Gun-Shy
Ledeen, Michael
Gun-Shy by Michael Ledeen T he old models of domestic and international behavior are disintegrating, the new ones not yet defined. The former Soviet Union is a shambles, and neither we nor the...
...The former Soviet Union is a shambles, and neither we nor the leaders of the new republics can fully foresee the shape of things to come...
...Do you think they'll do that...
...That will not work...
...The world is not automatically becoming more peaceful...
...Or Assad...
...If we had leaders who appreciated the excitement of the moment, who were willing to fulfill America's revolutionary destiny, we could be consciously shaping this great turning-point in human history...
...Alas, our leaders have not grasped their historic opportunity...
...Now that the abolition of the USSR has been formally announced, they might finally recognize that Gorbachev is powerless and despised at home...
...In the Gulf War, offense (American air power) so outdistanced defense (Soviet or other) that, for the immediate future, we are militarily unchallengeable...
...It does not take great imagination, for example, to foresee the sale of weapons of mass destruction from former Soviet republics desperate for hard currency to Middle Eastern fanatics, whether heads of state or terrorist chieftains...
...Bush lectures the Ukrainians on their "impossible dream" of independence only weeks before they achieve it, just as he snubbed Yeltsin and gave a cold shoulder to the Baltic leaders only weeks before their successes...
...It's now safe to challenge the Americans (albeit not so stupidly and blatantly as Saddam did), because (a) you'll always have time to reconsider if the United States looks like it might actually fight for its principles, and (b) even if the Americans attack, you're odds-on to live to fight another day...
...The former Soviet Union is beset with pockets of armed conflict, and will be lucky to avoid larger civil wars...
...Neither do I, and as Sad-dam and his ilk regroup, it is only a matter of time before some of us become their victims...
...For years, many smaller countries refrained from foreign adventures for fear of the superpowers...
...We have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into lukewarm support for the republics, just as we were dragged to support Baltic independence, and just as we will eventually be dragged to back the little republics of the old Yugoslavia...
...While there have been plaintive cries to save this program or that military base, these are the sounds of parochial turf fights, not the trumpets of the New World Order...
...Any bets against Saddam acquiring a nuclear arsenal or top biological-weapons experts from former Soviets...
...Lacking the Vision Thing, this administration changes its policies with startling rapidity, offering no indication that the new ones will be more durable than the old...
...Similarly, the vision of an infinitely competent welfare state is in pieces, along with many of the moral standards that underlay the tradition of Western liberalism, and we are groping for new economic models, and new standards of behavior...
...Yet just as our power has reached its apogee, our leaders are racing to dismantle it...
...Someone should tell Bush and Baker: To hell with treaties—grab the weapons...
...Gorbachev's fatuous projects for union...
...Unfortunately, the mistakes of the past few years will deprive us of much of the authority we might have had...
...T his awareness, in the wake of Soviet disintegration, could have explosive consequences...
...in most places it is becoming more violent...
...lesser conflicts simmer inside India and within various African nations (Burundi, Zaire, Angola, Somalia, Togo, Cameroon, and of course South Africa...
...This decision apparently rested on White House antipathy toward Boris Yeltsin, and produced some moments of black comedy last fall, when Bush repeatedly telephoned Yeltsin, urging him to support Michael Ledeen is resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute...
...The main reason we have lost our bearings is that we don't have a sense of mission...
...Once victory was announced in the Cold War, Democrats in Congress—with little opposition from Republicans—immediately set about their butter-rather than-guns frenzy...
...True to the great tradition of "bringing the boys home," many Americans still believe—notwithstanding millennia of human history—that peace is the normal condition of mankind...
...Because unless we remove Saddam, a frightening time bomb will tick away in Baghdad...
...We could have taken the initiative on the matter, linking our recognition of the new republics to their divesting themselves of nuclear and other weapons...
...A dispersion of top Soviet scientists and doom doctors—similar to the scattering of the Nazis after World War II—is already under way, and many are going to radical Arab regimes...
...Key decisions are made on the basis of personality, for example, supporting Gorbachev long after he ceased to hold real power...
...Abu Nidal...
...Yugoslavia—to the great shame of the West—is a catastrophe...
...Baker makes promises to all and sundry to get them to the great conference table in the sky, as if holding talks were what diplomacy is all about...
...We might even have offered to buy them...
...Instead, led as we are by people who believe that form is everything in life, we are imploring the new republics to sign pieces of paper (e.g., the nuclear non-proliferation treaty), and we continue to rely upon the United Nations to ensure that Saddam does not rearm...
...The Bush cabinet, for example, is largely composed of "be-ers," not "doers...
...Such people are dangerous because they lack clear goals: for them, success is making a deal, any deal...
...It was the great conceit of Bush and Baker (along with the KohIs and the Mitterrands) to believe that the collapse of the Soviet Empire could be managed by a small number of reasonable men—including, most notably, Mikhail Gorbachev...
...CI 32 The American Spectator February 1992...
...The new political units, whether today in the former Soviet Union, or tomorrow in Africa, Western Europe, or Canada, will not soon forget the consistent refusal of Bush, Baker, and the boys to recognize the duly elected governments in the Baltics, Ukraine, and the other Soviet republics, or in Croatia...
...today they are increasingly willing to take risks—even major ones, as Saddam did—because the Soviet Union is gone and we are unpredictable...
...Darman and Brady make a budget deal with Congress that is first hailed as the discovery of the Holy Grail, then deplored as an unfortunate accident...
...We can only pray that the third time will not prove fatal...
...After each world war we disarmed, and both times had to race to save ourselves later on...
...guys who are happy to fill prestigious positions, to vaunt their "professionalism" and "pragmatism...
...We could bestride the world like a colossus...
Vol. 25 • February 1992 • No. 2
