Capitol. Ideas/Gore's Gambit
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS GORE'S GAMBIT by Tom Bethell In chess, the Queen is said to be pinned when it is attacked by an opposing piece but cannot move because doing so would expose the King to check. An...
...High explosives will suffice for a direct hit on the Kremlin, which is why the Soviets have been so eager to ban the cruise...
...perspective, is to placate the Soviets, such a move would meet with low-keyed acceptance from the Hive...
...Alex Cockburn would complain, for the sake of appearances, about there not being a dime's worth of difference between the parties...
...It's the Republicans who would be in a state of uproar...
...has indeed "verified" that the Soviets have failed to comply with all arms control treaties...
...And if that support is a reality, why are we fraternizing with the Soviets...
...proposal 12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988 with putatively "unacceptable" provisions...
...In all of this there is a great opportunity for the Democrats, and it will be interesting to see if they take it...
...hands still further on the use of cruises—adding a ban on the sea-launched version...
...Can we simply accept their word that they will, as the Vice President seems to believe...
...If he does not move away, then he is exposed to the Gore Gambit (which Dukakis might also set in motion...
...By falling in love with Gorbachev, Reagan has given up a big Republican issue," he said...
...I hereby alert the Bush campaign to the Vice President's dangerous position right now on the political chessboard...
...It is unlikely that Gorbachev will permit Reagan to come to Moscow and get away without signing something, and what the President will be expected to sign (Adelman believes) is a "framework agreement" committing the U.S.—and the loyal "Queen" Bush—to a 50-percent arms reduction in principle (with the details to be worked out later, by the future occupant of the Oval Office...
...On one point I do agree with Adelman...
...Therefore, in the present irresolute moment in Washington, there are no real grounds for hoping that Soviet recalcitrance will prevent "the arms control process" from sliding all the way down the slippery slope toward treaty signing ceremonies with brass band accompaniment...
...side merely notes the Soviet violations, politely complains on Capitol Hill, and then comes back with a brand new arms control proposal...
...Such an agreement would be dangerous for the U.S...
...To this day, some armaments experts wonder if this missile (SS-20) really exists...
...The U.S...
...Then, "to show you're tough," he added, "you have to run against the Reds in Central America...
...I applaud President Reagan's historic foreign policy compromises, his well-intentioned efforts to reduce tension between the superpowers, andto restore detente...
...Polls were actually published last fall showing supposed popular support for the INF treaty before the U.S...
...The Administration's arms control team in Geneva right now has "on the table" a proposal to reduce by 50 percent our strategic nuclear arsenal...
...I do not believe that we can be so trusting . . ." Ihave tried this out on a dozen people and they all respond in the same fashion: "Don't worry, it'll never happen...
...The U.S...
...The Gore Gambit is for the fall, not the primaries...
...So it does seem to me quite possible that either Dukakis or Gore might make a tactical right turn on arms control...
...The Soviets clearly do understand this...
...does not seem to have given sufficient weight to the possibility that the Soviets can simply accept the U.S...
...is a media fellow at the Hoover Institution and The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...because it would be binding on us in a way that it would not be on the Soviets...
...Perhaps more to the point, because the Reagan offer is a live, concrete proposal that has been advanced in the real policy arena, the Republicans are potentially far more exposed by it than the Democrats are by any vague campaign promises they may have made...
...The general ignorance about arms control was well illustrated this winter when Pat Robertson pointed out that George Bush himself seemed unaware that the nuclear warheads are to be excluded from the INF treaty...
...In a 1986 poll, for example, half the respondents could not say which two countries were involved in SALT or START talks...
...For their part the Soviets issue blanket denials that they have violated anything, and the U.S...
...But if it is a Dukakis-Gore ticket, the Gore Gambit (as I shall call it) is a real threat to Bush...
...dependence on THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988 13...
...And it is at that point, after such a Moscow "framework agreement," not before, that the Democrats might decide to have a little fun with the Republicans by moving their Bishop onto that diagonal line where the Republican King and Queen so unguardedly stand...
...In short, the current danger is not that there is no mechanism of verification, but that there is no penalty for non-compliance...
...Some bees would buzz...
...and (lest we forget), Jimmy Carter effectively criticized Gerald Ford's comment that Poland was not under Soviet domination...
...Think of it: the number of our nuclear missile submarines could conceivably be reduced from 32 to 16...
...Therefore, I hereby announce my opposition to the Republican disarmament proposal...
...For if we take such an irrevocable step, what guarantees do we have that the Soviets will follow suit...
...As it is, Democrats feel much more free than Republicans to move where they will in the policy arena...
...An analogous situation now exists in the presidential campaign...
...Jesse Jackson's Michigan win now admittedly makes him the Democratic front-runner, and the party may not be able to deny him the nomination...
...We have thereby forsworn use of our technological lead—the true goal of arms control from the Soviet point of view...
...and the Soviet negotiators in Geneva had even finished negotiating it and before our own arms control experts had so much as seen a photograph of the missile that the Soviets were supposedly discarding...
...Suspicion between our two countries has gone on for long enough...
...If elected, I too will commit myself to working closely with the General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev...
...He keeps saying his treaties are "verifiable," when that is not the problem...
...Reagan is the King, and the Democratic nominee, say Governor Michael Dukakis or Senator Albert Gore, could make the devastating move that would "pin" the Queen, Vice President George Bush...
...The Democrats have moved so far to the left that they could not even countenance such a move...
