Sound Objective Toward a Worthy Goal : East Europe: The West can best promote change by favoring countries that enact reforms while minimizing contact with those that do not.

When President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev hold their first summit next month, one of the main topics of discussion will be Eastern Europe. Few concrete results are likely to emerge from the summit, but the very fact that Eastern Europe will command such attention is an indication of how rapidly the post-1945 global political order is changing.

Events that would have been unthinkable only a year or two ago have created enormous uncertainty about the future of Eastern Europe and have posed new challenges for Western governments. Any viable Western strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union under Gorbachev will have to include an effective approach toward the East European countries.

Western goals in Eastern Europe are relatively easy to define: far-reaching political liberalization with a minimum of violent disruption and a reduced likelihood of war between the Warsaw Pact and the Atlantic Alliance. The hard part comes in trying to devise policies that will promote these objectives.

In the past, Western influence on East European politics was virtually nil. Even today, the United States and its allies will have only a limited part to play in fostering liberalization. The main impetus for change in Eastern Europe will have to come from the local states and the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, if reformist trends in Moscow are not derailed over the next several years, the United States will have a greater opportunity for a positive role than at any time in the past. On such an important matter, even a marginal difference would be worth the effort.

Politically, Western governments can best promote change in Eastern Europe by favoring the countries that enact far-reaching reforms while minimizing contact with those that do not. Official and unofficial meetings, cultural and religious exchanges and scientific cooperation should be commensurate with the degree of liberalization in a given country. This is not to say that the United States should wholly ignore countries that fail to undertake significant reforms, but the disparity in treatment should be unambiguous.

The same applies to Western economic relations with Eastern Europe. The weaknesses of the East European economies are so pervasive and deeply entrenched that even vast infusions of Western assistance will be of no avail in the long run unless the local states carry out sweeping, market-oriented reforms. Hence, Western economic support will be beneficial only if it contributes to, and is contingent on, systemic reforms.

Direct investment by private Western firms and banks will be the most important source of economic aid for Eastern Europe, but Western governments can play a key role in encouraging private investors and in helping to channel funds to the East European states that have undertaken genuine reforms.

Select arms-control measures will also be valuable in facilitating internal change in Eastern Europe. The reductions envisaged under the negotiations on conventional forces in Europe will require the Soviet Union to cut its troop presence in Eastern Europe by one-half and its tank deployments by as much as two-thirds. Reductions of this magnitude will not only ease Soviet military control over the Warsaw Pact, but would also provide concrete evidence of Soviet intentions not to interfere in other states’ domestic affairs.

In pursuing these political, economic and arms-control measures, Western governments should be mindful of the need for discretion. So long as current trends in Soviet policy continue, the West should refrain from actively enticing states like Hungary and Poland to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Such actions will almost certainly be futile and counterproductive. Events are already moving in such an auspicious direction that restraint and patience on the part of NATO will be the best policy.

It should be emphasized, again, that Western influence on Eastern Europe and on Soviet-East European relations will be limited at best. Complex internal developments in both the Soviet Union and the East European countries will ultimately determine the future of the region.

Nevertheless, by adopting a careful mix of policies, the United States and its allies can, at least marginally, encourage sweeping reforms that will help forestall serious, destabilizing crises. Should that be the case, the positive trends in Soviet-East European relations over the past few years could prove to be a lasting phenomenon.