Soviet Aid: The Political Terms

The Washington Post, June 2, 1991

THE DISCUSSION of the possibility that the West might become a major partner in Soviet
reform has advanced to the point where not only the economic terms but the political ones are
being stirred into the mix. The secretary of state has informed Moscow authorities of three
particular areas of American concern: Soviet defense spending, Soviet foreign policy in such
raw-nerve areas as Cuba and Soviet internal policy in the Baltics. This is not the full list; the
conventional and strategic arms control treaties on which the secretary reported progress
yesterday constitute a whole other, important subject. But certainly movement in those areas
could help greatly to diminish the lingering ambiguity in the Soviet approach to reform and to
clear the air in the West, especially in the United States.

Mikhail Gorbachev himself is given to complain that the Soviet economy is “overburdened with
military spending.” He says it plaintively, as though someone else is responsible. It interests the
Kremlinologists to figure out just who is pulling the internal levers of power, but for the rest of us
it is enough that Mr. Gorbachev is the Soviet president. He is accountable if the military’s share of
GNP is pushing beyond a grotesque 25 percent even as the Pentagon’s share falls toward 4
percent. The fact is that the weapons, forces and capabilities that the Soviet Union is building are
of a size and potential menace inconsistent with the demands of the day. If he does not have the
political clout to bring the generals in line, then there can be no real reform. The more democratic
— the more open to popular pressures — the Soviet Union becomes, the sooner that message may
register.

Cuba symbolizes the Soviet state’s continuing reluctance to let go of its external empire,
notwithstanding the Soviet cooperation with Washington that produced Angola’s independence,
which was celebrated on Friday. Soviet links with Havana have loosened, but Moscow retains —
why? — a substantial Western Hemisphere military and intelligence presence and still offers Fidel
Castro annual sustenance estimated in the billions of dollars in trade concessions and military
supplies. It is absurd for Western countries to aid a Soviet Union that is helping keep afloat an
unreconstructed Communist police state, one that itself continues aid to revolutions, such as El
Salvador’s, in the neighborhood.

In the Baltics, the Gorbachev regime has thrown out political signals of readiness to
accommodate local nationalism. But these signs are weak and tentative when put next to the
signals conveyed by the continuing use of Red Army soldiers and interior ministry goon squads
against the Baltic governments and peoples. Just recently, for instance, Lithuanians have been
recording Soviet assaults on customs posts at a better than one-a-day pace; buildings are
destroyed, people have died. Again, Mr. Gorbachev is prone to take a “Who, me?” approach, as
though the raids were being conducted by aliens from outer space. The actual perpetrators are his
unelected government’s own forces. The victims are the representatives of democratically elected
governments seeking peaceful fulfillment of their national and human rights. This is the most
important thing: no use of force against people peacefully pursuing their rights. While this sort of
ugliness is going on unchecked in the Baltics or anywhere else in the internal Soviet empire,
Soviet eligibility for Western assistance should be regarded as zero.

Some will say that to raise these political questions at this relatively late date is to “move the
goal posts” — to make it harder for Moscow to deal with the West just as the prize of large-scale
aid starts to come within view. In fact, raising these questions shows that the dialogue is getting
serious. The collapse of their society has given Soviet authorities more of an incentive to meet the
standards of the larger world whose enormous benefits and advantages they are trying to tap, and
the Western countries have more leverage. It’s far to be preferred, moreover, that these questions
are being raised by an American administration whose leader confesses that some people think
he’s “too close to Gorbachev.” In respect to the Soviet Union, President Bush evidently is aware
of the danger of getting himself into the unhappy position — the position he occupies in respect to
China — of having a correct policy thrust on him by his critics. He should be taking the lead, in his
own country as internationally, in addressing the full range of questions that will determine
whether the Western-Soviet connection is going to work.