Challenge for Bush Will Be to Catch Up With Gorbachev at U.N.

Common wisdom holds that Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to New York primarily to meet President-elect George Bush, and that the Soviet leader’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly today is merely a pretext for keeping bilateral relations on track.

If so, this would not be the first time that the United Nations has provided a convenient East-West meeting place at an awkward moment--a good reason for keeping the General Assembly in New York even if we have to put up with the Yasser Arafats of this world. But we would be mistaken to focus exclusively on the get-acquainted non-summit and to treat Gorbachev’s new-found emphasis on multilateral diplomacy as no more than a sideshow to the bilateral relationship.

Traditionally the Soviets have treated the United Nations as little more than a propaganda appendage to the more muscular policies of a military superpower. But, as Soviet power and the utility of military force have declined, U.N. peace and security efforts have taken on a new meaning for the Soviet leadership. While stable Soviet-American relations remain the central and necessary condition for domestic reconstruction under perestroika and glasnost , Gorbachev has recognized, as his predecessors did not, that security is influenced by many national actors and by non-military as well as military factors.

Gorbachev has not rediscovered the United Nations out of altruism or idealism. He wants to disengage from unpromising adventures and commitments in the Third World, with the United Nations--not the United States--filling the resulting void. For decision-makers in both Washington and Moscow, U.N. involvement circumvents the dilemma of the zero-sum choice of escalation or defeat while permitting a veto of undesired outcomes. So it is not surprising that the Soviets over the past year have produced myriad sensible and not-so-sensible suggestions for strengthening U.N. peacekeeping, monitoring and verification capabilities as well as enhancing the mediating role of the secretary general and the competence of the World Court.

All this represents a major, but little recognized, challenge to George Bush. Ironically, the President-elect is the only member of his otherwise impressive foreign-policy team who has had experience or interest in U.N. affairs.

The U.S. posture at the United Nations, despite the encouraging words from President Reagan in September, remains essentially defensive and reactive, and we have still not paid our arrearages to the world body. Lacking an assertive strategy for using the United Nations, American policies there tend to be derivative of other policy concerns, as in the case of the Arafat visa.

Meanwhile, Gorbachev is already moving at a fast clip on the U.N. stage, and his campaign will no doubt gain momentum with his speech to the General Assembly--the first by a Soviet leader in almost three decades.

After two years of Western and nonaligned resistance, it appears likely that the General Assembly will endorse a watered-down version of the Soviet resolution calling for a comprehensive system of international peace and security. While still a murky concept, the Soviets have begun to fill in the blanks with specific proposals of broad appeal. Washington needs to move quickly either to embrace the aspects of the concept that are acceptable or to offer a realistic and attractive alternative.

The Bush agenda might begin with these issues:

--The funding of U.N. peacekeeping forces, which remain financially strapped even as they receive the Nobel Peace Prize this week. This past summer the Defense Department agreed that $150 million could be transferred from its accounts, instead of from the State Department’s meager resources, for this purpose. The Senate, however, failed to give its approval. This deal needs to be reworked with the new Administration and Congress.

--A multilateral agreement to ban chemical weapons. A lot of progress has been made on an accord, but a superpower push is needed to complete the work. This should be a natural for Bush, who introduced the U.S. proposal in Geneva in 1984.

--The enhancement of U.N. monitoring of the transfer of advanced conventional arms and missile technology to the Third World, as part of a larger effort to limit conventional forces both in Europe and in the Third World.

--The challenging of Gorbachev to live up to the “soft” side of his comprehensive security package by joining the United States in providing substantial support for the humanitarian, human-rights and development work of the U.N. system.

Through steps like these, Bush could show the world that “new political thinking” is alive and well in Washington as well as in Moscow.