TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/121189/12118900.045

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 4KB | 65 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.