NEWS ANALYSIS : U.S. Struggles to Deal With Soviet Collapse

The Bush Administration, faced with accelerating political and economic disintegration in the Soviet Union, is struggling to find ways to prevent the crumbling superpower from sliding into violence and chaos, officials say.

But the Administration has found itself sharply divided on key issues involving its relations with the increasingly independent Soviet republics and its desire to help them develop Western-style economies, leading critics to charge that President Bush is moving too slowly on the most important foreign policy challenge of his day.

The newest challenge has come from the Ukraine, the second-largest republic in the former Soviet empire. Ukrainian citizens are expected to vote for independence next Sunday--a move that would permanently change the map of Europe and sweep away a key pillar of U.S. policy.

“Dec. 1 is the day the Soviet Union dies,” a State Department official said, referring to the referendum’s date. “This is the greatest event since the collapse of the Berlin Wall. . . . It’s coming apart--and we’re not ready for it.”

In a bid to rescue a policy bogged down in debate, the White House has scheduled a top-level meeting this week at which officials are expected to try to put a new face on an approach that may have been overtaken by events.

Until now, the U.S. stance toward the 12 remaining Soviet republics has focused partly on encouraging them to stay together in some kind of confederation in order to promote “stability,” one of President Bush’s favorite foreign-policy buzzwords.

The idea, officials said, is that a confederation would help economic reform succeed by enabling the Soviet republics, long dependent on each other, to continue trading freely among themselves.

More important to the West, they argue, a confederation would maintain a central authority to control the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal, 30,000 warheads of which are scattered across four republics.

Besides, Bush prefers to deal with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, whom he has come to trust as a reliable partner in ending the Cold War and responding to global problems such as the Persian Gulf crisis.

As a result, Bush and other officials have openly declared their desire for the kind of close-knit Soviet confederation in which, as the President said after meeting with Gorbachev in Madrid last month, “the republics are indeed together with the center.”

But in recent weeks, with the approach of the referendum in the Ukraine, Administration analysts have reluctantly concluded that the chances of survival for a Soviet confederation--even a loose one--are slim.

“It’s too late for an economic confederation to work,” said one. “It may work in the short run, but not in the long run because the Ukraine won’t be in it.”

“We’ve all come to the conclusion that the devolution of power to the republics is an accomplished fact,” a State Department official agreed. “The center probably can’t be held together in much of a coherent fashion.”

That means devising new policies to help a grab-bag of 12 republics--some independent, others loosely linked in a still-undefined Soviet “community”--to move toward democracy and capitalism without going to war with each other over borders, economic resources or ethnic disputes.

The stakes are high.

“The worst-case scenario,” Undersecretary of State Robert B. Zoellick noted recently, “would be that you could have inter-ethnic strife in the republics; that you could lose control of nuclear weapons; that you could have large conventional armies at war with one another; that disruption in the economy could reduce supply of basic needs--you could have mass migration. It could get pretty messy.”

Zoellick and other officials contend that the Administration has kept up with the breakneck pace of Soviet change as well as could be expected, increasing U.S. economic aid and expanding direct dealings with the Russian Federation, the Ukraine and other republics.

But critics charge that the Administration is still too slow-footed.

“The policy is out of focus,” complained Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. “There is still a great deal of nostalgia in the Administration” for the days when the United States could simply deal with Gorbachev.

“We have to develop meaningful, sustained relationships with the republics, and we haven’t done that yet,” he said.

Rather than seeking to turn back the tide, the critics argue that a better way to avoid chaos would be for the United States to accept that fragmentation is inevitable.

“Disintegration isn’t necessarily the nightmare scenario everyone portrays it to be,” said one U.S. official critical of the Administration’s go-slow policy.

Officials have said the chaos in the Soviet Union makes it more difficult for the Administration to reach internal agreement on the ambitious initiatives for economic and military cooperation that U.S. and Soviet officials began to discuss after the hard-line coup d’etat against Gorbachev failed in August.

Bush announced a long-promised $1.5 billion package of grain credits and other emergency economic aid last week, but that came only after weeks of inter-agency wrangling over the terms of the deal. Leading members of Congress, complaining that the Administration was moving too slowly, proposed an additional $500 million to help the Soviets dismantle their nuclear arsenal, an idea some Administration officials endorsed but others criticized.

In the area of military cooperation, U.S. officials have discussed several ways to help the new Soviet authorities tighten control over their nuclear arsenal but have made no formal offer so far. Pentagon officials are still divided over “whether it’s safe to share this kind of information,” one official said.

But the most painful and immediate dilemma facing the Administration is determining what to do about republics that reject U.S. advice to stay in a post-Soviet confederation, most notably the defiantly independent Ukraine.

Bush himself admonished Ukrainians, in a one-day visit to their capital of Kiev in August, to avoid “suicidal nationalism” and “local despotism.” More recently, Administration officials warned that the United States will refuse to recognize an independent Ukraine, at least as long as it insists on raising its own army and breaking completely from Moscow.

Only last week, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Robert S. Strauss, likened the breakaway republics to teen-agers eager to assert their independence but likely to return to the paternal fold “when their laundry got dirty or they need a good meal.” And a senior Administration official indicated that the United States intends to defer to Gorbachev in deciding whether to recognize the Ukraine’s independence.

