THE US AND THE WORLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00153R000300050042-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 28, 2008
• Sequence Number: 42
• Publication Date: April 12, 1983
• Content Type: MEMO

Approved For Release 2008/05/28: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300050042-8
12 April 1983
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
FROM . Herbert E. Meyer
Vice Chairman, National Intelligence Council
SUBJECT : The US and the World
1. We are no longer in imminent danger of losing the Cold War. We may
even be starting to win it. Thus the course of history is beginning to move
in a direction favorable to the United States -- a change that has come so
swiftly it has not yet been realized by the public nor even by some government
officials.
2. To fully grasp the speed and significance of this change, one needs
to look beyond the daily battles, which inevitably are so frustrating and
discouraging, and instead to recall how badly the Cold War was going for us
just two years ago:
3. As the 1980s opened, a powerful argument could be made -- indeed, was
being made with growing frequency around the world -- that the US had begun
its descent into history. Our economy was faltering, our military strength
was slipping, traditional American values were eroding, and the Western
alliance was fraying. Time after time the US seemed unwilling, or unable, to
defend its interests or even its citizens. The Soviet Union's power,
meanwhile, was expanding rapidly. Its military arsenals were bursting with
new conventional and strategic weapons. Afghanistan was invaded, Poland was
subdued, and Soviet-bloc support for insurgencies in Third World countries was
raising the level of destabilization, of violence, of human misery.
4. With appalling speed -- and with more than a little help from our
adversaries -- the perception spread that history after all was on the side of
the Soviets. The effect of this perception on quite a few governments was to
force a jumping of sides, or at least a hedging of bets. After all it is a
fact -- rather an ugly one, to be sure, but nonetheless a fact -- that in far
too many countries the primary national-security objective is merely to be on
the winning side. Thus, as the perception spread that history would favor the
Soviets, policies were set and decisions made to accommodate what now seemed
likely to become the next global leader. Governments abandoned their anti-
Soviet rhetoric, toned down their pro-US rhetoric, withdrew support for US
initiatives and began to see merit in Soviet diplomatic and commercial
proposals that previously would have been dismissed outright. As growing fear
of Moscow combined with growing contempt for Washington, US negotiators on
Approved For Release 2008/05/28: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300050042-8
 Approved For Release 2008/05/28: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300050042-8
issues ranging from airline landing rights to arms control found their
adversaries to be more bold, less flexible, sometimes even a bit cocky. It
became safe to burn our embassies and to hold our diplomats hostage.
5. In short, as the 1980s opened, our country had begun to take on the
trappings of a lame duck. History leaves no doubt what future lay in store.
Had this trend continued, within just a few years the US would have ceased to
be a superpower and become, instead, merely a large country. We -- and all
our allies -- would soon have been at Moscow's mercy.
6. That trend has fundamentally reversed direction:
-- Fear that our economy would falter has given
way to mounting excitement over the budding recovery.
Inflation has dropped from double-digit levels to an
annual rate of less than 4 percent, interest rates are
easing, and the stock market is at a record level and
rising. Today the debate among economists and business
executives swirls around the question of whether the
coming boom will be the most powerful in recent history
or merely one of the most powerful. In time our
recovery -- in addition to lowering the US unemployment
rate -- will lift up our allies, and together we will
create more wealth in Third World countries that have had
the good sense to establish free-enterprise societies.
The economic gap between the Free World and the Soviet
bloc will widen.
-- Our defense build-up has directly reduced the
threat of all-out Soviet attack. Their military
advantage is beginning to diminish -- and they know it.
Moreover, by signaling free people throughout the world
of our willingness to defend ourselves and our national
interests, the US build-up has indirectly enhanced our
national security by strengthening our allies' resolve.
As President Eisenhower wrote to General Lucious Clay in
1952: "One of the great and immediate uses of the
military forces we are developing is to convey a feeling
of confidence to exposed populations, a confidence which
will make them sturdier, politically, in their opposition
to Communist inroads."
-- Our efforts to establish a prudent, balanced
East-West trade policy are starting to succeed. Evidence
is accumulating daily now that after initial reluctance,
our allies are prepared to work together with the US in
what they have come to realize is our mutual interest --
namely, slowing from a torrent to a trickle the transfer
Approved For Release 2008/05/28: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300050042-8
 Approved For Release 2008/05/28: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300050042-8
of Free World wealth and technology to the Soviet bloc.
In time, our co-ordinated policies will make it more
difficult for the Soviets to sustain their military
expansion programs, and thus the Free World's security
will be enhanced at minimal economic cost.
-- Our support for people whose countries are the
victims of Soviet-bloc aggression has begun to blunt the
Soviet drive for power in the Third World. In El
Salvador, in Nicaragua, in Afghanistan opposition to
Soviet-backed forces is rising. Moreover, the Soviets
must now assume that US support will be available
elsewhere, when requested in the name of freedom. In
short, the era of easy Communist victories has been
ended.
