The Gulf: A New World

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It was certainly nothing that Saddam Hussein intended, but his invasion of Kuwait bore its most significant fruit on Sunday. For the first time since World War II, the leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union met each other not as cold war adversaries or even as wary rivals to make their competition more manageable, but as partners cooperating against a common enemy: Saddam. Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Helsinki fully agreed on their objective: an unconditional Iraqi pullout.

As the summit began, Gorbachev presented Bush with a cartoon showing the two as boxers, with a figure representing the cold war knocked senseless at their feet and a referee with a globe for a head raising their hands in joint triumph. Most of the session was devoted to the gulf; Bush aides asserted that neither the presence of Soviet military advisers in Iraq nor Moscow's call for a Middle East conference that would discuss not only Kuwait but the Israeli- Palestinian impasse and the civil war in Lebanon as well posed a major impediment to cooperation. En route to the summit, Bush declared himself in favor of technical help that would enable the Soviets to increase oil production and replace some of the output cut off from Iraq and Kuwait.

Day before yesterday, such superpower cooperation against a nation that had long been an ally of the Kremlin's would have been inconceivable. But their new quasi alliance is the most striking, though very far from the only example of a proposition that has gathered force over the past six weeks: Saddam's power grab and the U.S.-led opposition to it have so shaken up global political and power calculations that the world will never be the same.

Bush and his aides talked about the showdown leading to a new world order. "If the nations of the world, acting together, continue as they have been, we will set in place the cornerstone of an international order more peaceful than any that we have known," said Bush in Helsinki.

The eventual course of many of the changes may not be determined for months or even years. The efficacy of sanctions and embargo, the future constellation of power in the Arab world, the ability of the United Nations finally to become the peacekeeping organization its creators envisioned -- all hinge heavily on when and how the crisis is finally resolved. But at least the main areas of upheaval are becoming clear:

U.S.-SOVIET RELATIONS. Moscow so far has played a role that looks as if it might have been scripted in the White House. It has been fully supportive of U.S. efforts -- cutting off arms to Iraq, voting for U.N. resolutions establishing a worldwide embargo -- without claiming any major part for itself. And it has rebuffed all attempts to drive a wedge between itself and Washington. In what was officially described as a "frank" (diplospeak for stormy) meeting in Moscow with Baghdad Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, Gorbachev repeated his insistence that there is only one way to end the crisis: unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.