1999 (24 page)

We should continue and increase that support. It is in our interest to increase the costs of keeping Cuban forces, for no other means exists to induce the Kremlin to pull them out. It is in the interest of the Angolan people to bring an end to the communist rule that has turned their county into an economic wasteland. UNITA's leader, Jonas Savimbi, seeks not unconditional surrender but rather a coalition government. His program calls not for more centralized planning but a market-based economy. Moreover, UNITA stands a good chance to succeed. In the last two years, major Cuban- and Soviet-led military thrusts into UNITA territory have failed abysmally, partly as a result of air strikes by South Africa but mainly because of UNITA's strength. In any case, while Moscow could conceivably sustain its losses in Afghanistan indefinitely, it is certainly an open question whether over the long haul Cuba can endure its casualties in Angola.

In Southeast Asia, the key conflicts in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union are the war in Cambodia and the insurgency in the Philippines.

Since Vietnam invaded Cambodia, a consensus exists in the United States that the Cambodian resistance deserves our help. While wearing down the Vietnamese occupation forces is in our interest, we have to accept the fact that Cambodia is a peripheral interest for the United States. Also, since communist Khmer Rouge forces make up the majority of the Cambodian resistance, a victory could put into power the same people who killed over two million Cambodians from 1975 to 1978. That would not be in the interest of the Cambodian people. There is little chance we can succeed in helping establish a noncommunist government, because the amount of supplies we would have to deliver to take on the Vietnamese would be tremendous. The sad fact is that we simply
do not have the capability to push the Vietnamese out. This is an area in which China, rather than the United States, should take the lead.

The Philippines are a critical interest for the United States. Our Subic Bay naval base and Clark Air Force Base are the two largest American military installations outside the United States. They are indispensable for our presence in the Pacific and our capability to project power into the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. And there are no suitable substitute locations for those bases anywhere in Southeast Asia. The United States cannot afford a defeat by anti-American forces in the Philippines.

We made the right decision in standing aside while the forces behind Corazon Aquino displaced the government of President Marcos. In his first years in power, Marcos was an outstanding leader of his country and a loyal ally of the United States, but after several years of success his government failed. While he did permit a great degree of freedom, he had blocked the possibility of reform through elections. That would have certainly led to a political explosion if he had stayed in power. While he did not invent corruption—which has been a way of life in the Philippines and still is—he had allowed his cronies and his family to enrich themselves beyond all reasonable limits. While almost all free countries were enjoying rapid economic growth, the Philippines became an economic disaster area, with government-backed monopolies blocking individual initiative. While the communist New People's Army rapidly gained strength, he neglected the need to build up and improve the competence of the military. If Marcos had stayed in power, the situation would have steadily—and quickly—deteriorated.

We also had an alternate leadership in the Philippines that held out the hope of turning these trends around. But whether President Aquino will succeed is still an open question. A revolution creates instability, and the communist-led NPA can profit from instability. It is not yet clear that the new leadership is up to the challenge. What is clear is that the United States cannot make the mistake of believing that the departure of Marcos has solved all our problems. We need to help the Philippines get back on their feet. We must increase our economic aid, assist the new government in devising
the right economic policies to encourage growth, and help reform and reequip the Filipino armed forces so that they can turn back the communists.

Whenever the United States involves itself in replacing one leader with another, it also takes on the responsibility to ensure that the new government will do better than its predecessor. We have pledged to help the Philippines. But we have yet to commit the kinds of resources which President Aquino needs to do the job. We must do so, for the future of the South Pacific and our future as a Pacific power are at stake.

Our competition with Moscow must not be limited to the noncommunist world. To accept the proposition that the communists have a right to compete with us in the free world but that we have no right to compete with them in the communist world is a recipe for defeat. We must adopt policies to engage the Soviets in the kind of competition between our systems that will foster peaceful change in theirs.

We cannot win the U.S.–Soviet struggle unless we go on the offensive—but on a peaceful offensive. We should develop a strategy for peaceful competition with Moscow on the other side of the Iron Curtain, not only in Eastern Europe but also within the Soviet Union itself. We must recognize that, in the long term, peaceful competition will be just as important to the outcome of the American–Soviet struggle as keeping up our military deterrent.

Our most difficult problems arise in finding a way to wage this competition within the Soviet bloc. Given the Kremlin's control over these countries, we are competing at a decided disadvantage. But a temporary disadvantage does not decide a contest. While we have no perfect means to compete with Moscow in the Soviet sphere, we must not abandon the imperfect means which are available. While the thirty-one Soviet army divisions in Eastern Europe prevent Moscow's satellites from breaking out of orbit, the aspirations of their peoples and the superiority of our system and our ideals make them gravitate toward the West.

