An Unsavory Swap

FEW IN THE West were happy that the outlook was bleak for a superpower summit after the Soviets detained and imprisoned American journalist Nicholas S. Daniloff '56. That much is obvious. What isn't so clear--but probably no less true--is that that's what the Soviets were hoping for from the start.

Did they set up Daniloff merely in retaliation for the arrest in New York of Soviet U.N. worker Gennadi Zakharov--hoping they could then work out a quiet, straight-forward swap for their spy? Or did they desire all along that the arrest cloud superpower relations and force a U.S. government under pressure to move toward an arms-control agreement to make concessions it would not otherwise make?

If the first rationale lay behind Soviet behavior, they blundered. When the Soviet foreign minister on September 19 handed President Reagan a note from General Secretary Gorbachev asking for a brief tete-a-tete sometime soon, the President was quick to decline. "Not until Nick Daniloff is once again a free man!" he said.

Still, the idea of the meeting was intriguing to Ronald Reagan. Mid-term elections are coming up and the Republican Party's prospects for maintaining control of the Senate are not commensurate with Reagan's personal popularity. The GOP has already tried to buy off the nation's farmers with a new $50 billion boondoggle. Now the Administration wants to shore up the President's and the party's image as arms controllers.

Now all these problems seem to be resolved. Daniloff is back home in America and Reagan will soon leave for Iceland to lay the groundwork for an arms accord with Gorbachev.

So what we're left with is a Swap That Isn't a Swap and a Summit That Isn't a Summit. "There was no connection between these two releases," Reagan said of the releases of Daniloff and Zakharov. "This is not a summit," he said of his upcoming "table-setting" meeting with the Soviet leader. Uhhuh. And war is peace, and I'm touring with the E Street Band next summer.

AND SOVIET-AMERICAN relations are once again back on track. "A bleak logjam suddenly broken, Soviet-American relations now flow with promise," The New York Times editorialized. Salvation is now at hand, if only we believe. Or is it?

The analysts and pundits were quick to whip out their balance sheets and try to figure out who won this round of the superpower game. "Keeping Score" is how the Times called attention to two stories--one from Washington, one from Moscow--that tried to do just that. Of course, the usual suspects were rounded up and asked to comment. And, also of course, the usual right-wing kooks--some of whom unfortunately happen to hold Senate seats--were aghast.

"I think we got very little for what was really an outrageous act of aggression," said Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on the arrest of Daniloff. The dangerous precedent of the Daniloff-Zakharov swap--of a Soviet spy for an American civilian--he said, "is more important than some glossy summit."

I'd like to disagree with Hatch on this point more than I do. But there's an element of truth beneath his commie paranoia. "The fact is," said Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.), "a crisis was gotten through with reasonable dignity." Weeeell...yeah, in a way. Nick Daniloff is home, prominent Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov and his wife are free, and the heads of the two superpowers will meet to discuss arms control.

All well and good. But what's bothersome about the crisis now so joyfully resolved is its artificiality. The crisis-so dangerous, so threatening, so ominous--only existed because the Soviets created it. The U.S. arrests a spy. The Soviets retaliate by nabbing an American civilian. Crisis.

THE SWAP THAT Isn't a Swap has been hailed as a rational, face-saving gesture that enables neither side to claim victory. It also supposedly demonstrates that Reagan and Gorbachev are simpatico in their desire to reach an arms control agreement.

But Gorbachev holds all the cards. Reagan stands to gain much politically if he can return from the Iceland meeting with the promise of a peace agreement in our time. Gorbachev then stands to gain much from Reagan if he threatens to call the meeting a failure.

And no KGB agent need fear again dire consequences if caught in the act. The principle has been established: if the U.S. arrests a Soviet spy, the Soviets can retaliate and create a crisis situation. Unlike some of his predecessors, including--gasp!--Jimmy Carter, this president does not believe in the principle of not trading innocent Americans for foreign spies.

The Administration also agreed to allow 25 Soviet spies--er, diplomats--slated for expulsion to stick around at least until their fates can be discussed at the Iceland meeting.

"The summit is desirable, but the swap was deplorable," said Congressman Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.). He's right. Effective arms control agreements are essential, but to achieve them there needs to be some basic level of cooperation, trust and understanding between the two governments. All three were undermined by the Soviet Union this month.

It was wrong to allow the Kremlin to reap the benefits from the resolution of a crisis of its own creation. If we do it again, we will have confirmed the reduction of the conduct of superpower politics to the level of sexual politics, where one partner in the game may occasionally provoke a tiff because they so much enjoy the pleasures of making up.