Do-Nothing Detente

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In the 3 1/2 months since George Bush's Inauguration, the world has been waiting to discover what attitude the new U.S. Administration would adopt toward the extraordinary events in the Soviet Union. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze have continued their odysseys through world capitals, proclaiming the promise of perestroika and the end of ideological conflict. All the while, the White House has turned away questions -- whether from allies, Soviets or the American press -- with the explanation that a sweeping policy review was under way.

Now, with Washington and its NATO partners openly quarreling about whether to negotiate with the Soviets on reductions in short-range nuclear weapons in Europe, the U.S. policy review is almost completed, and Secretary of State James Baker is due to drop the first authoritative hints on a two-day visit to Moscow this week. Shevardnadze was set to receive him eagerly on Wednesday and to usher Baker into a private room with Gorbachev on Thursday.

What Baker has to say, however, is likely to displease severely not only Moscow but also some U.S. allies, and an influential segment of American and European public opinion. The Secretary will propose a date, probably in June, for resuming the START negotiations on reducing strategic nuclear weapons. But otherwise Baker has no major U.S. initiatives to announce and no plans to match, let alone top, Gorbachev's innumerable catchy detente proposals.

This diplomatic vacuum is quite deliberate. Many aspects of American policy are still under debate; for example, Washington has not yet decided what changes, if any, to make in the framework for a start treaty that was all but agreed to by Gorbachev's and Ronald Reagan's negotiators. But the Administration's central theme is reasonably clear. In essence, George Bush proposes to stand pat and wait for Gorbachev to make the next move -- and probably the one after that and the one after that -- toward reducing tensions. As one senior American official puts it, the idea is to "let Gorbachev keep coming to us, making concessions, playing to our agenda."

And if the Soviet leader won't play? Then, in the view of many critics in the U.S. and abroad, Washington will have missed a historic opportunity to end the cold war and begin moving the relations between the nuclear superpowers from competition to cooperation. And, some of the staunchest U.S. allies add, George Bush will have abdicated the leadership role the world has a right to expect from the President of the U.S.

Bush is "firm in his belief that a new President shouldn't go off half- cocked," says a senior White House aide. "He has repeatedly said, 'I'm not going to make one of those big early-term mistakes like the Bay of Pigs.' " Yet faced with a political upheaval in the Soviet Union and its spillover in Europe, Bush seems almost recklessly timid, unwilling to respond with the imagination and articulation that the situation requires. "He is supposed to lead, but he is not even really trying yet," complains a British diplomat.