NEWS ANALYSIS : U.S. Struggles to Forge New East Bloc Policy

“You could say that we’ve won,” a senior U.S. official remarked.

“Our policy of ‘differentiation’ in Eastern Europe--of treating each nation differently depending on how they behaved--has succeeded. Or at least, it’s been (overtaken by events). In either case, now we need a new construct, a new concept that embraces the region as a whole.”

Indeed, the remarkable changes that brought down the six regimes of the East Bloc in 1989 have also created a compelling need for a new U.S. foreign policy.

But only in coming weeks and months will the quest get the attention it deserves from the broader bureaucracy, according to officials.

“Nobody wants to tear up his old policies before he has to,” explained one official, “and there is governmental inertia to overcome. And so far, the President has not been hot for a new policy.”

Without a broad new approach soon, officials see several possible problems:

-- That each U.S. agency, the Congress and private U.S. companies will go their own way on such issues as economic aid to individual East European nations. This could create inconsistent and confusing precedents that could be contrary to whatever U.S. policy eventually emerges.

-- That West European allies will move smartly in directions or at a pace contrary to American interests. West German efforts toward reunification with East Germany provide a good example of such risks.

-- That the flurry of democratic elections in the Eastern Europe in coming months, beginning in March in Hungary, will require a more coherent and fine-tuned U.S. strategy toward the kinds of parties and leaders it would like to see win there and toward the new governments when they emerge.

Certainly President Bush will want to have a more concrete policy than at present when Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev comes to the Washington summit in June.

“The keys to the future of Eastern Europe,” said one U.S. analyst, “are the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Gorbachev provides an active permissive function by not intervening, but the West must supply the wherewithal in money, short- and long-term. And the United States will be the most influential single player even though we are a bit strapped (for funds) just now.”

A multitude of issues face U.S. policy-makers. They include how to help Eastern Europe integrate economically into Western Europe and how to control a reunified Germany that might seek to fill part of the power vacuum being left by the Soviets.

The State Department, anticipating a White House request, has tentatively begun to examine what the United States might do in the region. Of two papers that have been written on the subject, one deals with resources that can be committed there.

“Not much,” one official remarked, as the piddling U.S. contribution of $500,000 to Romanian relief showed.

The second paper describes barriers to trade, including imports and high technology exports, as well as other economic sanctions against the former Soviet satellites.

The complexities still to be considered were evident in the statements of a State Department official.

“Obviously, after the dust settles, we want an Eastern Europe of independent democratic states, with mixed (private and public) economies and tied as loosely as we can get away with to the Warsaw Pact,” the official said. The pact links the defenses of East Bloc nations.

The official continued:

“But we have to think about how that region should look to best serve U.S. interests. What should our attitude be if Hungary decides to leave the Warsaw Pact and form a confederacy of sorts with neutral Austria? And should we think about creating a new ‘Little Entente’?” he asked provocatively.

The Little Entente was the pre-World War II agreement in which France and Britain promised protection to Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia in an effort to prevent attack by the remilitarized Italy and Germany. It collapsed when, to appease Hitler, they agreed to his annexation of part of Czechoslovakia.

“That’s not such a frivolous question,” another U.S. official expert said about the Little Entente. “Why do you think France has already gotten so deeply involved in Romania? Paris is already thinking in these terms.”

After Moscow’s takeover of East European states following World War II, U.S. policy was to treat the region as a monolithic adjunct of the Soviet Union. But as individual nations began taking lines different from the Soviet Union, U.S. policy was to differentiate between those states, with rewards calibrated to their independence from the Soviet Union.

Thus, Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania became Washington’s favorite East European state in the mid-196Os. Ceausescu’s maverick foreign policy included retaining ties with Israel and refusing to exercise the Romanian army with the Warsaw Pact. In return, Romania received most-favored-nation trading status from Washington.

Human rights and economic reform were gradually added to the criteria, until by the mid-1980s, foreign policy ceased being the main measure for judging those nations. Treatment of dissidents and minorities and efforts at internal economic and political reforms became more important.

Using these standards, Romania was eclipsed by Poland, which in 1989 became the first East European state led by a non-Communist government, and by Hungary, which moved more broadly toward economic and political pluralism as its Communist Party collapsed.

With the extraordinary revolutions at the end of 1989, a non-Communist government took power in Czechoslovakia, Romania has ousted and executed Ceausescu and is now run by reformist Communists who disavow the ideology, and the Communist parties that ostensibly still run East Germany and Bulgaria are a shambles.

Officials caution that the policy of differentiation should not be discarded, however, for it recognizes that each state in Eastern Europe will continue to have an individual identity in U.S. eyes. For example, Poland always gets more U.S. aid than Hungary because, in large part, its Polish-American supporters are more numerous and more politically active.

Each nation there will also have different relations with the Soviet Union in the future. Poland is far more important to Soviet security concerns than Hungary, and it will presumably have some kind of long-term security ties with Moscow whatever happens to the Warsaw Pact.

Officials also noted that efforts to devise a comprehensive U.S. strategy must avoid the temptation to seek large-scale integration of the region as a whole into Western Europe or to push Eastern Europe toward regional collaboration. The populaces have widely different levels of industrial skills, political skills and living standards.

East Germany and Czechoslovakia will be easier to bring into the European Community than Romania and Bulgaria, one official said.

“The economic disparity between the Netherlands and Portugal shows it’s possible for countries at such extremes to both be members,” he said, “but it won’t be fast or easy for some East European states.”

As the United States gropes beyond differentiation, a few guideposts seem to have already been laid down by the Bush Administration. Presumably, they will be incorporated into any new strategy.

Key among these is that the Warsaw Pact, although emptied of its military threat, should stay in place for the time being, along with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, one official said. The pact continues to be important for coordinating the attitudes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe on cuts in conventional military forces now being negotiated with NATO in Vienna.

Another existing U.S. position is that German reunification should not occur too quickly. According to that position, the four victorious powers of World War II--Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States--still have “rights” that the two Germanys must take into account.

A nascent economic organization for aiding individual East European states and more closely associating them with Western Europe already exists in the Group of 24, created at the last economic summit.