ANALYSIS : Pressure of Events Forced Sea Change in Bush Policy

President Bush’s announcement that he will meet informally with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev next month marks a sea change in his response to the historic upheavals sweeping the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: After repeatedly rejecting pressure to embrace Gorbachev and his reforms, Bush is now doing exactly that.

And the change springs less from an altered view of Gorbachev and the Soviet Bloc than from the irresistible pressure of onrushing events.

Bush entered the White House proclaiming a need for “caution and prudence,” determined to slow down the rapid pace of U.S.-Soviet rapprochement begun by President Ronald Reagan. He recoiled from any suggestion of an early meeting with Gorbachev.

But within months, he found himself facing a tide of pressure to respond to the startling changes in the Soviet Bloc. There were increasing demands both at home and from U.S. allies in Western Europe for a more imaginative policy.

Gradually, Bush began to bend.

“There was one time when I felt that such a meeting wouldn’t be productive,” the President acknowledged in his news conference on Tuesday. “ . . . What changed my mind on it was consultation with our allies; the rapidity of change in Eastern Europe; the emergence of democracies in this hemisphere, and this concept that I just didn’t want to, in this time of dynamic change, miss something--something that I might get better firsthand from Mr. Gorbachev.”

Bush’s Administration is still divided over Gorbachev’s chances of ultimate success, with most senior officials privately pessimistic about how far the Soviet reform program known as perestroika is likely to go. But after months of internal debate, aides say, they have largely agreed that the United States has no choice but to meet the Soviet leader and take a direct role in supporting reform in the Communist Bloc.

“It’s a case of looking and seeing profound change taking place,” a senior Administration official said. “It’s important not to be seen as sitting back and watching that take place.”

“We’ve known all along what we wanted to do, in general terms,” he said. “But a lot of things have happened” since Bush took office in January.

Among those changes, officials pointed out:

- Accelerated political reform in the Soviet Union, along with a deepening economic crisis.

- The election of a non-Communist government in Poland, led by the Solidarity movement.

- The decision by Hungary’s ruling Communist Party to turn the country into a democracy.

- Gorbachev’s role in urging more reform on his Soviet Bloc allies, including hard-line East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

“Gorbachev has passed several tests with flying colors, most importantly in Eastern Europe, where the Cold War began,” said Dmitri Simes, a Sovietologist at Washington’s Brookings Institution. “His actions have demonstrated that his declarations of ‘new thinking’ in Soviet policy are real. . . . The Administration recognizes that. This (Bush-Gorbachev) meeting will establish the U.S. commitment to change in the Soviet Union. It is a way for the Administration to show faith in Gorbachev.”

It is also a way for the Administration to score “a very easy foreign policy success,” he added.

Indeed, the political payoff for Bush’s move was immediate. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress applauded his announcement, and this included some who have spent months criticizing Bush as “timid” in his approach to the changes in the Soviet Bloc.

“I commend the President for this step,” said Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), one of the most persistent critics. “I think it will be useful.”

Asked whether the meeting had changed his judgment of Bush, however, Mitchell added: “No, the mere fact they are meeting doesn’t deal with the substance of policies.”

But other analysts--and some Administration officials, speaking on condition that they not be identified--said there has been a series of significant shifts in Bush’s policy.

When Bush entered the White House, he demanded that Gorbachev prove that his new approach to Soviet foreign policy was genuine, calling repeatedly for “actions as well as words.” And some officials, like Deputy National Security Adviser Robert M. Gates, warned that it was dangerous to change U.S. policy in response to Gorbachev’s reforms because the Soviet leader might soon fail.

Since then, Bush aides have been convinced, as one said, “that Gorbachev is real.” In Eastern Europe especially, he said, the Soviets’ commitment to reform has surprised American policy-makers: “They have demonstrated a tolerance level that exceeded our expectations.”

The second issue was more problematic: Should Bush stick to his cautious position because of concerns that Gorbachev’s reforms may fail? That question divided the President’s advisers--but not his Western European allies, the Eastern European reformers or a growing body of U.S. critics, all of whom argued for a greater American role in aiding reform in the Soviet Bloc.

As the pressure to act increased, Bush and his advisers agreed on a new posture: a still-cautious, but more active, search for what Secretary of State James A. Baker III called “points of mutual advantage” with the Kremlin.

“It would be (a) great blunder to ignore the possibility that perestroika might go much further and to retreat instead into a suspicious stance of disengagement that would never put perestroika’s promise to the test,” Baker said in a major speech on Soviet policy last month.

“Any uncertainty about the fate of reform in the Soviet Union . . . is all the more reason, not less, for us to seize the present opportunity,” he argued.

That was “a crucial change,” said Arnold Horelick of the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica. “Bush’s new look started in the spring, largely under pressure from the allies. It was pushed by changes in the Soviet Union and accelerated by events in Eastern Europe.”

Baker’s speech “ended the argument” that instability in the Soviet Union should lead to more caution in Washington, he said.

Another major factor, Administration officials said, was the increasing need for high-level U.S.-Soviet talks over the future of Eastern Europe.

At first, Bush and Baker rejected suggestions for such a discussion because it might appear to legitimize Soviet involvement in determining the political limits in Poland and Hungary. But as it has become clear that the Soviets “don’t have a formula for Eastern Europe,” one official said, it became more desirable for the two sides “to discuss their concerns directly.”

“There’s a need for mutual reassurance,” Horelick noted. “Bush can reassure Gorbachev that he has no intention of seeking unilateral advantage (in the instability in Eastern Europe), and Gorbachev can reassure Bush of his new-found tolerance.”

There was one more factor in the Administration’s changing view, officials said: the frustration of George Bush himself, a man who likes to pick up the telephone and talk to the heads of other governments.

“He does put a high store in personal diplomacy,” a senior official said. “He clearly felt . . . that it was too long a time for him to wait to meet Gorbachev as president.”

Times staff writers Paul Houston and Robert C. Toth also contributed to this report.