Bring Glasnost To The US Government: Unmuzzle Bob Gates

Today’s New York Times reports that Secretary of State James Baker has personally intervened to prevent the Deputy National Security Advisor to the President, Robert M. Gates, from accurately characterizing in public the dismal prospects for fundamental change in the Soviet Union.

"Secretary Baker seems intent on projecting a vision of the Soviet Union that can only be described as one seen through rose-colored glasses," said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr, the Center’s director. "It would be extremely dangerous if, in his determination to accentuate the positive, the Secretary were to prevent others in the Administration from helping the Congress, the public and our allies to understand the stark reality."

Gaffney noted, "Unfortunately, the censoring of Bob Gates’ relatively bleak appraisal of the actual condition of Gorbachev’s perestroika is hardly the only time Secretary Baker has tried to bring dissonant Administration voices to heel. In fact, he seems to be trying to suppress what the Times reports is a "view widely held among top officials in the Bush Administration" that "Gorbachev’s prospects for succeeding [are] very dim." Indeed, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak today disclosed that Gates’ boss, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft found Baker’s own rendering of the situation in the USSR "very euphoric."

The Gates incident is a particularly blatant example of an apparent pattern of censorship and suppression of competing views within the Bush Administration. It is of a piece with the following examples that have come to light:

• When Defense Secretary Richard Cheney had the courage to suggest earlier this year that it was unlikely Gorbachev’s perestroika would succeed in effecting systemic change in the USSR, his views were summarily disavowed by the White House and State Department.

 

• When Baker’s own Deputy, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, made a speech in September at Georgetown University that seemed to depart from the "euphoric" script by warning against "complacency…about the new order of foreign policy challenges" and urging the West "to avoid bankrolling merely cosmetic Soviet reforms," he received a sharp dressing down from his superior.

 

• Secretary Baker’s spokesmen have also attempted to dismiss a very thoughtful address by Vice President Dan Quayle in California on 17 October. In it, the Vice President enumerated the many reasons for worrying about the "darker side of Soviet foreign policy" which he described as "just as real, just as significant as perestroika and glasnost." State Department officials reportedly opined that "Quayle speaks for himself while Baker speaks for the President."

 

• The Washington Times revealed today that senior State Department officials have prevented the scheduled release of a damning indictment of ongoing Soviet anti-U.S. disinformation activities. The report entitled "Soviet Influence Activities" was scheduled to be disseminated in August but apparently its disclosures of aggressive Soviet efforts aimed at "hampering or defeating U.S. strategic interests worldwide" simply did not square with Secretary Baker’s euphoria about the man who is ultimately responsible for this disinformation campaign — Mikhail Gorbachev.

 

• To minimize the chances that an alternative view might emerge in the Defense Department concerning the direction East-West economic relations should take, the State Department has assigned no fewer than three of its employees to staff the Secretary of Defense on these matters. They have helped to transplant a "help Gorbachev succeed" mentality to an environment otherwise skeptical of the wisdom of that approach.

The Center for Security Policy believes that this is no time for the State Department to be imposing a party line on either its public or its confidential treatments of the current state of affairs in the Soviet Union. It would be the height of irony if, at the very moment that the USSR is permitting an unprecedented degree of dissent and criticism of its government — even on the part of Soviet officials — the United States were to prevent a similar freedom of expression on the part of knowledgeable and authoritative experts like Bob Gates.

The need for such "glasnost" in the U.S. government is made all the greater by the serious risks associated with policies that are — like it or not — predicated on the continued reformist trend in the USSR. As a practical matter, the impact of such policies will be felt in the West far more quickly than the promised benefits arising from fundamental reductions in threatening Soviet military capabilities.

Moreover, whether measured in terms of loss of political support for defense spending, faltering alliance arrangements, the undoing of multilateral technology control mechanisms, etc., it will be much more difficult to restore Western security to its pre-euphoric state than it will be for the Soviets to correct any future decline in their military capabilities due to arms control treaties now in the offing.

An important litmus test of the willingness of the Bush Administration to countenance such discourse would be if it permits the immediate publication of the original Gates speechtrue status and prospects for perestroika and what might be alternative U.S. policy responses should be promptly convened to take testimony from a wide range of Administration witnesses and non-governmental experts. intended for delivery at the National Collegiate Security Conference last night. The Center calls upon the President to authorize release of this speech at once. It also believes that congressional hearings into the