The Bush-Yeltsin Deal That Nobody’s Heard Of : Diplomacy: Russsia and the United States quietly sign a document aimed at remaking the world. The problem is they didn’t ask anybody else.

President Boris N. Yeltsin’s visit to the United States produced a charter that seeks to give concrete meaning to the term new world order . The document could involve, if its ideas take hold, a revolutionary reordering of global relationships. Such radical changes should not be implemented without a full national debate.

True, statements of principle are rarely implemented literally. But they do reflect a state of mind and hidden assumptions that shape long-term policy.

The most significant premises of “A Charter for American-Russian Partnership and Friendship” are that no geopolitical issues remain between the United States and Russia and that the spread of democracy will guarantee permanent peace. Russia is assumed to share identical goals, making possible a “strategic partnership” between the superpowers.

Are these premises valid?

The collapse of the Soviet Union is surely the seminal event of our time. But the nature of what is to replace it is still unsettled. Other established patterns of global relations are bound to alter. Care must be taken not to foster principles of world order that unintentionally encourage a cycle of instability and constrain the evolution of newly free countries.

The new charter is permeated by a tone redolent of a global Russo-U.S. condominium. Russia is called a “strategic partner.” In addition, “the United States and the Russian Federation will unite (emphasis added) in their efforts toward strengthening international peace and security, preventing and settling regional conflicts, and solving global problems.”

Can the United States sustain such an undertaking? Should Russia be encouraged into a global role, which is like putting liquor before a reforming alcoholic? Where does this leave U.S. allies?

The atmosphere of condominium emphasizes the curious clause stating that the two countries abjure “the threat of use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of each other (emphasis added).” Could this not be read to mean that the threat of force against other countries is permitted by the charter? Previous U.S.-Soviet statements of principle always contained clauses declaring that nothing in them superseded existing obligations, or they made new mutual obligations general. The new restrictive clause, even if inadvertent, is bound to be noted.

The charter emphasizes a vast new effort by the United States and the Russian Federation to “support the strengthening of the Euro-Atlantic Community” because “security is indivisible from Vancouver to Vladivostok.” When this concept first appeared in the Mikhail S. Gorbachev era, it was the slogan of European and Soviet leaders seeking to reduce U.S. influence and to gain maximum freedom of action for essentially national purposes. Once everybody is allied to everybody else, existing institutions will dissolve into a vague structure incapable of joint action and thus, in the end, best suited to nationalistic policies.

The Euro-Atlantic Community seems to include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European neutrals, the new East European democracies and all the successor states of the Soviet Union. The interests of these countries are assumed to be identical and to flow naturally from their democratic structures. But, in the real world, can this melange be called a community? Does the phrase “indivisible security” entitle either superpower to act alone in the likely event there is no consensus, or does each side have a veto? Is the choice between hegemony or paralysis?

And in what way can the five Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union or the three new states of the Caucasus be said to belong to a European security structure, not to speak of a Euro-Atlantic Community? If Kirghizstan, one of the Central Asian republics, becomes “European,” why not Pakistan or India nearby? The unspoken premise is that all the states of the former Soviet Union, however different their culture and history, are still treated as if they were under Moscow’s tutelage.

The unprecedented role assigned to the European Security Conference and the phrase that “America and the Russian Federation cannot accept another phase of European instability” point up the charter’s basic incompatibility with existing Atlantic institutions. Within NATO, the United States opposes a separate European military force on the ground that it weakens the integrated command. The charter, however, leaves little scope for NATO, except to contribute forces and resources to the newly invented Euro-Atlantic Peacekeeping Capability. Such a downgrading of NATO is likely to magnify European suspicions of the United States. Japan and China are certain to consider the Euro-Atlantic Community as some kind of exclusive club directed against Asia.

Similar ambiguities weaken the charter’s relevance to the strains produced by the breakup of the Soviet Union. In less than a year, 15 new states have emerged. All have become members of the United Nations. None, except the Baltic states, has known independence for the last 150 years. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the erstwhile Red Army remain on their territories. The soldiers intervene in local conflicts ostensibly to protect Russian minorities.

While the Russian Republic has not directly challenged the independence of the new states, it has not fully accepted it either. Russian leaders maneuver with persistence to establish themselves as the linear descendants of the historic empire. The entry of all the successor republics into the European Security Conference is a measure of this campaign’s success.

If Moscow attempts to recentralize its former empire, some sort of military conflict is probable. If it succeeds, even partly, alarm bells will ring around the Soviet periphery--but especially in Eastern Europe. The traditional pattern of mutual fear between Russia and its neighbors will reappear. The U.S.-Russian partnership will collapse.

This may not be an acute problem as long as Russia, together with all the successor states, faces economic disaster. But as they recover, the question of whether the new charter reduces the dangers becomes relevant.

The Bush Administration seems to assume that liberal democracy and market economics will, by themselves, achieve and preserve peace everywhere. But even if true, this point will not be reached for decades. Meanwhile, the United States must contribute to international stability with a foreign policy that goes beyond social engineering. The effort to shore up the Russian government is laudable, and the Congress should support it. But we must not so idealize and personalize the relationship as to lose sight of geopolitical imperatives. We need to balance the respect and cooperation to which Russia’s reforms and potential power entitle it against the dangers of hegemony over smaller successor states.

The toughest question raised is whether a Russia seeking to build democracy and a market economy and in need of vast amounts of foreign assistance can possibly fulfill the role assigned to it by the charter. Is it wise to divert Russia into a global enterprise that may keep it from even defining a responsible role with respect to the internal relationships of the former Soviet Union? At the end of an evolution that we should assist, Russia may turn into the partner envisioned by the charter. As of now, such a role is at best premature, at worst dangerous.