Madison Avenue, Moscow

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

By now, one might think, Washington would have wised up. Again and again, Mikhail Gorbachev has grabbed headlines and impressed world opinion by making catchy, if often propagandistic, arms-control offers. So it would behoove any American official who sits down with the Soviet leader to be prepared for surprises -- preferably with a fresh and appealing U.S. initiative.

Secretary of State James Baker and his colleagues in the Bush Administration would have none of that. Convinced that Gorbachev will make concession after concession if the U.S. sits tight, Baker deliberately carried no significant new ideas to Moscow last week for the most important superpower meeting since the new Administration took office. Instead, he arrived determined to "put a Bush stamp" on U.S.-Soviet relations by swinging the spotlight toward regional issues and away from arms control altogether.

Predictably, Gorbachev fired off another of his patented bombshells -- this time, a proposal for dramatic cuts in conventional forces in Europe, coupled with an announcement of a unilateral, though small, reduction in short-range nuclear weapons. Both were crafted to appeal to U.S. allies, notably West Germany, that have been pressing Washington at least to negotiate about reducing the numbers of short-range nukes. According to some reports, Gorbachev assured Baker that his plan was not a political ploy, but Baker replied, "It certainly is."

The Secretary of State had little else to say: he promised to consult the allies about the offer, praised the short-range nuclear cut as a "good step, but a small step," and refused to countenance any kind of negotiations on short-range nuclear forces (SNF). Once again the U.S. was made to look slow and unimaginative -- and once more it might be missing a chance to reduce tensions. The failure was all the more remarkable because some of Gorbachev's ideas have relatively little military significance. His unilateral reduction of 500 short-range nuclear weapons would come to about 5% of perhaps 10,000 the Soviets have available in Europe, and would leave the U.S.S.R. still enjoying a huge advantage over about 4,000 NATO nukes.

But the conventional-arms reductions that Gorbachev proposed are striking enough: hundreds of thousands of troops on each side and, by Moscow's arithmetic -- which does not come close to agreeing with NATO figures -- slashes of about two-thirds in the number of Warsaw Pact tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces. After the reductions, which would be much heavier on the Soviet than the U.S. side, NATO and Warsaw Pact troops and weaponry would supposedly be equalized by 1996-97 at a level a bit below that now fielded by NATO. Still, Gorbachev essentially only filled in the details on a proposal made by Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in March, moving closer to NATO's negotiating positions and repackaging them as his own. While he was at it, Gorbachev tossed in a hook. He called for a 55% slash in NATO helicopters and fighter aircraft, an idea the U.S. is certain to oppose strenuously.

What really distinguished the Soviet move was its adroit timing. It came just a day before George Bush was to deliver his first major speech on U.S.-Soviet relations and 18 days before a NATO summit meeting at which the alliance will be hard pressed to heal the U.S.-West German split over SNF negotiations. Moscow moved swiftly, and with apparent success, to keep the rift open. Shevardnadze used a scheduled trip to Bonn Friday afternoon for meetings with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher to tout the Soviet proposal. He added a touch of salt to the new Soviet sweetness, warning that if the U.S. expands the reach of its short- range launchers as planned, the Soviet reaction might be to develop a new short-range rocket of its own.

Afterward, Kohl denied any intention of completely getting rid of nuclear weapons, a prime fear of the U.S., which deems them necessary to offset Soviet superiority in conventional forces. But the Chancellor added, "I think we are on the right path" in demanding early negotiations.

The Secretary of State, who appeared surprised at Gorbachev's proposals as he flew out of Moscow, sought to downplay them as much as he could. He repeated that the U.S. saw no point in SNF negotiations until the imbalance between Soviet and U.S. short-range nuclear weapons is reduced by much more than 500, and he claimed that the U.S. has long been urging the Kremlin to make some unilateral cuts. On conventional forces, too, Washington asserted that Moscow was replying to American proposals.

Nor did the White House see any reason to make changes in Bush's Friday speech. The President spoke not just of easing tensions but of superpower "friendship." Said Bush: "The United States now has as its goal much more than simply containing Soviet expansionism -- we seek the integration of the Soviet Union into the community of nations." But, confirming what his lieutenants had been saying privately, Bush put the onus on the Soviet Union to make further moves to bring that happy state about. "A new relationship cannot be simply declared by Moscow or bestowed by others," he said. "It must be earned."

