U.S. Review of Reunification Stance Expected : Diplomacy: East Germany’s transition to democracy and the possible impact on NATO pose problems.

WASHINGTON —  East Germany’s sudden granting of free emigration to the West, coming only three short weeks before President Bush is to meet Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the Malta summit, will put urgent pressure on the Bush Administration to reassess U.S. policy on a question that past Presidents have gladly avoided: German reunification.

For decades, the United States has supported reunification officially, if not enthusiastically. But American policy-makers have always joked that “we expect the Soviets to save us from ourselves.”

After its savage losses in World War II and the humiliation of World War I, Moscow was adamantly opposed to bringing the two Germanys together again.

Now, however, the Soviet attitude toward Germany may be changing as radically as Gorbachev’s new approach to defense and the ideological purity of Eastern Europe. And even if Moscow does still prefer a divided Germany, it may now be prepared to use the reunification issue to move Germany away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Europe away from the United States, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Officials said that for example, Gorbachev might offer at the summit to demilitarize East Germany and even sanction discussion of East and West German confederation, on condition that the United States and its NATO allies, including West Germany, promise not to move into the vacuum.

“We’re on the horns of a dilemma in that respect,” a senior Administration official said. “We can’t be against reunification, if it’s peaceful and within the framework of a democratic Western European community. But we can’t be for reunification that goes too fast and threatened to suck West Germany out of NATO.”

It is a dilemma with which Bush and his senior advisers must now begin to grapple. “Before, reunification was an academic theory,” admitted another Administration official, “but now the likelihood of implementation is a lot closer to reality than before.”

Both the superpowers, most experts believe, have lost the initiative in Central Europe to the Germans themselves. Although the Soviets still have 17 Soviet divisions in Eastern Europe, said another Administration official, “I find it hard to imagine that the Soviets can any longer speak for East Germans” on issues affecting their sovereignty.

Arnold Horelick, a senior Soviet expert at the RAND Corp. think-tank in Santa Monica, said he is convinced that “the Soviets have no stomach for intervention” in East Europe now. The political and economic costs, he said, would be too high.

“The United States may be the only Western nation which can provide judicious guidance from a distance on this question,” Horelick said, “talking quietly to West European powers and the Soviet Union, to see that change proceeds deliberately and major miscalculations are avoided, toward an orderly transition to perhaps a two-Germany federation. I don’t see the Administration standing up to that challenge yet.”

Analysts here believe that East German leader Egon Krenz was desperately seeking a “breathing space” by opening all border crossings Thursday and promising political change. East Germans might not feel an urgent need to flee to the West if they believe that the Iron Curtain is not about to descend again.

Bush, speaking with reporters, was reluctant to say that the development brings German reunification closer. He said that it is probably a step toward his goal of a “Europe whole and free,” as well as toward Gorbachev’s call for “a common European home.”

But he added: “I don’t know whether this development speeds up the day (of reunification) or not.” His hesitancy even to mention reunification indicated that he is not prepared publicly to contemplate that result because his words might promote the process too rapidly.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, capping the week’s extraordinary pace of change in East Germany, brought the long-smoldering issue front and center Wednesday, however, by declaring that “the partition of our Fatherland is unnatural. . . . The German Question isn’t solved.”

U.S. officials said that the United States would prefer that reunification talks wait at least until 1992, after the scheduled integration of Western European economies. At that point, officials said, a unified Germany would be less frightening as a potential “wild card” between the East and West, officials said.

But now, U.S. officials are wary that events will spin out of control, that a dangerously unstable reunification will occur.

One scenario is that a unified Germany might seek to develop independent relations with Eastern European states, raising Soviet fears and causing Moscow to slap down a resurgent Germany before it became a serious threat.

West Germany has given repeated assurances that it will remain a loyal member of NATO and the Western community. It has even expressed fears of a “reunification on West German soil” that would leave East Germany destitute and overtax the West’s ability to assimilate the newcomers.

Because of the reunification issue, U.S. policy toward East Germany has always been a special case in its Soviet Bloc policy.

For decades, the United States favored the nations of Eastern Europe that distanced themselves furthest from Moscow on foreign policy issues. Romania was long the darling of Washington because of its independence.

More recently, the U.S. attitude has been based on human rights and political freedom. Romania has fallen from favor, while Poland and Hungary have risen in U.S. esteem as they have moved toward market economies and political pluralism.

East Germany was always outside this framework, however, because of the reunification issue and the importance that Moscow attached to that state as a security buffer.

U.S. officials say the Administration believes Moscow wants Germany to remain divided and the East to remain in the Warsaw Pact. A Soviet spokesman reiterated the policy Thursday.