COLUMN LEFT/ HAROLD WILLENS : Preventing a New World Disorder : As they inch toward nuclear disarmament, the superpowers must convert the newly nuclear.

President Bush’s decision to bring Presi dent Mikhail S. Gorbachev to the party being given at July’s economic summit in London was probably thrust upon him by four of the group’s seven elite members. But the thrust doesn’t make his move any less great--or less wise.

Now it seems the stage is well-set for a midsummer summit in Moscow, when Bush, the most powerful man in the world, will have a chance to make up for the weakness of President Woodrow Wilson 70 years ago and institute a truly new world order, an era of justice and peace and no more nuclear arms race. And I think Gorbachev will be more than ready to go along--since 1985, he is the one, after all, who has been making most of the concessions leading to an end of the Cold War.

In 1918, the world’s power brokers (predecessors of the group called G-7) met at Versailles to establish their new world order. They failed miserably--in great part because they insisted on disinviting the leaders of the new Soviet Union. As a younger Winston Churchill then insisted, the Bolsheviks were nothing but criminal baboons, and Wilson let him get away with this calumny. By mid-century, the Bolsheviks were living up to our expectations (and we to theirs) and, together, we baboons began a new world dis order.

We called it the Cold War and we entered an arms race that cost both sides a total (in 1990 dollars) of $10.3 trillion--the most incredible waste of resources in mankind’s history. Our own 23,000 thermonuclear warheads are still in place, but they are more of a threat to ourselves than a comfort. We are still manufacturing and testing new ones (while the byproducts of their manufacture continue to contaminate the countryside in a 13-state network). And other nations are attempting to emulate us with this kind of power: A single U.S. submarine carries more explosives today than were used by both sides in World War I and World War II.

The worldwide threat of those nuclear arms still provides the best possible reason for continuing the U.S.-Soviet rapprochement at the summit in Moscow. There, Bush and Gorbachev will sign the START treaty, the first agreement ever to make significant nuclear-arms reductions. But they can do more than that. Instead of preaching abstinence to other nations while practicing the exact opposite themselves, they can call for restraint without being seen as hypocritical and guilty of a demeaning double standard. They can call upon the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to deal with nuclear proliferation. This is the world’s No. 1 problem (our No. 2 problem is that we are not giving enough attention to the No. 1 problem). With vigorous U.S. and Soviet backing, the United Nations should be able to monitor and enforce an incremental reduction of nuclear arms by the nuclear nations and prevent attempts by all others to join the nuclear club.

Rather than bombard any nation daring to have its own nuclear force, wouldn’t it be cheaper and more humane and more effective for the United States to urge all nations to begin a general, gradual nuclear disarmament immediately, starting with honest moves to end our own nuclear testing?

There will be no new world order until we eliminate the old world disorder. Pakistanis still spend three times as much on arms as on health and education. The Soviets still stand in line to buy shoes and bread. And we Americans must still shake our heads when we realize how 40 years of overspending on the arms race has made it impossible for us to deal with our own social problems. We lead the world, by a long shot, in murder, robbery, rape and the consumption of drugs, even as we double our prison population (and double the number of children packed into every classroom, too, at all levels).

We haven’t heard the term “peace dividend” for almost a year now. I think it’s time we dusted the idea off. In fact, I can’t think of any other reason for celebrating our great victory in the Gulf War.

Victory for what? It is a meaningless victory if it doesn’t translate into a safer world and a better life for all.