Editorial / A World Without Russians

...The Soviets lurch on, devoted to their gloomy dreams...

...They continue to arm every thug on the globe so long as he shows a glimmer of interest in the Marxist whim-wham...

...Curiously such eloquent statements of purpose rarely find their way into the American news media, and the above was reported only by the Boston Globe and National Review...

...Or is it possible that the Soviets have decided to develop a military capability suited to the truculence of their rhetoric...

...On March 25, 1"976 an intrepid Pravda correspondent, reporting from the very floor of the 25th CPSU Congress, reassured the world's bomb throwers that the brethren in convention assembled were "...absolutely clear that detente in no way abolishes nor can it abolish or change the laws of the class struggle...

...while American leaders have felt no such constraint, though they govern a democracy supposedly sustained by an informed citizenry...

...The war was fought for control of men's minds, and through the whole hallucination of detente the Soviets have never ceased from assuring the world that the war continues...

...popular opinion might occasionall demand...

...By 1972 the Soviets' nuclear submarine force had expanded beyond the size of the American force, and the Soviets continued to expand it in 1973 by introducing a new submarine armed with a missile larger than our advanced Poseidon...

...Over the years casualities have compared favorably with our highway death tolls, and the cost was a bargain...

...in Africa we are seeing how fast they pounce when doors are left unlocked...

...Think of it, the USSR is a country clinging to a standard of living comparable to that of Appalachia...

...Carter's exhortations for respecting civil liberties are salutary indeed, but tyranny is not the USSR's only unappealing quality...

...We will have consolidated our position...

...In Southeast Asia we discovered how hard they will push those doors...

...though the Cubans have been conducting hostile operations in Angola, South Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, the Spanish Sahara, and Mozambique, and though during the 1973 Middle East war the North Koreans flew combat sorties for the Syrians and joined with the North Vietnamese to man Syrian air defenses...

...He apparently sees constitutional principles as akin to eggs--made to be broken...

...aspirations amongst emerging peoples are too high...

...Is Papa Brezhnev a subscriber to The New York Review of Books, and has he fallen for their lurid line on American ferocity...

...They compos, much of the Washington establishment against whom Mr...

...Carter railed las summer...

...essential to democratic politics are leadership and information...

...Succinctly put their argument runs that tosi...

...A World Without Russians For a decade or so now there has been a growing crowd of foreign policy strategists calling for revolutionary departures in American diplomacy...

...Obviously the Superpowers speak to each other in euphemisms and dissimulations, but apparendy only the United States has spoken exclusively in such inaccurate terms...

...The social ills Mr...

...Lowenthai goes on to accuse me of "plunging ahead for constitutional consistency," a charge I cheerfully plead guilty to...

...Simplistic, they will protest...

...I prefer t side with Madison, who insisted "it i proper to take alarm at the first experimer on our liberties...

...That is why th Framers included such provisions in th Constitution, rather than protecting thez by statute: they wanted to guard again, the sort of short-sighted, willy-nilly abrid~ ment of certain rights and protections th...

...Ardently emitring sweet vaporings about "stable world peace" as though they defined a reality rather than an aspiration, our leaders have apparently been oblivious to the energetic activities of the Soviets and their proxy forces all over Africa, the Middle East, and, of course, Southeast Asia...

...It is ironic that Papa Brezhnev has felt constrained to inform the average Ivan of his goals of world domination though he governs a despotism...

...If the American citizenry is sluggish in supporting military appropriations in the aftermath of Secretary Vance's fruitless Moscow journey it should come as no surprise...

...What is more, no matter how fecklessly the Western democracies' pursuit of it might be, they will continue to pursue the same policy they have followed since the late forties, m wit containment...

...Then too the Soviets have developed the Backfgre bomber and MIRVs...

...Further, they rush ahead with gigantic civil defense projects and with a military buildup that strongly suggests that they are attempting to achieve nothing less than a war-fighting, war-winning posture in strategic weaponry...

...We will have improved our economy...

