“In the name of God, Go!”

(Washington, D.C.): On several occasions in British history, men who have ceased to serve a constructive purpose have been enjoined to depart the political scene with the contemptuous phrase, "In the name of God, Go!"

The time has come for such a demand to be made of Mikhail Gorbachev. For one thing, his record over the past few years of accommodating — if not actively supporting — the opponents of freedom within the old Soviet Union would justify such a demand. For another, his irrelevance to the future of the nations and multinational alliance arrangements destined to supplant the Soviet empire would do so as well.

But Gorbachev’s present behavior makes any thought of his continuing to play an influential role there simply out of the question. As vividly depicted in the attached column by William Safire published in today’s New York Times, Gorbachev is presently acting as the spoiler, the obstacle to the consolidation of a Commonwealth of Independent States — a free alliance of sovereign nations explicitly designed to replace and terminate the old Soviet Union.

As such, Gorbachev is serving as an agent of the old guard, the unreconstructed communists, KGB and other bureaucrats and members of the military-industrial complex — those desperately trying to avoid the loss of power and perquisites that would accompany a democratic and free market transformation of the former USSR. What is more, as Safire points out, Gorbachev is stimulating a "bidding war" for the loyalties of the Soviet military.

According to Safire:

"Revealing the true colors of a tyrant, Mikhail Gorbachev now seeks to thwart the democratic will of the independent republics of his former empire by bidding for the support of the veteran Red Army generals….That puts the truth nakedly, but even his remaining apologists in the West cannot escape this fact: He seeks to enlist the power of arms to overrule the decision of elected representatives of the freed peoples….Our diplomats should stop wistfully dreaming of him as a source of stability and see him for what he has become in his final throes: a tinhorn despot reaching for military master; a source not of nuclear control but of civil upheaval; and a man trying to arrange a deluge to follow his certain downfall."

 

The net effect of Gorbachev’s role in this bidding war is not only to exacerbate divisions within the country and to increase the risks associated therewith. It also is obliging Boris Yeltsin to participate in such a bidding process — adding greatly to the already immense costs to Russia and the other new states of sustaining the military-industrial complex which should be the first to go over the budgetary side.

This is, at the very least, certainly no time for Gorbachev to be encouraged to cling to power. And yet, that would seem the unmistakable object of the Bush Administration’s most recent exercise in personal diplomacy, Secretary of State James Baker’s paean to him delivered at Princeton University today:

"[By October 1990] we and the Soviets had become partners, no longer competitors across the globe; partners in facilitating the unification of Germany in peace and freedom; partners in seeing Central and Eastern Europe peacefully liberated from communism’s stranglehold; partners negotiating radical reductions in conventional and nuclear weapons; partners in ending regional conflicts from Central America, to Southern Africa, to Cambodia; partners in reversing Iraqi aggression and subsequently in promoting Arab-Israeli peace; partners in short, in ending the Cold War….These achievements were possible primarily because of one man, Mikhail Gorbachev. The transformation we are dealing with now would not have begun were it not for him. His place in history is secure, for he helped end the Cold War peacefully, and for that the world is grateful and respectful. The same is true of his partner, Eduard Shevardnadze."

 

It is worth noting that this maladroit and shortsighted policy may have profound political costs to the Bush Administration — even as they are incurring significant strategic costs to the nation. In a major address this morning at Georgetown University, Democratic presidential candidate and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton threw down the gauntlet to the President and his foreign policy advisors:

"Because the President seems to favor political stability and his personal relations with foreign leaders over a coherent policy of promoting freedom, democracy and economic growth, he often does things I disagree with."