Iron Curtain of Technology

Washington is running no easy gauntlet trying to decide what technology can safely be sold to East Europe now that the region is trying to recover from 40 years of communism. If officials move too fast, they will stir up still-suspicious conservatives at home. But taking too long would tempt Western Europe to make its own decisions about what is safe, a development that could lose customers for American companies. And the prize for getting East Europe straightened out will be a chance to move to the even tougher question of what can be sold directly to Moscow.

The question of how high is high technology was very much on Washington’s mind even before last week, when the Soviet Union and the 12 members of the European Community signed their first trade agreement. The trade that interests the Soviets most is in technology that can help pull their economy into the 20th Century before the century ends.

Under agreements between the United States and 17 other manufacturing nations, none sells technology that the United States thinks has military applications. But in the U.S., deciding what’s hot military technology and what’s not is a decision shared among the Pentagon, the Commerce and State departments.

The Pentagon’s take-no-chances definition usually prevails. Months ago, it included what by American standards is an ancient computer, available in most department stores.

Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher wants to trim the list of forbidden technology for shipment to Hungary and any other Eastern European countries that agree to allow Western observers to verify that the technologies do not leak to the Soviet Union. The items with the highest priorities are medical equipment, electronic banking devices, airplanes, helicopters and classroom technology. Mosbacher argues that nothing belongs on the list if it can be bought on open markets elsewhere in the world.

The next step would be to trim the same list for sale to or use by joint-venture companies in the Soviet Union. At least initially, it would make sense to require observers to make certain that technology did not move into military channels.

The White House must knock heads as early and often as necessary to get the lists trimmed. That Europe does not see trade as either an abstraction or a military problem is exemplified by the way East Germans and West Germans are racing toward de facto unification through channels of commerce. Americans must be in the race.