World View : Summit ‘90--This Time the Focus Is on Conflict : With events pushing Gorbachev to the wall, the flood of Soviet concessions has halted. This week, he and Bush will discuss not detente but the issues--from Germany to Iran--that divide them.

When Presidents George Bush and Mikhail S. Gorbachev sit down Thursday morning to face each other across a small table in the Oval Office, their conversations will be dogged by the return of an element in the superpower relationship that recently had seemed obsolete: old-fashioned conflict.

From the closing months of Ronald Reagan’s presidency through the first 13 months of Bush’s term, in one decision after another, Gorbachev did mostly what U.S. officials hoped he would.

Then, in one tumultuous week this past March, all that began to change. The rush of events of Europe and inside the Soviet Union finally reached what Administration officials refer to as Gorbachev’s “bottom line.” A chill settled abruptly over the Kremlin’s accommodating attitude.

As a result, this week’s Bush-Gorbachev meetings will see an unwonted emphasis on areas of conflict and disagreement between the two superpowers.

“We were getting accustomed to an avalanche of Soviet concessions,” says Raymond L. Garthoff, a Soviet expert at Washington’ Brookings Institution. “We should have realized it couldn’t really continue forever.”

The inevitable end of the steady flow of Soviet concessions does not mean the Cold War has returned. The 45 years of intense ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union almost certainly are over if for no other reason than that few Soviets still believe in the ideology that once drove their society.

Moreover, the basic fear that drove the Cold War--the possibility that the Red Army could crash across the Central European frontier in a surprise attack--simply does not exist anymore, U.S. and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization military analysts say. So drastically changed is the military balance in Europe that even the sorts of potential Soviet moves Administration planners worry about--tanks crushing the independence moves in the Baltics, for example--are moves that might inflame public opinion in the United States, but not steps that would permanently upset superpower relations.

Indeed, as Bush said in a press conference Thursday, the Administration’s real concern now is “unpredictability” and “instability,” not war. Avoiding unpredictability, making sure that the top leadership of the two nations understand each others plans and motivations, is the chief reason Bush aides give for having frequent summit meetings. The meeting will be the seventh between the Soviet and American chiefs in the last five years, as many as in the previous 40 years combined. And yet another summit is likely to take place at year’s end.

As Administration officials prepare for the summit, their task is considerably harder than it was six months ago, in the period before the Bush-Gorbachev meeting in Malta.

At that point, American officials were still not entirely sure what Gorbachev and his allies were up to. But, as a practical matter they had little to do but “stand back and applaud quietly so as not to disturb anybody,” in the words of Michael Mandelbaum of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In the two years before the Malta meeting, Gorbachev had unilaterally pledged to remove Soviet troops from Warsaw Pact countries. He had pulled out of Afghanistan. He had promised to cut supplies of arms to Central American clients and he had signed a treaty to eliminate a large Soviet advantage in intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

In the most dramatic development of all, Gorbachev had refused to allow troops to put down the rebellions that toppled Soviet allies across Eastern Europe.

During all that time, virtually nothing Gorbachev did seemed to challenge U.S. interests. With the close of the Cold War, many confrontations that once brought the superpowers into conflict, either directly or through proxies, began to shut down, particularly in southern Africa, where the Soviets and the United States worked together to bring independence to Namibia, South Africa’s former colony, and a tentative opening toward peace in Angola. The decline of superpower rivalry also helped dampen the fires of war in Central America.

So, six months ago, the dominating question concerned not conflict, but cooperation--what could the United States do to make the restructuring under perestroika work?

On March 11, however, Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union, the first of three long-restive Baltic republics to do so. One week later, on March 18, East German voters elected a slate of conservatives pledged to swift unification with West Germany, largely on terms that would submerge their former Communist state into the West.

All of a sudden, Soviet leaders “began to see their whole position vis a vis the West start to crumble,” said Stephen P. Gilbert, a Soviet expert at Georgetown University.

The events of March replaced the ready flow of Soviet concessions with a harder Soviet line and a new emphasis on the areas where Soviet and American interests differ. As U.S. officials put the final touches on pre-summit plans, those areas of U.S.-Soviet conflict are once again at the top of the list.

The most important one on the summit agenda involves genuinely divergent interests between the two superpowers. It is also right where the center of confrontation was throughout the Cold War: Germany. With settlements already negotiated on strategic arms control and several other issues, the fate of Germany is likely to be the number one topic for the two leaders.

The Soviet interest ever since World War II, when German armies invaded Russian territory at a cost of millions of Soviet lives, has been to keep Germany subordinate and under control. East Germany was the Soviet Union’s most powerful ally in the Warsaw Pact but also its most rigidly dominated. Even now, the Soviets maintain more than 300,000 troops on East German soil, the descendants of the armies that captured Berlin at the end of the war and never went home.

The U.S. interest, by contrast, has been to create a strong and independent West Germany that could serve as the European bulwark of NATO, an alliance created to contain the Soviet threat.

Now, as the result of the March elections, East Germany’s new leaders are pledged to merge their country into the West. Already, the two German nations have agreed on an economic union to begin in July. Formal political union could come before the end of the year.

