U.S. Loses the Best Friend It Had in Kremlin : News ANALYSIS

With the surprise resignation of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the U.S. government lost the best friend it ever had in the Kremlin, a pivotal author of the post-Cold War Washington-Moscow partnership that stretched from Eastern Europe to the Persian Gulf.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III gamely predicted that Soviet foreign policy will remain unchanged because President Mikhail S. Gorbachev wants it that way. But Baker acknowledged that the U.S.-Soviet detente might not have developed as it did if Shevardnadze had not been running Moscow’s Foreign Ministry.

“President Gorbachev has said there will be no change as a consequence of this resignation in Soviet foreign policy,” Baker told a press conference devoted almost exclusively to Shevardnadze’s departure.

Baker seemed to be trying to put the best face on what, from Washington’s standpoint, could become a disastrous development.

Even if the next foreign minister adopts Shevardnadze’s policies wholesale, the internal divisions in the Soviet Union highlighted by the foreign minister’s stunning resignation could mean real trouble for future U.S.-Soviet relations.

Baker put aside his generally optimistic assessment to suggest that the world should take seriously Shevardnadze’s warning that the Soviet Union may be headed for dictatorship.

“We really are not in a position today . . . to absolutely guarantee that it (dictatorship) won’t be the case,” Baker said.

George Carver, former deputy director of the CIA, said, “Shevardnadze seems to be willing to put a warning shot across Gorbachev’s bow.

“If there is a major cat fight brewing in the inner circle of the Politburo, that will obviously affect U.S.-Soviet relations,” Carver said. “The stresses on the Soviet Union are such that the chances of major tears along major seams are getting greater every day.”

The sort of political instability highlighted by Shevardnadze’s resignation is a central concern of a new study of the Soviet economy due to be released today by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The two institutions advise against extensive Western financial aid to the Soviets “until we know who’s running the shop,” as one official familiar with the report put it.

The report was requested by the leaders of the world’s seven largest industrial democracies at their July summit meeting in Houston. It will provide the first detailed, internationally accepted set of statistics on the Soviet economy and, overall, portrays the nation in “very gloomy” terms, the official said. World Bank President Barber Conable and IMF Executive Director Michel Camdessus delivered the report to President Bush in a White House meeting Thursday morning. Until Shevardnadze’s successor is selected, there will be no way to assess the full impact of the change. But there seems to be no one on the scene with Shevardnadze’s prestige or forceful personality.

“Will Shevardnadze’s successor have the same standing with Gorbachev to allow him to overrule the military or to cooperate with the United States in the Persian Gulf?” asked Dimitri Simes, a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “If Shevardnadze’s desperation is justified, if indeed there is a profound crisis in the Soviet Union, then all relations with the Soviet Union are in doubt.”

Simes, a Soviet emigre, said that Gorbachev’s government does not have the same clear-cut division of responsibility that exists in the U.S. Cabinet. Therefore, he said, it is not possible to be sure how much influence Shevardnadze had over Kremlin policy. But from Moscow’s reaction to the Persian Gulf crisis, Shevardnadze’s influence seems to have been profound.

Ever since Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, Baker and Shevardnadze have worked together to orchestrate international solidarity against Saddam Hussein. Throughout the crisis, Shevardnadze has offered staunch support for the U.S. belief that military force may have to be used to end Iraq’s occupation. At the same time, Gorbachev has shown much more reluctance to condone military action.

Last October, Shevardnadze said in an American television interview that if the U.N. Security Council authorized the use of force in the gulf, the Soviet Union would send troops to participate. The comments produced a storm of criticism in the newly democratic Soviet Parliament, and Shevardnadze immediately disowned his own comments.

“Shevardnadze was on board with the idea that the United States might have to use military force in the gulf,” said Raymond L. Garthoff, a former State Department expert on the Soviet Union who is now a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Gorbachev, while not ruling out force, had been hoping to avoid that possibility.”

It is probably unlikely that Gorbachev will reverse Soviet support for U.S. policy in the gulf at this late date. But Moscow’s backing may become somewhat less outspoken.

In the 23-month tenure of the Bush Administration, Baker and Shevardnadze held 25 formal meetings, nine of them since Iraq invaded Kuwait less than five months ago. In a very real sense, the U.S.-Soviet relationship has become the Baker-Shevardnadze relationship.

“On a purely personal note, I am going to miss him,” Baker said.

Asked if he had staked too much on his friendship with Shevardnadze, Baker said: “We have not risked anything because we have developed a good personal relationship with the foreign minister of the Soviet Union. . . . Our policy toward the Soviet Union does not rest on personalities, never has, still doesn’t.”

Maybe not. But even under the most favorable circumstances, it will take some time for Baker and a new foreign minister to develop the same rapport that made the Baker-Shevardnadze relationship so smooth.

And it was with obvious pride that Baker cited some of the results of his partnership with Shevardnadze: peaceful democratization of the previously Communist regimes of Eastern Europe; reunification of Germany and U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the Persian Gulf.

“Without trying in any way to suggest that there was any difference between President Gorbachev and Minister Shevardnadze, because I don’t think there was, I’m not sure that (those results) would have happened had he not been foreign minister of the Soviet Union,” Baker said.

Under the supervision of Baker and Shevardnadze, U.S. and Soviet negotiators have wrapped up 95% of a new treaty reducing by at least one-third the U.S. and Soviet arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons. Bush and Gorbachev hope to sign the pact at a summit meeting in Moscow in February.

Baker said he does not expect Shevardnadze’s resignation to derail the arms talks.