NEWS ANALYSIS : W. Europe Surpassing U.S. in Aiding East Bloc Reform

WASHINGTON —  Twenty-eight years ago, when East Germany built the Berlin Wall, President John F. Kennedy rallied the West with his defiant response: “ Ich bin ein Berliner .” Now, as the wall comes tumbling down, Western leaders are proclaiming victory and stepping up aid to Soviet Bloc reformers.

But this time, the rallying cry is not coming from Washington.

Instead of President Bush, the West’s most visible spokesmen on shaping the New Europe are Europeans: West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Francois Mitterrand. In particular, diplomats say, it is Kohl and his foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who are spearheading the West’s efforts to aid reform in Eastern Europe.

The change reflects more than a difference between two U.S. presidents. It reflects, to a significant degree, a fundamental change in America’s place in the scheme of things.

For 40 years, the United States has been the most important power in Europe and the dominant partner in the Western alliance. But now that the two halves of divided Europe are growing closer together, Washington appears increasingly on the margin.

“We are going through a difficult transition,” said Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former senior State Department official. “This isn’t 1949, when the United States was clearly the leading power. In 1949, Europe was down and out. In 1989, that vacuum isn’t there any more; it’s been filled by the Western Europeans themselves.”

That change may make some Americans uncomfortable, Sonnenfeldt and others say, but in the long run it is inevitable--and, they added, a good thing. “We should welcome a bigger role by the Western Europeans,” Sonnenfeldt said. “Leadership, in some ways, means getting them to take more responsibility.”

Earlier this week, it was Mitterrand, not Bush, who called an emergency meeting of the Western allies to consider additional responses to the changes in East Germany. The United States is not even attending that meeting. Instead of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it is the 12-member European Community that is taking the lead.

In Washington, Democrats have sharply criticized what they see as Bush’s reluctance to act as leader of the non-Communist world. Privately, some Republicans are also concerned about the way Bush has reacted to events in Europe.

“We have a historic opportunity in Eastern Europe, but the Administration hasn’t been leading, it’s been following,” said Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “They ought to grasp the nettle of leadership, both rhetorically and with resources.”

Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), the Senate majority leader, called on Bush to convene a meeting of the NATO allies, to visit West Berlin and to move more quickly to suspend restrictions on trade with the Soviet Union. The White House said Bush plans no trip to Berlin and that he will act on trade only after Moscow meets U.S. demands on easing emigration.

Instead, the President has been content to welcome the changes sweeping Eastern Europe in a series of mostly low-key statements. “We are handling it in a way where we are not trying to give anybody a hard time,” Bush explained last week.

Bush aides defend their posture, saying that any greater U.S. role might actually get in the way of more changes in Eastern Europe. “One of the reasons the Soviet Union has let these changes take place . . . is that we aren’t trumpeting our victory,” a senior foreign-policy official said.

To some foreign-policy specialists, the less dominant U.S. role springs not from tactics but from necessity.

“There’s a kind of knee-jerk American reaction that we ought to be in charge,” said David P. Calleo of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. “Part of it is the discomfort of giving up our dominant role. Part of it is just partisan.”

“But we can’t afford to take the lead in economic aid,” he said. “We don’t have any money. If we give more money to Poland, we’ll be borrowing it from the Japanese.”

The United States is not irrelevant to the future of Europe, by any means. The Bush Administration is working on a package of aid for Poland and Hungary that Congress has enlarged from the original $125 million to more than $900 million. And, of course, the United States is still a major military presence as the biggest member of NATO, with more than 325,000 troops on the Continent.

Indeed, European leaders still see the United States as such a towering presence that Bush and other U.S. officials have had to put considerable energy into convincing them that the President does not intend to cut a secret deal on Eastern Europe with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev when the two superpower leaders meet in the Mediterranean off Malta next month.

“(We) are not meeting to negotiate the future of Europe,” Bush said Wednesday. “The peoples of Eastern Europe are speaking their own minds about that future.”

West European diplomats in Washington said their governments generally are pleased with the Administration’s position--with one exception: They would like more consultation with Bush or Secretary of State James A. Baker III, both before and after the summit.

“That is one place where the Administration has slipped,” said Robert E. Hunter, a former foreign-policy aide to President Jimmy Carter. “The act of working more closely with the allies is, in some ways, the most important part of building a new kind of relationship.”

Mitterrand’s action in calling a European Community meeting to deal with Eastern Europe is both a landmark in the new political assertiveness of Western Europe and a test of how the Continent’s new structure will work, diplomats said.

“This is an important development,” a senior European envoy said. “For the first time, the European Community is making a specific effort to take the lead on a foreign policy issue.”

“The EC is very eager to take the lead in dealing with Eastern Europe,” he added. “NATO is important for the security aspect, but to discuss the future of Europe--that’s a job for the 12 (EC members).”

Officially, the Bush Administration welcomed the announcement of the European meeting, but some U.S. officials were irritated by the move. “It was mostly Mitterrand playing domestic politics,” said one.

“There are a lot of people (within the Administration) who are still uncomfortable with the Europeans’ new role,” said another. “There are some who feel that if the EC gains political effectiveness, NATO loses. That isn’t our policy, though; our policy is that a stronger EC is going to be a stronger voice on our side.”

A more independent political role for the European Community is inevitable for two reasons, officials and other analysts said. One is economic reality, and the other is the increasing success of Western European integration.

When NATO was formed in 1949, the U.S. economy was roughly 40% larger than the combined economies of postwar European nations; now, the European Community’s output is roughly equal to that of the United States (although exchange-rate fluctuations make exact comparisons difficult).

More to the point, swelling trade imbalances and budget deficits have made it impossible for Washington to exercise leadership by spending money on foreign aid. In Poland, Hungary and East Germany, the leading economic role now belongs firmly to West Germany.

The main danger in Western Europe’s new independence, as some officials see it, is that the United States and the European Community might become estranged. That danger will be especially acute if the community acts to restrict U.S. investment or exports as it approaches full economic integration in 1992, they said.

To meet that potential problem, U.S. and European officials are already discussing ways to strengthen political links, perhaps through a new “economic alliance” agreement.

At the same time, they said, the allies must find a new role for NATO--especially if the current East-West talks on reducing conventional armed forces in Europe result in a major withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Continent.

“NATO is still there at the center of security issues,” a State Department official said. “Our role in that area has not diminished. . . . But that relationship is changing, too.”

“There is clearly the potential for increased friction with our European allies” as the balance of power shifts, he said. “But it doesn’t need to be that way unless we let it.”