From the Soviet point of view, “the crown jewel of East Europe is moving over and becoming a part of the other alliance,” said a senior White House official. And that, he added, “has been just too much for them” to accept.

Bush and his aides argue that the Soviets and the United States can accommodate both their interests in the region. Administration officials say Bush hopes to persuade Gorbachev that the best way to maintain the Soviet aim of keeping Germany under control is by ensuring Germany is “firmly tied” into the only alliance that remains in Europe--NATO. But “it’s a tough issue,” the senior Administration official conceded.

The situation in Lithuania and its Baltic neighbors, Estonia and Latvia, also promises to play a prominent role during the Bush-Gorbachev talks. U.S. officials do not want to push Gorbachev too hard over the Baltics, afraid that too much American pressure might strengthen the Soviet conservatives who fear Gorbachev already has gone too far.

At the same time, the Administration wants to prevent a violent Soviet crackdown on Baltic independence movements, fearing the backlash such action might cause in the United States.

Among other potential areas of confrontation, the one most likely to come up during the summit meetings is Afghanistan--one of the “inherited” conflicts of an earlier, Cold War era that neither the United States nor the Soviets has figured out how to solve.

In the inherited cases, an Administration official said, the United States and the Soviets “have an objective reason for settling” the fights, but “it’s mechanically hard because the parties on the ground hate each other.” And the “parties on the ground” often can severely restrict the options of their superpower sponsors, he noted. “Great powers,” he said, “don’t want to go around ditching their allies.”

When the Soviets withdrew their troops from Afghan territory, many Administration policy-makers predicted U.S.-backed moujahedeen rebels would swiftly overthrow the Soviet-sponsored government. Those hopes have now been dashed. On the other hand, billions of rubles--U.S. officials estimate the Soviets are spending $300 million each month in Afghanistan--have not allowed the Najibullah government to expand his control much beyond Kabul, the capital, and a few other cities.

“We’re ready for a political settlement,” an Administration official said. “There’s a stalemate” now, and the only way out is “some sort of deal.”

Once, back before the Soviets withdrew their forces from Afghanistan, the U.S. proposed that each superpower simply pledge to cut off arms shipments to its side and stand back and let the Afghans, themselves, work out a settlement. The Soviets said no, fearing an aid cutoff would lead to Najibullah’s downfall.

Now, positions have switched. Both sides appear to believe a mutual arms cutoff would just perpetuate the current stalemate. Because of that, the Soviets are arguing for the arms ban. But the Administration fears conservatives would accuse Bush of selling out the Afghan rebels and now insists that Najibullah agree first to turn over power to a transitional government.

Many other conflicts could be discussed during the summit. Next door to Afghanistan, U.S. officials have grown concerned about recent Soviet sales of advanced arms to Iran. The United States worries about Soviet moves there that might, eventually, threaten U.S. access to the Persian Gulf and its oil. The Soviets, meantime, worry about Iran’s ability to spread Islamic fundamentalism among Muslim residents of Soviet Central Asia.

In the Middle East, both nations worry about an escalating arms race, even as each one continues to sell arms.

Further east, Bush is likely to remind Gorbachev that the United States still supports Japan’s demand that the Soviets return territory, formerly Japanese, that the Soviet army occupied at the end of World War II. The dispute over four small islands has prolonged the chill in Soviet-Japanese relations.

And in Cambodia, as in Afghanistan, the superpowers remain locked in a conflict largely because of the intransigence of each side’s allies.

Finally, the summit may also turn to one part of the world where a chance exists for renewed superpower cooperation. India and Pakistan have been on the verge of war over the disputed Indian province of Kashmir. In Moscow earlier this month, Secretary of State James A. Baker III asked Gorbachev to join Bush in a joint effort to persuade the two countries to withdraw their troops from their border. So far, Gorbachev has not agreed, but Bush is expected to renew the effort.

Hot Spots From Europe to the Mideast

GERMANY

Likely to be the prime topic at the summit. The Soviets have long been interested in keeping the eastern part of their old wartime enemy under control, and America has long favored a strong West German state. Now, with the Berlin Wall in fragments and the once-Communist East and capitalist West pledged to merge into a single Germany, Moscow is clearly fearful that the East Germans are moving out of its orbit.

THE BALTICS

The three Baltic republics--Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia--are pushing hard for independence from the Soviet federation, and Gorbachev is pushing back equally hard. Washington wants to prevent a violent crackdown but also wants to avoid strengthening Kremlin conservatives in their political battle with Gorbachev.

IRAN

Moscow has recently sold advanced arms to Tehran. Washington is worried about possible Soviet moves there that might eventually threaten U.S. access to the Persian Gulf. The Kremlin worries about Iran’s ability to spread Islamic fundamentalism among the Muslims of Soviet Central Asia.

MIDDLE EAST

Both the Soviets and Americans are concerned about the escalating arms race in the Middle East, but each continues to sell weapons there--the Soviets to Syria, Iraq and Jordan, the Americans to Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Lately, home-grown chemical weapons in a few countries have made the mixture even nastier, and at least one country--Iraq--has used them with devastating results. Finally, there is the specter of the atom: Israel has a nuclear capability, and a number of Arab countries are straining to acquire it.