, the rhetoric of confrontation has not died with the Cold War. In 1967, Secretary Brezhnev was arguing for detente because, in his words, the Cold War and the confrontation of military blocs "seriously hampers the activity of revolutionary democratic forces" and that "in conditions of slackened tension the pointer of the political barometer moves left." (Remarks to Communist representatives at Karlovy Vary, April 24, 1967.)
More recently, in June of 1972, Brezhnev told a dinner honoring Fidel Castro that detente "in no way implies the possibility of relaxing ideological struggle. On the contrary, we must be prepared for this struggle to be intensified and becoming an ever sharper form of the confrontation between the systems."
The critics of detente use these quotes as evidence of continued Soviet hostility and as a warning that the Soviets cannot be trusted in any serious negotiations. Skeptical of Soviet intentions, they demand a radical change in Soviet behavior as the price for normalization of trade and any other concessions to Soviet interests. It is here that Secretary Kissinger and his critics part company – over the issue of what we can reasonably demand of the Soviets in exchange for the concrete benefits they seek from detente.
This issue has been at the heart of the controversy over the Jackson amendment to the trade bill – an amendment which I cosponsored. I felt that the issue of Soviet Jewish emigration was not simply a matter of Soviet internal policy which we should properly ignore. The issue concerned basic human rights which we hold sacred, and it involved the legal question of Soviet observance of an international covenant of which it was a signatory. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations over 24 years ago says specifically, in Article 13, Point 2: "Everyone has a right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." That declaration is further confirmed in the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, ratified by the Supreme Soviet on January 22, 1969. Further, Article 129 of the "Principles of Civil Legislation of the U.S.S.R. and Union Republics" establishes that international agreements to which Russia is a party override any conflicting domestic legislation.
For more than two million Soviet Jews, however, those provisions of international and domestic law have been dead letters. And Soviet leaders would be profoundly mistaken if they under- estimated American feelings on this issue. The concern is not limited to the American Jewish community. It is shared widely throughout our country, and its impact on Congress is heavy.
Americans properly perceive existing Soviet restrictions on Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union as being in violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms.
So in this particular instance, I made the judgment that we should withhold enactment of most- favored-nation treatment until the Soviets moderated their policy.
This judgment, I think, has now been vindicated by the apparent outcome of the controversy – the recent informal agreement between Secretary Kissinger and Ambassador Dobrynin on the one side, and several members of the Senate on the other, whereby there will be a sizable increase in the number of Soviet Jews permitted to emigrate each year and an end to Soviet harassment of those who apply for emigration. This informal agreement now seems to have cleared the way for early adoption of the trade bill, including nondiscriminatory trade treatment of the Soviet Union.
American idealism is rightly engaged with the question of personal liberties in the Soviet Union, if only because some minimal common moral framework is essential to a stable peace. The practical question for American policy is not whether a degree of pressure for human liberties is warranted, but at what point that pressure may become excessive, and therefore detrimental to its own purpose.
Secretary Kissinger, in recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, clearly rejected the view that internal changes in Soviet society must be the precondition for the pursuit of detente.
"Our view is different," he said. "We shall insist on responsible international behavior by the Soviet Union and use it as the primary index of our relationship. Beyond this we will use our influence to the maximum to alleviate suffering and to respond to humane appeals. We know what we stand for, and we shall leave no doubt about it." (September 19, 1974)
Despite the apparent success of the Jackson amendment in pressuring the Soviets into constructive policy changes on Jewish emigration, I believe that Secretary Kissinger has articulated an appropriate general guideline for American policy in the future. Clearly, there are limits to what we can demand of the Soviet Union in areas which they regard as matters solely of domestic concern. At the same time, we cannot be indifferent to those aspects of the Soviet system which are repugnant to our own social and political values.
But those of us who support the policy of detente believe that the steady normalization of political and economic relations provides the greatest opportunity for bringing about constructive changes in Soviet society in the long run.
This argument was made persuasively before the Foreign Relations Committee recently by the exiled Soviet scientist, Dr. Zhores Medvedev. According to Dr. Medvedev, such influence as the Western countries have acquired upon the internal life of the Soviet Union has come about only because of detente on the official level. "It is the development of these official state ties," said Dr. Medvedev, "of personal, trade, scientific, cultural and social ties and links between statesmen which create the opportunity for Western public opinion to influence the situation in the U.S.S.R." (October 8, 1974)
But even the most effective foreign inducements can exert no more than a marginal influence on the internal life of the Soviet Union. Russia has been a dictatorship throughout its history, for a half-century under the Communists and for many centuries before that under the tsars. As Dr. Medvedev advised the Foreign Relations Committee, "common sense tells us that we cannot escape our different histories."
