Could Upset Balance of Forces : West Wary of Swift Pace of Change in East Europe

It’s just a political joke making the rounds of Hungarian coffee shops: The last Soviet division in Hungary should not be withdrawn, but rather redeployed to the southeast to keep the peace with Romania.

“Except it’s not that funny,” said a Hungarian diplomat here. Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu has twice hinted at his country’s capacity to build nuclear weapons and is reportedly taking part in a program to develop a ballistic missile, the diplomat said.

This the is new reality of Eastern Europe as President Bush leaves today for visits to Poland and Hungary. The dismantling of the Soviet empire, the last colonial empire in the world, is moving almost too fast, even for American comfort.

Consequently, the post-World War II U.S. policy of containing communism, a reaction to the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, is a dead letter. At least in Poland and Hungary, where Bush will travel, the political ideology and centrally planned economies of Marxism are being buried--and age-old national and ethnic animosities are resurfacing in ways that recall the chaos of pre-World War I Europe.

Washington may not be fully prepared for the consequences.

“You call for tearing down the Berlin Wall,” Henry Trofimenko of the Soviet Institute for the Study of United States told a recent conference here. “But then what?”

The Bush Administration, reacting to the changes instituted by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, put forward a new policy this spring called “beyond containment.” Its goal is to eliminate the barriers between the two Europes, to ease the nations of Eastern Europe out of the Soviet orbit without blasting them out.

Bush did not call on the Eastern European nations, for example, to leave the Warsaw Pact. That would change the balance of forces in Europe radically.

Power Sharing Urged

Likewise, a Polish diplomat said that during the recent negotiations between the Polish government and the Solidarity trade union, the United States urged “cooperation in the peaceful transition” to power sharing, not “breaking down the (communist) system.”

And the United States has put no particular pressure on East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, which have vigorously rejected the reformist course, to follow the examples of Poland and Hungary.

But Bush has left no doubt about his goal. “The Cold War began in Central Europe, with the building of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall,” he said after the recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit meeting in Brussels. “If the Cold War is to end, it will have to end where it began.”

Cautious on Interfering

Until recently, the Soviets have had relatively few complaints about the new policy, in part because the Administration was very cautious about interfering in Eastern Europe.

“We obviously do not want to promote instability in that region,” explained a senior U.S. official. “Events there have gone beyond our resources. For the past decade, we have spent our wealth on military weapons that are useless in a situation that calls for economic aid.”

But last week Bush called for the unilateral withdrawal of all Soviet forces from Poland and, implicitly, from the entire region. That appears to have raised the hackles of Gorbachev as he visited France last week.

If Eastern European nations want to remake their political and economic systems, Gorbachev said, that is the “internal affair” of the individual nations concerned. The changes should remain within a “socialist framework,” he added, using a phrase he has used before without defining it.

But then, in what was seen as a warning to Bush as he prepared to leave for Poland and Hungary, Gorbachev said that “the present political processes (in Eastern Europe) are positive, but they are complex and they are also fragile. They are subject to various risks, including destabilization and rupture.”

Anti-Soviet Demonstrations

“Russians go home” demonstrations have already broken out in Hungarian and Polish cities. The most violent of them took place in Krakow, Poland, with bottles and other trash thrown at the Soviet Consulate. Moscow has chosen to ignore the provocation so far.

But anti-Soviet emotions can quickly get out of hand, especially in the superheated mood generated by Bush’s impending visit. If Bush appeals for a total Soviet troop withdrawal while visiting Poland, for example, that could provoke escalating attacks on the Soviets that Moscow could not ignore.

Gorbachev reportedly told his French hosts what he has said privately to others: that the Soviets will not interfere in Eastern Europe as long as the West seeks no military advantage there.

Consensus on Reforms

The consensus among U.S. and foreign experts is that the best interests of Washington and Moscow will be served if the political, economic and social reforms in Eastern Europe--some call them revolutions--are peacefully managed.

Any reversal of the process, and particularly any Soviet military intervention in Eastern Europe, would have far worse consequences than Moscow’s previous invasions. It would plunge U.S.-Soviet relations into a new and deeper Cold War for at least the rest of the century, according to a senior U.S. official.

It would also put an end to Gorbachev’s internal reforms of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), and to his “new thinking” in foreign policy, which has yielded the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and unilateral troop reductions in Eastern Europe.

Intervention is most likely if the pressing economic problems of Poland and Hungary turn to riots.

Looking for Bailout

Neither nation can generate enough wealth to restructure its economy on its own. Both countries--and the Soviets--want the West to bail them out.

But the West is insisting on continuing political and economic reforms as a condition for aid. At the Paris economic summit, which Bush will attend next weekend after leaving Hungary, the world’s seven leading industrial democracies are expected to devise a cooperative economic plan to help Poland and Hungary.

The four other Soviet Bloc nations--Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Romania--are in better economic shape today, but most experts predict they will soon have similar problems.

“The main issue,” said a Polish scholar who asked not to be named, “is how East Europe and even the Soviet Union itself can be integrated into the Western economic community.”

Multi-Party Systems

Both Hungary and Poland are on the way to multi-party political systems with at least some of the trappings of market economies. Poland is more advanced politically, but its economic problems are so urgent and all-consuming that beyond solvency, its reformers have not laid out coherent national goals.

Hungary has had greater success with economic reforms while moving slower toward political pluralism. Its long-term goal is to become the Sweden of Central Europe, according to Hungarian officials. They said the nation would be “a neutral, socialist democracy,” operating under a constitution in which the legislative and judicial branches are separated from the executive.

Communists Lack Majority

That government would be leftist, with communists playing a major role but lacking an absolute majority in Parliament. The country would be owned one-third by the state, one-third by industrial and agricultural cooperatives, and one-third by private individuals or corporations, including foreign firms.

Hungarians believe the Soviets would not object to these goals, even to neutrality of the country, in a decade or so. But they recognize the danger of Soviet intervention if they move too fast, particularly in seeking new security arrangements.

The Kremlin would be less likely to accept the neutrality of Poland, a more strategic territory than Hungary. The critical supply lines to its forces in East Germany, considered the Soviets’ most important ally in Eastern Europe, run through Poland.

Soviet Forces in Poland

“The Soviets tell us that stability in Poland is most important, even more important than Poland remaining communist,” said a Polish diplomat. “They also indicate that they would want to move troops into Poland if there was a war.” About 40,000 Soviet troops are now based in Poland, but they are logistical support personnel rather than combat forces.

Least tolerable to the Soviets, experts believe, would be for either Hungary or Poland to leave the Warsaw Pact and join the NATO alliance, as Hungary seemed tempted to do in 1956. A Hungarian diplomat concluded: “Unless there was a profound military threat to the Soviet Union from Central Europe, we don’t believe the Soviets would intervene.”

A Kremlin official was not so sure. Citing a Russian proverb, he said: “Everything is reversible in life, except time.”

BUSH’S TRIP TO EUROPE

Country City,Date Itinerary Poland Warsaw July 9-11 Meetings with Communist party leader Wojciech Januzelski, Solidarity and independents; Meeting with Lech Walesa Gdansky July 11-13 Hungary Budapest July 11-13 Meetings with Communist leadership France Paris July 13-17 Economic summit meeting; opening performance at new Opera de la Bastille Netherlands Amsterdam July 17-18 Meeting with Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers