NEWS ANALYSIS : Coup’s Failure Is a Global Boost for People Power : Outlook: It’s a validation of Bush’s ‘new world order.’ And the Soviet Union is now fully aboard.

For President Bush’s “new world order,” the failed Soviet coup was a benchmark far more important than the traumatic Persian Gulf War and--as a symbol--was the high point in two years of whirlwind global change.

The unraveling of the putsch, the international reaction during the three days of the coup and the underlying implications of both have given a greater boost to the momentum for global change than any event since the wave of revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in 1989.

Until last week, “the ‘new world order’ had to be tentative,” said Michael Beschloss, a Sovietologist. “If you assumed the possibility of a right-wing coup in the Soviet Union, then there always was the possibility that one of those coups would succeed and dislodge it from this new international system.

“Now that the coup has occurred and been rejected,” Beschloss said, “we in the West feel a lot more relaxed and confident that any future coup by leaders of a similar bent will not succeed. As much as we can be confident of anything, the Soviet Union is now part of the new international system.”

The Gulf War, fought over Iraqi aggression in invading Kuwait, played a vital part in establishing the mechanics of that new system. The collapse of the Soviet coup marked the success of its substance. The demand for empowerment--the ultimate goal of the 18th-Century Enlightenment--now appears irrepressible. Although it has swept the world over the last two years, last week’s events proved that it had finally taken root in the most important and powerful holdout: the Soviet Union.

Defying a millennia-old tradition of Russian passivity, the demand for empowerment emboldened not only Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin but hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens--from Russians in Moscow to coal miners in the hinterlands and leaders in remote republics--to face down or simply ignore the once virtually omnipotent Soviet army and KGB.

The collapse of the short-lived revolt “sends a signal,” said John D. Steinbruner, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, “that you must have the legitimate consent and participation of the people to govern, and (that) you can’t get it by the use of force any more.

“That is the overriding message for the whole world,” he said--especially for the last holdouts, countries ranging from China to Cuba.

Augustus Richard Norton, a fellow at the International Peace Academy, said: “A worldwide phenomenon is under way, and it involves people who are no longer willing to blithely accept the dictates of government. Individuals in the Soviet Union, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America are increasingly likely to . . . expect performance and freedom.”

U.S. scholars concur that the outcome in the Soviet Union is likely to spur the global trend toward change--a conclusion that reflects the roller-coaster of events and emotions that has marked the week as well as the new era.

Less than a week ago, U.S. foreign policy analysts were predicting that the coup would retard the momentum of the “new world order” and throw the world into a deep freeze as the Soviet drama played out at home. The best-case scenario was stagnation in East-West relations and a spillover onto all their new joint efforts.

The analysts now say that the demand for empowerment has won out and will be as important in shaping the next steps in the Soviet Union--with a ripple effect elsewhere--as it has been over the last week.

“It will also change the assumptions of people in other countries,” Beschloss said. ‘Until now, (Libyan leader Moammar) Kadafi and others may have thought there was a chance that the Soviet Union would turn sharply to the right,” legitimizing their own regimes and “making it possible once again to rely on superpower competition.”

That hope is now hollow, a fact that is likely to squeeze the remaining authoritarian regimes and inspire populations worldwide.

“It’s hard to exaggerate the importance” of the coup’s failure, Steinbruner said. “It marks a critical turning point in one of the most important countries in the world. It’s more important than all (the changes in) Eastern Europe combined. Eastern Europe was always vulnerable unless the Soviet Union joined the parade, and now it’s joined the parade.”

That does not mean proliferation of replicas of the United States, France or Britain around the world, Norton cautioned. “It’s less democracy than participation and performance that people are now living for,” he said. Empowerment may take new and different forms, but the end result will be that “people will have a say in the decisions that shape their lives.”

Just as important as the underlying implications of events in the Soviet Union have been the implications of the world’s actions during the crisis--especially for the principle of collective international action. Without dispatching a single soldier, the world’s major leaders engaged in a loose form of collective diplomacy that threatened the eight-man junta with international scorn and isolation if it used repression to achieve success.

After the success of collective action during the Gulf War, world leaders did not have to do much to send intimidating messages to the Emergency Committee or encouraging signals to the resistance.

World condemnation would have been an expensive but tolerable price in the bipolar world of 1964 when Nikita S. Khrushchev was ousted, but it is intolerable in the newly globalized and interdependent world of 1991.

“What impressed me was that, for the first time, the Western powers and, indeed, the entire world didn’t roll over and say, ‘There go the Russians again--we’ll just have to deal with whoever is in power,’ ” said William Hyland, editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. “It’s not inconceivable that (German Chancellor Helmut) Kohl or (President) Bush might have said, ‘What can we do?’

“The fact that they all said early on that this (coup) is illegitimate--and Bush even made a thing out of it with (U.S. Ambassador Robert S.) Strauss not giving his credentials to the leaders--was a startling dimension that no one had thought about, not the coup leaders or even Yeltsin.”

The impact of collective clout is the byproduct of the gradual evolution over the last year of a single set of rules for both the international and internal game of politics. Stepping out of line--as Iraq did by invading Kuwait and the Soviet coup leaders did by overthrowing a government struggling toward democracy--is increasingly unacceptable and dangerous even to try. Globalization is taking on new meaning.

“We are beginning to see acceptance of international standards for the first time. Even Soviet hard-liners could not isolate themselves from the rest of the world and set their own standards, which would have been a ruinous course,” Steinbruner said.

Francisco Sagasti, the World Bank’s leading strategic forecaster, said: “The coup was so out of touch with the new realities that it seemed almost comic. You can’t do things with total impunity when the whole world is watching--and these days you can’t stop the world from watching.”

For all the immediate euphoria, Sagasti warned of “a dark lining to the silver cloud.”

The freedoms unleashed also portend unsettled times as expectations and demands increase at the same time that the Soviet Union--like many of the world’s other fledgling democracies--lacks the resources to meet them.

“We aren’t home free,” Sagasti said. “At one level, the message is that leaders can’t use repression. But at another level, the message is that you have to keep people happy by addressing their needs. And you can’t eat democracy.”

Norton said: “Citizens are unlikely to choke down whatever their government says or does. But there’s a downside too. This means that we’re in for an era of unprecedented instability, as governments throughout the world struggle to find formulas to establish legitimacy, and as these formulas are tested against the new mood of empowerment.”

In other words, despite the sweeping implications of the coup’s failure for the Soviet Union and the outside world, the traumas and dramas that have unraveled as the “new world order” takes shape are still far from over.