There are those who consider the countries of Eastern Europe to be a lost cause. In this view, however regrettable the betrayal
at Yalta may have been, Moscow's subjugation of these countries is an unalterable fact of life. They argue that military change is too dangerous and that peaceful change is impossible. They are right on the first point but wrong on the second. Nothing in this world, not even a well-entrenched communist government, is immune to the forces of change. Eastern Europe today differs profoundly from Eastern Europe in 1950; Eastern Europe in 1999 will differ profoundly from Eastern Europe today. What we do will affect what kind of change takes place. If we accept the view of those who would write off Eastern Europe, it will be harder for the forces for positive change to prevail. We cannot
determine
what happens in Eastern Europe, but we can
influence
events there. If we adopt responsible policies to compete with Moscow in Eastern Europe, we can help shape and accelerate the process of positive change.

Soviet control, though great, is not total. The Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe are not a monolithic bloc. The peoples of these countries totally reject Soviet domination. Not even the communist leaders of Eastern Europe and those of the Soviet Union have identical interests. Soviet military power does severely limit the scope of independent action, both domestically and internationally, on the part of East European leaders, but personal, political, national, and even ideological differences have developed—and will develop—between the Soviet Union and its East European clients.

We must base our policy on a sophisticated understanding of the motivations of the three key political groups in Eastern Europe: the leaders in the Kremlin, the peoples of Eastern Europe, and the communist leaders of the countries of Eastern Europe.

Moscow's leaders are ruthless imperialists who want to control Eastern Europe. It is part of their empire, and they want to keep it. A desire for imperial expansion is as ingrained in the Kremlin's way of thinking as the desire for freedom is in ours. While the Soviets gloss over their imperial domination with talk about the “fraternal camp of socialist countries,” it is nothing more than window dressing. In 1968, when Alexander Dub
ek, the communist leader of Czechoslovakia, presented Brezhnev with reforms to liberalize his country while retaining the socialist system and staying
in the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet leader cast aside the pretense. “Don't talk to me about 'Socialism,' ” Brezhnev told Dubček. “What we have, we hold.”

But at the same time the Soviets cannot exert total control over every detail of government policy in every East European country. They have tremendous power to decide who holds office in their satellites. Through that power, they can determine basic political and economic policies of these countries. But they have much less control over the fine points of policy. Moscow will not throw its clients out of office over small matters, because it wants stability. Unless they are willing to purge major East European communist leaders or intervene with military force, the Kremlin leaders often have to live with their clients' decisions, even if they do not approve.

While the governments of Eastern Europe are Soviet allies, the peoples of Eastern Europe are
our
allies. More than anyone else, those who suffer from Soviet oppression know the need to stop Soviet expansion. Many analysts tout today's anticommunist freedom fighters as an unprecedented development. It is not. We must remember that the East European peoples did not go quietly into the totalitarian night. Hundreds of thousands who opposed the imposition of communism on their countries were killed during and after World War II. Tens of thousands more have since fought and died for the liberation of their native lands.

Few today remember the opposition the Soviet Union met when its forces invaded Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. We often read about how Soviet tanks rolled into these countries, as if the Hungarians, the Czechs, and the Slovaks simply rolled over at their sight. That is a myth. If we are to understand Eastern Europe today, we must keep in mind that East European resistance to Soviet military forces has been as impressive as that of the Afghans today.

I was in Austria on the Hungarian border soon after Moscow invaded the country in 1956. It took 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops three weeks of fighting to put down the popular uprising. Soviet forces killed 25,000 Hungarians, wounded 150,000, and imprisoned 20,000, many of whom were later executed. Two hundred thousand refugees fled into Austria. Large parts of the Hungarian army
defected to the resistance. But the fight was a mismatch. Hungarians fought with rifles, grenades, and Molotov cocktails against Soviet T-54 tanks. Many areas of Budapest suffered more damage than they had in World War II. In an interview with correspondents on the scene, I called Khrushchev the “butcher of Budapest.” The epithet stuck because it fit.

In Czechoslovakia in 1968, it took 500,000 troops weeks to restore Soviet control over the country. Without any arms or military equipment, the resistance hamstrung Soviet forces for weeks. Crowds sat in front of tanks. A brave few stuffed tin cans down the gun barrels. Throngs milled around the central radio and television station to prevent the invaders from taking them over. Civilians undertook a systematic campaign of passive resistance. Soviet morale plummeted as the people totally ostracized the troops. With near-universal popular adherence to the resistance call for “not a drop of water for the occupiers,” Soviet units were handicapped by a severe shortage of drinking water.