Confusions about Afghanistan

...ANALYZING THE SOVIET STRATEGY Confusions about Afghanistan BY MILOVAN DJILAS Belgrade Future historians trying to understand the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan will no doubt find it difficult to make any sense of the seemingly illogical explanations offered by Lettist leaders in general and by Communist ones in particular This does not apply, ol course, lo Communist leaders who fully support Moscow's line, like Georges Marchais of France His stand merely proves again that the French Communist Party has always been and continues to be Leninist-what is, Stalinist-despite its support of so-called Eurocommunism Indeed, I would stress that its encouragement of political pluralism is only a verbal and tactical ploy No, the inconsistency I have in mind pertains to the interpretation of the latest Soviet conquest put forward by the Italian and Spanish Eurocommunists The leadership of the Italian and Spanish Communist parties unambiguously condemned the takeover of Afghanistan The Yugoslav Communist Party did likewise-although except for the matter of independence from the Soviet Union, it does not fit into the Eurocommunist mold (Nevertheless, I feel that internally Yugoslav Communism is somewhat less monopolistic and oppressive than the Soviet variety And in the face of Soviet aggression the motives and positions of Jugoslav leaders, winch I shall turn to later, became clear ) Partisans of democracy should applaud the 'Yugoslavs' determination to preserve their national independence They should rejoice, too, that the Spanish and Italian Communists have supported the principle of independence and criticized the Kremlin's actions Their apparent confusions stem from the fact that they still carry some of their previous ideological baggage-and the old dogma, already undermined in large part by past experiences, has now been dealt another blow by Soviet despotic expansionism For example, in the communique issued following their meeting in Madrid last January 27, as reported in the Belgrade daily Politika, Spanish party leader and his Italian counterpart, Enrico Berlinguer, declared that the Soviet military "intervention" was responsible for "the most recent increase in [international] political and military tension " The takeover of one country by another, they went on was an "event" equivalent to the NATO deployment of new nuclear missiles in Europe, resistance to SALT II in the United States and similar developments Continuing in this vem., the communique concluded that the nighan crisis marked a revival of the conflict between the Eastern and Western blocs-in other words between the I'SSR and the United States 1 he same thinking is prevalent in the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party This interpretation also led the Italian and Spanish Communist leaders to label as "disturbing factors" the "American threat to boycott the Olympic Games, President Carter's stated intention to maintain American dominance in world affairs, and the striving toward military superiority by both superpowers ' Small wonder then that Berlmguer and Camllo stressed "the absolute priority of preserving detente and peace" as well as a "renewal of East-West ties ' The appraisal of events in terms of the behavior or misbehavior of the superpowers can be traced to the Leninist teaching about the division of the world among imperialist nations What distinguishes the Eurocommunist analysis is its revision of the Leninist view to treat equally the moves of the "socialist" Soviet Union with those of the 'capitalist" United States Thus Berlinguer and Carnllo presented a less dogmatic and more objective assessment of contemporary occurrences, a step in the right direction In the end, though, they retained some of their past Leninist biases For tactical internal reasons, it may be premature for them to reject all those prejudices, yet, the mere parroting of old notions can only deepen old and dangerous misconceptions The United States undoubtedly was guilty of many transgressions and mistakes in supporting dictatorial and corrupt governments But when Berlinguer and Carnllo equate those actions with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and when they attribute this crisis to the USSR-USA rivalry in the Middle East, they close their own and our eyes to an unbridled Soviet expansionism and a rigid, unyielding totalitarian-militaristic Soviet system Berlinguer and Carnllo are rightly worried about the preservation of peace They fail to notice, however, that humanity is threatened by a potential holocaust primarily because the Soviet state is exploiting emerging revolutionary movements, taking advantage of the lack of resolve in Western Europe and the United States It is the Soviet Union's recent shift to a global offensive that is a real danger to world peace Unfortunately, this is often obscured by the contradictions and conflicts between the USSR and the United States, by unresolved ethnic and religious relations in the world and, above all, by uneasy and inequitable North/South economic relations Detente and peace are without question worthwhile, but they cannot be preserved today with an imaginary balance That self-deceiving equation and the Western reticence to oppose Soviet moves merely encourages Soviet expansion To argue that the Kremlin's "intervention"-poor synonym for the "occupation"-in Afghanistan is the result of the USA-USSR conflict detracts from and masks the aggressive, despotic nature of the Soviet system Today, a national Communism has become the domestic tool of the Soviet Party bureaucracy, but Marxism-Len-mism remains the foundation of the ideology it seeks to spread Peace can be preserved only by achieving sufficient superiority to prevent military expansion, to prevent aggression, which at present is carried out by the Soviet Union alone Understandably, an independent Europe is what Berlinguer and Carnllo hope for No one should oppose such a Europe, if this means a Europe that is united and sufficiently strong to resist Soviet expansionism The Soviet intention is to pacify Europe, to separate it from the United States and simultaneously to undermine it by conquering or controlling the countries that provide Europe with much needed raw materials The goal of Soviet expansion is not so much the subjugation of Afghan tribes, as the control of Middle Eastern oil and an outlet to the Indian Ocean in order to dominate Europe, and to force European industry to work for Soviet "socialism " Evidence of the Eurocommunists' contradictory thinking can be found among some Yugoslav Communist leaders, but the situation here is quite different Because the Yugoslav leaders feel threatened, they try to avoid "provoking" the Soviet Union with relatively strong statements Their strategy is based on the Utopian belief that a "nonaligned ideology" can be preserved if blame for the world's ills is even-handedly assigned to both superpowers Another simplistic approach is to attribute any crisis to "superpower rivalry " The Secretary of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Dusan Dragosavac, has already written off Afghanistan so that Yugsolavia may once again confine itself to supporting the illusory Final Act of the Helsinki Accords on European Security and Cooperation That kind of rationalizing can only lead to the return of "fraternal friendship" with Soviet ruling circles Dragosavac even fails to treat the two blocs equally, implying that the Western bloc is worse than the Eastern one for the sun-pie reason that it is "capitalist ' It is fortunate for Yugoslavia that more lucid and courageous ideas have been advanced by many others here, and have been followed by corresponding actions A practical example of such constructive thinking can be found in the nondogmatic evaluations of current developments, and in the determination of Yugoslav citizens to mobilize an effective self-defense...