LET'S NOT BE DUPED BY GORBACHEV

The celebrated meeting between President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev last week was said to have laid the groundwork for a new cooperative spirit between the super-powers.

Reading the words of these two world leaders following their nine hours of talks indicates that indeed Soviet and U.S. relations could be entering a boldly forthright and amenable era.

Both leaders said the signing of the 700-page Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty will allow the two nations to concentrate on more pressing economic issues.

Now that military rivalry has been replaced by economic affairs, Bush has assured Gorbachev that trade with his nation will be expanded. Sounds great, right?

But despite gushy kudos from the "Gorby-loving" national media, I find it difficult to be impressed by this talk. In fact, the very thought of economic aid to the U.S.S.R. makes me flush not with goosebumpy glee, but with ire.

How much does the United States need the Soviet Union? What effect would severing all economic ties between the two nations have both there and here?

Let's take a look at the pact that supposedly will allow the two nations to put the arms race behind them.

Over its 15-year duration, START will require the Soviets to cut the nuclear warheads on missiles and bombers by 35 percent and the United States to cut its long-range warheads by about 25 percent. Each side is limited to 6,000 warheads on 1,600 missiles or bombers, with a limit of 4,900 on missiles. The pact still would leave as many as 18,000 warheads in their strategic arsenals.

Bush and Gorbachev lavished praise on the START accord, which will force cuts in their strategic arsenals that will lead to levels about equal to those in existence when the negotiations began in 1982.

But given the economic struggles in the Soviet Union we're told by news accounts that the Soviet people must seek sustenance from the wildly inflated black market due to severe food shortages doesn't it seem strange that a 35-percent cut in warheads would put the U.S.S.R.'s supply only at 1982 levels?

Gee, you mean Nobel Prize winner and Time Man of the Decade Mikhail has actually been building nuclear arms and other weapons at a feverish pace? Wasn't this the man who apparently single-handedly held back tanks in Central Europe as the people stood up for freedom, and the Wall came down.

Well, sort of. It's also the man behind Moscow's thrust of tanks into Lithuania last year to crush that people's plea for independence. Gorbachev, in that single move, made it clear that all the Baltic Republics are destined to remain forever enslaved by the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union produced 140 ICBMs in 1989, 1,300 sea-launched cruise missiles, 1,500 artillery pieces and 5,700 armored fighting vehicles. Also, 300,000 Russian troops still sit in Germany, 50,000 in Poland. Gorbachev, with his apparently insatiable appetite for the potential for destruction, sits atop this weapons heap.

The Soviet Union has spent years building its current weapons arsenal, a collection that far exceeds the United States. They've also displayed a blatantly caustic disregard for any previous arms control agreements with the West.

How can the United States be so naive to think that will now change? Many Americans have been duped into believing the overstated and simplistic view that Soviet economic already is in sufficient disarray to force Gorbachev into complying with any U.S. arms control demands if economic aid is contingent on such demands.

But if that's the case, why does the Soviet military still consume 20-40 percent of GNP, depending on what source you use, while the U.S. Congress complains bitterly about misplaced priorities when a mere 5 percent of our GNP is spent on defense?

Why not deny Gorbachev any and all economic assistance and let the failing Soviet system collapse, giving the Soviet people a fighting chance for some real reform and freedom and eliminating our need for Soviet arms concessions? A truly decimated economy is unable to produce pellet guns, let alone nuclear warheads, even in the Soviet Union.

By choosing to continue to prop up the Soviet economy, the United States is allowing a Communist nation to continue to flounder in its illogical, immoral and repressive economic system.

Our nations and leaders need to stop thinking of Gorbachev as the reform-minded, peace-loving liberal he's not. He's a hard-liner cut from the Stalin mold who needs to be held accountable to his dubious track record, not his magnanimous words.

To quote columnist Patrick Buchanan: "If Gorbachev's regime has declared itself for no private property, no freedom, no independence for the Baltic state, what stake have we left in its survival."

In a separate column, Buchanan always frank in his assessment of Gorbachev's Russia had this to say:

"Why do we need a regime that churns out SS-24 mobile missiles sixth-generation Scuds with 6,000-mile ranges and targets them on our homes? Why do we need a regime that moves 70,000 pieces of equipment trucks, tanks, planes, armored vehicles, gunships and artillery pieces east of the Urals, to prevent their being covered by a treaty on conventional arms? Why do we need a U.S.S.R. that yet spends 25 percent of GNP on weapons of war?

"Why extend a nickel in credit to a regime that has $5 billion to spare in annual aid for Fidel Castro's Cuba?"

Why indeed.