Next Step : Domestic Issues Place Shackles on Soviet Foreign Policy : Conservatives are using the turmoil at home to rebuild their influence and power to attack Gorbachev where he is vulnerable. Limits are placed on his ‘new political thinking.’

For Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the issues in the Persian Gulf crisis are clear and beyond challenge: Iraq occupied its neighbor Kuwait against all international laws, and under an unprecedented series of United Nations resolutions the world community is demanding that Iraq withdraw--or face eviction by military force.

But a curious debate has developed in Soviet politics around the government’s position. Should the Soviet Union participate in that armed action? Should it send troops, ships and planes to join the multinational forces? What are its international obligations?

“Not a single Soviet soldier should go,” Col. Viktor I. Alksknis, a deputy in the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, and a leader of the conservative Soyuz faction in parliament, declared when the question was still open. “This is not our war . . . our people remember Afghanistan.”

Alksnis prevailed, and that conservative victory marked important shifts in Soviet foreign policy.

Soviet foreign policy clearly became a function of the country’s increasingly rough domestic politics. Conservatives are now using it to rebuild their influence and power and to attack Gorbachev where he is vulnerable.

Limits were placed on “new political thinking,” as Gorbachev has called his dramatically different foreign policy, and its boldness constrained for the future.

And the Soviet-American alliance developed by Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze over the past five years, and so evident in his cooperation with Secretary of State James A. Baker III in the gulf crisis, was reduced in scope and intensity.

“Soviet foreign policy has entered a different stage,” Stanislav Kondrashov, a respected political commentator for the liberal newspaper Izvestia, said last week. “Most of the big things have been done--not all of them well, but anyway done. Now, there are other issues, some bolstering the gains of ‘new political thinking’ and others where we must correct our mistakes . . .

“ ‘New political thinking’ was a new truth for us, and it allowed us to see the whole world from different perspectives. But political truths are only good for a limited time, for specific circumstances, and there is a point where this new truth does not cover everything. A change is coming and is even overdue.”

In this context, Alksnis’ insistence on not committing Soviet forces to the Middle East was, in reality, a fundamental challenge to Shevardnadze, whose subsequent resignation was evidence of the right’s growing political strength.

Why, Alksnis was asking, is the Soviet Union, which is still a socialist state, aligning itself with the capitalist West against Iraq, a longtime ally, in a cause of limited importance to itself?

Even more to the point, why was the Soviet Union so readily subordinating its interests to those of the United States, and why was Moscow allowing Washington to dominate the international scene and do so with its support?

“If we and the Americans get together and bring peace, it is one thing, but if we help them make war that is quite another,” Alksnis commented last week. “We have our problems, undeniably so, but we remain a great and powerful nation whose strength will increase as we reassert our fundamental principles.”

But it was enough for Alksnis and Shevardnadze’s other critics to say “Afghanistan” to block any Soviet involvement in a gulf war. The memory of the Soviet Union’s decade-long war in Afghanistan remains fresh and painful, and Shevardnadze, who had left open the possibility of participation in a U.N. force, quickly retreated.

“For military officers who won their promotions in Afghanistan, who never opposed that war and who are true hawks today to use Afghanistan to criticize our foreign policy . . . is sheer hypocrisy,” a Shevardnadze aide commented this month.

“It is galling to hear policies that got us out of Afghanistan--and that are intended to prevent future Afghanistans--criticized by people who supported our intervention there. But that is politics, and today our politics question everything.”

Even those policies that had brought the Soviet Union so much praise in the West--and helped win Gorbachev the Nobel Peace Prize last year--are being questioned in the turbulence of today’s Soviet politics:

* Who “lost” Eastern Europe, which has now largely turned westward, away from the Soviet Union politically and economically?

* Did Moscow not agree “too cheaply” to German reunification last autumn? Could Soviet negotiators not have struck a better “bargain,” getting more German economic aid for Moscow and greater security guarantees?

* Has Soviet security not been weakened by the treaty, signed in November, reducing conventional forces in Europe?

* Has the Soviet desire for better relations with the United States led it to abandon old friends and to support policies that are inimical to its interests?

* If the Soviet Union signs the proposed treaty with the United States reducing their strategic arsenals, can the Americans be trusted not to start on a new generation of weapons?

“A rethink is under way, and it will bring some changes in policy and in the way policy is made,” Vitaly I. Goldansky, chairman of the Soviet Pugwash Committee and a member of the Supreme Soviet’s international affairs committee, commented in an interview. “There is a feeling among many, even liberals, that we have sold ourselves, and sold ourselves too cheaply at that . . .

“These are really feelings that touch on national humiliation. Many in the older generation, for example, believe we have lost our victory in World War II through the developments in Eastern Europe, that we have given up our laurels . . .

“Others realize that we have lost the Cold War. This is true, and although that may be a good thing for us and the world both, to admit it openly is again a national humiliation.”

These themes recur increasingly in foreign policy discussions, and foreign policy increasingly is a point of contention in Soviet politics.

“Even before Gorbachev, a leader was attacked where he was vulnerable, whether it was the economy or agriculture or corruption or political dissent,” a political scientist who works at Communist Party headquarters said last week. “Gorbachev has become vulnerable, rather unexpectedly so, on foreign policy, and the attack is on.”

