Watching Gorbachev

SOVIET General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to the United States last week promising a "Christmas surprise." What he delivered--a promise for unilateral cuts in Soviet troops and weaponry--was both surprising and encouraging.

While the cuts that the Soviet leader announced in last Thursday's speech before the United Nations would still leave the Warsaw Pact with an unquestionable conventional superiority in Europe, they would go a long way toward stabilizing affairs on that continent. Gorbachev promised to realign Soviet conventional forces in Eastern Europe so that their structure would be "clearly defensive."

To accomplish this feat Gorbachev said the Soviet Union would recall 500,000 of it 5.1 million troops deployed world-wide, including 50,000 in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Gorbachev said the Soviets would also eliminate 5000 tanks from both Eastern Europe and the western part of Russia and would reduce Soviet forces from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains.

The Soviet leader also announced wide-ranging plans to continue the Soviet withdrawl from Afghanistan, ease tensions along the Russian-Chinese border, make improvements in human rights in the Soviet Union and clean up the world environment.

GORBACHEV'S speech to the U.N. represented a major change in Soviet rhetoric. His call for more reliance on the U.N. as a global peace-keeping force and international enforcer of human rights seemed like what most Americans would expect from a speech by Woodrow Wilson or John F. Kennedy than a Kremlin head. And his downplaying of ideological differences among nations demonstrates a new willingness to dismiss Marxist ideology calling for world revolution and to adopt a more pragmatic approach to foreign policy.

The Soviet leader's words offered an opportunity for peace that should not be squandered by American reluctance to come to the table. The United States, while remaining cautious, must look toward negotiations which will take us further toward a bilateral reduction of conventional forces not just in Europe, but around the world. The US could also use this as an opportunity to reduce our share of funding for NATO forces and encourage our allies to pick up more of the tab, at a time when the bill seems to be shrinking.

President-elect George Bush must watch Gorbachev's next moves carefully. For even if the Soviet Union carries through with the proposed realignment, there would still be some potentially dangerous unanswered questions.

One important question for Gorbachev is whether he can retain control in the Soviet Union. While the Soviets claim Gorbachev rushed home early from the United States last week because of the destructive Armenian earthquake which claimed more than 60,000 lives, experts on the Soviet Union openly question whether he did so because of negative reactions from the Soviet military. Soviet armed forces chief of staff Sergie Akhormeyev, who opposed Gorbachev in this latest unilateral move, resigned the same day Gorbachev gave his U.N. speech.

While Gorbachev would like us to believe "the use or threat of force no longer can or must be an instrument of foreign policy" for the Soviets, that way of thinking has simply not been reflected by Soviet actions until recently. Gorbachev's actual motive may be that he desperately needs to patch up the Soviet economy; the new policy may be an attempt to reallocate resources as much as a change in outlook. Many question whether Gorbachev will continue with his internal reforms once he gets the economy back on its feet.

But whatever one thinks of Gorbachev's motives, everyone must agree that Gorbachev's program for peace presents an unparalleled opportunity for the two superpowers to continue thawing the cold war. If he perseveres, Gorbachev will have taken a large step toward a lasting peace and toward his goal of preserving "the vitality of this civilization."