Why Is The Bush Administration Inviting A Tiananmen Crackdown In Red Square?

(Washington, D.C.): The Center for Security Policy today denounced signals being sent by the Bush Administration to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev concerning Washington’s view of the growing crisis in the USSR. These signals suggest that the U.S. government will be tolerant should the Soviet Union choose — as China did in June — to use brutal force to quell popular demands for political freedom and economic opportunity. The latest indication of such an attitude was described in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal which reported that senior Administration officials have "talked recently about how they might soften the outcry here if Mr. Gorbachev decides he has to crack down on growing unrest."

"Recent reports indicate that the Administration now recognizes what the Center for Security Policy has argued for months: The Soviet empire is in desperate straits," Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director, said today. "Similar forces to those that recently sought democracy and systemic economic reform in China are erupting throughout the USSR and in several of its client states."

"With their heavy-handed denunciation of the Baltic popular fronts, Gorbachev and the other members of the Politburo unmistakably signalled that they are tempted to respond to these forces in the same way Li Peng and Deng Xiao Ping did — with brute force," Gaffney added.

Gaffney noted, "It now appears that when the Administration describes its policy toward the Soviet bloc as one that moves ‘beyond containment,’ one of the principal ideas it has in mind is containing the outrage of the American people when — despite their rhetoric of openness and reform and despite substantial Western assistance — communist regimes revert to form. When that happens, the Chinese have discovered and the Soviets are being encouraged to expect that the Bush Administration will try to prevent any real political or economic costs from being imposed on those who crush domestic democratic movements."

This Administration policy effectively invites repression in the USSR; it is totally inconsistent with the principles and values of the American people. Unfortunately, it is of a piece with official efforts to accelerate bilateral initiatives in trade, finance, arms control and technology cooperation that can profoundly disserve U.S. security interests. To name but a few, these include:

• The likely creation of a U.S.-Soviet Economic Working Group at the upcoming Ministerial meeting in Wyoming, designed to give improving economic ties the same — or higher — priority in East-West relations as has been accorded human rights, arms control and regional issues in the past;

 

• Consideration of Soviet observer status and eventual membership in GATT, the IMF, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank affording the USSR unprecedented access to multilateral funding and participation in international resource allocation decision-making;

 

• Massive decontrol of advanced, militarily relevant technology whose transfer is currently proscribed by domestic and multilateral export controls (e.g., machine tools and high-speed telecommunications equipment);

 

• Fevered negotiations in various arms control forums aimed at "making progress" at nearly any price in order to meet arbitrarily imposed deadlines (e.g., the six-month to one-year deadline announced by President Bush on the conventional forces in Europe (CFE) talks);

 

• Agreement to open the first branch office of the Soviet Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs in New York City this fall, despite its inevitable use as a vehicle for diverting deposits, penetrating U.S. companies and banks, technology theft and espionage; and

 

• Continued and determined U.S. resistance even to seeking an alliance-wide agreement in favor of greater discipline and transparency in Western lending to Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet client states.

This policy approach is taking on a positively bizarre cast when one realizes that it is occurring even as published leaks from senior U.S. officials indicate a widespread and growing conviction within the Bush Administration that Gorbachev’s perestroika simply cannot succeed.

Gaffney observed, "Until recently, the Bush Administration’s efforts to help Gorbachev were justified by its proponents on the grounds that the need to ensure his success warranted it. As that rationalization — which was always dubious — now appears untenable and abandoned by the Administration, there seems to be an equally questionable logic now propelling the Administration that we must make as many concessions as possible to Gorbachev before he ceases to be in a position to accept them."

This approach is squandering the leverage the West has available to encourage real, systemic change in the Soviet empire — the sort of change that must occur if the USSR’s capability to threaten vital Western interests is to be reduced. Worse yet, the fact that Soviet behavior and the USSR’s access to Western largesse are increasingly divorced from one another augurs ill for the continuation, to say nothing of further expansion, of those reforms that have occurred in the East bloc.

Roger W. Robinson, Jr., a member of the Center’s Board of Advisors commented, "Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, the Kremlin used to rattle its ballistic missiles. Moscow’s newest policy technique is to rattle a tin cup. In either case, the West should not define its policy in response to such Soviet devices."

Gaffney concluded, "The centerpiece of next week’s ministerial in Wyoming should be to impress upon the Soviets that the United States and its allies will respond vigorously to any move by the Kremlin against its own people and those of its East European clients. Even in the absence of the present threats to the Baltic states and others, it would be ill-advised for Secretary of State Baker to use this meeting to signal a U.S. readiness to accommodate Soviet demands for government-guaranteed credit flows, access to international economic organizations and significant transfers of militarily relevant technology. In the face of those stated threats, however, such American signals could well implicate the United States in any repression that subsequently ensues."