If Russia is ever to become a free or even liberalized society, it will be the result of internal evolution, of pressures generated from the increasingly assertive professional, managerial and intellectual communities within the Soviet Union. The very fact that voices of protest are now being heard is indicative of progress. In Stalin's time, Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov would have been disposed of before their voices could be heard.
We cannot bring freedom to the Soviet people, but within the limits of prudence and policy, we can offer a measure of hope – the hope inspired by our own good example as exponents and practitioners of freedom. Beyond that, as a matter of common sense and national interest, we must shape our foreign policy as much in awareness of the limits of what we can do as of our hopes and aspirations. We must move back toward the standard embodied in the classic formulation of John Quincy Adams:
"Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will be America's heart, her benedictions, and her prayers. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." (Address at Washington, July 4, 1821)
II.
The critics of detente have attacked the move toward normalization of trade relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. as providing concrete benefits for the Soviet Union in return for little more than elegant declarations of peace and friendship. Of course the Soviets will benefit. But there is no reason why the United States should not also derive concrete economic benefits from this relationship as well. Moreover, what we seek to achieve from a normalized trading partnership goes beyond an economic balance sheet: we wish to establish the kind of normal, businesslike, cordial dealings which will give the Russian people and their leaders a vested interest in continued peace and stability.
The improvident grain sale of 1972 gave trade with Russia a momentarily bad name, but surely the lesson of that experience is not to shun trade but to trade intelligently and profitably. A steadily increasing commerce with the Soviet Union – in foodstuffs, consumer goods and machinery – combined with carefully considered investments and jointly financed resource development projects – would represent a prudent policy, combining profit with political incentive for peace and moderation.
Although the broader purpose of trade may be political, it does not follow at all that we should be guided by anything less than strict economic criteria in our business dealings with the Russians.
American businessmen quite legitimately are exploring the adequacy of managerial facilities, and are also requesting relevant economic data which are readily available in most countries but about which the Soviets have been secretive. Close and careful scrutiny must also be given to the soundness of credit arrangements, investment guarantees, and reliability of supply. The latter will be an especially sensitive problem for American investment in Soviet energy sources. In the wake of the recent Arab oil embargo it would seem utterly mistaken to allow ourselves to become heavily dependent on Soviet natural gas or petroleum.
And so I reject the argument of those who have attacked our policy of normalized trade with the Soviet Union. The focus of that attack has been on the question of most-favored-nation trade treatment, which in purely economic terms is a secondary issue. All most-favored-nation actually means is nondiscrimination in tariffs; as George Kennan has commented, "It involves no one- sided transfer of funds or goods; no loans, no gifts ... (no) act of benevolence ..." In enacting this provision of the Trade Bill, we are doing no more than establishing the same kind of trading relationship with the Soviet Union that we already have with most other nations. In doing so, we will benefit economically, as will the Soviets. And hopefully, the world will also benefit from a deeper commitment of both countries to continued cooperation in political as well as economic affairs.
III
The future of detente lies above all in the willingness and ability of the United States and the Soviet Union to end the arms race on the basis of an overall equality in strategic forces – preferably at significantly reduced levels.
A continued arms race will undermine the political and economic accommodations we seek. It will undermine our ability to deal constructively with diplomatic crisis. It will add to the already oppressive economic burden on both our peoples.
And yet the arms race goes on, without any rational purpose. It goes on only because of our failure to stop it, and at its end, in the warning of Albert Einstein, whose formula made the atomic bomb possible, "looming ever clearer, lies general annihilation."
If we are to put a stop to the impoverishing arms race, we shall both have to take well-calculated risks, setting aside the chimera of absolute security for a rational goal of the greatest attainable security. The effort to achieve precise equality in strategic arms has turned the Geneva SALT talks into a swamp of futile wrangling over the nuts and bolts of every conceivable weapons system. Variations of geography and national vulnerability give the same weapons systems markedly different significance for the two sides, and the attempt to negotiate these variables into a semblance of strategic symmetry has resulted in the failure thus far to agree on much of anything. In his wise and incisive statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last September 18th, Professor Dean Rusk, who has had experience with the dilemmas of arms control, said that he had "just about reached the conclusion that, if real progress is to be made, the approach must be wholesale rather than retail and must involve dramatic simplicity."
