Cover Stories: Yes, He's For Real

By WALTER ISAACSON

For the Russians, tempered by centuries of land invasions, national security has long been defined as the control of territory and the subjugation of neighbors. Moscow's desire for a protective buffer, combined with a thousand- year legacy of expansionism and a 20th century overlay of missionary Marxism, was what prompted Stalin to leave his army in Eastern Europe after World War II and impose puppet regimes in the nations he had liberated.

This Soviet quest for security necessarily meant insecurity for others. It also, as it turned out, meant the same for the Soviets. "One irony of history is that the security zone in Eastern Europe that Stalin created turned out to be one of the greatest imaginable sources of insecurity," says Princeton Professor Stephen Cohen, co-author of Voices of Glasnost. It precipitated the cold war, provoked an armed competition with the West and saddled the Soviets with a string of costly and cranky vassals.

Thus it was understandable, perhaps even inevitable, that Soviet control over Eastern Europe would erode and its territorial approach to security be exposed as obsolete in a world of nuclear missiles. Yet even years from now, when the breathtaking events of 1989 are assessed, hindsight is unlikely to dilute the amazement of the moment. For suddenly, amid a barrage of headlines that a year ago would have seemed unimaginable, the architecture of Europe is being redrawn and the structure of international relations transformed by Mikhail Gorbachev's redefinition of Soviet security.

"These changes we're seeing in Eastern Europe are absolutely extraordinary," George Bush told the New York Times last week. In fact, 1989 will be remembered not as the year that Eastern Europe changed but as the year that Eastern Europe as we have known it for four decades ended. The concept was always an artificial one: a handful of diverse nations suddenly iron- curtained off from their neighbors and force-fed an unwanted ideology. Soviet dominion over the region may someday be regarded as a parenthetical pause (1945-89) that left economic scars but had little permanent impact on the culture and history of Central Europe.

Last week saw yet another series of events that reflected the upheavals of this watershed year:

-- In Budapest acting President Matyas Szuros stood on a balcony overlooking a rally in Parliament Square and said that the 1956 uprising, which the Soviets suppressed with tanks and the hangman's rope, was actually a "national independence movement." He declared the People's Republic of Hungary, so named in 1949, dead. Now it is the Republic of Hungary, an independent state with plans to hold multiparty elections. When speakers mentioned the U.S., the crowd cheered; for the Soviet Union, there were jeers. But along with shouts of "Russians, go home!," there were chants for the man who made the scene possible: "Gorby! Gorby! Gorby!"

-- Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze marked the anniversary of the Hungarian uprising by telling Moscow's new parliament that the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan had "blatantly violated" the law. By doing so, he implied that events like the 1956 Hungarian crackdown and the 1968 Czechoslovakian invasion would not recur. In addition, with a candor rare even in the West, Shevardnadze said of the controversial Krasnoyarsk radar station in Siberia: "Let's admit that this monstrosity the size of the Egyptian pyramid has been sitting there in direct violation of the ABM treaty." (His fealty to the treaty was in part motivated by a desire to drive a stake through America's SDI missile-defense program.)

-- In San Francisco Secretary of State James Baker delivered the Administration's strongest endorsement to date of Gorbachev's efforts. "Any uncertainty about the fate of reform in the Soviet Union," said Baker, "is all the more reason, not less, for us to seize the present opportunity." President Bush likewise abandoned a timid U.S. attitude when he granted Hungary most-favored-nation trading status and declared, "We are privileged to participate in a very special moment in human history. We are witnessing an unprecedented transformation of Communist nations into pluralistic democracies with market economies."

-- In a trip laden with symbolism, Gorbachev visited neighboring Finland, a dexterous nation that has maintained friendly relations with Moscow while retaining political and economic independence. "Finlandization" used to be derided as a form of latter-day appeasement that might infect Western Europe; now it is considered a model for the relationship that Poland or Hungary could achieve.

When Gorbachev first spoke of "new thinking" in foreign policy, many in the West -- especially in the U.S. -- doubted his sincerity. The real test was whether Gorbachev would end the policy at the heart of the cold war: the subjugation of Eastern Europe. At the end of last year, in a speech at the United Nations, Gorbachev declared that he would. "Freedom of choice is a universal principle," he said. Yet the doubts lingered. They always seemed to come down to the question: Is Gorbachev for real?

There can be only one answer now: yes, emphatically yes. Earlier this year, after Poland's Communists lost the most open elections since World War II but tried nevertheless to thwart Solidarity's effort to form a government, Gorbachev spoke by phone to the Communist Party leader, who subsequently backed down. Gorbachev has also provided public approval to the Hungarian reformers. In summing up a Warsaw Pact meeting in Bucharest last July, he pronounced: "Each people determines the future of its own country and chooses its own form of society. There must be no interference from outside, no matter what the pretext." What it all adds up to is that both in rhetoric and in reality, Gorbachev has done what Western leaders have been demanding for 21 years: repealed the "Brezhnev Doctrine," under which the Soviets claimed the right to provide "military aid to a fraternal country" (translation: invade it) whenever there was "a threat to the common interests of the camp of socialism" (translation: a threat to Soviet dominance).

