With every new Russian-American summit, relations between the two Cold War adversaries are becoming chillier. The summit slated for Oct. 23 in New York is already looking more like Reykjavik in 1987 than Vancouver in 1993. It's not a cold war yet, but the quantity of unresolved problems is escalating every month: Reactors for Iran, the bickering over the interpretation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the enlargement of NATO, the Partnership for Peace program, the flank limitations in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty and, now, the sharp differences over NATO policy in Bosnia.


If the summit in New York is as unproductive as the one in Moscow in May, a further deterioration in relations is almost inevitable. People on both sides of the Atlantic realize that the bilateral relationship between Moscow and Washington and, more broadly, relations between Russia and the West have reached a watershed. In an attempt to find some mutual understanding on military matters, including NATO expansion and NATO's role in Bosnia, Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and his American counterpart, U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, met in Geneva last Sunday.


The net results were rather disappointing. Grachev and Perry agreed to go forward with the long expected joint exercises to train soldiers in peacekeeping duties in Kansas on Oct. 23. The participation of 150 Russian servicemen will be financed from Nunn-Lugar funds approved in previous fiscal years by Congress. The maneuvers were postponed earlier, but will now go ahead on the day Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin are due to meet near New York. One more costly demonstration of great power good will.


Perry and Grachev have also agreed that the mission in former Yugoslavia may be named the "Operation of Implementation Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina." As Grachev pointed out, "NATO is not mentioned in this name," but this can hardly be considered a major concession. Especially after NATO Secretary General Willy Claes insisted Monday at the North Atlantic Assembly in Turin, Italy, that the Bosnia peacekeeping mission "will be a NATO-led operation with NATO command."


For Russia, subordination to NATO is utterly unacceptable. People in Moscow sincerely want peace in the Balkans, but not at the cost of NATO, whose decision Russia cannot influence in any way, replacing the United Nations, where Russia has power of veto in the Security Council. For over two years, NATO officials and Western leaders have reiterated that "Moscow has no power of veto over NATO-related issues." Moscow has learned this lesson. The prospect of being a mute but nevertheless active participant in the deployment of troops in the Balkans, subordinate to NATO rather than the Security Council does not suit the Russians.


During a television panel discussion this past Monday, Russian National Security Adviser Yury Baturin called NATO's efforts to enlarge, as well as the "virtual spreading of NATO's influence in the Balkans," the main external threat to Russia's national security. Baturin also said: "As a result of the implementation of the existing Russian foreign policy line, we are on the threshold of being entirely deprived of the possibility of realizing our interests in the Balkans." Those close to Yeltsin believe that Russia's pro-Western foreign policy of recent years, which is associated with Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, must be changed, and that this will require some radical shuffling of personnel within the Foreign Ministry.


In the West, it seems, people seriously believe that anti-Western moods in Moscow emanate from a few conservative Russian generals and it would be enough to involve the Russian military in the Partnership for Peace program, and joint peacekeeping in Bosnia, for the opposition to NATO enlargement to begin to crumble. Washington is even ready to partially finance the participation of Russian troops in the Bosnia force


But the NATO "charm offensive" is failing. Only a small group of high-ranking diplomats headed by Kozyrev now favors pro-Western positions, and the West's increasingly uncompromising pressure on Moscow -- demands to agree to NATO enlargement and take a back seat as the alliance moves into Bosnia -- will soon deprive them of all influence. Unless the upcoming summit in New York suddenly changes the world, as those famous meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev once did.