...But can we really be so sure...
...For there is no plausible threat without Soviet support...
...Pro-arms control polls merely record the (non-conTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988 11 troversial) public approval of improved relations between the U.S...
...media always take their side by reporting, very skeptically and on an inside page, "alleged" Soviet violations...
...If Marty Peretz of the New Republic is not right now urging his Harvard pupil to execute the Gore Gambit, I would be surprised...
...It is therefore possible that Gore or Dukakis could make a tactical move to the right, saying as they did so something like this: "I am for arms control negotiations 100 percent...
...But some among the Democratic advisers must realize that arms control polling figures are among the murkiest and most unreliable in the business and that most Americans really don't have the slightest idea about the subject...
...Notice that in earlier presidential elections the Democrats did make the obvious moves...
...When I mentioned the possibility of a Gore Gambit to Kenneth Adelman, the former director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, now with the Institute for Contemporary Studies, he said he did not believe the Democrats would make such a move because basically Democrats believe the polling data purporting to show that the American people favor arms control...
...They recognize that the pollsters are basically "theirs" to begin with, and that "public opinion," far from being fixed in concrete, is the Democrats' to manipulate...
...And at that point the Republicans would be in serious trouble...
...A delman said he thought that the Soviets would not be willing to accept the U.S...
...And the Soviets could still do the same with the START proposal, because of course they now understand the amazing fact that they are not obliged to comply with anything they sign...
...The latest word (as of late March) is that the strategic arms treaty will not be ready for Reagan's and Gorbachev's signatures at the time of Reagan's visit to Moscow in late May...
...Since FDR the Democrats have only twice recaptured the White House from Republican incumbents—in 1960 and 1976...
...The Soviets already succeeded, in what is by far the worst feature of the INF treaty, in getting us to agree to a ban on ground-launched cruise missiles, both conventional and nuclear...
...Both times they moved to the Republicans' right...
...The problem is that we keep coming back for more...
...A few speeches about treaty-euphoria in the White House and the overlooked security of the American people and "public opinion" would turn overnight...
...negotiating strategy, both in START and INF, seems to have been to encumber the U.S...
...START proposal as is because they want it to include a ban on all sea-launched cruise missles...
...Contradictions...
...Bush supports this risky position, and in doing so he is "pinned...
...But I am also for arms control proposals that are safe and equitable...
...Possibly...
...Reagan's place in the history books be placed above the legitimate concerns of the American people...
...But the Reagan-Bush 50-percent arms-reduction proposal goes too far and has been negotiated too hastily...
...The danger to Bush stems from President Reagan's strange desire to reduce the U.S...
...concessions) in the end did accept the terms...
...Therefore, Adelman has a point: the Soviets would certainly like to seize the START opportunity to tie U.S...
...rr he country is in any event not in a 1 healthy political condition if one major party is relying on the other major party not to make the obvious political move...
...The number of our B-1 bombers, of our MX and Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles could be reduced by a similar percentage...
...Notice, however, that even if there is no formal treaty the foregoing analysis still applies...
...I pledge to you that if elected, and unlike George Bush, I will think twice before cutting up half of our nuclear submarines...
...Once the U.S...
...But if we don't give them this (and of course Paul Nitze might, but assume that he will not) then the Soviets are still free to "take" everything else thatwe are offering them in START—the entire 50-percent reduction already mentioned...
...But the people aren't with you on that...
...It seems clear, incidentally, that President Reagan has not understood this point...
...In all of these negotiations, the U.S...
...The Soviets themselves would no doubt "accept" such a move, provided they believed it to becynical and tactical in nature: helpful to a Democratic recapture of the White House but not necessarily injurious to future arms control and other dealswith-Democrats once in power...
...Thus the treaty could not really be said to reduce either side's nuclear arsenal...
...This proposal is more radical than anything that even this year's left-leaning Democratic candidates have offered the electorate...
...Half a loaf may not be as good as a whole loaf, but it is better than none...
...The safety of the United States must not be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency, nor can Mr...
...Since, as far as I can see, the whole goal of arms control, from the U.S...
...Does George Bush?the very nukes that Reagan says he wants to abolish...
...nuclear arsenal by 50 percent —accompanied by an unenforceable Soviet promise to do likewise...
...John F Kennedy made much of an alleged missile gap...
...Likewise, incidentally, the Democrats could also attack the Republicans for the shameful State Department attempt to sell out (apparently behind Reagan's back) the freedom fighters in Afghanistan...
...Nonetheless, the Soviets in INF (after much grumbling and asking for more U.S...
...Thus if I were advising Dukakis orGore, I would not take such arms control polls very seriously...
...has submitted a proposal, I repeat, the Soviets can accept it unchanged (after much stage-managed hemming and hawing) because they know that its arms-reducing provisions will be dutifully enforced by us, on us, whereas the Soviets will be obliged only to issue loud, indignant denials that they are not in compliance...
...To date the Republican arms control team has been most obliging, thereby preserving intact U.S...
...If Bush moves away from Reagan on arms reduction, then he abandons the strategy of loyalty to the King that has stood him in good stead throughout the Iranian Tom Bethel...
...How can you both fraternize with Gorbachev and warn plausibly of a Communist threat in Central America...
...and the Soviet Union...
...proposal in toto, without requesting a single change...
...Cruise missiles are now so accurate that they no longer have to be nuclear...
...The U.S...
Vol. 21 • May 1988 • No. 5