The President ticked off a long series of actions that Moscow must take ("tear down the Iron Curtain . . . achieve a lasting political pluralism and respect for human rights" inside the Soviet Union) to earn U.S. trust. By contrast, he offered little in the way of U.S. action. He revived and expanded the "open skies" proposal advanced 34 years ago by Dwight Eisenhower. Under it, each side would let the other's unarmed reconnaissance planes, and now satellites, fly over its territory.

More important, Bush offered to work with Congress for a "temporary waiver" of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which sharply restricts U.S.-Soviet trade unless the Kremlin allows free emigration of Soviet Jews and other citizens. The condition: the Kremlin must write into Soviet law liberalized definitions of who can leave the Soviet Union.

It will take more to paste the NATO alliance back into a unified negotiating posture. Briefing the 15 allies in Brussels, Baker did win a communique that termed the Soviet offer of unilateral cuts in short-range nukes "a welcome, positive, but rather modest step." It noted, correctly, that NATO forces have unilaterally removed 2,400 nuclear weapons from their arsenals in the past decade, aggravating an "unwarranted superiority" on the Warsaw Pact side. (Actually, NATO did so mostly because the weapons were obsolete.)

Behind the scenes in Brussels, there was considerable unease. Even British officials expressed frustration that the country that gave the world Madison Avenue could not seem to wrest the public relations initiative from Gorbachev. As they and many others see it, the Soviet leader is playing an effective double game by trying to exploit splits in NATO and deepen world yearning for peace: despite their high propaganda content, his offers could serve as the basis for fruitful negotiation. But Bush insisted at week's end that there is "no such war" as a p.r. war. "I want to win the peace war."

Still, even in the U.S., some officials saw more than public relations in Gorbachev's latest proposals. A State Department official described the conventional-forces reduction ideas as "serious and detailed." He noted that they call for deep cuts in precisely those Soviet weapons -- tanks and armored personnel carriers -- that would be most useful for an invasion of Western Europe and also in the NATO arms -- helicopters and strike aircraft -- that most worry the Warsaw Pact.

Baker did make one arms-control proposal, but it seemed pro forma. He suggested that negotiations for a 50% slash in long-range strategic nuclear weapons resume in Geneva on June 12 or 19. The Soviets accepted but scoffed at Baker's request that the long-suspended negotiations run for only six weeks before a summer recess. Said Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov: "We think our negotiators have had enough holidays. We have lost a lot of time. While diplomats are on vacation, arms are piling up."

- On other matters, Baker made surprising progress. In four meetings with Shevardnadze before and after his 3 1/2-hour session with Gorbachev Thursday, Baker asked Moscow to reduce its $500 million in military aid to Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Shevardnadze's response: Well, maybe -- now that the U.S. has switched to a diplomatic approach in Central America rather than financing war waged by the contra rebels. Baker assured Shevardnadze that the U.S., in a policy switch, would no longer try to keep the Soviets from playing a role in a possible Middle East settlement; Shevardnadze in turn did not flatly reject Israel's U.S.-backed plan to hold elections among Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Baker further sought to introduce into the U.S.-Soviet dialogue a new class of "transnational" issues -- pollution, drugs, terrorism -- on which ideology should pose no bar to cooperation. As a small first step, he and Shevardnadze signed an agreement on joint efforts to control pollution in the Bering and Chukchi seas, near Alaska. All that was swiftly overshadowed once Gorbachev, an hour into his meeting with Baker in the Kremlin, announced that "the whole world wants this" and began detailing his arms-cut proposals.

The danger in Baker's let-them-keep-making-concessions approach is that it may feed the impression in Western Europe and much of the world that the U.S. finds confrontation and cold war more familiar and therefore more comfortable than the strange new world of disarmament and cooperation that Gorbachev incessantly touts, with however much exaggeration and however many hidden hooks. The whole world really does want a reduction in the arms that threaten its existence, and Washington must do far more than it has to convince its allies and its own people that the U.S. seeks that result no less than the shrewd Soviet leader.

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CAPTION: On the table: Gorbachev's numbers

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Moscow and Christopher Ogden with Baker