I understand how a position can be taken for the purpose of giving it up as a concession.
That is why my friend George, whose mental reasoning is very deep, very profound (I must keep saying that), last year said he would unilaterally reduce the American nuclear stockpile.
My simple-minded strategists wondered — if the United States was going to cut its missiles from 7,000 to less than half that, why do it without demanding Russia give up something in return? Why take a peaceful action so belligerently? I knew why. Bush's advisers, who are smarter than mine, wanted to show that it did not matter to them what Russia wanted. They know we cannot afford to maintain our huge missile force. Yeltsin pleaded with Clinton to agree to a lower level of 1,500 missiles in each nation.
Clinton wanted to make that deal, but his military wouldn't let him go under 2,500. Then along comes Bush to announce publicly that he won't negotiate on reductions at all — that he'll reduce the stockpile to whatever number his military says is all America needs to destroy Russia.
Very shrewd. Bush says he will not negotiate on reducing offensive missiles and links that to his refusal to negotiate on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. All most consistent; America, with its world primacy, will act unilaterally in its national defense interest against terrorists like Saddam Hussein, and he suggests that Russia's reaction to ending ABM restrictions does not count.
But what everybody misses is that by doubly insulting us — on START treaty reductions as well as on the ABM treaty — Bush made possible a grand compromise. While conceding our role in negotiating limits on offensive missiles, he enables me to let him build a limited missile defense.
At our first meeting, he held to his linkage — the United States will decide on both its stockpile reductions and its anti-missile development. I reacted sharply by supporting Saddam in the United Nations and by threatening to add five or more nuclear warheads to all our missiles. (Russia cannot afford to redecorate my dacha, but I supposedly have billions to spend on tens of thousands of new warheads.) At our second meeting, a counter-linkage presents itself "unexpectedly." I agree to renegotiate the old anti-missile treaty, which Bush would otherwise abrogate, so I lose nothing. In return Bush will negotiate with Russia the reduction of our mutual missile forces, which we both will do anyway, so he loses nothing.
Rather than going it alone on both, as he originally set forth, we are going it together on both. Weapons of offense and defense will now be discussed as a set. As my profound friend George said Sunday, "The two go hand in hand." My face is saved. The American president nods his head as I proclaim that we, one on one, have discussed "the world architecture of the 21st century." Europe is grateful to Russia for forcing the unilateralist American into at least bilateralism.
We'll both get what we need. In a few years, he will be able to shoot down Saddam's missiles (my scientists were more amazed than the Americans at that successful recent anti-missile test), and I'll make much out of squeezing down START's ceiling to 2,000 missiles.
And then comes what the Americans call a "sweetener" — the promise of economic aid and new investment flows. Bush can publicly fret about brutality in Chechnya and my takeover of the Russian media, but I'll still praise his mental profundity when his compatriots call him incompetent.
Do you suppose this sentimental hegemonist grasps my plan to reassert Russian power? I will adopt China's model: Centralize political control by cracking down on dissent and crushing democratic tendencies. At the same time, develop a controlled capitalism to generate profits that the state can tax to build military strength.
My gamble is in allying Russia with China against the United States and Japan. Selling our latest arms to Beijing could create a superpower with 10 times our population on Russia's eastern border. I will run that risk.
That will make a forthcoming meeting with my new friend George all the more piquant. In Shanghai, I will introduce him to my best new friend, Jiang Zemin.
New York Times News Service