The immediate targets are the treaty on German reunification and the agreement on reducing convention armed forces in Europe, both of which must be ratified by the Supreme Soviet and both of which are drawing heavy criticism from conservative lawmakers and foreign policy commentators. Although not yet signed, the Soviet-American treaty that would reduce the superpowers’ nuclear arsenals by a third or more is also meeting opposition.

“The way these treaties were negotiated was, as we say, ‘dogs fighting under the carpet,’ ” Goldansky said. “We do not know what happened at what stage of preparation and how we gained by what we gave. That only adds to the suspicion that what our soldiers won with blood our diplomats are giving away at tea.”

The treaty on German reunification will be strongly opposed in the Supreme Soviet, according to lawmakers. Efforts will be made to amend it through accompanying resolutions, and Germany will probably be asked for even more assistance than the $13 billion it has already agreed to provide.

“The generals are absolutely against this treaty, and so are people in the party Central Committee,” Goldansky said. “Ratification will cost Gorbachev a lot. But even the debate could damage our relations with Germany, for much will be said about the war, about the manner of unification, about past threats and future threats.”

The treaty on reducing conventional armed forces in Europe is already the focus of considerable controversy here over whether the generals lied to the political leadership about how many tanks the Soviet Union had, where they were, and whether this apparent deceit was justified to protect the country.

In vituperative attacks on Shevardnadze and the Soviet Foreign Ministry, conservatives are strongly backing the military in its hurried shift last year of an estimated 20,694 tanks, 25,000 artillery pieces and 15,500 other armored vehicles east of the Ural Mountains, removing them from the treaty’s jurisdiction.

The United States and NATO are accusing the Soviet Union of effectively cheating on the treaty, which calls for the destruction of these weapons, and a senior Western diplomat here said last week that the matter would affect other arms control agreements, including that on strategic arms.

Writing in the right-wing newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya last week, a conservative economist said Soviet negotiators had gone too far in the East-West conventional arms reduction treaty, and he blamed “the desire of the Foreign Ministry, as soon as possible and before the (East-West) Paris summit (last November), to prepare this treaty.

“A colossal amount of military equipment had to be destroyed with corresponding expenditures that our economy simply could not afford. That is why the military, trying to somehow to make up for the miscalculation of our diplomacy, organized this removal behind the Urals of thousands of tanks, artillery and other equipment -- there at least they would not be destroyed.”

And even before the final details of the Soviet-American agreement on strategic arms are settled, the treaty is under attack by senior generals and officials of the Soviet military-industrial complex, according to Goldansky, who, as one of the country’s top-ranking scientists, takes part in discussions of long-term strategic programs.

“The treaty will be signed, and it will be ratified,” he said. “But the generals are even now looking for ways they can have more warheads than the agreement envisions, they are putting the arguments for new classes of missiles, and they are insisting on plans of our own to counter an American ‘break-out’ from the treaty.

“Two years ago, they would not have dared to defy Gorbachev’s will so openly. They would plot and they would snipe, but they would not challenge. The president has been weakened politically, and he is vulnerable on the issue of national security.”

But Kondrashov suggested that the Gorbachev-Shevardnadze policies have also been undercut by their implementation. In negotiating the most recent treaties, there was a clear “shortage of wisdom and strength,” Kondrashov said, and little account was taken of the need for winning public acceptance here.

“The question of national dignity is almost metaphysical,” Kondrashov commented, “but it must be an essential element of foreign policy. The developments of the past year--the changes in Eastern Europe, the return of our forces from there, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the unification of Germany--all happened at such a pace that we appeared to ourselves to be on the run and able only to react. Naturally, there is a backlash.”

Georgy A. Arbatov, the director of the USA Institute, a major Soviet think tank, sees the military-industrial complex taking advantage of this shift in the country’s political mood in efforts to preserve its power and reverse perestroika, Gorbachev’s program of political and economic reforms.

Assessing the struggle over the country’s 1991 military budget, Arbatov said that conservatives, many of them from the military-industrial complex and some of them officers, had used all the old Cold War rhetoric and invoked the “enemy image” of the West and the United States to thwart efforts by liberals to cut the budget and transfer most of the money saved to education, health and housing programs.

“The opponents of perestroika and the new Soviet foreign policy are trying to use the natural discontent and alarm (in the army over poor living conditions) to turn back the direction of events,” Arbatov said last week.

“They have become even more active recently in trying to slander and discredit everybody who speaks of the shortcomings and self-indulgence in the military. Some of those mouthpieces of militarism engage in open blackmail--of our parliament, politicians, even the president.”

Liberals, such as Arbatov and Goldansky, see Gorbachev under mounting pressure from the right--the army, the KGB security police, the Interior Ministry, Communist Party apparatchiks--and moving in their direction in order to maintain a political base broad enough to govern.

“To preserve perestroika and retain the leadership, he is willing now to sacrifice those to his left, such as Shevardnadze,” Goldansky said. “Next, he may be willing to yield on certain issues, and policy shifts will follow.

“But I think he is miscalculating because there will come a day when he cannot please the right, whatever he does. And what becomes then of ‘new political thinking’ and perestroika? “

Hardliners Pose Difficult Questions

* Who lost Eastern Europe?

* Did Moscow exact too low a price for agreeing to German reunification?

* Isn’t Soviet security threatened by too deep cuts in conventional arms?

* Can the Americans be trusted not to launch some new generation of weapons?

* Is the Kremlin giving up too much to make friends with Washington?