White House Still Uncertain as to Response to Coup : Crisis: U.S. government is stunned. It worries about sending the wrong signal to new Kremlin leaders.

The Soviet coup took the Bush Administration so completely by surprise that officials were still undecided Monday night over how to respond, including whether to rush newly confirmed Ambassador Robert S. Strauss to Moscow or keep him here as a gesture of disapproval over the ouster of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The Bush White House, visibly stunned by the sudden turn of events, hunkered down on a whole range of issues and tried to wait for the situation in the Kremlin to clarify itself before making any major decisions.

“No decision has been made on the ambassador, and, right now, there is a tendency to avoid making any major policy decisions in order to send a go-slow signal,” said one senior Administration official, who stressed that the Administration still clings to the hope that the Soviet people will reverse the coup.

Although Administration officials believe that President Boris N. Yeltsin of the Russian Federation could yet lead a massive public reaction that would topple the new regime, American intelligence sources said there is also concern that leaders of the coup will have Yeltsin arrested.

“They probably have no choice but to arrest Yeltsin because he is so appealing to the public,” one source said.

Meanwhile, Strauss hurriedly returned to Washington from a vacation in California, and President Bush is scheduled to swear him in this morning as the new ambassador to the Soviet Union.

For his part, Strauss is understood to be eager to take up his post in Moscow. But some Administration officials are arguing that permitting him to do so would send the wrong signal to the Soviet regime, seeming to contradict Bush’s statement Monday that he does not “want to do anything that would give approval to these extra-constitutional--out of the constitution--changes that have taken place.”

With trade, arms control, the Middle East peace process and other major U.S.-Soviet issues hanging in the balance, and the future direction of the Kremlin in doubt, the coup has presented Bush with new political realities at home.

First and foremost, the immediate reaction to the news from Moscow among members of Congress left no doubt that there will be substantial opposition to granting the Soviet Union most-favored-nation status in trade or ratifying new arms reduction treaties.

And, if the new hard-line Soviet regime remains in power indefinitely, Bush will face pressure for restoring some of the recent defense budget cuts, a move that could have serious consequences for an economy struggling to emerge from recession.

Already, some congressional leaders are calling on the President to warn the new regime that the United States will not stand idly by if the Soviets try to intervene in the affairs of East European nations.

“Given the Cold War mentality of those involved in the coup,” said Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, “it is extremely important that the United States and our allies send a strong signal as soon as possible that we will not tolerate any intervention in the internal affairs of newly independent nations of Eastern Europe, especially Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.”

In the end, say political analysts of both parties, the coup could be not only a major setback for Bush’s dreams of “a new world order” but a severe political headache for a President who has been viewed as a virtual shoo-in for reelection in 1992.

In no small part, Bush owes his extraordinarily high standing in public opinion polls to his foreign policy triumphs in the Persian Gulf and to his negotiations with Moscow.

During his recent summit trip to the Soviet Union, Bush lavished praise on Gorbachev and risked alienating independence-minded leaders of the Soviet republics by making clear, in a speech in Kiev, that Washington would look primarily to Gorbachev and the central government in Moscow in its future dealings with the Soviet Union.

“The ‘new world order’ is in big trouble,” said Kevin Phillips, veteran Republican analyst, who added that the coup’s impact on the financial markets, as well as any restoration of defense cuts, “which we can’t afford, would be a minus for the economy.”

The only political upside for Bush, Phillips suggested, would be if “the same state of affairs is prevailing immediately before the 1992 presidential election.” In that case, he said, Americans would rally around the President the way they rallied around Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 after the Soviet Union invaded Hungary.

Former Democratic Party Chairman John C. White said that, although Americans will support Bush in the short run, “as time goes on, his so-called new world order is going to become a joke, as it already is among people knowledgeable in geopolitical issues. In relying on personal diplomacy, Bush has made a massive miscalculation that this situation was preventable.”

“He bet the farm on Gorbachev,” White said. “That was a high risk for the United States, and he will have to pay a price for it.”

The President’s policy “backfired,” said Kim Holmes, director of foreign policy and defense studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Holmes said Bush’s policies supporting Gorbachev, which Administration officials said were aimed at strengthening his hand, probably convinced Soviet hard-liners that the United States would stand by and accept business as usual, regardless of what they did.