Going To Meet the Man

By MICHAEL DUFFY

George Bush has often said he prefers "what works and what's real" to "airy" theorizing. Yet as he prepped for the toughest challenge in his diplomatic career, this weekend's meeting in Malta with Mikhail Gorbachev, there were tantalizing signs that the President was coming down with a case of "the vision thing." As he described his attitude toward the Saltwater Summit last week, "I'm thinking of it rather philosophically now."

Mindful that his get-together with the Soviet leader will take place at a time of extraordinary upheaval in Eastern Europe, Bush has mused privately and publicly about the "historic" nature of the encounter. Flying back from Memphis aboard Air Force One on the day before Thanksgiving, he wondered aloud if the meeting might help guarantee "a peaceful future for kids all over," including his eleven grandchildren. Then, in a televised address that evening, the President struck what was for him a visionary tone. He invited Gorbachev to "work with me to bring down the last barriers to a new world of freedom. Let us move beyond containment and once and for all end the cold war."

Despite Bush's sweeping rhetoric, his closest advisers predict that he will stick to the cautious script he has followed since Hungary, Poland, East Germany and most recently Czechoslovakia began loosening the grip of Communist repression. But the President was dropping hints that if the chemistry is right, then maybe -- just maybe -- the meeting in Malta could go beyond the modest get-acquainted session he originally envisioned. He dangled that possibility in his televised speech. While stressing that the meeting "will not be a time for detailed arms-control negotiations" and that "there will be no surprises sprung on our allies," Bush also declared that "we will miss no opportunity to expand freedom and enhance the peace." The Soviets too were sounding optimistic. "I know the mood of the General Secretary, and I can forecast that it is going to be a very interesting and very useful meeting," said Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.

The probability that such steps will be taken, if not at Malta then soon thereafter, was enhanced by developments in Washington. In recent weeks feuding between anti-Soviet hard-liners like Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and moderates led by Secretary of State James Baker, who favor a more active U.S. role in helping perestroika succeed, has been decisively resolved in the moderates' favor. Whether by conviction or coercion, Cheney has lately been cooing like a dove. By ordering the Pentagon to cut as much as $180 billion from its projected spending plans through 1995, Cheney indicated that Washington is ready to make deeper cuts in military expenditures -- and by extension, in U.S. troops stationed in Europe -- than it had previously contemplated. Said Cheney: "It's clear that the likelihood of all-out conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, is probably lower now than it's been at just about any time since the end of World War II."

Although Administration aides spoke of considerable "arm twisting" by Bush, Cheney's turnabout reflected political and budgetary realities more than a major rethinking of U.S. defense needs. Faced with a lingering $110 billion deficit, Congress long ago abandoned Pentagon plans to increase defense spending each year. Overdue as Cheney's order may have been, the armed services responded by leaking hastily assembled cut lists, studded with base closings and hard-to-cut weapons systems that are immensely popular on Capitol Hill. Conspicuously absent from the lists were such big-ticket items as the Navy's Seawolf attack submarine, the Air Force's Advanced Tactical Fighter and the Army's LHX attack helicopter. The Navy flouted the spirit of Malta further by scheduling a test of its Trident II submarine-based ballistic missile for Dec. 1 -- the day before the summit begins. The Navy's insensitivity to diplomatic timing so worried the Joint Chiefs of Staff that they are contemplating postponing the test.

More striking than the size of the Pentagon's proposed cutback was the timing of its announcement. Bush has become adept at letting the most conservative Cabinet members announce liberal-sounding policy changes that could anger the Republican right. It thus fell to Cheney to disclose that the Pentagon is examining conventional-weapons cuts that would go beyond Bush's plan, unveiled at last May's NATO summit, to reduce U.S. and Soviet forces to 275,000 each. Some Pentagon officials are worried that the talk about reducing defense spending could, in the words of one, give some allies "a green light for their own cuts."

On the heels of Cheney's announcement, word reached Washington that West German Defense Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg has drawn plans for a 15% reduction in the Bundeswehr by 1991. Almost simultaneously, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the West German Foreign Minister, arrived in Washington and let it be known that any U.S. plans to modernize short-range nuclear weapons in Europe are out of the question now that the two Germanys are groping toward reconciliation. "No German government will discuss any weapons system that might result in nuclear weapons being targeted at Dresden and Leipzig," said a Genscher aide.

Such talk has angered British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who spent the day after Thanksgiving with the President at Camp David tutoring him on how to handle the Soviet leader, with whom she has met five times. Concerned that Cheney's announcement will weaken America's hand if the Malta talks take a substantive turn on arms control, Thatcher advised Bush, "Any surprise that you're presented with, you take it away and you consider it very, very carefully."

The pushing and pulling among allies will bolster Bush's wariness if Gorbachev delivers a surprise of the sort that caught Ronald Reagan off balance in Reykjavik. Much more likely are broader philosophical explorations of the future course of the superpower relationship and a series of small but still significant incremental steps on trade, chemical weapons and nuclear testing. But White House aides have been hinting for several weeks that Bush will not be going to Malta empty-handed. If past experience is any guide, Bush will not decide to play whatever cards he is carrying until he arrives in Malta and the game is under way.

Above all else, Bush, a true believer in the value of personal diplomacy, wants to cement a bond with Gorbachev that he thinks will enhance relations between the two countries. He has sought advice from experts he has long trusted, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Nixon, and from some about whom he has misgivings, like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Henry Kissinger. Bush hopes not only to impress Gorbachev with his understanding of Soviet problems but also to argue cogently about solutions. "It's one on one, and at stake is the world," said a senior Administration official. "He's a little nervous about it, and I think that's why he's working so hard to get ready."

Initially, Bush had hoped to invite Gorbachev to Camp David for a few days. There, alone and in private, he could test Gorbachev's mettle and get to know the Soviet leader personally, just as he had befriended hundreds of other foreign leaders in his career. After the Soviets opted for Malta, Bush told aides, "I want a Camp David atmosphere on that ship." To work his magic free of prying eyes and ears, he has ordered reporters to stay far from the U.S. cruiser Belknap and the Soviet cruiser Slava. "He wants to be able to get up from the table and go for a walk with Gorbachev around the ship if he wants to," said a senior official.

Bush is at his best in such intimate settings. For all his talk about taking steps only in consultation with U.S. allies, Bush knows that he and Gorbachev will decide what happens in Malta. If the President has indeed become more "philosophical," the Malta summit could turn out to be far more than the friendly ocean cruise Bush had originally proposed.

With reporting by Frank Melville/London and Bruce van Voorst/Washington