The arms control agreements reached thus far, though not insubstantial, are nonetheless inadequate – somewhat, as Professor Rusk put it, "like building a dam one-eighth of the way across river." The Moscow agreements of 1972 were significant and promising – the ABM treaty limiting each side of two anti-ballistic missile sites, and a five-year interim agreement limiting both land-based and submarine-launched missiles. The Washington summit of 1973 produced only an agreement on "basic principles" for a permanent arms limitation treaty to be concluded by the end of 1974; but that objective has now been abandoned. The Moscow summit of June, 1974 limited each side to one ABM site instead of two – a useful agreement, although neither side wanted a second site anyway.
Beyond that, the 1974 summit was a disheartening failure: abandoning the goal of an early permanent treaty limiting strategic arms, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed only to strive for a new interim decision to last until 1985. In addition the Moscow summit this year produced a "threshold test ban," prohibiting underground nuclear test above 150 kilotons. With the threshold set so high as to leave both sides virtually unimpeded, and with so-called "peaceful" testing – which is technically indistinguishable from military testing – deferred for later regulation, the threshold test ban stands little chance, in its present form, of winning Senate approval.
Of all these agreements only the ABM treaty has major, lasting significance. The abandonment by both sides of the effort to make themselves invulnerable to attack signifies a commitment to coexistence. It can be upset or destabilized by a bid for "first-strike" capacity, but as long as both sides retain their retaliatory power, and each therefore remains certain that an effort to destroy the other would result in its own destruction as well, there can be no conceivable rational reason for either power to launch a nuclear attack. This is the "balance of terror" – a frail foundation for survival – but until and unless a permanent, thoroughgoing agreement to limit strategic arms is reached, it is all that we will have, all that stands between us and Armageddon.
Meanwhile the arms race goes on, with no end in sight, at crushing expense to both sides, and with the ever-present possibility of a technological "breakthrough" by one side or the other which might upset the fragile balance of power. The drawn-out SALT talks, and the prospect of only another interim agreement actually have the effect of accelerating the arms race as both sides strive feverishly to pile up "bargaining chips" for prospective negotiations.
Both the United States and the Soviet Union have played the bargaining chip game. The United States moved ahead with the development of MI RV – and thereby insured that the Soviets would follow suit. The reason it has been impossible to reach an agreement limiting MIRV's is that the Russians are behind and have not the slightest intention of being frozen into a position of inferiority. Clearly, the time to have sought agreement on the multiple warhead missiles was before they reached the testing stage. As "bargaining chips," MIRV's have been worse than a failure: they have actually fueled the arms race.
And now, I fear, the Soviets may be on the verge of accelerating the arms race. Soviet strategic weapons development has continued unabated, not matching the relatively greater restraint exercised more recently on the U.S. side. Only yesterday, the Defense Department's chief scientist warned that "the coming year will probably see the start of the most massive deployment of new strategic nuclear weapons in history" by the Soviet Union. Four new intercontinental range missiles, the SS-X-16, 17, 18, and 19, are reported now ready for deployment. Moreover, the Soviets are reported to have made significant progress in missile accuracy, including the development of terminal guidance systems, and they have been conducting underground nuclear tests on more powerful warheads for the new missiles.
There is no more certain path to the destruction of detente than a unilateral Soviet effort to gain strategic superiority over the United States. The American people will bear whatever defense burden is necessary to preserve an overall strategic equality. The Soviet leadership would be well-advised to consider this fact carefully before moving ahead to the deployment of a new generation of strategic weapons.
IV.
Arms control is the heart and core of detente, the sine qua non of survival in the nuclear age. As Professor Rusk told the Foreign Relations Committee, "In a world in which thousands of megatons now rest in the hands of frail human beings, the pursuit of agreements which can reduce tensions is not merely good policy but harsh necessity."
Our current primary task in the world is the preservation and stabilization of peace. It is not the kind of peace we once hoped for – the peace of justice and law envisioned in the Covenant of the League of Nations and the United Nations Charter. But that is not within the grasp of our generation. It is rather a peace of the traditional kind – a peace of power politics among uneasy rivals. We may not have to settle for that forever – it probably could not last forever. Sooner or later we shall have to move beyond mere detente, if we are to avoid a nuclear Armageddon.
But for the time being we can do no better than to give agreements substance where we can – first and foremost to end the arms race – while also trying to solidify the personal accommodations of leaders with more durable arrangements, and taking whatever opportunities come our way to inch beyond detente, toward a world of justice and law.