NATION, Page 36Easier Said Than DoneBush and Gorbachev set ambitious goals at Malta, but they leftlittle time for the hard bargaining still to comeBy 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