-- Our willingness to speak out forthrightly about
the truly evil nature of communism -- as the President
did so eloquently in his now-famous Orlando speech -- is
probably the most effective deterrent of all to future
Soviet aggression. For we are making clear to an entire
generation that the Cold War is nothing less than a
struggle for the survival of freedom. We are the world's
leading power, the Soviets for decades have been working
to displace us -- and our two civilizations are so
utterly different that barring a fundamental change by
them it won't be possible to reach an amicable accord or
to form a lasting partnership of any sort. Either the US
will continue as the world's leading power -- and freedom
will survive -- or the Soviet Union will achieve its
ambition to impose its will and its system throughout the
world. By speaking out forthrightly now, we are enabling
people to recognize and face this central, fundamental
choice of our age. Moreover, by drawing attention to the
fact that in all the world there is not a single
communist success story -- not one communist country
whose people do not yearn to escape; not one communist
country whose economy is not bankrupt -- we have at long
last launched an offensive for which the Soviets have no
defense at all.
7. The impact of all these policies and programs -- on our allies, on
our adversaries, on everyone in between -- has been electrifying. The
perception that our country's day is done, and that history after all is on
the side of the Soviets, has simply evaporated. Some governments that had
jumped sides have begun sending signals that they would like to jump back.
Some governments that had begun to hedge their bets are now scrambling to
hedge their hedges. The recent election in West Germany is but the most
Approved For Release 2008/05/28: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300050042-8
 Approved For Release 2008/05/28: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300050042-8
visible indicator that our Western European friends continue to support the
alliance, and in the end reject utterly any notion of separating themselves
from us. Moreover, today in capitals throughout the world policymakers once
again are taking Washington's views into account before reaching decisions
that could affect US vital interests.
8. History teaches that the most dangerous periods come when conditions
begin to improve. Thus we must brace ourselves for an especially nasty patch
of US-Soviet relations. The Soviets will not suffer their reversal lightly.
Moreover, we have pushed them onto the defensive at a time when their own
economy has begun to stagnate and when living standards have begun to drop.
(Today the Soviet economy's only genuine success is the military sector. It's
worth noting that the chief surplus of communism is arms; the chief surplus of
capitalism is food.) The Kremlin's new effort to revive the Soviet economy by
cracking down on the workers cannot possibly succeed; the solution lies not in
more threats but in more incentives, and Moscow has none to offer. The
current drive to boost productivity by rooting out corruption will also fail,
simply because widespread corruption has become vital to the conduct of daily
business in all sectors, from agriculture to missile production. Indeed,
should the Kremlin's leaders somehow succeed in eliminating corruption, the
economy would collapse around their ears.
9. Beyond their borders, the Soviets are hated by the Eastern Europeans
and reviled by the Chinese. The Western Europeans have firmly rejected the
Soviets' crude diplomatic campaign to drive a wedge into the NATO alliance.
Indeed, during the last few months the Europeans have expelled more Soviet
diplomats for improper behavior than during any comparable period in recent
history. The Japanese have turned aside recent Soviet overtures, have
responded firmly to recent Soviet diplomatic threats, and are beginning to
spend more money on defense. Throughout the Third World, Moscow's ability to
buy influence through economic aid is eroding. Soviet ideology is dead.
10. In sum, we are entering an era in which the only remaining instrument
of Soviet leverage will be brute military force, applied directly or through
surrogates such as the Cubans and Vietnamese. In coming years the Soviets
will use this instrument frequently and forcefully. They have no choice but
to do so, for they recognize that the alternative to a steady expansion of
Soviet power is a steady decline of Soviet power to the extent that communist
control of the Soviet empire itself would not survive. More precisely, we
should expect a staggering increase in the number of new strategic and
conventional weapons systems, a more crude approach to using these weapons
systems as means of international intimidation, and a growing number of Third
World de-stabilization efforts.
11. We should be neither surprised nor shaken by the current outburst of
Reagan-is-a-warmonger rhetoric from Moscow. This outburst is merely a
reflection of how worried the Soviets are now that the US will manage to
continue the current trend. They should be worried, for if the present trend
Approved For Release 2008/05/28: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300050042-8
 Approved For Release 2008/05/28: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300050042-8
continues, Soviet opportunities for gains at the expense of our national
safety will diminish steadily.
12. To be sure, the cost of continuing the present trend will be
horrendous, in terms of our money and our national energy. Nasty bumps along
the way are inevitable; each one will De seized upon as evidence that the
effort itself is misguided or even senseless. Moreover, as the level of
diplomatic and physical violence rises, so too will rise the demands from
within our own society to avoid this violence by diminishing our own
strength. This we must resist at all costs. As President Truman's
Secretaries of State and Defense observed in their brilliant 1950 report,
later issued as NSC-68: "No people in history have preserved their freedom
who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might
prove inoffensive to their enemies." In short, what we must not do is ever
again allow the Soviets to come so close to victory. A world dominated by the
Soviet Union would be intolerable.
13. It is too soon to say whether in the long run we will succeed. What
is possible to say now -- indeed, what needs to be said -- is that by stopping
our country's slide and changing the world's perception of the US-Soviet
rivalry, we now have an environment in which success, and therefore peace with
freedom, is possible. We have shown that history is not on their side, but on
ours. It would be a mistake to exaggerate this achievement. It would be a
bigger mistake to overlook it.
Herbert E. Meyer
Approved For Release 2008/05/28: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300050042-8