From Patrons to Partners

By WALTER ISAACSON

George Bush's march across the Continent last week threw into sharp relief two major and intersecting historic trends. His foray into Poland and Hungary highlighted how Eastern Europe, at least in part, is tumbling toward greater independence from its Soviet overlords. His attendance at the Paris summit of industrialized nations at week's end illustrated, less intentionally, how Western Europe similarly continues to become more independent of the U.S. And Bush's skimpy aid offerings in Warsaw and Budapest showed that as the waning of the cold war hastens these shifts in Europe's tectonic plates, the U.S. is likely to find it both necessary and wise to let its allies take the lead in managing Western responses to changes in Eastern Europe.

The most important aspect of Bush's visit was its symbolism. "The Iron Curtain has begun to part," the President declared in an eloquent speech at the Karl Marx University in Budapest. In front of Gdansk's Lenin shipyard, he told cheering Poles, "America stands with you." While offering lavish praise for the courage shown by Poland and Hungary, he avoided baiting the Soviet Union, a sensible strategy for dealing with a bear that for the moment seems unusually amiable.

He was less lavish, however, with his finances. In Poland he pledged $100 million in economic aid and an added $15 million for controlling pollution in Cracow; he also pledged support for a move to reschedule some of the nation's foreign debt. In Hungary he offered $25 million in economic aid, $5 million for an environmental center, a $1.5 million a year Peace Corps project to help teach English, and the end of trade restrictions.

Such gifts seemed rather paltry, less than Lyndon Johnson might have dropped on some backwater congressional district during a quickie campaign stop. The $115 million offered to Poland, for example, would barely dent a decimal point in that nation's $39 billion foreign debt. Some of his European hosts were disappointed. Solidarity leader Lech Walesa pressed the case for $10 billion in assistance, and Communist Party leader Wojciech Jaruzelski asked for at least $3 billion in aid and a major rescheduling of Poland's debt. Hungarian banker and businessman Sandor Demjan, in a gesture that was at once magnanimous and a bit slighting (as well as rather amazing), told the New York Times that he would match the $25 million in direct U.S. economic aid. The $145 million in Bush's gift bag for easing Poland and Hungary away from Communism was dwarfed last week by the $70 billion the Air Force requested for the Stealth bomber program and by the $43 billion for the Third World that Japan offered at the Paris summit.

American officials, however, argue that massive handouts would be unproductive. During the past two decades, the regimes in Poland and Hungary entrenched themselves by using foreign loans to subsidize cheap consumer goods rather than upgrade industries. "The last thing the West should do is to forgive us our debts," says a senior Hungarian diplomat. "It would just relieve the pressure for reforms, so it would be money down the drain again."

Still, some analysts saw the meager sums as a symbol of the relative decline of America's economic clout. A top Administration official traveling with Bush conceded, "Sure, we could do a lot more to encourage economic reform in Eastern Europe. But we don't have the money. We are broke." Says Michael Mandelbaum, a Soviet scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations: "The foreign policy fruits of Reaganomics are that we are the world's largest debtor nation and have a budget deficit that constrains what we can spend."

When Bush arrived at the Paris economic summit, he asked America's industrial allies to make similar contributions to Poland and Hungary. The group agreed to hold a meeting in a few weeks to discuss both financial aid and support for reforms in the two countries, underscoring that the European Community is increasingly more able and eager to help guide potential changes in the Communist bloc. "Leadership in Europe on these questions belongs to the E.C., both by right and by their record of success," said investment banker Robert Hormats, a former top State Department official.

Bush's plan to send in Peace Corps volunteers to teach English in Hungary served as a nice counterpoint to the dropping of Russian-language requirements in that nation's schools. But the second language there has traditionally been German. The historic role of Germany, however, is a troublesome obstacle to what Bush referred to as "making Europe whole again." Poles in particular have suffered from German expansionism, stretching from the Teutonic Knights of the 13th century to Hitler's invasion 50 years ago. To the extent that the E.C. becomes more unified, fears of a resurgent Germany are likely to recede. A strong E.C. could also serve as the core of a more self-sufficient Europe.

The decline of Moscow's influence over Eastern Europe is the direct consequence of its postwar failures. The economic system the Kremlin imposed has been a disaster, and its oppressive political embrace has engendered seething resentments.

The decline of Washington's influence over Western Europe, on the other hand, has been the gradual and inevitable result of its great postwar success. America's involvement in Europe was a welcome response to Soviet aggressiveness, not the cause of it. By helping rebuild its allies, the U.S. proved the strengths of its economic and political systems. Learning to deal with the robust partners that resulted has been a fitful process but a healthy one. The result is that now, as the cold war thaws, the U.S. can feel comfortable sharing with its allies the responsibilities, and financial burdens, of building a new European order.

With reporting by John Borrell/Warsaw and Dan Goodgame with Bush