THE MOSCOW SUMMIT : Europe Expects Little From Summit

European analysts feel rather ho-hum about the impending summit in Moscow. They do not expect much to happen and, from the European point of view, that is probably a plus.

President Reagan shocked Europeans in October, 1986, when, without consulting them, he came close to reaching agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland, on a ban on all nuclear missiles.

Although not surprised, Europeans were also apprehensive about what came out of the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting in Washington last December: the signing of a treaty for the destruction of ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear forces.

In both cases, many Europeans were fearful that President Reagan was bargaining away their nuclear protection and leaving them vulnerable to conventional Soviet military forces.

There are still isolated cries of anxiety about the Moscow summit meeting. Political analyst Pierre Lellouche, writing recently in the French news magazine Le Point, said there is nothing wrong with good relations between the United States and the Soviet Union so long as the atmosphere does not foster illusions.

But he cautioned Europe to remember an old Indian proverb: “When two elephants fight, the grass beneath them is crushed. That is also true when they make love.”

Most European analysts did not seem very worried--or even concerned. Even the drama of Reagan setting foot for the first time in the land he once called “the evil empire” has not excited much curiosity in Europe.

“You see,” Dominique Moisi, deputy director of the French Institute for International Relations, said over a recent lunch in Paris, “for us it has never been the evil empire.”

In France and Britain, there has been some journalistic fretting over the frequency of summit meetings. The Economist, the respected British news magazine, worried in a recent editorial whether Reagan and Gorbachev are overdoing it. The Moscow summit, after all, will be their fourth, and there is talk now of a fifth later this year.

In a similar way, Lellouche, in his commentary in the French magazine, noted that Reagan and Gorbachev, after Moscow, will have taken part in a third of all the American-Soviet summit meetings since 1945.

“The amiable Mr. Reagan’s liking for a chat, and the shrewd Mr. Gorbachev’s desire for a Western audience, have lately produced an excess of summits,” the Economist said. “. . . Once in a purple moon, it may be necessary for the top men to settle some awful impasse between themselves. . . . Apart from that, a summit’s only proper business is to sign agreements already worked out by humbler men. . . .”

But Peter Jenkins, a foreign affairs columnist for Britain’s daily Independent, disagreed. “Summit meetings ought to be a routine feature of superpower diplomacy,” Jenkins said. “Visible and audible dialogue is an essential ingredient of stability in the nuclear age and a condition of public support for strategies of deterrence. Even when not much is achieved, it does no harm for leaders to meet and talk.”

This quiet debate over whether Reagan and Gorbachev are meeting too often betrays the low level of European expectations about the summit. Both those who think the leaders are overdoing it and those who think they are not overdoing it agree that not much will happen in Moscow.

Thatcher Sees Benefit

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher found positive prospects in the summit, but on a somewhat tangential issue. She told the Washington Post in a recent interview that she thought the summit would give Reagan a chance to demonstrate the West’s support for the changes the Communist leader is trying to make in the Soviet Union.

“I think that visit to the Soviet Union could really be a very great plus for the West, indicating that the reforms that Mr. Gorbachev has started are very much not only to the benefit of the people of the Soviet Union but . . . to the rest of the world,” she said.

” . . . You really have got to say, ‘Look, these are moves in the right direction, and we welcome them.’ You’ve got to be openly encouraging of things that are moves in the right direction.”

In West Germany, the government and press analysts looked at the summit optimistically, even while expecting it to produce little. Government spokesmen in Bonn said they believe that Reagan and Gorbachev will create momentum for later negotiations on a reduction in conventional arms and on human rights issues in the Soviet Union.

Conventional Arms Issue

Reduction of conventional forces is a vital issue in Europe because of the widespread belief that agreements on destruction of nuclear missiles could leave Europe vulnerable to possible attack by Soviet tanks and infantry.

German newspapers were impressed by a brief address that Reagan made to Europeans on Tuesday on the television channels of a satellite service operated by the U.S. Information Agency and shown to selected audiences at U.S. embassies.

The President talked mostly about how the West should not expect “a quick, radical transformation of the Soviet system” and how a treaty to diminish strategic nuclear arsenals would take time.

In an editorial, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, a left-center newspaper, said the aim of the Reagan speech seemed to be “to allay fears that the United States would go over the heads of its allies as it did in Reykjavik.”

In the past, Paris has been the capital of European concern about Reagan-Gorbachev summitry. French officials believe fervently in nuclear deterrence and feel proud of their nuclear arsenal, which makes France the No. 3 nuclear power in the world. Gorbachev’s pronouncements that the Soviet Union and Western Europe belong to a “common European house” usually get a chilly reception in Paris. The French suspect that the Soviets want to draw Western Europe out of the protection of the American nuclear umbrella and make the West Europeans susceptible to Soviet pressure.

French Preoccupied

But a flurry of elections--the reelection of President Francois Mitterrand on May 8 and two rounds of parliamentary elections scheduled for June 5 and 12--have turned the French inward, distracting their attention from Moscow.

French analysts do not believe that much attention is needed anyway. The influential Paris newspaper Le Monde described the summit as “banal” because the two leaders have met so often.