Attachment
Paper Prepared by Gregory Treverton of the National Security
Council Staff8
PRM 9 FOLLOW-ON: CSCE AND EASTERN EUROPE
POSSIBLE ISSUES FOR PRC CONSIDERATION
CSCE
The PRM follow-on draft9 is too general and
too rhetorical to serve as a basis for fruitful PRC discussion, let alone decision.
But there are decisions to be made, many of them tactical but most
the sort that can only be taken by the President. The President’s
prestige is clearly on the line at Belgrade; what we do there cannot
be perceived as falling off our commitment to human rights, much
less as cutting a deal with the Soviets. At the same time, CSCE is three baskets, not one, and
there is little to be served by turning the meeting into a
confrontation.
Issues that should be considered:
Basic Purposes
No one disagrees that our basic objective is maximum review of
implementation without confrontation. But that raises the issue: how compatible are those objectives? That in
turn raises specific questions:
—presuming there will be some closed-session review of
implementation, do we raise specific cases at all, only a few for
illustrative purposes shunning the most controversial (Orlov,
Shcharanskiy),10 or many including some of the
controversial ones?
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—what do we say to the press and to non-governmental organizations
outside the conference? We cannot be silent, yet blurring what goes
on inside the conference with what is said outside could provoke the
confrontation we all say we want to avoid. (The Soviets have been
quite clear in indicating that they are prepared to retaliate if
need be.) Can we reach an understanding with the Soviets that will
not be perceived here as a sell out?
—a related issue, as important, is how we deal with members of
Congress who will go to Belgrade as representatives of the CSCE Commission. So far our relations
with the Commission at the working level are good, and many of the
Commission’s interventions have been useful (for instance, Dole
pushed us in a direction quite opposite from what I might have
expected). Yet in the fall, senior members of Congress will be
independent actors no matter what our treaty with the
Commission.
—should our preparations include a fairly detailed self-criticism,
not just in Basket III but in others as well?
—what level representative makes sense for the opening session:
Christopher, Young (as the President has once
suggested), or a lower level?
Balancing the Baskets
The general question is what can be done to make our approach seem
less biased toward Basket III? For instance:
—are there possibilities in the area of CBMs, even though the Soviets
have shown little interest up to now (and others have worried that
CBMs agreed in the CSCE framework
will foreclose more valuable stabilizing measures in MBFR)?
—what dangers are there for us in a thorough review of implementation
of Baskets I and II (for instance, in raising Jackson-Vanik)?
—should we take such a dim view of the “Brezhnev proposals”11 as we have up to now?
Why?
Relations with Allies
—how much coordination with allies (and neutrals) makes sense? Until
now our preparations have presumed that very close cooperation was
an—perhaps the—imperative. There is no
gainsaying the importance of close and frank coordination. But we do
not want to go to the
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point
of diminishing returns: it may be better for us all, and make for
less tension among us, if for some aspects (review of
implementation, for instance) we seek not an identity of action, but
parallel action within an agreed framework (“themes”).
—are different kinds of consultations necessary? They may be, not as
a substitute for the NATO process
but in addition to it. What we hear from the Canadians, and in a
less direct but stronger form from the Germans, is a political worry. That must be responded to in
a political forum, not in the NATO
context that emphasizes process over substance. If there are real
differences of view, or real fears among the Allies about Belgrade,
those need to be surfaced, not papered over. There may be value in
some sort of consultation at the foreign minister or political
director level.
New Proposals
—the main issue is clear and we are on the right side of it. The
choice is between trying to pre-empt Soviet grand designs and
scoring points on the one hand, and, on the other, trying to
structure a continuing CSCE
process with incentives for the East to participate. Yet there
remains the tension between our current (proper) emphasis on
constructive proposals and the need to convey a sense of political
initiative on our side. Our proposals as a package look less trivial
than do many of the constituent proposals. This may be an area in
which unanimity within the Alliance is not imperative (for instance,
there may be no harm in supporting a proposal like the Belgian one
for a human rights court, presuming the Belgians are still
interested.12
—how do we respond to grandiose Eastern proposals—for instance, for a
non-first use of force? Again, there need be no reason to be
fearful. We can convey to the Soviets our belief that CSCE is not the forum for such
proposals. But at the same time we should be prepared to turn those
proposals, if made, to our own purposes, to make of them something
we could accept (even if the East could not).
CSCE in Context
—how does CSCE relate to our
bilateral (or other multilateral) initiatives (this issue is flagged
in the follow-on draft)? Should we step up those initiatives in the
months before Belgrade, play them down or continue as is?
—more generally, are there ways, as yet unrecognized, that CSCE needs to be made to fit better
with our general approach to human rights, or to relations with
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (for
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instance, would move forward with MFN for Hungary be supportive, neutral
or adverse with regard to our CSCE
objectives, and vice versa).
Eastern Europe
The primary defect with the current PRM follow-on draft13
is that it washes out the difference between alternatives. With only
several small exceptions it does not seem from the draft to matter
whether we pursue Option III (bias toward countries that are either
somewhat liberal internally or somewhat independent of the Soviet
Union) or Option IV (efforts to expand contacts across the board).
It may be that the “flatness” of the options reflects the reality of
our limited influence in the region. But the existing draft also
contains hints of bureaucratic compromise.
There are two other main defects in the current draft:
—there is too little richness to the set of policy instruments
discussed. This is obviously related to the general criticism. But
supposing we wanted to take an initiative in relations with Poland,
there certainly is a richer menu of alternatives, if perhaps not an
absolutely very rich one, than is conveyed by the response. The
response tends to collapse all instruments into three: MFN, and claims settlements and
consular agreements where applicable.
—the response needs to have a sharper sense of the domestic political
context. For instance, returning the Crown is probably a
non-starter; and it almost certainly is at the current moment and in
relation to the upcoming Belgrade conference. Similarly, talking
about what we might do to develop further our relations with Poland
and Romania—a good topic and one for which some possible actions
should be listed—ought to be cast against the difficulty we have, at
least in the case of Romania, of doing even as much as we have in
the past.
Suggested issues:
Basic Approach
—There is consensus that we seek to foster internal liberalism and
external independence from Moscow in Eastern Europe. But there is
disagreement, perhaps even fundamental, over how. Option III
implicitly says that good behavior ought to be rewarded, while
Option IV suggests that changes we seek can only occur over the long
run with
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increasing contact
between East and West. These follow-on studies may be no place to
return to first principles, but without it the policy alternatives
seem too abstract. Worse, the draft turns what looks like a basic
disagreement into something that appears in the end not to matter:
Options III and IV, with very different premises, seem to have quite
similar policy implications.
—how does our policy toward Eastern Europe relate to our policy
toward the Soviet Union? Again, the question is a basic one, but it
at least needs to be raised. In a period of strain in U.S.-Soviet relations, should we freeze
relations with Eastern Europe (as a signal to Moscow) or make
special efforts to move them (as a signal to Eastern Europe)? Or if
it is fair to characterize our posture toward the Soviet Union as
Option IV (subject to Congressional limitations), then does it make
sense to pursue another policy with respect even to the closest
Soviet satellites?14
Differentiations Among Countries
—what are the different policy instruments that might be used to
differentiate among Eastern European countries on some agreed basis?
What are possible initiatives, country-by-country, that might be
employed?
—to put the same question the other way around, is any attempt to
differentiate among countries likely to be swamped by several major
actions, such as returning the Crown or awarding MFN?
—given a general approach, to what extent should specific actions on
our part be conditioned on commitments by the
countries (on family reunification, emigration or other issues), as
opposed to using those actions as rewards for
good performance? Is there much practical difference between the
two?
—is there a case for special treatment of the GDR? If so, what is it? The draft
tends to argue that given the GDR’s
pivotal position and given the paucity of our information about it,
we should expand our contacts with it no matter what general
approach we take to Eastern Europe. Is that convincing? How would we
expand our contacts with the GDR?
And what would we gain?
—Yugoslavia is omitted from this draft. On what basis? How do choices
about policy toward Yugoslavia—economic, political and military—bear
on our general policy toward Eastern Europe?
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Coordination with Western Europeans
—how much do particular policy options depend on coordination with
Western Europeans? How much cooperation is possible in particular
areas? Are there areas in which our choices could threaten existing
Western European policies or arrangements (for instance the FRG’s ransoming of ethnic
Germans)?
—how can we better understand, and perhaps begin to influence, the
Eastern debt situation? The draft’s idea of a State/CIA/NSC working group seems a good
one.
—are there relations between Eastern and Western European Communist
parties that we can and should influence, positively or
negatively?
