1999 (26 page)

Hungary is an excellent example. General Secretary Kadar, whom Khrushchev appointed after the Soviet invasion of 1956, has widely liberalized his country's economy. He has not worked miracles but he has produced positive change. The Budapest I saw in 1963 could only be described as drab and dreary. When I returned in 1983 it was bright and lively—an eloquent example of what just a little freedom can do. Kadar allows Western television and radio stations to broadcast their programs unjammed into the country. It is now even possible to buy some Western newspapers in Budapest. These reforms have greatly improved the quality of life for the Hungarian people—and they create the basis for future governments to adopt still more reforms on a pragmatic basis. We must welcome such positive change because we have a stake in its success. We should never adopt policies—such as wholesale isolation of the Eastern bloc—which would abort them at the outset.

Our strategy for peaceful competition in Eastern Europe must be grounded in pragmatism. It is not an all-or-nothing venture. Like Lenin, we must be willing to adopt a strategy of taking two steps forward and one step back. Some East European countries
have already made significant progress. Each wave of reform consolidates previous reforms and opens the way for still more in the future. In the early 1950s, the great issue in Poland was whether the Kremlin could force its clients in Warsaw to collectivize agriculture. Poland held Moscow off. Today, after successive waves of peaceful change, the issue of land ownership is not even subject to debate. Solidarity expanded the frontiers of freedom to an unprecedented extent. Even through the imposition of martial law, the Polish government failed to restore the previous status quo. Warsaw has had to accept the existence of thousands of independent publications. With the Solidarity leadership still active, it has even had to accommodate itself to a de-facto organized political opposition. Stalin must be twirling his mustache in his grave.

Promoting such peaceful change is how we can compete with Moscow in Eastern Europe. Maintaining control over these countries will be a perpetual problem for the Kremlin. Freedom is an acquired taste. Unlike the Russians, East Europeans have tasted freedom in the past—and they still have a taste for it. How far peaceful change can carry the countries of Eastern Europe toward genuine independence and internal freedom is an open question. We must not render that question moot by failing to do what we can to promote it.

We should also extend this peaceful competition into the Soviet Union itself. To many Americans, this sounds like a kind of hostile act. But it is not. Soviet commentators now regularly appear on American news broadcasts, peddling the Soviet line on international issues. The United States must not refrain from beaming news and information into the Soviet Union. We have every right to do so under international law, and we should exercise this right. If we adopt a policy of unilateral restraint in the war of ideas, we will forfeit one of our most effective tools in the American–Soviet competition.

Our goal should be to encourage the decentralization of power in the Soviet Union. That must be a long-term goal—but it is within reach. While Kremlin leaders hold thousands of political prisoners, the era of Stalinist mass terror has ended. Without terror, Moscow simply cannot exert the same kind of total control. This has loosened up the system and has opened up far greater
opportunities for individuals and groups to deviate from the edicts of the central government. Our broadcasts into the Soviet Union should promote a gradual push on the part of the Soviet peoples to lessen control by Kremlin leaders.

There are those who argue that such reform is impossible in a totalitarian power like the Soviet Union. They are wrong. While change comes at an excruciatingly slow pace, it does occur—and we must seek to affect the direction it takes.

Radio Liberty is a good beginning. But our broadcasts must direct far greater attention to the non-Russian nations of the Soviet Union. Moscow rules the last multinational empire on earth. Russians constitute barely half the total population. The other half includes Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Byelorussians, Kazakhs, Tatars, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians, Moldavians, Tadzhiks, Lithuanians, Turkomens, Kirghiz, and dozens of others. There are over one hundred distinct nations in the Soviet Union. Our radio broadcasts should address these peoples in their native languages and should provide them with information about their own regions and histories which the Russian-dominated government refuses to disseminate.

Virtually all of the non-Russian nations consider the Soviet government to be rule by the Russians and for the Russians. These peoples know that Russians permit only token representatives of other nations to hold top slots in the central government. They still remember that Russian armies conquered their lands, that Russian colonists quickly moved in, and that the Russian minority now dominates key government and economic positions at the provincial level. They would be a highly receptive audience for our message calling for decentralization of power in the Soviet Union. If Kremlin leaders had to devote more of their attention to satisfying the demands of these peoples, the world would become a more peaceful place.

Americans often forget how powerful and enduring the memories of historical injustice can be. They mistakenly believe that the non-Russian nations incorporated into the Soviet Union have assimilated themselves into Russia, just as immigrants do when they come to the United States. But fifty million Ukrainians, for example, have never forgotten that they are the largest nation in the
world without a state. They remember that the Kremlin killed over eight million Ukrainians in the collectivization of agriculture and the political purges of the 1930s. They remember that their national repression was so severe that in World War II, when Hitler's Germany occupied the region, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, composed of forty thousand guerrillas, fought against
both
the Soviets and the Nazis. We can be certain that the Ukrainian desire for national self-determination will not soon ebb.

