In World of Change, Bush Stands Still

George Bush is a status-quo politician. That’s why he was elected President last year. Americans liked the status quo under Ronald Reagan and they voted to preserve it.

Reagan, however, was not a status-quo politician. His response to Mikhail S. Gorbachev was remarkably open--some would say naive. But the last thing anyone would say about Reagan is that he was fearful of change.

That is exactly what people are saying about Bush. “I think perhaps this is a time for caution,” said Bush in response to the stirring upheaval in China. Caution? At a time when 1 million people are putting their lives on the line for democracy? That is the sort of thing that could give caution a bad name.

Today Gorbachev has become the symbol of change in the world. Wherever he goes, he seems to spread democracy in his wake. “We need someone like Gorbachev, a man with vision,” said a student protester in Beijing last week. Imagine a protester saying that about Bush, who announced that it would be improper for a U.S. President to advise the students “what their course of action should be.” Bush added, “We do not exhort in a way that is going to stir up a military confrontation.” What does he think he and Reagan have been doing with the Contras for eight years?

Gorbachev represents previously unthinkable aspirations, namely, reforming communism and ending the Cold War. The Bush Administration counters with “the status quo plus,” a policy the President describes as “a deliberate, step-by-step approach to East-West relations.” In other words, let’s slow things down.

When Gorbachev said he would stop sending weapons to Nicaragua, the White House responded with annoyance. Press spokesman Marlin Fitzwater dismissed the gesture as a “public relations gambit” perpetrated by a “drugstore cowboy.” The White House just doesn’t get it. To say the Soviets are engaging in “public relations” implies that they are being superficial while we are being substantive. But they are reforming their system and making unilateral arms cuts while we are saying, “Let’s wait and see.”

They act. We complain. They withdraw 500 nuclear missiles from Europe. Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney complains they have “so many rat-holes over there in Eastern Europe that 500 is a pittance.” This kind of small-minded response gives the United States the same image the Soviet Union had when Andrei Y. Vishinsky represented them at the United Nations and earned the nickname “Mr. Nyet.”

There is more than image at stake, however. The United States does not seem able to control events--or even influence them--in Panama, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and China. When a country loses its ability to influence events, it loses power. The United States gained power under Reagan because he succeeded so often in controlling events--although sometimes, as in Lebanon, he failed. Bush seems buffeted by events--more like Jimmy Carter.

Conservatives are becoming critical. They were outraged over an incident that happened during Bush’s visit to China earlier this year. The Chinese government forcibly excluded China’s best-known dissident from a banquet Bush had invited him to. Bush protested the government’s action only after aides pressured him.

Recently, at the urging of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee adopted a resolution supporting the student demonstrators in Beijing and warning Chinese leaders that violent suppression of the protesters would “seriously damage relations with the United States.” At the same time, a State Department official said, “The government in trouble in China is a friendly government with which we have had good relations. We don’t wish that government ill.” Asked to characterize Bush’s response to the upheaval in China, one Republican senator said, “He’s taken out a patent on banality.”

Liberals sometimes sound as if they miss Reagan. Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.) urged that Bush “publicly identify himself” with the movement for democracy in China by inviting Chinese students to meet with him. “It’s time for the President of the United States to find words to encourage them in their struggle for freedom,” Solarz said. “Isn’t this what we’ve been talking about for all these years?”

Indeed it is. The fact is, we are winning the Cold War. The Soviets are accepting our initiatives. We have been complaining that it makes no sense for NATO to negotiate a reduction in short-range nuclear missiles as long as the Soviets have a significant edge in conventional forces. So last week, the Soviets offered sweeping reductions in their conventional forces.

The Soviet offer astonished some U.S. officials. But Bush, who had to scrap his prepared remarks at the Coast Guard Academy the next day, responded petulantly. The Soviet offers, he said, “confirm what we’ve said all along--that Soviet military power far exceeds the levels needed to defend the legitimate security interests of the U.S.S.R.”

Bush hears what the Soviets say, but he says he doesn’t see anything warranting a substantive U.S. response. “I welcome (Gorbachev) proposals,” Bush said last Sunday at Boston University, “but I would like to see them implemented.”

