Odd Trio Trying to Fit Under the Tent : Washington, Moscow and Bonn Need to Work It Out

For more than 40 years, Europe prospered peacefully in the eerie glow of the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now, in a poignant new role for the superpowers, both are scrambling for a share in the leadership that Germany is certain to exert in a post-Cold War Europe determined to let the lines between East and West fade into history.

Making certain that both get something out of their scramble is important not only to the superpowers but to the stability of a new Europe that now must invent ways to keep the peace without the eerie glow.

For the Kremlin, the stakes are so high that the outcome could determine whether a generation of reformers trying to steer their country into the mainstream of industrial democracies after 70 crippling years of communism can survive.

For the United States, the stakes are high but not quite that dramatic. A place in the European sun, preferably just beyond the looming shadow of Germany, is important if Americans are to mediate disputes bound to arise as Europe fashions new political and economic bonds. A presence is also important to assure the rest of Europe that a unified Germany is no threat. It is important financially to be deeply involved on the Continent while the 12 member nations of the European Community pool their industrial and agricultural strengths in 1992.

Sharing also means maintaining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as Europe’s main peacekeeping force and holding Germany inside NATO for as long as possible. NATO probably cannot last forever, as President Bush now understands, because both Europe and the Soviet Union have their own ideas of what security structures will stabilize the Continent, and NATO seems too archaic to be among them. But Washington can postpone any major changes in European security until it is clear that Eastern Europe and Moscow have settled down. Bush’s call for a summit on reshaping European security is a way of buying time for NATO.

Moscow’s needs are both greater and more complicated. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is said to have joked to another head of state last year that the day after headlines proclaimed a unified Germany, the next day’s headlines would name the Soviet general who had taken Gorbachev’s place. The story is probably apocryphal, but it is no joke. Twenty million Russians died during the German invasion of World War II and if they are united on nothing else, Soviets are determined that it will not happen again. This places severe limits on Gorbachev’s freedom to watch Germany reunited without some assurances of peaceful intention. But he must walk a careful line because he also needs the technical and economic aid that Germany can offer as well as the expanded trade that should logically follow--assuming the Soviet Union’s economy does not collapse in the meantime.

Finally, the Soviet Union now understands that its best hope of prospering is not to build barriers against Western Europe but to tear them down. That cannot happen if Europe, in turn, shuts out Moscow.

Sensitive to Moscow’s many dilemmas, Europe is already talking about creating a new mutual security tent big enough to cover both East and West. That is the bandwagon that Bush not only is jumping aboard but hoping to guide with his summer summit. The West had its chance to cheer last year, watching communism crumble in Eastern Europe. From now on, keeping Europe in delicate balance will be like inching along narrow mountain ledges. It is no place to be cheering.