An Inviting Opportunity

“Opportunity invites us to . . . move beyond containment, beyond the Cold War, to a new strategic relationship based on a sound political footing,” Secretary of State James A. Baker III told a San Francisco audience about a week ago.

On Monday, President Bush disclosed that he has accepted opportunity’s invitation by proposing a summit meeting in December with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The proposal was endorsed “promptly” last July. They will meet for a day on a Soviet navy ship somewhere in the Mediterranean and a day on an American ship, in the kind of isolation and informality where they can--as Bush put it--”put our feet up” and talk.

These are not the best of times for either Bush or Gorbachev. That alone would explain their ready agreement to spend two days sizing each other up and comparing notes about the kind of future that is being produced by incredible changes in the Soviet Union and Europe.

If the meeting works, both men could come away with a better sense of where change presents the greatest risk and how each might act to limit the danger of change getting out of control. Gorbachev is following no master plan for change but is dealing day by day with strikes, food shortages and the clamor among his country’s diverse ethnic groups for more autonomy. The situation is almost a recipe for loss of control. And it is true that after 40 years of racing to arm against each other, it is too early for either superpower to turn to trust alone as a guide to the other’s intentions.

But the plan to spend two days at sea and away from the telephones should give Bush and Gorbachev the time and opportunity to spell out to one another what sorts of sudden moves they could not tolerate. They could move toward something like a political relationship if they did nothing else but describe the kinds of actions that each considered would violate their national interests and agreed to try to avoid such actions. And if the meeting did not work, the negotiations in Vienna on conventional arms reductions and in Geneva on nuclear arms cuts still would go on, and Bush and Gorbachev could try again later.

The pressures on Bush for a reduction of military forces are not nearly as strong as they are on Gorbachev, but they exist. The U.S. government is so broke that it will have to borrow the money it sends to the San Francisco Bay Area for earthquake relief; the Pentagon still wants more new weapons systems than it can afford. What’s more, an era of government by politics, of politics and for politics has sapped Washington of the strength to deal with domestic problems and hampers the shaping of foreign policy.

Still, these are not the worst of times for the two superpower leaders. Afghanistan remains a battleground because Moscow and Washington refuse to stop arming their proxies, but with Soviet troops gone, neither is directly involved. There is no sign of dramatic breakthroughs in arms control talks, but talks go on. Europe seems determined to redefine itself and discover ways to extend its peace. And Baker may turn out to be right. It could happen on the Mediterranean that the two leaders will find there is an opportunity for a new relationship on a sound political footing.