Editorial / Swedish Dreams of Empire
Tyrrell, R.Emmett Jr.
SWEDISH DREAMS OF EMPIRE by R. Emmett Tyrrell, J r . L a s t month members of the worldwide peace movement temporarily had to ease up on their demonstrations against American...
...We do know that a few days later President Brezhnev looked very haggard during meetings in West Germany...
...Olaf Palme and his Social Democrats ruled in Stockholm...
...Notice, incidentally, the oddity of Stockman's very muted complaint that there was an "honest misunders t a n d i n g " between them on the important m a t t e r of whether he would be quoted directly...
...Is it prudent to humiliate them when they have so Adapted from RET's weekly column syndicated by King Features...
...many other worries: their defensive action in Afghanistan, the bellicose Poles, another uncertain wheat crop, and all those.malicious charges in the Western press claiming the Soviet Union has developed the ghastly chemical and biological weapons now being used to annihilate Southeast Asians...
...It is just that things do 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1982 not work very well in Russia...
...In the ensuing hysteria they blasted away at the plane killing two civilians and wounding ten others...
...GOOD WRITER GREIDER by Tom B e t h e l l I have my doubts as to whether William Greider's article on David Stockman, published in the Atlantic Monthly, gives readers a particularly accurate impression of the budget director's thinking...
...Then they lost the plane completely for an hour and a half...
...The Swedish politicos make political hay...
...The Soviets are worriers...
...Norwegian radar had spotted the plane immediately, but it was not until the airliner lumbered over one of the comrades' heavily guarded, top secret military installations--a flight of at least 18 minutes--that they caught on and scrambled to their MIGs...
...Swedish armies have fallen upon the Russians as recently as 193 years ago...
...I am only sorry that he had to find out in such a painful way that Greider was not his "friend" after all...
...This magnification became even more distorted, of course, in the television c a m e r a ' s lens, where, curiously enough, the great ballyhoo about the article seems to have begun...
...L a s t month the Swedes followed a very reckless course...
...In the face of every Swedish provocation the Soviets were restrained, mature, and even somewhat droll--the sub's captain drawing his forefinger across his throat when asked the fate awaiting him back home--ha ha, that is a good one...
...How well I remember the adventure of the South Korean Boeing 707 that, while on a commercial flight in April of 1978, wandered into Soviet air space undetected by the Soviet air defense system...
...SWEDISH DREAMS OF EMPIRE by R. Emmett Tyrrell, J r . L a s t month members of the worldwide peace movement temporarily had to ease up on their demonstrations against American militarism...
...Remember the Swedes' exemplary neutralism over the past few decades...
...I t is difficult to make the argument that an article is distorted if the victim of that distortion himself maintains a discreet silence on the subject...
...Why all the menacing oratory...
...I have long held that it was during this chilling episode that the world experienced World War III...
...He wanted a compromise on the tax bill which would substantially reduce its drain on the federal treasury and thus moderate the fiscal damage of Reaganomics...
...According to the p r e s s , he consumed a bottle and a half of vodka...
...After all, the Soviets were obviously embarrassed enough...
...Remember the Stockholm Peace Congress...
...It will not be good for Europe...
...The distortion is analogous to that created by bar graphs that fail to depict all p e r c e n t a g e points below a certain level, thus magnifying the differential...
...O'Neill remains unbudgeably opposed to everything that he stands for...
...Such primitive political grandstanding was never committed when Mr...
...Someone else close to Stockman described it as "dishonest...
...Palme is now in the minority, however, and the Swedes are engaging in the same crude anti-Sovietism as the Reagan Administration...
...With the Swedes acting like cowboys what chance will there be for a nuclear-free zone in Scandinavia...
...The problem with the article is that its overall effect is to magnify greatly such differences of opinion as exist between Stockman and other members of the Administration...
...The Russians have legitimate defense interests in the Baltic, as this frightening display of Swedish chauvinism makes clear...
...is occasionally impatient with Gramm, with whom he is working, but says not a word about O'Neill, who remains outside his orbit of negotiation...
...A 27-page article that presents these marginal conflicts as the Stockmanian Universe is t h e r e f o r e misleading...
...To see Sweden, of all nations, lusting for violent confrontation must have been very distressing for peace activists everywhere...
...Stockman may, I suspect, have agreed to p r e s e r v e a chastened silence about the article...
...As for the captain's insistence that the sub had foundered owing to a faulty gyro and inclement weather, I find the explanation perfectly reasonable...
...It is difficult to believe that Stockman sat through 18 sessions with a tape recorder running on the table without unequivocally establishing whether or not he would be quoted...
...Note the conflation of THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1982 5...
...I am guessing here, with only a few hints to go by...
...George Gilder, a friend of Stockman's, says he is convinced that it does not...
...Meanwhile the life of every youngster on that submarine is endangered, and the Soviets are depicted as warlike and devious--the same old stereotype...
...The thing flew all over northern Russia before landing on a lake...
...H e r e ' s an example: "Stockman's interest was made clear to the others...
...Surely ~he Swedes are familiar with the technological wizardry of the Socialist Fatherland...
...If that sub was indeed gathering intelligence information, let us recall that Russia has been invaded many times...
...Yet in Sweden the pendulum has apparently swung back again...
...Why all the fatuous legalism ? Why not simply salvage the sub and send Moscow the bill...
...Actually, through the whole imbroglio the USSR behaved very well--a point that doubtless has not been missed by such thgughtful American observers as Anthony Lewis of the New York Times and George Kennan, the seasoned student of Kremlin affairs...
...Imagine...
...In turn, Greider may well be suppressing further isolated quotes Which could be more damaging to Stockman...
...This criticism is in no way intended to exonerate Stockman from the folly of exposing himself to such tried-andfalse, award-winning journalistic tactics...
...At several points in the article, Greider skillfully .makes his (not Stockman's) points by means of welldisguised editorials inserted between the Stockman quotes...
...In Russia a lot of junk wobbles off the production line...
...As soon as they lost sight of that damaged airliner my guess is that they let fly against all their enemies with every missile in their arsenal...
...For a highly cerebral response to this editorTal, see "Current Wisdom" on page 42...
...What should have been borne in mind by everyone last month is the point Kennan recently made in the New Yorker, to wit: The USSR is essentially a defensive power...
...despite repeated messages left at the Washington Post, Greider declined to come to the phone to confirm or deny...
...The point is that someone in Stockman's position, in his dealings with Congress and the Administration, is bound to deal with the "moving parts" at the margins of the system...
...My impression here is that some sort of a "deal" may have been struck between Stockman and his Hay-Adams friend...
...Is it really wise to intensify their deep sense of insecurity...
...These are turbulent and unpredictable times, and last month the world's greatest threat to peace was Sweden...
...A small, obsolescent Soviet submarine runs aground while on a trainj_og mission in S'weden's tricky coastal currents, and the Swedish military starts rattling the saber...
...In the course of months of conversation, then, it is not surprising if Stockman Tom Bethell, The American Spectat o r ' s Washington correspondent, holds the De Witt Wallace Chair in Communications at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Phil Gramm is someone he can deal with...
Vol. 15 • January 1982 • No. 1
