Hyde Park Summit Was Not in Vain

To maintain the status quo in relations between East and West, Russia and the United States, is probably the best that can be hoped for from a summit meeting between presidents Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton nowadays -- and that was all we got.


The big news from Monday's Hyde Park summit was that nothing has changed. Boris and Bill are still fast friends. Neither wants to force any kind of open rift in their relations, especially as they each prepare for difficult re-election campaigns. But they still cannot agree on the key issues that divide them.


The most immediate of these concerns is the proposed peace enforcement troops that are be sent to Bosnia after a peace agreement has been signed by the warring parties. Everyone, said the two presidents, agrees "completely" that Russian troops should take part in the force. But the question is how.


The United States will not consider a United Nations-led force or any other dilution of NATO -- and for that read U.S. -- command. Russia will not consider placing its troops under NATO control. That was how the issue stood before Monday's summit, and that is how it remains.Then there is the still larger question of NATO expansion, which as Yeltsin said in fairly apocalyptic terms in New York, does carry with it severe implications for the future security and stability of Europe. Again, everybody agreed on the need for peace and harmony. But how is that harmony to be ensured?


The United States has accepted the need to expand NATO's protective umbrella over Eastern Europe, and Clinton cannot afford to backtrack openly on that commitment before the elections next November.


Russia is horrified at the prospect of allowing the modern hardware and nuclear weapons of a foreign military alliance to be placed on its borders, and therefore will not accept expansion. To do so would amount to political suicide for Yeltsin, who faces reelection next June.


This standoff, too, existed both before and after the summit.


So, was there any purpose in the meeting at all? The answer must be "yes." Privately, both presidents have invested a good deal of political capital in their relationship, and as elections approach they have a clear interest in playing it up as a success.


But more than that, these summits, by now routine, are needed precisely because the two superpowers have intractable problems to resolve. The bearhugs and bonhomie are an important affirmation of the fact that there are larger issues of world security at stake in the U.S.-Russian relationship than even Bosnia -- and these are still in relatively good repair.