Moslem peoples in Soviet Central Asia are no different in this respect. They have not forgotten that over a million and a half people died from starvation when Stalin withheld food supplies from Central Asia in his brutal quest to consolidate Soviet control over the region during the 1930s. They know that Russian colonists dominate their local governments. They know that the Kremlin has decided to focus the program for economic renewal on the European areas of the Soviet Union, dooming their homelands to economic stagnation and their peoples to poverty. They know that future generations will either have to migrate elsewhere in search of jobs or face unemployment.

These historical memories and current political realities make the peoples of Central Asia a potential force for peaceful change. They consider communism to be an alien, oppressive ideology, and they are susceptible to the influence of the worldwide resurgence of Islam. They know that Soviet troops are committing genocide against the people of Afghanistan—with whom the Central Asians have far more in common ethnically, culturally, and religiously than they do with the rulers of the Kremlin. Soviet power has subdued these peoples temporarily. But nationalism, the most powerful political force in the twentieth century, is not dead in the Soviet Union. After Gorbachev replaced a Kazakh provincial leader with a Russian, riots involving tens of thousands of people swept the city of Alma-Ata for several days. Even Soviet officials conceded these were “a manifestation of nationalism.” With a population of 55 million—and with a growth rate far exceeding that of the Russians—the Central Asian peoples will be a force to reckon with in the years beyond 1999.

Americans have only one historical experience remotely comparable to those of the non-Russian nations: the Civil War and
Reconstruction. While hundreds of thousands of deaths in that war hardly compare to several million deaths through Soviet oppression, the Civil War did create an enduring regional split in the United States. Over a hundred years passed before the South was reintegrated into the national life of the United States, and memories and prejudices which trace back to the Civil War still persist. With less than a century elapsed since the conquest of the non-Russian nations by the communist leaders in Moscow, those national resentments remain white hot. If anyone believes otherwise, he is whistling as he walks by the graveyard.

Our only way to engage in peaceful competition inside the Soviet Union is through foreign broadcasting and cultural-exchange programs. While our broadcasts should not promote rioting or other violence, we should direct attention to the question of nationalism and should encourage these peoples to press for their national rights. Within the Soviet system, there is a constant bureaucratic war between the Russians and the non-Russian peoples over resources and the key political positions in the outlying provinces. If Kremlin leaders make concessions in this struggle as a result of growing non-Russian national awareness, the door for positive peaceful change will have been opened.

Our strategy for peaceful competition must also take advantage of Gorbachev's policy of Glasnost. While many in the West have been fearfully wringing their hands over this new approach, those who do so in the East are more justified in their fears. Winston Churchill once observed, “Russia fears our friendship more than our enmity.” He understood that one of the greatest dangers to the Soviet system is contact between their ideas and ours, their peoples and ours, their society and ours. This proximity invites unwelcome comparisons. It breaks the Kremlin's monopoly on information. It plants seeds of thought that will someday blossom into peaceful change.

We must adopt policies to maximize this contact. We should take Gorbachev at his word when he calls for more openness. Western leaders who appear on Soviet media or who address Soviet audiences should not mince their words about Soviet domestic and international policies. We must redouble our radio broadcasting into the Soviet Union. We also need to exploit new technologies
in this effort. We should make it our goal in the years before 1999 to put into orbit a satellite capable of beaming television programs throughout the Soviet Union.

Nikita Khrushchev threw down the gauntlet of global competition in the 1950s. For thirty years, Moscow has been competing with the United States across the board. It is time the United States and the West pick up the gauntlet and adopt a comprehensive strategy to compete with Moscow. We must maintain the strength necessary to protect our vital interests around the world. We must develop the capability for measured responses to Soviet challenges against our more peripheral interests. We must compete with the Kremlin not only within the Soviet bloc but also within the Soviet Union itself. In the years before 1999, we need to deter Moscow and to learn to compete with Moscow. If we do both, we will have put ourselves in the best position from which to negotiate with Moscow.

I
f we deter the Kremlin leaders, we will be in a position to negotiate with them. If we compete effectively with them, they will
want
to negotiate. Deterrence, competition, and negotiation are equally important elements in our overall strategy to achieve real peace. But a difference exists among them. While we can successfully deter and compete with Moscow without negotiations, we cannot successfully negotiate without effective American policies for deterrence and competition.

In negotiating with the Soviet Union, we must keep three points in mind. First, only after we take whatever actions are necessary to deter Soviet aggression can we negotiate agreements to stabilize the strategic balance. Arms control cannot substitute for deterrence, but it can supplement it. Second, only after we take whatever actions are necessary to defend American interests around the world can we negotiate understandings to stabilize regional conflicts. Unless we stand up to protect Western interests, Kremlin leaders will have no incentive to sit down with us at the bargaining table. Third, negotiated agreements between the superpowers will not put an end to the American–Soviet conflict. Negotiations can lead to limited cooperation, but limited cooperation does not mean an end to competition.