World View : All Was Not Lost for Gorbachev in His Peace Effort : Analysts are impressed by the way Moscow worked closely with a range of countries, including past ideological foes.

By the goal that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had set himself--halting the war in the Persian Gulf--his dramatic mediation effort failed.

Although Gorbachev felt he was within reach of the concessions he would need from Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein to satisfy the United States, in the end he was unable, despite a weekend of telephone calls, to persuade President Bush and other Western leaders to accept the Soviet peace proposal.

Yet, Gorbachev’s effort did make Moscow the focus of world diplomacy last week. More important, it demonstrated that even as a “downsized superpower,” the Soviet Union wields considerable influence and that it is determined to use that influence in what is quickly becoming the latest arena of international competition: shaping the “new world order.”

While they didn’t succeed in stopping the ground war, foreign policy analysts say the Kremlin’s efforts were both impressive as international crisis management and instructive in suggesting the degree of difference between Soviet and American interests in the Middle East and elsewhere.

“We have our own approach to international issues, and throughout the Gulf crisis you have been able to see it in action,” a senior Soviet diplomat commented. “We were criticized for a time as being ‘yes men’ for the Americans. Then, we were accused of obstructing the U.S., and I wouldn’t be surprised if some Arabs see us as bullying Iraq. . . .

“The point is that, in the multipolar world we now have, no one country will call the shots, not even the United States. In the Soviet Union, we don’t want even to try. . . . We will both uphold our principles and pursue our interests in establishing the new world order that everyone wants.”

“We can’t build a new world order on the ruins of Baghdad,” said Sergei Grigoriev, Gorbachev’s deputy press secretary, in explaining the 11th-hour mediation effort. “Our motivation was that straightforward--we did not want to see so many lives lost. We felt that a new world order must, if at all possible, be built peacefully.”

As Moscow’s diplomatic contacts grew in velocity and seriousness, Grigoriev’s boss, presidential press secretary Vitaly N. Ignatenko, denied U.S. suggestions that the Kremlin was buying time for Hussein, an old ally, and maneuvering for its own advantage.

“As a great power and a member of the U.N. Security Council, the Soviet Union believes that it is obliged to seek a settlement of this conflict, which began with Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait,” Ignatenko said. “We do not have a mandate as a mediator, but we do have an obligation to use all our influence to secure implementation of the U.N. resolutions.”

The way in which Moscow set about using that influence, however, was carefully calculated not only to bring about a Gulf settlement but to shape the postwar Middle East and assure the Soviet Union’s position there as the one great power able to talk to everyone in the region.

“Some Soviet motives undoubtedly were noble, but their actions were not entirely altruistic,” commented Margot Light, a specialist on Soviet foreign policy at the London School of Economics. “International crises shape policies as much and at times even more than doctrine, and this was such a case.

“Moscow was pushed into deciding where it stood and why, and what it could and would do, and its attempt at mediation in the Gulf could become a model for Soviet behavior in other regions, other crises,” Light said. “The Soviets would undoubtedly see it as the logical extension of their ‘new political thinking’ from the East-West confrontation to other conflicts.”

As a first case study in the new Soviet style of international crisis management, Moscow’s mediation effort impressed foreign policy analysts on several counts:

* In its search for a peace formula in the Persian Gulf, the Soviet Union found itself working closely with a wide range of countries, including past ideological foes, which accepted its attempt as a good-faith effort. Although Washington fumed about Moscow’s “meddling,” as one senior White House official put it, most countries welcomed Gorbachev’s peacemaking.

* Perhaps the most surprising partner was Iran, which until a year ago cursed the Soviet Union with nearly the same vehemence with which it denounced the United States. Although the two countries had already begun to improve their relations, this cooperation showed a new Soviet ability to form quick, common-cause alliances.

* Although inexperienced in slick image projection, Moscow appealed with considerable frequency and success to world public opinion in order to build support for the initiative and put pressure on the Bush Administration and other Western governments.

