Living With the Real Gorbachev : Hard As It Is to Divine His Motives, We Still Must Respond

“Will the real Mikhail S. Gorbachev please stand up?”

Many Americans are asking that question, especially after the Soviet president’s latest round of jet-set diplomacy followed by his assertion of domestic authority by cleaning out more aging “dead souls” from the Communist Party’s Central Committee. The question is important, because it could determine whether the United States proves able to compete with the phenomenal leader in the Kremlin.

Item: In Cuba, Gorbachev publicly opposed the export of revolution--a pointed lesson for his host, Fidel Castro. But he also opposed the export of counterrevolution. This was a reference to the so-called Reagan Doctrine, under which the United States has supported the fight against pro-Soviet governments in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia.

Item: Gorbachev said that he would not introduce nuclear weapons into the Western Hemisphere. But he also linked the reduction of other Soviet activities to a halt in U.S. meddling elsewhere, especially in Afghanistan.

Item: In London, Gorbachev reiterated his European peace plan, which bedazzled many Western observers when he unveiled it last December at the United Nations. But he then hinted at disrupting East-West conventional force talks if the countries in the Atlantic Alliance modernize short-range nuclear weapons. The Soviet leader knew that he was stirring the Western pot because his hostess, Margaret Thatcher, supports modernization and the West German government can’t touch it, politically.

Item: Gorbachev has been bidding to join Arab-Israeli peace negotiations. He pushed Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to recognize Israel, and he has proposed to cooperate with the West in countering terrorism. But U.S. Defense Department sources say that the Soviets sold some advanced SU-24 fighter-bombers to Libya that, by Pentagon account, could reach Israel.

So which is the real Mikhail Gorbachev? Clearly, he is all of the above. And just as clearly, the West must learn to live with this fact.

Making sense of Gorbachev is especially difficult in the United States. For the past 40 years, attitudes toward the Soviet Union have swung wildly. First, there was the Cold War, when nothing seemed possible in U.S.-Soviet relations. Then, in the 1970s, came detente and euphoric expectations that were dashed when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. Remarkably, Ronald Reagan hung onto the pendulum as it again swung from the “evil empire” to “my friend Mikhail.”

At the moment, the risk lies in expecting too much from the Soviet president. It is easy to see on television the rough and tumble of an unprecedented Soviet election and mistake it for Western democracy. It is tempting to witness a drastic reduction in Cold War tensions and believe it also means the end of significant East-West competition.

The dilemma is that the Gorbachev era could permit the most radical restructuring of East-West relations--the best chance for reducing the military burden of confrontation--in 40 years. But at the same time, the Soviet Union is no more willing and able to abandon all pursuit of power than it is to repeal the law of gravity.

This Manichaean dilemma is illustrated by Western efforts to divine the Soviet leader’s motives.

Yet given the expectations that Gorbachev has raised about fundamental change in East-West relations, Western leaders cannot wait until one or another motive is proved. Inordinate delay poses twin risks--the erosion of popular support for still-needed military security or the missing of an opportunity that, if now lost, might not return again soon.

As the West’s leader, the United States is particularly hard pressed. At home, George Bush is the first President who cannot escape the need to explain to the American people the dual nature of U.S.-Soviet relations: cooperation and competition, feast one day and famine the next. He must find a way to dampen the swinging pendulum of public opinion in order to craft sensible and sustainable policies toward Gorbachev’s Soviet Union.

The Administration faces an equal task abroad. The European allies are becoming impatient that the Western champion has yet to take the field against the challenger from the East. In London, Gorbachev taunted the United States for its delay.

Time, however, has not yet run out. There is merit in the Administration’s careful strategic review of a world in flux. And for all his diplomatic cheek, Gorbachev is playing a hand much weaker than that held by the American President.

Nevertheless, when the U.S. review is done, the President must have something to show for it. No later than next month’s NATO summit, he must present a strategy to allies hungry for leadership in uncertain times. This was underscored this week by the hasty visit to Washington of West Germany’s foreign and defense ministers, looking for a U.S. answer to Gorbachev’s initiatives. Bush must provide a political rationale for preserving Western military strength, devise credible tests of Gorbachev’s intentions and offer a long-term blueprint for a new breed of relations between East and West.

Indeed, by starting early and acting boldly, Gorbachev has presented Bush with perhaps the greatest task of statesmanship to face a U.S. President in 40 years.