...Full of progressive vision he went on to report that "We have been able to accomplish more in a short time with detente than was done for years pursuing a confrontation policy with NATO...Trust us, comrades, for by 1985, as a consequence of what we are now achieving with detente, we will have achieved most of our objectives in Western Europe...

...The Soviets and their proxies have been shipping arms to guerrilla bands in Angola, Mozambique, Dhofar, and to the Polisario Front in the Spanish Sahara...

...Lowenthal's prediction about how the Declaration of Independence might be taught is impenetrable--I have no idea what he is trying to say...

...Changing Your Address...

...Since the middle sixties the United States has done little to expand its strategic capacity, but the Soviets have greeted our unilateral arms limitation with one of the most vigorous armaments drives in history...

...Yet such statements are common fare in the USSR...

...On the other hand the Kremlin has been arming to the teeth...

...Dissatisfied with this orb as k is, they call for unilateral arms limitation, a new economic world order, lamb chops for the world's poorest billion people, and other such enlightened policies...

...The only people who lost were those who now live with the Soviet heel at their throats, and if we are not beguiled by the jackasses who urge that we turn the Pentagon and the State Department into international counterparts of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare there still may be hope for those losers...

...Given the increasing numbers of irreligious people in our society--a phenomenon I regret as much as Mr...

...No doubt there may be some benefits in violating the establishment clause, just as the nation might profit by suppressing Mr...

...Print your new address and mail this form to The Alternative...

...Lenin can agree, even as the jejune foreign policy strategists scratch their noodles dreaming up imaginative alternatives to reality...

...Lowenthal does--allowing such observances in public institutions would create some highly troublesome frictions in communities across the country...

...I agree that the establishment clause, consistently applied, would require the elimination of references to God in oaths, mottos, and the like, but that prospect does not horrify me...

...To borrow from the imagery of Senator Henry Jackson, the Soviets still prowl the corridors of the world looking for unlocked doors...

...As wars go, the Cold War was by far the most pleasurable ever fought...

...For the CPSU and for the proletarian revolutionaries throughout the world Leninism has been and remains the science and art of revolutionary creativity...

...Almost nothing functions smoothly including the secret police, and yet the comrades are frantically building a military machine larger and more expensive than any on this earth...

...Today they maunder about normalizing relations with Cuba, North Korea, and North Vietnam...

...CoW g/ar rhetoric, they will hiss...

...And a decisive shift in the correlation of forces will be such that, come 1985, we will be able to extend our will wherever we need to...

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...ay's world of international relations is extraordinarily different from the past...

...That is the conclusion that comes relentlessly to my mind, and to avoid such a conclusion takes either a loony genius or a failure of will...

...The unlovely nature of the Soviet bully has been denied by Western governments for nearly a decade, years during which military expenditures were scowled at by an increasingly populous mob of otherwise profligate pols...

...Nor would international terrorism, hijackings, kidnappings, and other assorted barbarities peculiar to our time be such vexed questions were it not for the Soviet Union, the world's arsenal of anarchy...

...Throughout the last three decades I cannot think of one threat to world peace that would not have paled into, at worst, a regional altercation, were it not for the eager presence of the Soviet Union or one of its clients...

...Enclosed is my check for $10.00 x71 (please print) Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . State . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zip . . . . . . . . . . Date of change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 The Alternative: An American Spectator May 1971...

...A month later Comrade Yuri Andropov, Politburo member and chief of the highly influential KGB, remarked at Lenin's 106th birthday party that "The CPSU considers allegiance to Leninism to be the indisputable law for its theoretical and practical activity...

...Papa Knows Best Papa Brezhnev stated as much at Prague in 1973 when he notified the assembled thugs that "we are achieving with detente what our predecessors have been unable to achieve using the mailed fist...

...One of the problems with detente (and with the policy departures of the New Era strategists) is that it overlooks the nature of Soviet foreign policy and ignores some essentials of democratic politics...

...Yet I remain unstung and unstingable...

...Even the celebrated policy of detente was from the West's point of view merely a variation of containment...

