Administration’s Soviet Assistance Binge Will Damage US Security Interests And Undermine Genuine Reform

The Center for Security Policy today questioned the approach apparently adopted by President Bush for integrating the Soviet Union into the world economy. "In facilitating Soviet access to Western economic and financial resources — for example through the waiver of Jackson-Vanik, prior to the realization of fundamental structural changes in the Soviet Union — the West is forsaking an historic opportunity to promote a genuine transformation of the Soviet system," said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., director of the Center.

An Alternative "National Strategy Review," recently released by the Center, argues that U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union should be primarily conducted in accordance with the sound principles of discipline and transparency. Consistent with such an approach, Soviet compliance with publicly enunciated economic and political milestones should govern trade relations and all financial disbursements.

"President Bush’s latest offer to integrate the Soviet Union into the world community — a euphemism for expanded access to Western trade and financial institutions and their resources — will unleash a flood of Western economic, financial, and technological assistance to the Soviet Union. With the introduction of new government-guaranteed credit flows and trade concessions that will likely result from the waiver of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, it will be increasingly difficult to exercise control or constructive leverage essential to bring about a more peaceful and inward-looking Soviet Union," Gaffney noted.

Gaffney added, "The timing of the President’s initiative is particularly troubling. It amounts not only to a leap of faith in the purposes to which Gorbachev will channel such assistance; it also requires the United States to overlook a continuing pattern of unacceptable Soviet behavior (e.g., the toxic gassing of peaceful protesters in Soviet Georgia, provision of Libya with SU-24 fighter-bombers, actively exacerbating strains in the NATO alliance, sharply increased production of front-line battle tanks, a 3% increase in Soviet defense spending in 1988, and disinformation concerning the U.S. role in Panama). Far from creating disincentives to such outrageous behavior, the Administration is effectively rewarding the USSR for engaging in it."

Of particular concern to the U.S. security community is the fact that this initiative is but the latest in a series of recent presidential actions. These include:

• the $1 billion-plus financial and trade rescue package for Poland;

 

• the decision to provide a minimum $25 million in U.S. taxpayer subsidies for wheat sales to the USSR — subsidies that will, in all likelihood, grow sharply as the disastrous American winter wheat harvest and empty silos translate into higher commodity and food prices;

 

• the likely approval of an additional $75 million in taxpayer subsidies for soybean oil sales to the USSR; and

 

• the President’s unqualified public statements of support for the success of perestroika, widely interpreted as a repudiation of the cautious and realistic view expressed by Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney and Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Gates.

"A waiver of the Jackson-Vanik amendment would pave the way for restored Soviet access to both direct U.S. government loans and credit guarantees and, in effect, encourage our allies to continue — and even expand — taxpayer-subsidized financial transfers," says Roger W. Robinson, former senior director for international economic affairs at the National Security Council and member of the Center’s Board of Advisors. He added, "It should be viewed as an unacceptable risk for the West to strengthen Soviet economic performance before reforms are shown to be irreversible and to have altered substantially the threat."

The Center also applauded efforts of leading members of Congress to moderate the feverish tempo of subsidized economic and financial assistance by the Administration. In this regard, the 11 May letter to the President by Senators Steve Symms and Connie Mack (a copy of which is attached) is particularly noteworthy; it puts the Administration on notice concerning the justified unwillingness of many Members of Congress to permit the use of economic and financial concessions to Moscow as tools of diplomacy.