NEWS ANALYSIS : Bush’s Voice Muted, Allies Take Summit Initiative

Britain’s John Major presided. Russia’s Boris N. Yeltsin stole the show. Japan’s Kiichi Miyazawa gave notice that he intends to wield more of his formidable financial clout.

But one voice was noticeably muted at Friday’s U.N. Security Council summit: that of President Bush. He had few concrete proposals to offer, his presence seemed to lack some of its old fire, and his colleagues--who in times past often formed a loyal chorus--offered him no special tribute.

The summit, one U.S. official said, was “an exercise in symbolism, not substance.” But the most evident symbolism was of a shift in the world’s balance of power--hinting that America’s position as the world’s only superpower may already have passed, a brief moment of history.

As the 15 members of the Security Council proclaimed a rough outline for a new world order run partly through the United Nations, most of the initiatives were coming from countries other than the United States.

Yeltsin, making his debut at a major diplomatic event, called for a joint U.S.-Russian effort on anti-missile defense systems and an international project to employ former Soviet nuclear scientists.

France’s Francois Mitterrand pushed for a U.N. rapid-deployment force that could intervene in conflicts around the world.

Even Germany, which is not a member of the Security Council and was not at the meeting, won agreement that the Security Council will consider sanctions against countries that try to buy nuclear weapons technology.

In contrast, Bush spoke briefly and generally, in an almost offhand tone, hailing “this new, invigorated United Nations” but suggesting no specific actions beyond continued sanctions against Iraq and Libya.

A U.S. official said the President’s low-key approach was intentional: “This wasn’t our show,” he said.

And he said Bush welcomes the new assertiveness of his allies. “It’s good to hear proposals from other countries,” he said, “even though we may not be crazy about them, because it strengthens the communal nature of the U.N. We’re even willing to sacrifice some of our national interest--in the short-term sense--to make that work.”

But the result is a far cry from the kind of global political dominance the United States exercised a year ago, when Bush organized multinational resistance to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait--a form of U.S. leadership the President hailed as recently as Tuesday in his State of the Union address.

“A Pax Americana simply won’t work any more,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. “Our economic difficulties simply make it unsustainable. . . . Somebody has to take a leadership role, and it ought to be the United States--but we aren’t in any shape to do it.”

Instead, the “new world order” that Bush once described as an exercise of American leadership is turning into a somewhat unwieldy, still uncertain expression of something called “collegial leadership.”

That was on display at the United Nations, as countries from Russia and Japan to Belgium and Cape Verde hailed the idea of the Security Council as a more effective, more dynamic body that could someday send multinational troops to intervene in countries’ internal conflicts if they threatened the neighbors’ peace.

Bush Administration officials are noticeably cool to the idea of a standing military force for the United Nations--even a relatively small rapid deployment force raised by Security Council members, as Mitterrand proposed.

A standing U.N. force, ready for action whenever the Security Council voted, would dilute one form of power the United States enjoyed during the Gulf War: that of the only country capable of raising a large multinational force able to intervene on short notice.

A U.S. official said the Administration might be “prepared to accept that, as long as it doesn’t impinge on our freedom of unilateral action.” But he said senior officials are skeptical about the idea, and noted that, unlike Yeltsin, Bush did not endorse it.

One strategic analyst, Michael Vlahos of the U.S. Navy-sponsored Center for Defense Analyses, said the Security Council summit was “an exercise in high symbolism . . . that reflects the realignment in world power.”

“Russia is being welcomed into the club--but only as a regional power, a power with the weight of China or India more than a superpower,” he said.

“The main thing that’s going on is a formal investment of the three-power structure: the United States, Europe and Japan,” he said. “And what we are beginning to see is those power centers, those allies, drift apart. What happens in the U.N. Security Council will be a good barometer of that.”

As that kind of barometer, the Security Council was functioning pretty well already. Japan’s Miyazawa came on polite but strong, noting that U.N. peacekeeping operations are expensive and adding that countries that are asked to finance those forces (such as Japan) expect to be brought into the decision-making process “from the earliest stage.”

His spokesman, Masamichi Hanabusa, was more blunt, telling reporters that Japan expects to have a permanent seat in the Security Council--with veto power, like the United States--by 1995. Japan now holds only a two-year seat with no veto.

Otherwise, he said, Japan will increasingly resent U.N. “taxation without representation. . . . Some tea party may occur somewhere.”

Western Europe’s new self-confidence was visible in the posture of both Major and Mitterrand, who acted like the leaders of superpowers--Major because he is running for reelection in Britain, and Mitterrand simply because he is French, one U.S. official said privately.

Even Europe’s absent big power, Germany, made its clout felt by pulling strings behind the scenes to get its resolution on technology proliferation into the final declaration. Germany has neither a permanent nor a temporary seat.

“We were pleased to show that we could make a contribution,” a German diplomat said. “Since we are not burdened with having to sit through such long meetings, we have more time to reflect on the issues,” he added wryly.

Asked whether Germany was really content without a Security Council seat, he paused and said: “Not really.”

But a German bid for a permanent seat would raise the question of whether Britain and France still deserve theirs--an issue the three European Community partners are unwilling to open, at least at the moment.