Easier Said Than Done

By MICHAEL DUFFY

George Bush normally distrusts "big moments," and this one did not last long. His chummy session with Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta restored momentum to U.S.-Soviet relations and gave a boost to what Bush called his "new thinking" about the changes in the Communist world. Yet the President had barely left his joint press conference with Gorbachev when he encountered serious questions about his plans to encourage perestroika and to deliver on his promises in time.

Conservative activists were concerned that Bush had gone too far in pledging to help Gorbachev economically. Military experts doubted that treaties to cut nuclear warheads and European force levels could be completed by next June, or anytime next year. The President promised to "kick our bureaucracy and push it as fast as I possibly can" to meet the deadlines. Yet despite the smiles in Malta, the obstacles to arms control are more than bureaucratic; the two leaders did little to resolve fundamental disagreements.

Until recently Bush was a member of the conservative chorus warning that a bad arms-control deal was worse than no deal at all, as critics reminded him. "Setting an arbitrary time frame for arms-control treaties to be completed and signed is not wise," said Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Even the Soviets were flashing warning signs. Armed forces Chief of Staff Mikhail Moiseyev said the Soviet leadership should make no further concessions to the U.S., and noted pointedly that there are still too many disagreements to conclude a strategic-arms treaty by June. Gorbachev and Bush would have to meet again just to hash out these differences, said Moiseyev.

By that measure, the main value of Malta was in fulfilling Bush's stated goal: making a personal connection with Gorbachev. To Bush's relief, Gorbachev played a low-key role, thanking the President for his "prudent and cautious" rhetoric. The two leaders engaged in lengthy chats about "Western values," an expression Bush uses to describe the changes sweeping Eastern Europe. In one 30-minute segment, Gorbachev asked Bush to drop the phrase from speeches, because it implied the changes were a victory for the West. Accordingly, the President has started speaking of "democratic values."

That kind of concession displeases conservatives, who say the Soviets should suffer through their economic and political crises without American assistance. The White House dispatched Vice President Dan Quayle to disarm the hard-liners even before Bush left Europe. Quayle uttered anachronistic noises to the Washington Post, including a nostalgic reference to the Soviet Union as a "totalitarian state." If Quayle's partial retraction a few days later -- he changed the description to "authoritarian" -- seemed to blur the Administration's view even more, that was part of the game. Behind the scenes, White House officials reminded conservatives that the overtures to the Soviets were extremely popular. "The big question is, Can we break 80% in our approval rating?" said a West Wing aide only half jokingly.

Bush played a similar hand at NATO headquarters in Brussels, offering something for everyone. For West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Bush declared, "The task before us . . . is to end the division of Europe and of Germany." For French President Francois Mitterrand: "Reunification should occur in the context of Germany's continued commitment to NATO." When his support for an "integrated" Europe rattled Britain's Margaret Thatcher, Bush telephoned her later to say he had not meant to undercut her position. The smooth performance left the Europeans feeling pleased, if perplexed. Quipped a top NATO envoy: "This was the diplomatic equivalent of writing those personal letters we hear about."

Bush used Malta as a pretext for mending fences with the other Communist superpower. He sent National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger to Beijing for the ostensible purpose of briefing Chinese leaders on his talks with Gorbachev. The real motive, Administration aides conceded, was to resume high-level contacts, which the U.S. suspended after the massacre of students in Tiananmen Square last June.

+ Given the many mixed signals, it was no wonder the President encountered questions about the heft of his proposals and how he plans to fulfill them:

Economic Aid

Bush's plans to help the Soviet economy -- by easing U.S. trade barriers, expanding technical cooperation and speeding joint ventures -- are the most easily accomplished. But they are largely symbolic. If Moscow lifts restrictions on emigration, which it has said it will do, the U.S. will be persuaded to grant the Soviet Union most-favored-nation status. That would lower tariffs on Soviet manufactured goods, but it would not change the fact that the U.S.S.R. has relatively little to sell to the U.S. Still, Gorbachev needs every concession he can get. Bush's promise to sponsor "observer status" for the Soviets at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade talks in 1991 will signal the Kremlin's acceptance into the world community and serve as an endorsement for Gorbachev's foreign policy.

Strategic Weapons

Bush had no sooner thrown his weight behind the stalled Strategic Arms Reduction Talks than Gorbachev complicated matters. Earlier this year, the Soviets proposed moving forward on a 50% cut in nuclear warheads without an agreement on hard-to-count sea-launched cruise missiles. At Malta, Gorbachev hinted that he could not sign a START treaty without some kind of understanding about SLCMs. To that, Gorbachev added another gambit: he proposed a ban on short-range nuclear weapons on naval vessels.

Secretary of State James Baker and his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, will take up several easy START issues when they meet in Geneva next month, but not SLCMs. With or without them, Bush acknowledged, his June deadline would be hard to meet.

Conventional Forces in Europe

An old arms-control adage holds, "If you like watching a car rust, you'll love conventional-weapons talks." Negotiations in Vienna have dragged on for 15 years. Although Bush promised last May to complete a CFE deal within a year, he acknowledged in Malta that it would take at least until the end of 1990. That may be why he reversed his long-held but unpopular position that cuts in conventional forces must precede reductions in strategic arms.

Soviet and U.S. officials have essentially agreed to reduce their forces in Europe to 275,000 each. But some NATO allies are dragging their feet on peripheral issues. British and French negotiators are wary of any deal that reduces the size of their independent air forces -- so wary, in fact, that some experts predict that aircraft will have to be taken off the table if Bush is to meet his deadline.

The prospect of inch-by-inch progress in Vienna and Geneva only underscored warnings that there will be no quick "peace dividend" for the overstretched federal budget. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney's planned $180 billion in Pentagon cuts through 1995 amount to little more than deletions in the military's wish list. Nuclear-arms control saves little money because it normally results in destruction of hardware that has already been paid for and often requires expensive verification methods. Reducing conventional forces could save money, but not much: defense-budget experts from the Rand Corp. to the Congressional Budget agree that a 50% reduction in U.S. troops in Europe would yield savings of only $6 billion to $7 billion a year. Real savings would not occur unless troops based in the U.S. are demobilized, a politically unappetizing prospect because of its impact on local economies.

Despite these challenges, Bush is still buoyed by an element of good fortune. Gorbachev seems content to let the President move at his own pace. The Soviets and NATO allies support a stabilizing U.S. presence in Europe. And a gradually reduced Soviet threat may enable Bush to squeeze just enough money from the military next year to keep the federal deficit moving downward. Bush recognizes that he is the benefactor of a rare alignment of stars. "I'm a lucky person to be President of our country in these very exciting times," he said last week. But as the ground in Europe continues to shift, he will need more than luck.

With reporting by Dan Goodgame, Christopher Ogden and Bruce van Voorst/Washington