215. Memorandum From John Lenczowski of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (McFarlane)1
SUBJECT
- Reactivation of U.S.-USSR Environmental Agreement
Once again another U.S.-Soviet agreement is up for reactivation or renewal. Once again the issue appears all by itself and out of context. Renewal of such an agreement seems innocent enough. It does not appear to pose the risk of a technology transfer hemorrhage, nor does it appear to pose a significant hostile intelligence threat. Its political impact seems relatively insignificant: not too many people pay attention to meetings between environmental officials at the Under Secretary level.
The problem with this is that it is part of a pattern of a wide variety of agreements that are appearing before us for renewal one by one.2 The real policy question here is whether this is a pattern to which we want to subscribe at this time. Other issues which form the pattern include: the reactivation of U.S.-Soviet Health agreements, the U.S.-Soviet Fishing relationship, the Agricultural Cooperation agreement, the agreement on Economic, Industrial and Technical Cooperation, the Consular agreement, the Exchanges Agreement and others. (The ones listed are only those which have appeared in recent weeks.)
Taken together, these add up to a relationship of wholesale cooperation with the Soviets that amounts to a revival of the “detente” relationship established by President Nixon. These types of agreements were to help diminish the fundamental political tensions between the two systems not only by their intrinsically cooperative nature, but because they formed a web of relationships which were organically linked so as to provide a system of incentives for the Soviets to behave in a more moderate fashion. Fully recognizing that we had more to offer the Soviets in these various fields than vice versa, the threat of U.S. withdrawal from these accords was to serve as the stick accompanying the carrots. Even though it was recognized that these agreements were not truly reciprocal, it was nevertheless part of the price we were [Page 779] willing to pay to supply both the positive and negative incentives of a “linkage” policy so as to encourage in particular Soviet good faith in arms control.
If somebody is articulating the philosophy behind the current renewal of U.S.-Soviet agreements, I have not heard it. Perhaps the strategy underlying this has appeared in secret documents which I have not seen. What I have been able to see is a rather underarticulated policy of “intensified dialogue.” But, this expression cannot explain an entire foreign policy strategy.
Is the current policy a repetition of the Nixon policy of “linkage” and incentives? Or are we willing, as it appears, to give more and more carrots to the Soviets regardless of their external behavior?
Today they are conducting a major escalation of their attack on the innocent people of Afghanistan. Yet the reactivation of the Environmental agreement as well as others involves lifting of Afghanistan sanctions which, though imposed by President Carter, we have chosen to retain for three and a half years. The Soviets are harassing the Sakharovs with new intensity. They have rejected countless of our good-faith efforts to get them to return to several negotiating tables in spite of their dubious record of treaty compliance. On top of this, their policy seems pointed, as much as ever before, toward an open attempt to take sides in a U.S. presidential election. How else to explain their decision to pull out of the Olympics?3
Under these circumstances, I believe the entire package of agreements should come under review and should be postponed until such time as the Soviets are willing to take even a few steps—much less move halfway—toward reaching some kind of mutual code of behavior with us.
Unless we begin to treat these agreements more directly as part of the entire strategic relationship with the USSR, and in doing so link them to Soviet external behavior in a way that establishes a coherent system of incentives, the Soviets will interpret our actions as signs of weakness and will have no incentive to mitigate the various types of aggression which they and their proxies are currently conducting around the world. Clearly we must continue our efforts to demonstrate that we in fact want peace, but the challenge we face in trying to do so involves avoiding adopting the position of a supplicant for Soviet good will.
From a variety of indications, the Soviets appear to believe that they can paint the President as a warmonger to assist his electoral defeat and by tarring him this way, induce him to make concessions [Page 780] in symbol if not substance. They are looking to see if we are conscious of the nature of the signals we send them and if those signals are ones of strength or weakness.
Renewing agreements in the absence of a clearly defined and articulated strategy will only be seen as a sign of weakness—especially a sign that we fear their anti-Reagan propaganda campaign so much that we are willing to reach even for Environmental agreements in hopes of mitigating it.
- Source: Reagan Library, John Lenczowski Files, NSC Files, Subject File, Soviet (6). Confidential. Sent for information. A stamped notation on the memorandum indicates McFarlane saw it, and he wrote in the margin: “Good paper. Many thanks.”↩
- Shultz and Dobrynin discussed a number of these agreements in their April 16 meeting. See Document 212.↩
- See Document 217.↩