MAKING WAVES, REMAKING WORLDS : Malta: Marking the meeting where superpower prospects for cooperation outweigh competition.

The Malta summit was clearly a success for both Presidents George Bush and Mikhail S. Gorbachev. They placed U.S.- Soviet relations on a more even keel. Yet the inability of superpower leaders to control, or even foresee, the buffeting storm that compelled a change in plans seemed to symbolize the limits of their power in dealing with such elemental political changes as those now sweeping Europe.

In historical perspective, Malta may come to be seen as the first post-Cold War meeting to create a new relationship between East and West, a new Europe, even a new world. The summit did not “end the Cold War,” but illuminated a maturing in which prospects for cooperation outweigh continuing superpower competition.

Malta has not been the only significant summit. For all its overdramatization, the first Richard M. Nixon-Leonid I. Brezhnev summit in 1972 opened up a prospective detente. Though it was unsustained, it was a foundation. The first Ronald Reagan-Gorbachev summit, in 1985, marked a change from the confrontation of the early 1980s--a shift only Reagan could have managed without sharp domestic struggle. The Reagan-Gorbachev summits renewed a process Bush and Gorbachev can carry further.

While Malta marks a step forward, the future management of East-West relations will increasingly depend on Europeans rather than superpowers.

For all their historical and cultural ties to Europe, and their geopolitical clout, the United States and the Soviet Union remain peripheral to the heart of Europe. Neither can exclude the other from Europe--as people on both sides have tried in the past. Even today, some, blinded by Cold War thinking, argue that Gorbachev is trying to divide the United States from Europe, when it is patently clear he wants the United States in Europe. This is far from the last bilateral superpower summit, but the future will ineluctably bring multilateral summits.

Bush was not called on at Malta to respond to Gorbachev’s earlier proposal for an early summit meeting of leaders from 35 nations, all joined in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). But both Gorbachev and Bush saw the CSCE process as the framework for dealing with the issue of German reunification.

The creation of a new security regime for Europe is also a growing requirement as military force has become less central to security. Judging from his post-summit comments at Brussels, Bush apparently does not yet see as clearly as Gorbachev the new role the two alliances can play in cooperatively contributing to achieve mutual security--but the process is under way. And Bush did suggest joint U.S. and Soviet support for convening a multilateral summit to sign a Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) agreement once negotiated, preferably in 1990.

Malta was originally billed as an “interim summit” and, for all its symbolic significance, it was. No agreements were concluded, or even negotiated. Yet the meeting provided for a joint resolve to press ahead on the strategic-arms negotiations (START), an interim U.S.-Soviet agreement to cut chemical weapons arsenals and the CFE conference.

Gorbachev’s proposal to open negotiations on global naval-arms control and, in particular, to ban tactical nuclear weapons at sea, did not gain Bush’s acceptance. The issue will not, however, fade away. Gorbachev also raised the subject of military doctrine--an item not in Bush’s brief, but on the agenda for experts’ talks in February in the CSCE framework. These talks will probably spur a discussion of “deterrence” and may well spark some controversy before yielding greater mutual understanding.

Bush seems more optimistic than others--more than Secretary of State James A. Baker III and even Gorbachev--on the possibility of completing START negotiations by mid-June. But a jump-start to revive negotiations is in order even if agreement cannot be reached by June--and, of course, with enough will it could.

In U.S.-Soviet affairs, the focus at Malta was economic. Bush took the initiative by doing what he could to bolster the Soviet economy. He offered steps to normalize trade relations by granting most-favored-nation status. He also promised to seek the end of legislative bars to credits--though the size of future credits may not be large. More broadly, Bush promised to support Soviet observer status in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade--bringing Moscow into the world economic structure. Gorbachev was clearly pleased.

The area of greatest uncertainty at Malta involved “regional conflicts”--the pockets of geopolitical friction between allies and clients of the two superpowers. Most noted has been the matter of Nicaragua sending arms to insurgents in El Salvador--but the differing views, while real, were limited. Gorbachev agreed with Bush on free elections in Nicaragua, on opposing the transfer of arms to Salvadoran rebels and on resolving conflicts by political means.

Gorbachev said the Nicaraguans had assured the Soviets they were not sending arms. Bush insisted, with good basis, that the Nicaraguans were--but accepted Gorbachev’s account and blamed Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega for lying. (Bush may have been aware of the discovery, from recently captured SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles, that these were not manufactured in the Soviet Union.)

The two leaders agreed on supporting peace efforts in Lebanon. Bush evidently urged Gorbachev to establish relations with Israel--already in the works. They agreed that exchanges of intelligence and other cooperation against international terrorism are useful.

Much was done. But the most important result is a rapport evident in the leaders’ collaborative fielding of questions at the unprecedented, and unplanned, joint press conference.

Those who have criticized the summit as a “giveaway” by Bush are wrong on all counts. He didn’t “give up” pursuit of conventional-force reductions nor “give in” by reviving START-CFE as a multilateral negotiation. Gorbachev has already made major concessions in CFE and obviously wants it; START is no less a U.S. interest than a Soviet one. The U.S. steps toward normalizing economic relations are due.

Bush has clearly decided that to aid Gorbachev is in the interests of the United States and the world, as well as the Soviet Union. That is no “giveaway.” It is new thinking by Bush in response to new thinking, and deeds, by Gorbachev--and should be welcomed. At Brussels, Bush himself emphasized that Gorbachev’s response to the situation in Eastern Europe and his readiness to accept disproportionately larger conventional-arms reductions in Europe “deserves” and “mandates” new thinking on our part. A competition in new thinking would be a more significant result of Malta than dramatic rhetoric couched to sound like more than it really meant.