...What is more I believe that this most pleasurable of wars continues, though the Western governments act as if they ended it years ago through statesmanlike neglect...

...Lowenthal, who should kno, better, sees nothing wrong with violatin constitutional guarantees when there i something to be gained by it...

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...It was admittedly an attempt at cheap containment--' 'containment without tears" as Robert W. Tucker described it in the March Commentary-but, unless Western leaders shared Papa Brezhnev's hopes for 1985, it was still containment...

...What do you suppose they are up m ? Could this expenditure be merely a vast public works program m put a little boom into their drowsy economy...

...dons in American foreign policy one can only guess, but my guess is that they find such assertions horrible to behold...

...How well such assertions go down with those who prescribe dramatic new direc...

...They have four new types of intercontinental ballistic missiles in production--the SS-16, SS-17, SS-19, and the huge SS-18, a missile that is only of value to a nation seeking a first-strike capability...

...Kissinger's aspirations to reduce international te.nsions, the American voters should have been apprised of the condition of those tensions...

...Lowenthal's right m free speech...

...Q0DIOIQmu00g0Q~QQ0000oQ000QQ00QQ0~QoD0oQ00QQ0~QQQQ00Q0oQQ00D00O0g00O~tm00jQOI0O~Q00Q00O00~0DoI0o0Q0Qo0~QBQ0~00I~o~60IoQ00ooa~8o oo0tQo~o00QoooQ A WORLD WITHOUT RUSSIANS (continued from page 4) adhered to a memorably stultifying foreign policy, and all indications are that things will not be improving soon...

...In 1969 the Soviets attained numerical equality with the American ballistic missile force, and by 1970 they had nearly 250 more missiles than the United States...

...The world will no longer yield to force of arms...

...Lowenthal blames on the separation of church and state are serious, but I doubt they would be cured, or even ameliorated, by allowing prayers in public schools...

...During these years our leaders have (continued on page 36) 4 The Alternative: An American Spectator May 1977 thing to do with the establishment clause...

...The fact is that these supposedly obstinate and untoward world conditions will fade into the sunset on the very day that the American State Department is rid of the chief problem confronting it for 32 wearying years, to wit, the tireless mischief of the Soviet Union...

...Balance-of-power diplomacy has been replaced by a new consciousness among nations, a new desire for egalitarianism, for justice, and for political expression...

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...With a new administration in Washington these strategists have been full of hope that their hour is at hand, and with the appointment to the National Security Council of men like David Aaron and Robert Hunter or to the State Department of men like Leslie Gelb and Anthony Lake there is some reason to fear that it is...

...Their conventional land force is larger and as well equipped as the American force, and for the first time in history this land power is developing a world-wide naval capacity...

...Notwithstanding Mr...

...Important: allow six weeks for address change...

...As I see it the advocates of revolutionary diplomatic departures are victims o f ; decaying will m govern...

...To be sure this is all moonshine, but it is a brand of moonshine especially fetching to modern sophisticated pols attuned to brilliance and void of intelligence...

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...If he successfully spurns thei cynicism and defeatism he will hay, provided the Western democracies al inestimable service, though if I were to pu my money on it I would wager that th, decay runs too deep...

...Furthermore on the day the Soviet Union retires as the world's number one nuisance there will also be a precipitous decline in international terror, violent instability, and international crisis...

...Since 1966 the United States has not deployed a single new strategic system, nor will it until 1980 when the first Trident submarines become operational...

...In 1976 still another Soviet submarine appeared...

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...As the democratic side grows ever more passive, the appearance of the struggle changes, but the reality remains...

...It is a point on which all serious capitalists and votaries of Dr...

...The Cold War continues...

...The nature of Soviet foreign policy is inveterate hostility to democracy...

...Its rate of productivity growth has dwindled to one percent...

...Obviously, maintaining a military posture of mere sufficiency or parity is not as chic in the USSR as it is in so many Western think-tanks...

...Yet Washington directs its complaints at such minor international boors as the Brazilians, the Argentines, the Chileans, and the South Africans...

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