Heeding Bush, NATO Backs Lead Role by U.S. : Europe: His blunt message forces formal recognition of a continuing pre-eminent American position.

In unusually blunt language for a diplomatic conference, President Bush threatened Thursday to pull the United States back from its central role in NATO if the other members of the alliance let the military organization wither as European unity approaches.

Bush’s surprise maneuver was intended not so much to bring about a U.S. withdrawal from the 42-year-old alliance as to force NATO to commit itself, in a formal manner, to recognizing the continuation of Washington’s pre-eminent role.

Asked later whether anyone took him up on his bluff and objected to the United States maintaining its influential position, Bush said, “not one.”

The question of America’s relationship with the 15 other members of NATO was the top item on the Administration’s agenda as the alliance unveiled a strategic reorganization to adjust to the arrival of democracy in Eastern Europe and the stunning political relaxation in the Soviet Union.

Among the shifts NATO envisions are a downgrading of the threat from the Soviet Union, establishing greater ties with Moscow’s former Communist satellites and moving toward leaner, more mobile allied forces together with reduced reliance on nuclear weapons.

“It would be a mistake to leave this hall with blissful ambiguity on this point,” Bush said in his opening remarks at a two-day North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit conference. “Our premise is that the American role in the defense and the affairs of Europe will not be made superfluous by European union. If our premise is wrong; if, my friends, your ultimate aim is to provide independently for your own defense, the time to tell us is today.”

At the heart of Bush’s message, delivered behind closed doors and relayed by a senior White House official, was concern that three developments--revitalization of the Western European Union, completion of a Franco-German plan to create a corps-sized two-nation army and the European Community’s new interest in security matters--will draw military resources and political support away from NATO, the United States’ singularly important link to the defense of Europe.

European leaders at the opening of the summit responded favorably to the President’s challenge to them to spell out clearly whether they wish the United States to continue to play its leading role in NATO.

They do, they said.

French President Francois Mitterrand, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and British Prime Minister John Major all reassured Bush that the United States remains the linchpin of NATO and that any eventual European military force would not be designed to cut out America.

Virtually to a man, the Europeans seemed to regard Bush’s comments as more of a rhetorical flourish for his domestic audience than a real point for debate. But clearly, the President’s purpose in raising the implied threat produced just the results he wanted.

While the Italians privately called it “provocative rhetoric,” they and the French spoke in placating tones in public, and they suggested that Bush was preaching to the converted. And Kohl, in a speech at home Wednesday and in remarks here Thursday, said that the French-German military plan he had advanced with Mitterrand last month was for a unit that would serve as a complement to NATO, not as a threat.

Bush’s goal, the White House official said, was “to be very clear early on and very blunt about how we feel.” He said Bush’s remarks were in response to a feeling within the Administration that with Bush present, Mitterrand publicly endorses the current U.S. role in NATO, but that at other times, he presses for a greater French role, “which implies a lesser role for us.”

“We’ve always got to keep pinning him down,” the official said. “There is this disturbing tone from France that America needs to be in (NATO). We say, ‘You’ve got that wrong. You need us. If you don’t think you need us, fine.’ The real question is NATO vs. the Western European Union vs. the French-German plan.”

The concern has been that the Franco-German plan, under which a total of 50,000 troops from the two nations would serve together in a force, would operate outside of NATO command. Indeed, French troops were pulled out of the NATO central command structure a quarter-century ago, and, thus, half the force would automatically be beyond NATO authority.

Bush chose to force the issue Thursday because, in the U.S. view, the alliance has reached one of its most important moments as it looks to the future--as important, Bush said, as its founding in 1949.

“We are in the process . . . of redefining this alliance and some of its goals,” Secretary of State James A. Baker III said. “We want to make certain there are no ambiguities and that there is no confusion.” He said that, while the United States supports the creation of “a European security identity,” it must complement the alliance.

