TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072489/07248900.039

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6KB | 118 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 19

From Patrons to Partners


Bush's trip shows a changing role for the superpowers in Europe


    George Bush's march across the Continent last week threw
into sharp relief two major and intersecting historic trends.
His foray into Poland and Hungary highlighted how Eastern
Europe, at least in part, is tumbling toward greater
independence from its Soviet overlords. His attendance at the
Paris summit of industrialized nations at week's end
illustrated, less intentionally, how Western Europe similarly
continues to become more independent of the U.S. And Bush's
skimpy aid offerings in Warsaw and Budapest showed that as the
waning of the cold war hastens these shifts in Europe's tectonic
plates, the U.S. is likely to find it both necessary and wise
to let its allies take the lead in managing Western responses to
changes in Eastern Europe.

    The most important aspect of Bush's visit was its
symbolism. "The Iron Curtain has begun to part," the President
declared in an eloquent speech at the Karl Marx University in
Budapest. In front of Gdansk's Lenin shipyard, he told cheering
Poles, "America stands with you." While offering lavish praise
for the courage shown by Poland and Hungary, he avoided baiting
the Soviet Union, a sensible strategy for dealing with a bear
that for the moment seems unusually amiable.

    He was less lavish, however, with his finances. In Poland
he pledged $100 million in economic aid and an added $15 million
for controlling pollution in Cracow; he also pledged support for
a move to reschedule some of the nation's foreign debt. In
Hungary he offered $25 million in economic aid, $5 million for
an environmental center, a $1.5 million a year Peace Corps
project to help teach English, and the end of trade
restrictions.

    Such gifts seemed rather paltry, less than Lyndon Johnson
might have dropped on some backwater congressional district
during a quickie campaign stop. The $115 million offered to
Poland, for example, would barely dent a decimal point in that
nation's $39 billion foreign debt. Some of his European hosts
were disappointed. Solidarity leader Lech Walesa pressed the
case for $10 billion in assistance, and Communist Party leader
Wojciech Jaruzelski asked for at least $3 billion in aid and a
major rescheduling of Poland's debt. Hungarian banker and
businessman Sandor Demjan, in a gesture that was at once
magnanimous and a bit slighting (as well as rather amazing),
told the New York Times that he would match the $25 million in
direct U.S. economic aid. The $145 million in Bush's gift bag
for easing Poland and Hungary away from Communism was dwarfed
last week by the $70 billion the Air Force requested for the
Stealth bomber program and by the $43 billion for the Third
World that Japan offered at the Paris summit.

    American officials, however, argue that massive handouts
would be unproductive. During the past two decades, the regimes
in Poland and Hungary entrenched themselves by using foreign
loans to subsidize cheap consumer goods rather than upgrade
industries. "The last thing the West should do is to forgive us
our debts," says a senior Hungarian diplomat. "It would just
relieve the pressure for reforms, so it would be money down the
drain again."

    Still, some analysts saw the meager sums as a symbol of the
relative decline of America's economic clout. A top
Administration official traveling with Bush conceded, "Sure, we
could do a lot more to encourage economic reform in Eastern
Europe. But we don't have the money. We are broke." Says Michael
Mandelbaum, a Soviet scholar at the Council on Foreign
Relations: "The foreign policy fruits of Reaganomics are that
we are the world's largest debtor nation and have a budget
deficit that constrains what we can spend."

    When Bush arrived at the Paris economic summit, he asked
America's industrial allies to make similar contributions to
Poland and Hungary. The group agreed to hold a meeting in a few
weeks to discuss both financial aid and support for reforms in
the two countries, underscoring that the European Community is
increasingly more able and eager to help guide potential changes
in the Communist bloc. "Leadership in Europe on these questions
belongs to the E.C., both by right and by their record of
success," said investment banker Robert Hormats, a former top
State Department official.

    Bush's plan to send in Peace Corps volunteers to teach
English in Hungary served as a nice counterpoint to the dropping
of Russian-language requirements in that nation's schools. But
the second language there has traditionally been German. The
historic role of Germany, however, is a troublesome obstacle to
what Bush referred to as "making Europe whole again." Poles in
particular have suffered from German expansionism, stretching
from the Teutonic Knights of the 13th century to Hitler's
invasion 50 years ago. To the extent that the E.C. becomes more
unified, fears of a resurgent Germany are likely to recede. A
strong E.C. could also serve as the core of a more
self-sufficient Europe.

    The decline of Moscow's influence over Eastern Europe is
the direct consequence of its postwar failures. The economic
system the Kremlin imposed has been a disaster, and its
oppressive political embrace has engendered seething
resentments.

    The decline of Washington's influence over Western Europe,
on the other hand, has been the gradual and inevitable result
of its great postwar success. America's involvement in Europe
was a welcome response to Soviet aggressiveness, not the cause
of it. By helping rebuild its allies, the U.S. proved the
strengths of its economic and political systems. Learning to
deal with the robust partners that resulted has been a fitful
process but a healthy one. The result is that now, as the cold
war thaws, the U.S. can feel comfortable sharing with its allies
the responsibilities, and financial burdens, of building a new
European order.