WASHINGTON — With the collapse of the hard-line coup in Moscow, the politics of Western aid to the Soviet Union have been fundamentally altered in the space of less than a week.
Before the failed putsch, the Bush Administration had refused to provide significant amounts of economic assistance to the Soviet Union, contending that a massive aid program would be wasted until Moscow embarks on a dramatic program of political and economic reform.
At the London economic summit in July, the United States and the world's six other major industrial democracies effectively rebuffed President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's requests for assistance to revive the moribund Soviet economy.
Now, some critics contend that Bush turned his back on Gorbachev when he needed Western help the most. By forcing Gorbachev to return from the London summit virtually empty-handed, he was weakened politically, providing an opening for the coup plotters, critics complain.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith charged that Gorbachev was a "victim of a Washington policy" that allowed "democracy to become identified with economic hardship among the Soviet people."
Graham Allison, director of a Harvard University center studying how the West should help the Soviets, complained that U.S. aid to the Soviet Union so far has amounted to "peanuts."
As a result, pressures are mounting in the West to provide more, if for no other reason than to make a symbolic show of support for Gorbachev and last week's hero, Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.
Many in Congress and the Administration now believe that a strong signal should be sent to make it clear to the Soviet people that the Western allies endorse their rapid march to democracy.
Congressional Democrats, led by House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), are already planning to introduce legislation calling for expanded Soviet aid when Congress returns from its summer recess.
And, while the White House has not yet publicly acknowledged it, senior Administration officials are convinced that they must provide more emergency food and humanitarian assistance. Although they remain opposed to any expansion of long-term economic aid until the Soviets embark on fundamental economic reforms, officials say that emergency food shipments would help head off growing criticism in Congress and in Europe of White House policies.
