July 23,1975
Page 24279
CONFERENCE ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, next week leaders of 35 nations will meet in Helsinki to sign a document which has resulted from 2½ years of negotiations at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe — CSCE. These negotiations have been supported enthusiastically by the Soviet Union, but from the point of view of the participating Western nations, the Conference results are mixed at best. A succinct analysis of the Conference appears in the latest issue of Newsweek, "Cold War to Cold Peace," by Alfred Friendly, Jr. of Newsweek's Moscow Bureau.
Mr. Friendly formerly served as counsel to my Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations, and I have the highest respect for his analytical ability, his judgment, and his sense of history. His recent article is a concise and cogent presentation of the complex issues of European security, and I ask unanimous consent it be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
COLD WAR TO COLD PEACE
(By Alfred Friendly, Jr.)
Unless some last minute hitches crop up, leaders of 35 nations will soon converge in Europe to sign what amounts to an ersatz peace pact, a document that defines the boundaries of post-World War II Europe 30 years after the fact. Couched in the elusive language of diplomats, the document, written to the specifications of the Soviet Union, declares Europe's frontiers inviolable, but says they are amenable to peaceful change. It abjures the use of force, but does not rule out the threat of force. It pledges nonintervention in the internal affairs of the signatories, but does not specifically forbid interference in such affairs. Finally, it endorses "respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms," subject, however, to respect for local laws and traditions, which may limit such rights and freedoms.
All this delicate compromise reflects the work of Eastern and Western bloc delegates to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), a 30-month-old negotiating marathon now drawing to a weary close. The delegates are aiming for ratification of the principles of the security conference at a gala summit in Helsinki beginning July 30. But even as the summit preparations begin, many Westerners are wondering just how much security they have won. Was so much time and effort really necessary to declare a formal end to the cold war, only to inaugurate what a British commentator calls "the cold peace"?
The Russians seem to be taking great pleasure in the document formalizing the CSCE. Never mind that it is a non-binding agreement that one U.S. negotiator calls "a masterpiece of weasel-wording"; it still goes a long way toward assuaging Soviet insecurity. As Russian officials see it, the CSCE agreement in Helsinki will confirm their hegemony in the socialist bloc. Equally important, it will promote Moscow's image as a good neighbor to the confrontation-weary democracies of the West.
While Moscow derives that psychic bonus from the summit (the largest gathering of heads of state since the Congress of Vienna sought to freeze the European status quo 160 years ago), the West earns some benefits as well. From the beginning it has linked its support of the CSCE to Russian support for negotiations to reduce military forces in Europe. So far the mutual, balanced force reduction (MBFR) talks in Vienna have been stalemated. But once the Helsinki summit concludes, Western diplomats say, progress at the MBFR talks will become the "acid test" of the Soviets' sincerity on detente.
Loopholes: The Westerners also hope that "basket three" — the section of the CSCE negotiations dealing with humanitarian issues — can be made into an "aspirational code of conduct" for Russia. The hitch is that the language of the agreement is riddled with loopholes. As it stands, basket three requests countries only to "look favorably on" application to reunite families and to "encourage" accords for the international distribution of printed matter. Thus, while the West may have scored a theoretical point by insisting that cooperation between East and West had to include freer movement of people and ideas, in practice basket three proves relatively empty. For instance, although it grants Western journalists visas good for multiple trips in and out of the Soviet Union, it does not guarantee Russians any better chance than they have now to read what those journalists write.
Nevertheless, there is some possibility that the Western nations will use the "code of conduct" as a test of Soviet compliance with the concepts of CSCE. "Even though we're not getting a legal document," explained one American diplomat, "this puts human rights issues on the permanent agenda of East-West relations. I think there is a real prospect of public protests if the Communist states systematically violate what some in the West regard as a significant set of guidelines for international behavior."
Secrecy: Despite such optimism, however, the CSCE has to be reckoned a one-sided Soviet success. On the much ballyhooed agreement over advance warning for military maneuvers, it is hard to see how 21 days advance notice of major troop maneuvers can protect Romania or Yugoslavia from an oversolicitous Soviet interest in orthodoxy in the socialist camp. Nor, in the age of spy satellites, does volunteering such information make a great breach in the Soviet penchant for secrecy.
Explaining that penchant to visitors, Georgi Arbatov, a senior Politburo adviser on U.S. affairs, alludes to centuries of Russian isolation among hostile neighbors and justifies secrecy as a weapon of self-defense. But such rationalization only begs the standard question about Moscow's policy: how far does the West have to go in accepting the Soviet Union on its own terms before winning reciprocal acceptance of the Western status quo? CSCE seems to embody the Soviet principle that what's ours is ours and what's yours is negotiable. MBFR may force Moscow's hand more clearly, but no "charter of European relations" will put much of a brake on its drive for self-assertion. "The only thing you can be sure of about the followup to CSCE,"says a cynical European ambassador, "is that Brezhnev will launch a new peace offensive as soon as he's tucked this one under his belt. The Soviets think they can talk the West into a sense of security because the message they're putting out is what we want to hear. Often, I'm afraid they are right."
It may be just an irrelevant historical note, but Russia, Austria and Prussia followed the Congress of Vienna by forming the Holy Alliance and appealing to Christian rulers to live as brothers and preserve the peace in Europe. A British statesman dismissed this as "sublime mysticism," but the alliance did serve as a justification for Czar Alexander I to offer his troops for use in conflicts as far from home as Italy. Now 160 years later, the "troops" may be local Communist activists in Italy or Portugal, but it seems entirely possible that the Russian interpretation of brotherhood is unchanged.