THE SPECTATOR
WHAT SUMMIT FAILURE?
Acertain idea of 'failure' has been circling the globe ever since Mr Reagan and Mr Gorbachev parted, sped on its way by such means as Le Monde's first summit headline and a dispatch by BBC televi- sion's Washington correspondent. Accord- ing to both, Mr Reagan 'failed' at Reyk- javik. Neither seemed to think that Mr Gorbachev had also 'failed'. The BBC's man also drew on the results of what seemed to be his rather undemanding inquiries into American civilisation. Amer- icans, he told us, did not like their presi- dents to fail. This would have been more helpful if he could have named, for pur- poses of comparison, the peoples who particularly relished failure by their heads of government when dealing with their country's greatest enemy. No matter. We were being encouraged to believe that Mr Reagan was now in serious trouble with his success-worshipping countrymen.
So he would be if there had been a failure. But a summit, or any other nego- tiation is not a failure simply because it has failed to end in agreement. Nor is agree- ment proof of a meeting's success. Munich and Yalta ended in agreement, and at the time most authorities said that they had been successful, triumphant even. Re- visionist historians still argue this about those summits. But that is not the accepted wisdom about Munich and Yalta which has trickled down to the sort of people who have been talking about failure since Reyk- javik. They should be more guarded in their use of the word now — or rather, the rest of us should be more guarded when they use it.
We do not know whether the meeting in Reykjavik was a success or a failure. That will only be answered by the passage of time. The summit foundered on Mr Reagan's adherence to SDI. His Western critics say that this admittedly fantastic scheme will be either useless or lethal, and a lot of them manage to say it will be both, although it is difficult to see how, if it is useless, it could be damaging to anyone except the American taxpayer. If the ene- mies of SDI are right, then Reykjavik would have been a failure because it would have been an opportunity missed to secure a cut in half of the Soviet intercontinental armoury. But it is only Reykjavik which would have failed. There will be other summits. They will take place under the next president, and probably under this one as well. In due course — probably under Mr Reagan's successor — we shall see whether these 'unprecedented' Soviet offers will be repeated, especially if there is a chance of the American president going some way to meet them. But, the diploma- tic sentimentalists warn us, the world cannot wait that long. Why not?
The relationship between the two super- powers is stable. In the one region where they, and their allies, confront one another — Europe — the absence of conflict is of a kind which Metternich or Talleyrand would have regarded as almost the sup- reme aim of all diplomacy. This could be changed by the election of a Labour government which undermined American belief in the Europeans' desire for con- tinued American protection, or by those long-predicted 'neutralist' tendencies in West Germany. But such developments would be departures from the post-war Atlanticist settlement. Supporters of Atlanticism could not be blamed for them.
What other terrible things are summits supposed to prevent? It is said that they would help Mr Gorbachev spend less on arms, or on trying to match SDI, and thus make the Soviet Union a nicer place for its citizens to live in. Among other things, he can carry out reforms, mysteriously ensure that there is more fresh fruit in the shops. But it does not follow that less Soviet defence spending on the sort of things under discussion at Reykjavik — IBMs, and research on space defence — would result in much less defence spending as a whole. The head of the team of Soviet experts who sat through the night at Reykjavik was Marshal Akhromayev, the chief of the general staff. It is difficult to believe that he was out to find money which could be spent on microwave ovens for the Soviet people.
Most people, both in the West and in the East, seem to know all this much better than does the East-West relations industry. All the signs suggested that the summit was a great turn-off — literally so, since it monopolised a whole weekend's television. Mrs Raisa Gorbachev alone attracted real interest. It was only when Mr Reagan walked out that most people realised that anything else interesting had happened. And that was the one event which the experts had not predicted.
In all the maudlin speculation since Sunday, no one has suggested that the two would never meet again — even though that would surely be the logical outcome if the situation were really so terrible. The world would be wise to remain calm, and so far seems to have done so. The two sides will continue to talk in Geneva. Every now and then, as at Stockholm in the summer, they genuinely agree about quite a lot of important matters — secondary ones maybe, such as chemical weapons, but important all the same. There are scores of places — seminars, think tanks, institutes, cocktail parties — where Soviet officials and the omnipresent 'arms, control experts' will carry on talking. Russian officialdbm's historic need; at frequent intervals, to have a good time in the West, will see to that. Around the subject of arms control and détente there has grown up a powerful military-conversational complex: on the Western side, people who are experts on weapons, but only on how to get rid of them. Unlike American conservatives, we do not think there is anything sinister about this, nor do we believe it alone will lead to a fatal weakening of American resolve to deter the Soviet Union. Reyk- javik proved that all these experts, and the public opinion which they browbeat, can force Mr Reagan to the negotiating table, but cannot get him to do what they say is inevitable: be 'reasonable' about SDI, real- ise that the world can't go on like this. His persistent failure to do their bidding is one of his many reassuring characteristics.
Mr Reagan — and more of us than care to admit it — know well enought that, for the foreseeable future, the differences be- tween the West and the Soviet Union, cannot be talked away.
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