
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 10, 1990                   TAG: 9007100384
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ART PINE LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: HOUSTON                                LENGTH: Medium

FEAR OF U.S.S.R. GONE, ALLIES GO THEIR OWN WAYS

The first seven-nation economic summit to be held since the end of the Cold War has barely gotten under way, but already it is providing a telling glimpse of how hard it will be for the allies to get along without the fear of the Soviet bloc to unite them.

Beneath the customary gloss of cosmetic diplomacy, this may go down in history as the Go-Your-Own-Way Summit.

"It's a Go-Your-Own-Way and Do-What-You-Want sort of thing," says Carol A. Brookins, president of World Perspectives Inc., a Washington-based policy research group. "It's as though we're all members of the same family; but it's OK to do as we please anyway."

Previously, the need for the allies to remain strong in the face of the Soviet bear usually was enough to jolt the Western powers into concerted action. With that threat fast disappearing, the allies already are finding it hard to make the kinds of political sacrifices that are almost always necessary in order to deal with major problems.

Examples abound of the way decisions could be forced in the old days. There was the Energy Summit in 1979, the Missiles-in-Europe Summit of 1983 and the Dollar-Stabilization Summit of 1986.

But now, with sharp differences on such key issues as trade, the environment and aid to Moscow and no Soviet threat to unite them, the allies have found a new formula for responding: Draft very broad guidelines and then do as you please - with a minimum of actual concessions.

The United States and Japan already have worked out such an arrangement on allied lending to China. Although Washington technically opposes any resumption of aid to Beijing, U.S. officials signaled that they will look the other way while Tokyo reinstates credits that it cut off last year.

The allies agreed at last year's summit in Paris to suspend aid to China following the Beijing regime's violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations.

"We recognize that there are differences in the interest of individual countries," White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters. Japan, he noted pointedly, was entitled to make decisions on its bilateral aid programs on its own.

And, as Monday's developments showed, the seven are hammering out similar umbrella-agreements.

On aid to the Soviet Union, for example, the seven plan to establish a broad framework that will nominally represent a common approach. Yet it will also allow each of them to provide aid to whatever countries they wish, and on whatever terms.

To some extent, the increased tolerance represents an evolution: With security concerns now visibly diminished, the United States no longer is in a position to demand, and get, whatever it wants from the other leaders.

All that may not be as worrisome as some doomsayers have portrayed it. Henry Nau, a former National Security Council strategist, argues that with the Cold War finally over, the United States does not need to exercise the power it did in earlier days.

Instead, he argues, Washington theoretically should not need to flex its muscles that much to achieve its long-term goals.

"Power for what?" Nau asks. "We don't need as much power now."

by CNB