The International Pulse/A Stern Gang

...The American Spectator May 1992 53 SARKES TARZIAN INC WRCB, CHANNEL 3, CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE KTVN, CHANNEL 2, RENO, NEVADA WTTS, 92.3 FM, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA WGCL, 1370 AM, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA WAJI, 95.1 FM, FORT WAYNE, INDIANA CENTRAL OFFICE, BOX 62, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA 47402 TELEPHONE 812 332 7251 Providing the Best Radio and Television Service talking about monetary integration and a more perfect continental union, calls for independence are heard from Basques, Corsicans, Irishmen, South Tyroleans, and even Sardinians...

...The insouciance continues, with the Navy managing to "lose" the ship carrying the SCUDs from North Korea to Iran and Syria...

...Nor did Bush and Baker protest when our German allies flouted export controls on shipments to the Soviet Union, Libya, Syria, and Iraq—which got 70 percent of its mass-destruction technology from Germany—nor, in recent months, when Syria acquired considerable numbers of SCUD missiles and Libya continued revamping the infamous chemical weapons facility at Rabta...

...As in the case of Savage, there was no public opprobrium, and the Journal cavalierly refused to publish any of the enraged letters it received in response to the series...

...It is not just Russia policy that suffers from incoherence and lack of comprehension...

...Mikhail's All-Union Treaty, which had the support of perhaps 3 percent of the Soviet population...

...Finally, as I have been saying lo these many years, the struggle will not have been won until the KGB and the other instruments of the terror have been shut down and control over the apparatus has been transferred to the democrats...

...It is not just Bush/Baker...

...T he leaders of the West have lost their moral guidelines, and a wise man once noted that when you can no longer distinguish between friends and enemies, you often end by embracing your enemies' view of the world...

...it is the West...

...For if the Saudis (and the Gulf emirates, and other such) do not democratize, they will soon find themselves in a situation similar to Algeria's: challenged by a radical mass movement that threatens to drag them back to the Middle Ages...

...We can only hope that some political figure, somewhere in the West, will come forward with a bit more of The Vision Thing...

...This administration, for example, has shown no interest in pursuing the tough export controls instituted by the Reagan team...

...Trained to manage, not lead, thinking of themselves as a ruling meritocracy that no longer really needs the consent of the governed, they cannot cope with revolutionary change, because they cannot comprehend the ideas and the passions that have produced the revolution in the first place...

...At the precise moment that the fashionable European geopoliticians are Michael Ledeen is resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute...

...Our leaders, alas, are not likely to do any of these things...

...It is folly to pourmoney into an economic system that has freed some prices, but has not privatized enterprises nor made the currency convertible, just as it is folly to help governments that have not been democratically elected or are not pursuing programs of abolishing Communism...

...It is a natural process because it involves the dismantling of an artificial world constructed on the one hand by the fanatical moralist Woodrow Wilson and his shortsighted British and French allies at Versailles, and on the other hand by the voracious Soviet Empire, starting at the same time...

...The result is that Saddam still rules, and is rebuilding his capacity for mass murder...

...Once upon a time, any American politician who said such a thing would quickly disappear from public life, but no more...

...Robert Mosbacher's Commerce Department and James Baker's State led the charge in dismantling COCOM, the East-West Coordinating Committee that enforced the embargo on high tech to the Soviet bloc and other unfriendlies...

...There were many differences between Yeltsin and Gorbachev, but the fundamental one has to do with legitimacy...

...the Gulf war was brilliantly managed, but its mission was ill-defined...

...Such disagreements can and should be debated openly and passionately...

...The implication of such articles is that Jews shouldn't be entrusted with political power, because it is likely they will use it in Israel's behalf...

...The lack of a principled response from any sizable segment of the American political universe shows a decay ofcourage and character that is equally alarming...

...And no major political figure in the West has taken George Bush to task for it...

...Instead of bullying the Israelis, we would be encouraging the advance of democracy in the Middle East, above all in countries that are strategically important to us, like Saudi Arabia...

...But the disease to which these men and women have so pathetically fallen prey isn't limited to the lofty membership rolls of the Bush/Baker Country Club...

...Elsewhere in the Middle East, we seem to be developing a curious affection for the likes of Syria's murderous dictator Hafez al-Assad, while holding our diplomatic noses when in the presence of democratically elected Israeli leaders...

...And there was no proof that Israel had violated any agreements...

...Some of the attacks against Israel 54 The American Spectator May 1992 have been over real differences in policy (as in the debate over West Bank settlements...

...Although high-tech exports were recognized as a bit of a problem, the administration showed no great concern, even when it became evident that Saddam was hell-bent on acquiring a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction...

...No one at the cabinet or sub-cabinet level had the vision and the courage to speak out against this premature dismantling, and once these controls were gone, there was no convenient way to stop the hemorrhage of Western technology to the likes of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, and Hafez al-Assad...

...Up to a certain point, the confusion in the West is understandable, for we are in one of those watershed moments in world history when the old rules have gone and the new ones have yet to be made...

...Representative Gus Savage is reported to have said that all Jews are "un-American," and what frightens me is not so much that he said it, but that it took so long for a political price to be paid for it...

