ROBINSON WARNS SENATE AGAINST “GRAND BARGAIN”

(Washington, D.C.): In testimony
before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee today, Center Board member Roger
W. Robinson, Jr., urged U.S. policy-makers
to avoid “a pell-mell rush to
provide undisciplined aid to Moscow”
and advised instead the adoption of
“an approach that facilitates real
step-by-step conditionality for genuine
structural reform.”

Robinson provided a comprehensive
critique of notions like those inherent
in the so-called “Grand
Bargain,” an initiative drafted by
Harvard and Soviet academics ostensibly
to tie Western assistance to fundamental
Soviet reform. Robinson called
for a six-to-nine month “Reform
Implementation Period,” during
which time the Soviet
commitment to reform could be
demonstrated and the political and
economic institutions established
— institutions needed to ensure that
such aid is used to the
benefit of both the
people of the Soviet Union and those in
the West whose tax
dollars would be involved.

“After we have so recently
emerged from seven months of
Gorbachev-led Soviet recentralization and
repression, it is reasonable to
insist upon a period of at least
equal duration dedicated to radical
systemic change before we bet
billions in further taxpayer-guaranteed
funds on what some bankers have called
‘The Red Bear S&L,'” said
Robinson.

Robinson was the Senior Director for
International Economic Affairs at the
National Security Council from 1982-1985
and a former Vice President at the Chase
Manhattan Bank with responsibility for
Chase’s loan portfolio in the Soviet
Union, Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia. He
observed:

“The notion that a ‘Grand
Bargain’ arrangement would be ‘cheap’
for the American people is
seriously misleading. It begs the
question: Cheap relative
to what? It
makes no sense to pay good
American money in a manner that
ultimately would preserve
the Soviet threat. Likewise,
we must not be seduced into
believing that we somehow
“owe” Moscow center
billions now because it has cost
us trillions to defend
against that threat over the past
forty-five years.”

Excerpts from
Robinson’s testimony are attached.
His full testimony on href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=91-P_52at1″>”The Soviet
Union in Crisis: U.S. Interests and
Responsibilities” may
be obtained by contacting the Center.