“The United States will for quite some time continue to be the leader of the alliance, and . . . our European allies are very anxious that that be the case,” Baker said.

Another official added: “We got all the assurances we wanted.”

In another development directly tied to NATO’s future, the Bush Administration quietly pressed for a much greater role in the alliance for Eastern European nations, formerly members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, than U.S. officials are publicly disclosing.

While America’s formal position is that Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania should immediately receive liaison-observer status, “ultimately we see them as full members,” a White House official said. Such a role, he said, would lead to their contributing military forces to NATO and coming under the alliance’s defensive umbrella, under which an attack on one member nation is considered an attack on all.

The summit is likely to declare at its concluding session today that the Eastern European nations are welcome to adopt an observer status.

That role, and especially full membership in NATO, the official said, means “there is less chance of anything happening to (the Eastern European nations) in terms of a threat from the East.” The official and others have noted, however, that the military threat from the Soviet Union is sharply reduced in the wake of the unsuccessful coup there--and in the wake of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s subsequent decision to join Bush in pulling back nuclear forces.

Besides, he said, Eastern Europe’s membership in the 38-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and in the Western European Union--a nine-nation defense consultative group formed in 1955 and recently revitalized--demands that the nations there also be given a full role in NATO, “if you want to make NATO the primary organization.”

In addition to taking up questions on Eastern Europe today, the summit is likely to issue a statement on NATO’s relations with the Soviet Union, focusing on human rights, nuclear arms and economic support.

By Thursday’s end, the United States, Canada and 14 European nations had formally approved a 16-page, 60-point document, “The Alliance’s New Strategic Concept,” which downgrades a threat from the Soviet Union and calls for leaner, more mobile forces together with reduced reliance on nuclear weapons. Baker called the new agreement “a big step.”

As part of their new look, NATO leaders also established a North Atlantic Cooperation Council to confer with former enemies. An initial meeting with nine East and Central European countries, including the Soviets and the newly independent Baltic states, is scheduled for Dec. 20 in Brussels.

“Our own security is inseparably linked to that of all other states in Europe,” the NATO leaders said. “We intend to develop a more institutional relationship of consultation and cooperation on political and security issues.”

NATO’s revised strategy, which Secretary General Manfred Woerner said “opened a new chapter in the history of our alliance,” anticipates sharp force reductions by both the United States and its allies as well as an 80% reduction in the level of nuclear weapons agreed upon by NATO defense ministers last month.

The U.S. military commitment is expected to be halved during the 1990s to about 150,000 troops in Western Europe. All NATO military forces, the document says, should reach “the lowest possible level of forces consistent with the requirements of defense.”

Of particular concern to the North Atlantic partners, although not mentioned specifically, is the regional and ethnic disarray in the Soviet Union, where squabbling republics assert authority over nuclear weapons, and the civil war in Yugoslavia.

When the summit ends today, foreign ministers representing the 11 European Community members of NATO will be joined by their Irish colleague--Ireland is a neutral nation that does not belong to NATO--to discuss imposing sanctions against Serbia as the aggressor in the Yugoslav conflict.

Times staff writer William D. Montalbano contributed to this story.

NATO’s Origins

A look at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from its inception :

CREATING THE ALLIANCE: The NATO treaty was signed April 4, 1949, in Washington. In it, the United States, Canada and 10 European nations--Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal--aligned themselves against any military threat from the Soviet Union. Greece, Turkey, West Germany and Spain later joined the alliance.

The treaty says, “The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”

France, Spain and Iceland are not part of NATO’s integrated military structure.

THE OBJECTIVE: NATO sought to maintain enough military forces to deter an attack from the seven nations of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact while at the same time striving for disarmament and detente. The Warsaw Pact’s military force was dissolved March 31, and the Warsaw Pact formally ended July 31.

THE PEOPLE: The alliance has been the military protector of 620 million people: 353 million in Western Europe, 243 million in the United States and 26 million Canadians.