...now telling us that old Soviet nuclear weapons are nothing to worry about, then calling for an emergency program to hire Soviet nuclear scientists...

...So intense is his feeling about Israel that, even during his recent swing through Asia, Secretary Baker subjected his local hosts to extended diatribes against Israeli recalcitrance and the evils of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank...

...All the smaller entities that were either annexed by Soviet imperialism or assembled into different units by Versailles diplomacy are now escaping...

...0 The American Spectator May 1992 55...

...This is going to continue, particularly in the former Soviet Empire, and no amount of financial assistance, seminars on democracy, or tender loving care is going to stop this natural process before it has run its course...

...When Richard Nixon warned that Bush might get blamed for "losing Russia," Bush started talking about Russian aid again...

...Even given the horrific results of our incoherent high-tech export policy, the only public Bush/Baker tantrum in the field of export control has been against Israel...

...No Democratic presidential candidate is making any sense, and indeed it is hard to find a Western leader who is talking sense about foreign policy...

...In the meantime, we are going to have to live with a lot of confusion...

...Like Alice after eating one of Wonderland's more potent delicacies, many countries are growing smaller and smaller, as bits and pieces spin off into epicycles of independence and autonomy...

...If our leaders understood the urgency of support for the democratic revolution, it would be impossible for them to make such moral errors, for they would intuitively shun the embrace of the Middle East's tyrants, and nurture our friendship and alliance with Israel...

...Meanwhile, in one of those paradoxes that characterize revolutionary periods, some of the West European nation-states are themselves challenged by breakaway movements, just as we were adjusting to the notion of a European superstate...

...They are looking for a new, more natural center of political gravity, and they seem to be finding it in their traditional, smaller units, from Montenegro to Armenia, and from Estonia to Azerbaijan...

...Gorbachev was not, and the continued cult of Gorby—most recently on display in Germany, a country that knows a thing or two about leadership cults—is yet another demonstration of our leaders' confusion...

...There must be a reckoning, whether it involves putting the former leaders on trial, or simply by publishing the documents that tell the history of the terror...

...Confused as they are by daily reading of the national press and watching of the national TV news, they will probably continue to change their policies in response to the latest headlines...

...If they understood the democratic revolution, they would have embraced freedom for the Baltics, and for the other Soviet republics that wanted out...

...This unreasonable and ill-tempered campaign against a democratic ally shows the depth of our leaders' confusion...

...Which is it to be, Super Europe or a new jigsaw puzzle...

...Shamir suffers from the same social stigma as Yeltsin...

...I can't quite sort out who it's likely to be, but it's clear by now that he won't come out of this year's presidential election...

...If they understood the democratic revolution that has swept the world in the past eighteen years, they would never have embraced Gorbachev (who was picked by the Communist Politburo) at the expense of Yeltsin (who was elected by the people...

...As the Soviet Empire came undone, the Bush/Baker Soviet policy consisted solely of support for the sainted Gorbachev (Bush even called Yeltsin several times to urge him to support St...

...Indeed, we recently had the disgusting spectacle of the Wall Street Journal devoting an astonishing amount of space to a series of articles whose main point was a thinly veiled allegation that many prominent American Jews have "dual loyalty" to Israel and the United States...

...The other Europeans have no particular policy ideas—indeed the French seem to hold all views, depending upon the position of the stars and planets—except to worry that unrest in the East may produce waves of immigrants, who threaten the West European Way of by Michael Ledeen Life...

...When Gorbachev was rejected by his own people and replaced by Yeltsin, our leaders didn't know what to do...

...The country pushing hardest for massive aid to Russia—Germany—is, as luck would have it, the one that lent the most money to the former Soviet Union, thus stimulating the suspicion that unenlightened self-interest may be driving Kohl's foreign policy...

...even the crime of which Israel was accused (cannibalizing small 'components of American systems, and integrating them into Israeli-manufactured products for export) has been committed by virtually every American ally...

...nevitably, the campaign against Israel has encouraged anti-Semites to become more outspoken and brazen in their efforts to remove the Jews from the fabric of American society...

...Ever since, they have been jerked around from one proposal to another, now endorsing massive aid to Russia and the Republics, then dismissing it...

...Yeltsin is a legitimate leader, because he was chosen democratically...

...Western leaders fear "destabilization," but destabilization is already in full swing...

...But some of the anti-Israel attacks are clearly spun out of the air...

...It is tempting to blame the bleakness of our vision on the President's lack of conviction (about most anything), the secretary of state's lack of understanding (of the way the world works), and various other members of the same social set, who pride themselves on good manners but rarely trouble themselves with bothersome ideas...

...Given one of the great revolutionary moments in human history, with an opportunity to drive a stake through the heart of dictatorship and advance the cause of freedom throughout the world, the most powerful man in the world has responded by attacking Israel...

...For the United States to make de facto cause with Israel's anti-democratic enemies inverts our national principles, and subverts our national interest...

...If our leaders appreciated the magic of this moment, they would also understand what is required for the former Soviet Union: active American help, and the institutions of a free society...

...That is what has happened to Bush and the Baker Boys, who have packed a good deal of their energy, and most of their passion, into an all-out, knock-down struggle with, incredibly, our longtime ally, Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East...