Others are less suspicious. Right now, only 26% of the U.S. public believes that “the military threat from the Soviet Union is constantly growing and presents a real, immediate danger to the United States.” That figure is down from 64% in 1983. The status quo is changing. But no one in the Bush Administration has the courage or the imagination to say so.

Remember when Jesse Jackson went to Syria to rescue the captured U.S. pilot? Reagan refused to be embarrassed. Instead, he held a ceremony at the White House to celebrate the occasion. Bush seems unable to celebrate the breakthrough in U.S.-Soviet relations without casting suspicion on Moscow’s motives.

It takes a secure leader to do something like that. Reagan was secure. Despite all the nutty things he said, his sense of personal security was always reassuring. Bush usually says sensible things, but he is so easily rattled that he makes people nervous. He seems to be paralyzed by two fears--the fear of being called a wimp and the fear of creating a controversy.

Bush refuses to criticize the Beijing government for fear of provoking a controversy. “The world has a stake in China’s economic progress, national security and political vitality,” the President said in a statement issued at the height of the upheaval last week. “The United States hopes to see the continuing implementation of economic and political reforms, which undoubtedly will also help advance these goals.” Take that, communist oppressors!

Bush takes a tough line with the Soviets to show he’s no pushover for this glasnost thing. In his May 12 speech, Bush demanded the Soviets pass a series of “tests” to show they had changed. If they passed, the United States would be willing to go “beyond containment.” Last week, the President spelled out the reward. If the Soviets are good, he offered to “integrate the Soviet Union into the community of nations.” In other words, invite them to accept the status quo.

Bush’s foreign policy is Reaganism without risks. Or as one foreign-policy specialist described it, “the Reagan agenda pushed by civil servants.”

The fact is, Gorbachev is doing something conservatives have dreamed about for 40 years. He is rolling back communism. A free election was held in the Soviet Union. In China, protesters openly defied the communist government and succeeded in challenging its legitimacy. In Poland, a communist government will face an organized opposition movement at the polls next month--and it will probably lose. According to the government’s poll of Poles, only 12% of the voters say they will vote for the communists.

Is communism in its death throes? A lot of communists say yes. In Hungary, a radical reform faction seems likely to take over the Communist Party. They are calling for a multiparty system, a complete transformation of the economy--and withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, in favor of “neutralism guaranteed by the two superpowers.”

The totalitarian model is crumbling. That model depends on keeping a close link between control of the economy and the monopoly of power. In the Soviet Union, Gorbachev loosened up on the monopoly of power and allowed non-communist candidates to compete in elections. As a result, the party is under pressure to allow a freer economy. In China, Deng Xiaoping loosened up on the party’s control of the economy. Now its monopoly of power is being challenged.

No communist leader, not even Gorbachev, believes a communist party should have to compete for power with an organized opposition. The purpose of glasnost is to allow for change and reform within the party. This year’s Soviet election was a gigantic primary. Independents were allowed to participate, but communist rule was never threatened.

The protests in China last week were a kind of impromptu Iowa caucus. Participants started out by calling for a “dialogue” with the authorities and demanding recognition of their movement as “patriotic”--that is, as legitimate rather than “counterrevolutionary.” But as in Iowa, the media attention made the participants feel powerful, and they ended up demanding the ouster of the prime minister. That’s when the authorities decided to crack down.

Totalitarianism requires the party be completely identified with the system. Opposition to the party becomes “counterrevolutionary”--i.e., treason. Separate the party from the system, however, and you make democracy possible. That is what is happening in the Soviet Union, China, Poland and Hungary. Movements are emerging that claim to be loyal to the system (“patriotic”) but critical of the Communist Party. When will we know that communism is doomed? When a ruling Communist Party loses power to the opposition. That has never happened. But at times it looked possible last week.

And it had the Bush Administration worried. Secretary of State James A. Baker III said at a news conference, “I don’t think it would be in the best interests of the United States for us to see significant instability in the People’s Republic of China, just like I don’t think it’s in the best interests of the United States for us to see significant instability in the Soviet Union.”

The message of the Bush Administration is clear: Democracy is fine, as long as it doesn’t disturb the status quo.