“We will be, by and large, a spectator,” the official said, adding that it is still unclear whether Gorbachev intends to embrace a sovereign Ukraine or condemn its secession as illegal.

The Administration’s position raises the possibility that the United States might recognize an independent Ukraine “only after the whole world has done so before us,” another official said.

But at the highest levels of the Administration, the question remains a source of considerable discomfort. One high official canceled a scheduled interview when told that the Ukraine would be the subject.

“It’s being debated all over town,” said a State Department aide. “We’re trying to work out a single U.S. position.”

So far, several officials said, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has taken the lead in arguing for a closer embrace of the Ukraine and other independent republics, and national security adviser Brent Scowcroft--as well as Bush himself--have resisted.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III appears to have argued for a middle course that would involve promoting more contacts with up-and-coming leaders in the republics while seeking ways to preserve coordinating bodies in Moscow.

But the virtual certainty of the Ukraine’s declaration of independence next Sunday is increasing pressure on policy-makers to extend a hand to the new republic, and the high-level White House meeting scheduled for this week is designed to “try and put together a policy,” one official said.

At the same time, the White House has scheduled a meeting between Bush and a dozen Ukrainian-American leaders who represent a powerful voting bloc in some states in an attempt to minimize election-year fallout at home.

Both meetings were scheduled after American representatives at NATO headquarters in Brussels sent an urgent cable to Washington warning that other members of the alliance were moving toward a unified position in favor of Ukrainian independence.

Alarmed, the Administration stalled the NATO meeting until it could review its own position. Meanwhile, officials said, the Administration has asked its allies to avoid rushing into recognition of a Kiev government, in part because doing so would put unwanted pressure on Washington to go along.

One U.S. official said that Bush is unlikely to change U.S. policy soon.

“We keep saying it’s for the republics to decide,” he said. “But we keep doing everything we can to squeeze them toward the center.”

Indeed, for some senior Bush aides, the prospect of a continued shift of power from Gorbachev’s weakened central government to the republics still conjures up a policy nightmare.

In a sign of that concern, one top policy-maker went out of his way last week to warn reporters that Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin is creating “a possible source of instability” by taking more and more authority from Gorbachev.

“What he (Yeltsin) is doing is moving step by step to take over the powers and responsibilities of the center,” the senior official said in an interview. “There is not an awful lot left for Gorbachev to use to undergird his power base.”

But in an unusual sign of mounting dissent, some lower-ranking officials in the Administration have privately criticized that pro-Kremlin approach as anachronistic.

Instead of seeking to preserve Gorbachev as a bulwark against Yeltsin, these officials contend, the Administration should concede that the center is dead and work on promoting harmonious relations among independent republics.

“The battle between Yeltsin and Gorbachev is over,” one dissenting Administration official said. “The next battle is going to be the one to re-establish Russian control over everybody else. . . . And in that fight we ought to be on the side of the republics.”

By reaching out to the Ukraine, the official added, the White House could “force Russia to think of itself as a nation with borders of its own rather than as an empire.”

Other experts outside the Administration agree.

“If we don’t recognize the Ukraine, we will be sending a message to Moscow that pressure on the Ukraine would be OK,” said Brzezinski. “That could have dangerous implications.”

“By not recognizing (the Ukraine) you could encourage people around Yeltsin to push for confrontation over borders,” added Eugene Iwanciw, who as head of the Ukrainian National Assn. has led a powerful lobbying effort. “Ukrainian recognition sends a very loud and strong signal: Don’t push for any aggression.”

Stephen Sestanovich, a former Reagan Administration aide now at the private Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned that the Bush Administration’s disapproval of Ukrainian independence could strengthen radical nationalist elements in Kiev and diminish U.S. clout.

“You can’t have any influence with these people if you’re against their independence,” he said.

In explaining its reluctance to encourage Ukrainian independence, the Administration has emphasized its view that the Soviet nuclear arsenal must remain under central control.

But some officials have complained that the Administration has shot itself in the foot by urging the Ukrainians to hand over the nuclear weapons on their territory to Soviet authorities in the Russian Federation, their historic enemy.

“There are lots of things they might be willing to do with their nukes, but that isn’t one of them,” one official said.

These officials and Ukrainian representatives insist that the Ukraine has no desire to become a nuclear power. But they argue that the United States should work out ways that the weapons can be retained on Ukrainian territory and dismantled there, even though that would require complicated international agreements and could take as long as a decade.

The Administration may also have stumbled last month by bluntly condemning a Ukrainian proposal to build a 400,000-man conventional army. One official said that Scowcroft complained angrily about the harsh tone of the statement, drafted by Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger.

“Every sovereign state in the world has an army,” another official noted. “Telling them they couldn’t have an army was the equivalent of telling them that they couldn’t be a sovereign state.”

But so far, the Administration’s actions have stuck to the previous policy of promoting central authorities. When the White House unveiled its package of emergency aid for the Soviet Union last week, it specified that the assistance would be distributed through the Inter-Republic Economic Committee--an apparent attempt to boost the influence of the panel, one of Moscow’s new coordinating bodies.

And when the State Department hosted the first in a series of high-level U.S.-Soviet talks on the superpower relationship, 11 of the 12 Soviet participants represented Gorbachev’s central government.