Grand Illusions.

ANDREW J. BACEVICH

Mr. Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University.

A World Transformed, by George Bush and Brent Scowcroft (Knopf, 568 pp., $30)

OFFERING us the Bush years as George Bush wishes us to remember them, this ponderous and resolutely superficial memoir will do little to restore the luster of that Presidency. Yet A World Transformed exposes the strategic illusions that currently blight American foreign policy. In that sense, it qualifies as required reading.

Alas, the reading can be an onerous chore. The literary shortcomings of this collaboration between Bush and his national-security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, are considerable. Portions of the book written in the first-person plural provide a joint perspective. Alternating comments by Bush and Scowcroft supplement that account. Circumspect, unfailingly polite, and largely devoid of introspection, the personal commentaries are little more than embroidery. The resulting book is fragmented, redundant, and unnecessarily long.

Yet the authors' worries about length provide a convenient rationale for leaving much out. While Bush's preference for steering clear of domestic matters is understandable (if telling), less justifiable is the decision to ignore or dismiss with barely a mention the invasion of Panama, the Persian Gulf before and after Desert Storm, and the crises in Bosnia and Somalia.

In essence, the authors confine themselves to two episodes which they hope will constitute the Bush legacy: bringing down the curtain on the Cold War and forcibly ejecting the Iraqi army from Kuwait. Yet even as recounted here, Bush's role in the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe and the unification of Germany was witness rather than architect. Meanwhile, efforts to portray the Gulf War as "a watershed of history" appear more fanciful than ever. Eight years after Desert Storm, the war's final outcome seems increasingly in doubt.

To be sure, Bush deserves the nation's gratitude for refusing to acquiesce in Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. The combination of that achievement and Bush's inability to translate military victory into a lasting strategic victory reflect his strengths and limitations as diplomatist, Commander-in-Chief, and statesman.

For Bush, the essence of diplomacy is personal interaction. A World Transformed brims with accounts of the President's conversations with his friends-and we are assured repeatedly that they are all his friends: Hosni, Helmut, Brian, Margaret, Vaclav, Franois, and above all, Mikhail. In his profoundly elitist view of how the world works, what really counts is the deal cut at the G7, the relaxed chat at Kennebunkport, or the friendly late-night call placed from the Oval Office.

Yet above all it is as Commander-in-Chief that Bush yearns to be remembered. Even as he recounts his agony over the prospect of sending out American soldiers-"kids," in the President's lexicon-in defense of Kuwait, he was confident that American air power would pulverize the Iraqis. With General Colin Powell on the very eve of the ground offensive lobbying to call it off, Bush stood firm.

In doing so, he responded to the mandate of history. Indeed, a handful of historical truisms defined Bush's principles of statecraft: No Munich, No Vietnam, No Versailles. Munich showed that appeasement only fuels aggression. Vietnam warned against the danger of protracted conflict. Versailles alerted Bush to the hazards of humiliating a great power that's down on its luck.

As guidelines for managing the Cold War, the Three Noes had served the United States well. But it became Bush's fate to assume office as that era was slipping away. As this account documents, neither Bush nor Scowcroft was up to the task of formulating a grand strategy to respond to the end of the Cold War and victory in the Gulf. What new configuration of power among nations might produce and sustain equilibrium? In 1990 and 1991, that crucial question went unanswered.

Other concerns preoccupied the President. Writing in his diary as the Berlin Wall was being breached, Bush reflected: "The big question I ask myself is, How do we capitalize on these changes?" His answer: arms control, on which he would "demand new studies." For his part, Scowcroft flirted with the idea that success in the Gulf might revive the vanished hopes of 1945. The United States and the Soviet Union could henceforth "stand together." In place of FDR's Four Policemen, Scowcroft offered two-even as one of them teetered on the verge of extinction.

Unable to conceive of a realistic new strategy, Bush beguiled himself with rhetoric about a "new world order." Sadly, that rhetoric may well constitute his true legacy. His strategically illiterate successor has seized upon it and now prattles on about the obligations of an "indispensable nation" summoned to "remake history." In the process, Bill Clinton has fostered new illusions and undertaken new commitments for which he has already shown an unwillingness to pay. When the bill for those illusions comes due, George Bush will number among those whom history calls to account.