COLUMN RIGHT : Bush Needs to Cram on Diplomacy : The President gets low marks on vision and leadership.

President George Bush is facing what may be the most important “test” of his presidency. Unfortunately, as his summit with Mikhail Gorbachev gets under way, Bush stands to be graded harshly by the Congress, the press and, ultimately, by history.

This assessment arises from the President’s disappointing foreign-policy performance thus far. While Bush has excelled in the category “plays well with others,” his marks have been seriously deficient in the qualities that count: a D+ on vision; a C- on leadership, and a D- on patience and resolve.

The single most damning indictment is Bush’s failure to regard U.S.-Soviet relations in terms other than arms-control agreements and other trappings of so-called stability. He tends to recoil from the opportunities presented by the crises afflicting the Soviet Union, and his Administration has squandered leverage that could be decisively used to the lasting benefit of U.S. security and international peace.

What President Bush may need at this important juncture is a summit primer. These are the type of questions Bush should expect; how ably he answers them will help determine how well the national interest is served.

--The Administration is engaged in a vigorous effort to help the Soviet Union exploit its energy resources. Does President Bush believe that Soviet repression in Lithuania, especially through the use of energy leverage, should be rewarded by U.S. efforts to enhance the Soviets’ capacity to use energy as a weapon?

The correct answer: No. Ronald Reagan recognized this reality when he acted to impose significant obstacles to efforts to build a major Siberian gas pipeline--an infrastructure calculated to increase U.S. allies’ dependence on Soviet energy supplies and, therefore, their susceptibility to Soviet energy blackmail.

--The United States is negotiating with the Soviet Union to settle $1.54 billion in defaulted payments owed to American bondholders and the U.S. government. Once these debts are settled, the Soviet Union would be able to offer bonds in the U.S. market. Should President Bush refuse to facilitate such offerings?

The correct answer: Yes. U.S. interests will be ill served both by a liquidation of Soviet debts for a fraction of their face value and by the new opportunities for untied lending such bond sales would represent. After all, Soviet securities offer unprecedented openings for a dangerous penetration of U.S. pension funds, life insurance companies’ portfolios, mutual funds and the like, creating (witting or unwitting) constituencies with a vested interest in Moscow’s dictates.

--The United States and its allies have embarked on a wholesale infusion of militarily relevant technology into the Soviet economy even as the evidence mounts that the dramatic reductions in defense spending that Gorbachev promised have not materialized. Shouldn’t the West be demanding as the price for its technological largess the complete withdrawals of the Kremlin’s forces from East Germany and other client states?

The correct answer, of course, is that we should be bringing the full weight of Western leverage to bear on Moscow to remove its forces from all its erstwhile imperial holdings in Eastern Europe. We should, however, insist on a higher price for unencumbered access to Western dual-use technology and for other economic, financial and political assistance. The only circumstances under which such assistance can be safely supplied is if the politico-military-economic system in the Soviet Union--the mechanism that has been used to misapply these resources in threatening ways--is replaced with genuine democratic and free-market systems.

Clearly, the election of Boris Yeltsin to the presidency of the Russian republic and that of like-minded reformers to the city governments of Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev--if not the burgeoning independence movements from the Baltics to Mongolia--are proof of the popular rejection of the Kremlin’s Communist rulers. This public attitude has become more intense as Gorbachev has shown himself clearly opposed to such radical reformist sentiment and ever more prepared to use various forms of repression to resist it.

If President Bush recognizes that the true test of his leadership will be his willingness to support those seeking to supplant Gorbachev and the political and economic system he leads--instead of propping up a regime that neither enjoys the support of its people nor is in the United States’ long-term strategic interests--he will pass his summit exam with flying colors.