TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121189/12118900.045

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 3.7 KB | 75 lines

                                                                                EAST-WEST, Page 39

The Presidency

Talk of Peace, Tools of War


By Hugh Sidey


    The two menacing gray cruisers wallowed in a wind-scoured
sea, radar disks alive, sullen missile launchers lining their
decks. They were the instruments of a half-century of a
calculated war that never happened, a war constrained by the
brutish power of just such ships.

    Ironically, they were shepherds of peace last week,
anchored in Marsaxlokk Bay. Malta is a scarred limestone
fortress fought over for centuries, the gashes of German and
Italian bombs still visible from the battering it took in World
War II. George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev searched for a way to
dismantle their huge arsenals even while transported and
comforted by their monstrous machines. Their task will not be
easy. Everywhere one looked along this peculiar journey were
reminders of how much the military structure girdles, orders and
even calms the world. Anybody who tries to change it quickly had
best be careful.

    When Bush climbed aboard his jet for this odyssey, he was
in the hands of the U.S. Air Force. The President's three
Marine helicopters had been ferried in the belly of an Air Force
transport and were waiting for him on the Malta ramps. From
there the machines whirled him 50 miles to the aircraft carrier
Forrestal, then settled him back feather-like on the fantail of
the Belknap. Rubber-suited Marine divers bounced in dinghies
along the tops of the rising waves, patrolling for any
suspicious movement in adjacent waters. A shabby little barge,
old tires festooning its scuffed sides, turned out to be in the
employ of the Navy, the keeper of the communication cable to the
Belknap. That allowed Bush to monitor events in the Philippines,
where U.S. force once again had to be committed to help
stabilize a friend.

    To stage this informal "feet on the table" pageant of peace
took the skillful services of thousands of soldiers, sailors
and Marines. While gratified by their new mission, they and
their Soviet counterparts retained some of their fighting
spirit. Soviet sailors interviewed by the Malta press implied
that the older Belknap was a bit of a clunker compared with
their cruiser Slava. An American gob, eyeing the Slava's conical
superstructure, sniffed, "It makes a good target." But that was
about as hostile an environment as could be found until the
weather struck, an adversity that may actually have encouraged
deeper thought.

    Before he sat down with Gorbachev, the President pointedly
gloried in the thunderous launching and recovery of F-14 Tomcat
fighters on the Forrestal. Down in the carrier's hangar bay,
Bush stood before the quieted planes and crews and talked about
his view of war. "There's a painting in the White House,
upstairs in the little office. It pictures Lincoln with two
generals and an admiral meeting on a boat near the end of a war
that pitted brother against brother. Outside the battle rages.
And yet what we see in the distance is a rainbow, symbol of
hope, of the passing storm. The painting's name? The
Peacemakers."

    Gorbachev picked up the beat. When he arrived, he noted,
"The naval ships have come on a mission of peace. This symbolism
gives expression to the radical changes now sweeping the world
as it shifts from confrontation." When wind forced the first
meeting to be moved to the dockside Soviet cruise ship Maxim
Gorky, Gorbachev remarked wryly, "The first thing to do is to
eliminate those ships you cannot board in this kind of weather.
We will have a secret agenda in this way to disarm the Sixth
Fleet." That's the whole point, but it is quicker said than it
should be done.