REAPING THE WHIRLWIND

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100190082-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 14, 2007
• Sequence Number: 82
• Publication Date: January 21, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/03/15: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100190082-4
GEORGE F "WILL
12ussia weighs its words. When a new edi-
tion of Russia's most widely used diction-
ary was published during Khrushchev's
era, it contained a single significant change
from the previous edition. "Khrushch," a
kind of beetle, was no longer described as
"deleterious to agriculture."
Last week, while Russians were harvest-
ing Afghanistan, some Republicans who
fancy themse.ves Presidential were telling
Iowa that they would never, everbedeleteri-
ous to agriculture. They usually are thrill-
ingly fierce about Russia,,but now say: Let's
be tough-as-nails with the Russian bear but,
golly, let's not stop feeding it. All those fel-
lows want to seem Churchillian, but can't
get the hang of it. Churchill raised two fin-
gers in a defiant "V"forvictory. TheRepub-
lican trademark is a single wetted finger
raised to test which way the wind is blowing.
By last week, neither the Iranian nor the
Afghan crisis was, strictly speaking, a crisis.
The Soviet conquest was proceeding rou-
tinely an d was distracting attention from the
fact that, regarding Iran, the U.S. Govern-
ment has exhausted its repertoire of inac-
tion. That exhaustion didn't matter much
because the American public wasn't so in-
terested anymore. For all the talk about
transformed man meeting grave crises with
bold departures, the Administration could
not even rise above waffling about an Olym-
pics boycott. Or about whether aid to Paki-
stan would include a commitment to guar-
antee Pakistan's territorial integrity.
o?TIMIsM:Thawhirlwindwearenowreap-
ing was sown in 1975. Congress had long
since made impossible a. response to the
North Vietnamese attacks that presaged the
destruction of a U.S. ally. Congress would
not tolerate a serious response to the arrival
of Soviet proxies in Angola. The U.S. signed
the Helsinki agreements on human rights,
knowing that the Soviet Union had no inten-
tionofcomplyingandthat there wasnohope
of compelling compliance. The United
States thereby became an accomplice of the
Soviet Union in legitimizing Soviet pre-
tenses and deceiving the American public.
In 1977, U. S. paralysis was elevated to the
status of policy, even philosophy, when Car-
ter unfurled "a new American foreign poli-
cy" in his commencement address at Notre
Dame. He proclaimed "a policy based on
constant decency in its values and on opti-
mism in our historical vision." Optimism
was in order because we were now free from
"inordinate fear of Communism" and be-
cause "we are confident that democracy's
example will be compelling." Carter did not
NEWSWEEK
21 January 1980
Plliil 11 V "41
say what he considered an ordinate fear of
Communism or who would be compelled to
do what by "democracy's example." But his
theme was clear: Kissingerian power poli-
tics were unseemly. We would rely on opti-
mism and the power of exemplary living.
Less than three years later, we are (or so
it is said) getting yet another new foreign
policy. This one is based on the sunburst of
understanding that occurred when the So-
viet Union did to Afghanistan what it had
done to Latvia, Estonia, Poland, East Ger-
many, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and
Czechoslovakia (and had helped others do
to South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos).
The Administration seems almost proud of
its metaphysical flexibility, but there are
f'n Y p,77,.3
skeptics who doubt the duration of this
month's enlistment in the cold war. They
note that Carter's speech in response to the
Soviet military aggression contained not a
syllable about U.S. military countermoves.
Carter may be the most dangerous Presi-
dent since James Buchanan (1857-61), who
gave the South the impression that the
North would not use force to save the
Union. Buchanan thought secession was
wrong, but that coercion would be, too. His
attitude was an invitation.
The Economist says: "Who invited
40,000 Russian soldiers complete with their
quisling into Afghanistan? Answer: Presi-
dent Carter, the American Congress and
American opinion-and those American
allies who have dared not believe, and have
done little to remedy or reverse, the crum-
bling of America's willingness to exercise
its power." Before that issue of The Econo-
mist arrived by air from London, 60,000
more troops had arrived in Afghanistan.
The Economist called the invasion an "act
of contempt" dramatizing "the failing de-
terrence of America" and the need to halt
"appeasement." But the invasion also was
an act-of ominous confidence.
The Russians are, officially, material-
ists, but they know the role of the immate-
rial. They know power is not a mass of
military materiel; it is such materiel at the
service of a particular kind of will, of
confidence. Russia's Ethiopian and other
recent operations have given them confi-
dence in their ability to conduct clockwork
intervention, as they have done in Af-
ghanistan. Russia beat Napoleon and Hit-
ler with vast spaces and huge numbers.
Now Russia is shedding inhibitions in part
because it has confidence in its ability to.
use speed and precision, as well as over-
whelming power. The United States, for its
part, could have bases and ships all over
the Middle East and be no better off if it
remained paralyzingly reluctant to use
military assets in any way. And the U.S.
cannot prevail,"in any case, unless it sub-
stantially increases its assets, fast.
J.NJ LLECTUAL D=3RIS: It is said we are gov-
erned by changed men. But it might be at
least a bit easier to believe in change if
Carter himself would forgo that non sequi-
tur about how we will prevail because we
are right. And if he would change some of
the men around him. After the Bay of Pigs,
President Kennedy reportedly said to Allen
Dulles, the CIA director, "Under a parlia-
mentary system of government it is I who
would be leaving ofce. But under our
system it is you who must go." Today, after
three worse-than-wasted years, the Admin-
istration admits that its its original policy
assumptions are intellectual debris and the
kindest assessment is that Carter has been
consistently misinformed and ill-advised. Is
there no penalty for failure in this Adminis-
tration? Among those who should go are
_-Stansfie Turner, the CIA director, and
Mars a 1Shu i-man, the State Department's
"Soviet expert."
But how many experts are needed to
decipher Soviet policy? In June 1968, two
months before the West was (or said it was)
shocked by the invasion of Czechoslovakia,
Andrei Gromyko proclaimed that "the So-
viet People do not plead with anybody to be
allowed to have their way in the solution of
any question involving ... our country's
extensive interests." In 1975, when U.S.
behavior helped set in train events that led
to Russia's geopolitical onslaught, Gromy-.
ko proclaimed that Russia's overriding aim
is "developing and deepening the world
revolutionary process."
Where next? Marshal Tito is 87. When he
dies and Yugoslavia is riven by factions, the
Russians will have a faction, and the West
may have another occasion for saying how
shocked it is by Russian behavior. In Rus-
sia, there must be amazement, if not inex-
tinguishable laughter, about the West's un-
willingness to weigh Russia's words.