There’s Profit to Be Had in Iceland : Reagan’s in a Strong Position to Soothe Critics on All Sides

President Reagan made the right decision to go to Iceland--not because an arms control breakthrough is in sight and definitely not because Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s performance entitles him to receive favors from the United States. Rather, it is in the name of effective competition that Reagan is to fly to Reykjavik.

If some meaningful progress can be achieved in reducing the risk of nuclear war or arranging a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, so much the better. But negotiations with an adversary usually involve more than settling disputes. Particularly for pluralistic democracies, they are often a condition for protecting the cohesion of alliances and maintaining the domestic consensus. The American national security interest argues against allowing Gorbachev to achieve political advantage by portraying the Reagan Administration as an obstacle to genuine disarmament.

Hard-liners who claim that the President has blinked by accepting the summit in Iceland miss the point. Reagan is not a free agent. He has to operate in a political environment over which he does not have complete control. To start with, the mini-summit was not the President’s idea. It was proposed by Gorbachev in his Sept. 19 letter. Knowing the Soviet leader’s penchant for getting propaganda mileage, one may be reasonably sure that he would not hesitate to repeat the offer publicly. Thus, the real choice for the Administration was not just whether to have the summit, but how to respond to yet another of Moscow’s peace challenges.

There are clearly serious risks associated with the Reykjavik summit, so hastily arranged on the eve of congressional elections. But, on balance, refusing to go to Iceland would be worse.

The unpleasant fact of life is that both at home and in Western Europe, the Reagan Administration suffers from a perceived lack of commitment to arms control. This perception is only partially fair. Long gone are the days when Reagan associates engaged in cavalier talk about winning a protracted nuclear war “with pride.” And at the bargaining table, the United States displays enough flexibility to give some hope about feasibility of a deal, even to the Kremlin. Also, nobody has proved that a relentless pursuit of arms control is a virtue. Treaties--if properly designed--may bring an element of additional stability and predictability. But the history of the U.S.-Soviet relationship demonstrates that a failure to conclude them is not the end of the world.

Yet in the public mind, arms control is synonymous with peace. Reagan, the ideological anti-communist, is uneasy about making arrangements with “the evil empire.” But Reagan, the political pragmatist, understands that yielding high moral ground on arms control to the Politburo would be a costly mistake.

The President is also aware that his willingness to travel to Iceland is a political plus to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, both of whom have governments facing elections in the near future. He is also aware that Democrats in the House are increasingly restless about the lack of arms-control accomplishments.

Still, the President goes to Iceland in a strong political position. The Daniloff affair did damage to the Gorbachev charm offensive. And the conservative outcry about Reagan’s handling of the incident could not come in more handy. It puts him in a unique position when he meets the Soviet leader while being attacked from the right.

Contrary to hard-liners’ fears, this will make it more politically acceptable for the Administration to hang tough in Reykjavik, even if the price is a failure to induce Gorbachev to set a date for a full-scale summit.

Reagan is a skillful politician. And he will have considerable credibility blaming a plausible fiasco in Reykjavik on the Soviet intransigence. The President will sound convincing telling the American people and our allies that, despite all Soviet misdeeds, in the name of peace he was prepared to walk an extra mile, indeed to fly almost 3,000 miles, but still could not win Moscow’s reciprocity.

Gorbachev knows that Ronald Reagan is not a pushover. As a matter of fact, there are quite a few people among the Soviet elite who are beginning to suspect that the President, more often than not, has outperformed the younger Soviet boss. That may be one reason the Kremlin felt a need for the mini-summit in Iceland, as an assurance that Gorbachev would not have to leave a later visit to the United States empty handed.

In dealing with the Soviet rival the first priority is not to accomplish the best but to avoid the worst. Reagan will be well positioned to do this in Reykjavik. Beyond that, what will happen at the mini-summit is anybody’s guess. Still, it is worth at least entertaining the possibility that a productive exchange of views between the two leaders may, in the long run, be more of a contribution than a fancier encounter where heads of state are essentially reduced to a ceremonial role of signing documents negotiated well in advance.