Gorbachev is clearly motivated by his nation's desperate internal situation. Perestroika, which aims to radically restructure the Soviet economy, has so far succeeded only in disrupting the clanky old centralized-state system that at least belched forth a few second-rate consumer goods for the store shelves. Now those shelves are barer than they have been for 20 years, there are rumors of looming food riots this winter, and Gorbachev is not the hero at home that he is abroad. It is no wonder, then, that the Soviets, as former U.S. arms negotiator Paul Nitze says, "have turned inward, looking at what the military establishment has cost the people, the society, the economy."

For the first six months of the Bush Administration, agnosticism about Gorbachev was an article of faith. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater went so far as to call him "a drugstore cowboy." Moreover, it was virtually taboo to use any form of the verb "to help" in the same sentence with Gorbachev. Senate Democratic leader George Mitchell accused the Bush Administration of "status quo thinking" and exhibiting an "almost passive stance." Bush's attitude began to change when he visited Poland and Hungary in July. His hosts impressed on him that their survival, not to mention their success, depended on Gorbachev's. Bush commented afterward that he had understood the connection intellectually but now he understood it "in his gut."

Bush's conversion has not ended the deep schism within his Administration. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft remains cautious about Gorbachev's ultimate aims, and his deputy Robert Gates is acidly skeptical about the Soviet leader's ability to prevail. In an unusual move, Baker last week forbade Gates to deliver a speech that was too pessimistic about Gorbachev's economic program. Vice President Dan Quayle directly challenged Baker in a Los Angeles speech by stressing "the darker side of Soviet foreign policy" and saying that instead of helping, the U.S. ought to "let them reform themselves."

Raising this skepticism is probably, to use Bush's favorite word, prudent. After all, what if Gorbachev is indeed merely pursuing by more subtle means the old Soviet goals of getting the U.S. to withdraw from Europe, dissolving NATO and neutralizing Germany? Even so, as Baker points out, it would still make sense for the U.S. to "lock in" gains by helping Soviet bloc nations become more independent and by securing agreements that make mutually beneficial arms reductions. In addition, the changes in Eastern Europe have progressed so far that a sudden reversal becomes less likely every day. In the worst-case scenario, a hard-liner -- even Gorbachev -- could crack down in Moscow tomorrow. But could he reverse the course of events in Hungary and Poland? Could he ensure the loyalty of troops in Eastern Europe?

Gorbachev and Shevardnadze said once again last week that NATO and the Warsaw Pact should eventually be dismantled. NATO Secretary-General Manfred Worner dismissed the suggestion as "a long-standing aim" of Soviet policy. Still, if there is no cold war to fight, it will be impossible at some point to avoid reconsidering the roles of the two military alliances. One of Worner's predecessors, Britain's Lord Ismay, said the goal of NATO was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down." As the Soviet threat recedes, NATO could serve to keep the West Germans, if not down, at least tethered to the West. The organization's purpose would become more political: preventing the Continent from reverting to the spasmodic shifts in national alliances that sparked centuries of wars. The twelve-nation European Community is likewise poised to play a leading role in belaying the nations that are breaking loose from the Soviet orbit.

The success of perestroika will depend on the Soviets, but Washington can help Gorbachev by reaching agreements to cut conventional arms and strategic nuclear arsenals. In addition, Shevardnadze in his speech last week spoke of Moscow's desire to join such Western economic institutions as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). Like Hungary, the Soviet Union could benefit from most-favored-nation trade status.

Yet given the sweeping transformations under way, these measures seem limp. Such a step-by-step approach would be, at best, yet another example of the -- dare one say timid? -- incrementalism on arms control and trade that has marked Soviet-American relations for four decades. As Bush himself says, the opportunity is historic. The idea that the Warsaw Pact would launch a land invasion of Western Europe, which is what most of NATO expenditures are designed to prevent, has become nearly inconceivable. "It may be time to abandon incrementalism for a leapfrog approach, to see if we can really make a basic change in our relationship," says former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke.

Instead, Bush could challenge Gorbachev with courage and imagination. He could ask the Soviets to join the West in making enormous, fundamental cuts in defense spending. This would not be naive pacifism but hardheaded self- interest. It could be a boon to the deficit-choked American economy as well as to perestroika. Rather than negotiating trims in a few weapons programs, Bush could propose demobilizing significant portions of each side's military, testing whether Gorbachev would go along with dismantling whole divisions and reconfiguring forces so as to create a less dangerous world.

Dean Acheson compared the task of his fellow statesmen at the end of World War II to the one described in the first chapter of the Bible. "That was to create a world out of chaos; ours, to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material." The genesis that is now at hand may be just as formidable, because it involves transcending not chaos but a rigid order.

The postwar era was launched with a speech by Harry Truman outlining a presidential vision of containment. Similarly, Bush could launch a postcontainment era by propounding a bold swords-into-plowshares scheme for a fundamental change in East-West relations. Such a clarion call for a radical new Bush Doctrine could command the bipartisan support that accompanied the Truman Doctrine. It could also, at the very least, regain for the U.S. the initiative on the world stage. And, who knows? Gorbachev might go along. More surprising things have happened this year.

With reporting by Christopher Ogden/Washington and Strobe Talbott/Moscow, with other bureaus