IRONY OF IRONIES: A.D.M.-SPONSORED BRINKLEY SHOW REVEALS LUNACY OF TAXPAYER SUBSIDIES TO MOSCOW

(Washington, D.C.): In a presumably
unintended public service, the
Archer-Daniels-Midland Corporation (ADM)
helped to underwrite a television program
offering one of the most powerful
indictments of a policy relentlessly
championed by that company — additional,
massive taxpayer exposure to the Soviet
Union. Yesterday, guest after
guest on This Week With David
Brinkley criticized, ridiculed or
otherwise reviled the idea of providing
massive Western agricultural, financial,
technological or other assistance
subsidized by Western taxpayers to an
unreformed Soviet Union.

The Librarian of Congress (James
Billington), the chairman of the
International Debt Subcommittee of the
Senate Finance Committee (Sen. Bill
Bradley, Democrat of New Jersey) and even
a member of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Igor
Malashenko) all rejected
the contention advanced by Dwayne O.
Andreas, Chairman of the Board of
Archer-Daniels-Midland, and like-minded
individuals, namely that
taxpayer-subsidized assistance must be
used to prime the Soviet reform pump.

Dr. Billington, an internationally
recognized authority on Soviet history
and affairs said:

“I think it’s a
mistake to think that we should
go through the central government,
which is a government which has
only a 14 percent acceptance
rating in its own country and is
on the verge of a lot
changes….What we’re dealing
with is a society caught between
an essentially dictatorial system
that has a lot of past experience
and a lot of political
sophistication, but no
legitimacy, and a new democratic
movement that’s arising from
below in Russia as well as in the
republics…which is really
legitimizing the sociey, but
doesn’t have the experience.

“Where we could help
most is giving these people
experience, establishing more
human contact, but not going
though the central government
which tends to reinforce
precisely the old essentially
declining but still very strong
party system.“

For
his part, Sen. Bradley further
underscored the argument against
aiding Soviet central authorities
resisting reform by noting the
extent to which that resistance
clearly is at cross-purposes with
the Soviet peoples’ interests, as
well as those of the West:

“[Gorbachev] avoids taking
responsibility for acts that are
clearly his responsibility. The
repression in the Baltic states
took place directly ordered from
the central government. The fact
is that he has the capacity to
reduce the defense expenditures
in the Soviet Union….Just last
October, he refused to take even
modest steps toward a
market-oriented economy. And
throughout this process, he has
failed to legitimize change by
having an open democratic
process.”

Sen.
Bradley also embraced a term the
Center has long believed
epitomized the Gorbachev strategy
for obtaining additional
resources from the West on his
terms — “nuclear
blackmail”:
“[Gorbachev’s statement at
the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in
Oslo last week in which he said
the USSR is ‘entitled’ to Western
aid] is an attempt at a new form
of nuclear blackmail — ‘Give us
money or we won’t be able to
control our nuclear
weapons.'”

Speaking as a knowledgeable
member of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, Sen.
Bradley went on to rebut the
central contention of those who
hope Soviet nuclear
saber-rattling will coerce
the West to bail out Gorbachev
and his cronies:

“The fact of the matter is
the Soviet military has the
capacity and the determination to
control nuclear weapons. They
have the command and control
systems. They have nuclear
security that’s aimed at
unconventional threats, both
civilian and military. After all,
they’re a rather sophisticated
military. Second, the republics
have already stated their
willingess to cooperate in the
control of nuclear weapons….I
don’t think we should exaggerate
this fear, and I don’t think that
we should be blackmailed by the
threat.“

Even
Mr. Malashenko — a spokesman for
the Communist Party apparatchiks
and other members of the
nomenklatura who have most to
gain from the aid being urged by
the U.S. agribusiness giant, ADM,
and others — could not help but
accept the aptness of an analogy
coined by Kim Holmes, director of
Foreign Policy Studies at the
Heritage Foundation, who likened
the Soviet Union to a car
with no engine into which people
want to pour more gasoline.
Malashenko said:

“I don’t think it
makes any sense to pour gasoline
[money] into this broken car.
The real question: How to fix
it?….If you ask me for now
if [Gorbachev] needs this money
tomorrow, my answer is no,
because this car is not running
and [the] engine is not fixed….We
want to be sure that we are
repairing this car, that we are
fixing the engine and not doing
anything else….When
this engine is fixed and the West
sees that it’s a real
engine….then probably I think
that we will need some gasoline.“
(Emphasis added.)

The question that arises in the aftermath
of yesterday’s edition of This Week
with David Brinkley is: Will
this show — which, like virtually every
other influential public
policy-oriented national television news
program, enjoys ADM’s patronage — be
able to do in the future what it did
yesterday? Or will voices like
those heard on Sunday and those of Gary
Kasparov and
George Melloan, who
powerfully echoed the majority view
expressed on the Brinkley show with
op.eds. published in recent days on the
editorial pages of the Wall Street
Journal (copies of which are
attached) be permitted forcefully to
contest the ADM party line? The Center
for Security Policy hopes that the latter
case will apply — with or without the
sponsorship of companies like
Archer-Daniels-Midland.