* Moscow demonstrated as well that Soviet diplomacy, for many years a joke for its ham-fistedness, is now as sophisticated and competent as any. And Gorbachev’s near success, coming amid his country’s own political and economic crisis, reminded those ready to write him off that he remains a formidable figure.

What the mediation effort also brought out was the degree of divergence between the Soviet Union and the United States in their approaches to many international issues.

After increasing cooperation on resolving a number of regional conflicts--in Afghanistan, Namibia, Cambodia, Angola and Central America--as well as in ending the Cold War division of Europe, both Moscow and Washington had felt an active partnership developing on the basis of shared views on many issues and an increasing ability to collaborate.

In the long lead time to the start of the Gulf War six weeks ago, however, the Soviet Union came to realize that the two superpowers still have many international interests that are very different and that they take markedly different approaches to a number of problems.

As civilian casualties mounted in Baghdad from the U.S. bombing campaign, the veteran political commentator Stanislav Kondrashov, writing in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia, reminded people that the Soviet Union had implicitly agreed to the deaths by voting for the U.N. resolution permitting the use of military force.

“Our conscience is troubling us today because in this slaughter we have found ourselves on the same side with the murderers,” Kondrashov said. “We now have the experience of the first phases of the Soviet-American alliance in the post-Cold War epoch. This experience is a hard one. . . .

“Our policy cannot merge entirely with that of the West, as we mistakenly believed. I am sure that this first hard experience of alliance with Washington will be subjected to exhaustive analysis.”

“The Americans, it seems, simply want to go to war, to solve this problem militarily,” stated Col. Nikolai Petrushenko, a prominent conservative in the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature. “In my opinion, this is not morally correct, and we have cause to fear such a major war near us. . . .

“But we also can see that the United States, feeling itself the victor of the Cold War and the policeman of the world, proceeds from a different philosophy in addressing international problems. . . . We must ask ourselves: ‘Is this a partner for the Soviet Union in developing a new world order?’ ”

The Soviet Union has always argued that its proximity to the Middle East gives it a much different perspective on the region. But there are other important political and economic factors:

The oil of the Persian Gulf is used to finance Soviet sales in the region, not to fuel its cars. Politically, the Soviet Union remains firmly committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the context of an Arab-Israeli settlement. It is at ease with regimes that the United States regards as dangerously radical, yet it wants stability in a region so close to its borders. Finally, the Soviet Union appears no more likely to forgo highly profitable arms sales in the future than other countries.

“Our interests sometimes coincide with those of the United States, and sometimes they run in parallel,” Viktor A. Kremenyuk, deputy director of the USA Institute, a leading Soviet think tank, said in a recent interview. “But not always, and certainly not always in the Middle East. . . . So, here we are no longer adversaries, but how do we cooperate? It’s a question not just for the Gulf conflict but for other regions, other problems.”

Although as committed as Washington to forcing Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, Moscow shared neither its willingness to use military force nor its conviction that Hussein should be brought down. Moscow, as Soviet officials made clear over the weekend, still fears that even greater, chronic instability could follow this war.

But the priority that the Soviet Union has placed on its relationship with the United States endures despite the Kremlin’s feeling that the “most realistic chance” for peace was passed up as “the instinct to rely on a military solution prevailed.”

“Our relations have a very broad basis,” Ignatenko commented. “We will not express condemnation but only sorrow that the world could not resolve this by peaceful means.”

The Plan That Brought No Peace

The Soviet Union and Iraq agreed on a peace plan, but it was too little, too late to prevent a ground war in the Persian Gulf. The plan included these points:

* A complete withdrawal from Kuwait would begin the day after hostilities ended.

* The withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait would be carried out on a fixed timetable.

* U.N. economic sanctions would end after two-thirds of Iraqi forces left Kuwait.

* After a full pullout, other U.N. resolutions adopted after Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait would cease to have a purpose.

* All prisoners of war would be released immediately after a cease-fire.

* Withdrawal of forces would be monitored under the aegis of the United Nations by countries not directly involved in the war.