Gorbachev in London: A Nice Chat Will Do

LONDON —  Margaret Thatcher was the first Western leader to appreciate the significance of Mikhail S. Gorbachev. When he visited Britain in December, 1984, three months before he became leader of the Soviet Union, she declared that he was someone she could do business with. This prompted others, not the least Ronald Reagan, to realize that here was a new kind of figure on the Soviet scene.

In the intervening years Thatcher has taken every opportunity to develop the dialogue with Gorbachev, which gives particular point to his visit to London, beginning today. This will be his first meeting with a major leader from the Western Alliance since last month’s historic Soviet elections.

But we should not be looking for a new leap forward in international relations to match the drama of what has been happening politically within the Soviet Union. Indeed, the value of the Gorbachev-Thatcher discussions should not be measured by whether they reach any specific new agreement at all.

The British are allergic to blueprints in the best of times, and there is distinct uneasiness in London at Henry Kissinger’s proposal, still not entirely spelled out, for a new arrangement with the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe.

British opinion certainly hopes that as the Soviet Union moves toward democracy at home, it will ease its political and military control over Eastern Europe. There would be no thought of using that process to destabilize the Soviet Union. Indeed, the dangers of instability within the Soviet empire as Gorbachev pushes his reforms are clearly recognized.

The wisdom of Kissinger’s thoughts on these points is understood. It is the idea of trying to codify them in a deal with the Soviet Union that sticks in British official throats.

This may be partly because of memories of the agreement that Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill reached with Josef Stalin at Yalta--hardly an encouraging precedent for striking a bargain with the Soviets over Eastern Europe. But that is an irrelevant comparison. What was being settled at Yalta, whether all the participants realized it or not, were the arrangements for imposing Soviet military and political control over Eastern Europe, not the terms for relaxing that control.

A more telling criticism of Kissinger’s proposal is that any deal at this time would seek to impose a pattern on what is by its nature an uncertain process of political evolution in Eastern Europe. Who can know what the countries there will want in 10 years?

We may feel confident that it would be foolish and dangerous to invite any nation that might leave the Warsaw Pact to join the North Atlantic alliance. But what about relations with the European Community? It is much harder to be sure on that point.

What if chaos did break out in Eastern Europe? Would such a deal imply a joint obligation from the West and the Soviet Union to restore stability? That does not seem an attractive prospect to Britain. So we should not expect to see Thatcher and Gorbachev pointing the way toward any formal arrangement on Eastern Europe.

Nor, I suspect, should we look for agreement on economic matters. To British minds it seems natural that East-West trade in Europe should now increase. But this should be on strict commercial grounds. There is not much to be said for the Italian idea of a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe, nor for soft credits on political grounds. They would more likely lead to bad debts than to political benefits.

On disarmament, Thatcher is unlikely to do anything that would look like trying to preempt the policy review that the Bush Administration has undertaken. Her main concern on security policy at the moment is not so much to negotiate anything with the Soviet Union, but to persuade the West Germans to accept the modernization of the Lance nuclear missiles deployed on their territory.

So will her meeting with Gorbachev really be worth the trouble? Or will it turn out to be an anticlimax, a warning to other leaders of the dangers of meeting for the sake of meeting?

Perhaps Gorbachev’s visit will be remembered for the speech he is scheduled to deliver. Already, it has received much advance billing. But even if he does not say anything of note, there is a more subtle purpose that could well be served by this visit.

If stable relations are to be established with the Soviet Union, we shall have to get used to its leaders meeting Western heads of government without great initiatives being taken or momentous issues being settled. There is a value in keeping in touch for its own sake.

Who better to set that pattern than Margaret Thatcher, who is in no danger of being considered dull, who does not have to create an international reputation for herself and who is not in political need of an early triumph?