Bush's Politics of Evasion
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Washington-USA BUSH'S POLITICS OF EVASION BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington In 1947, when it looked as if Greece and Turkey were about to be drawn into the Communist orbit, a forceful Harry...
...To make matters worse, current fiscal theory holds that loans are to be issued only after borrowers have shown they are willing to forsake their former profligate ways by adopting "economic adjustment programs...
...Still, his tendency toward overcautiousness dominates...
...Every time Poland's predicaments have found their way onto the White House agenda, fiscal conservatives have prevailed...
...As Polish economic fortunes continue to slide, the White House has been thinking up one excuse after another for limiting American largess...
...Washington-USA BUSH'S POLITICS OF EVASION BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington In 1947, when it looked as if Greece and Turkey were about to be drawn into the Communist orbit, a forceful Harry Truman carried the day by quickly pushing Congress to approve massive amounts of aid for them...
...The Poles hope to see their country resume its historic role at the crossroads of European society...
...Given the restricted geopolitical ceiling under which Bush operates, one should not be too surprised that his Administration still cannot fathom what must be done in Poland, even after the full depth of the Communist-induced rot there has been laid bare...
...This year, too, the CIA will funnel upwards of $ 1 billion to the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan and their Pakistani allies...
...In mid-September, the Administration did agree to earmark an extra $50 million in emergency food relief to the Poles in 1990...
...For when it comes to borrowing money, the rules for the Poles are the same as those set by your neighborhood banker: Before you apply, you need to have good credit...
...Instead, they have sought to focus on a comfortable aura of stability in the region that no longer exists, if it ever did...
...Congressional critics of Bush's Polish policies are being told Gorbachev's troubles at home have reached such a dangerously high level, nothing should be done that might roil the political waves within what used to be called the Eastern bloc...
...Of this sum, $24 billion is owed to the wealthy countries in the so-called Paris Club...
...Earlier, during a brief visit to Poland when he was Vice President, Bush is said to have gotten along famously with the stiff-necked general, perhaps leading Jaruzelski to believe he might rise above the fray and emerge as a Slavic Mitterrand...
...Such talents, however, seem to lie beyond the intellectual compass of a Washington team conditioned to resist grand designs and respond only to self-generated inbasket stimuli...
...But their American visitors beckoned them not to raise their sights at the moment beyond the Rhine...
...But that, of course, please understand, should also be seen as a disparate affair...
...Prior to the Parisian encounter, though, the President dropped by for a midday meal at the home of Lech Walesa in the Polish port city of Gdansk...
...So Bush let it be known that his function a few days later at the Paris summit of industrial nations would be to persuade West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to trot along as the lead husky on the rescue sled...
...The Solidarity leader handed him the outline of a program calling for emergency assistance to Poland totaling $ 10 billion...
...If politicians do not call him to account, historians surely will...
...Robert E. Hunter, European director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, lists as top priorities an immediate infusion of consumer goods to ease pent-up frustrations, followed by across-the-board technical assistance and the creation of a pool of ready capital to underpin a vital currency reform...
...His wish list included $2.7 billion from the International Monetary Fund, $3 billion from the World Bank and $4.1 billion in fresh bilateral credits...
...No wonder Communist officials, in their last days at the helm, avoided a bargaining session with the International Monetary Fund...
...The Administration decision was to tell Warsaw it would have to settle for a paltry $119 million because the Communist-run economy was in such a mess that anything more couldn't usefully be handled...
...What is more, for his part Gorbachev is painfully aware that no matter how deep his reforms, a healthy Russia can never emerge while Eastern Europe remains ill...
...Before finally quitting, the Communists turned to the Polish Army for critical support...
...The kind of dollars the Paris Club prefers to lend are those the borrower promises to use to pay off the interest and principal on old loans...
...So, in the end, caution could prove to be the most obtuse course in the quest for overall stability...
...At the time, the President was being urged by some in-house European experts— as well as by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had defected from the Democrats and backed the Bush candidacy in 1988—to spearhead a multibillion-dollar consortium, which would include Japan, as a means of quickly injecting large sums into Poland...
...But that, naturally, oneis told, is quite a different situation...
...Those measures would in the short run yield less food and more joblessness, precisely the opposite condition than what angry Poles are at present demanding from their leaders...
...With his talk of "a common European home" Gorbachev has, in fact, sought to turn a problematic situation to his political advantage...
...No sale...
...In any event, Jaruzelski proved to be enough of a patriot to recognize that, when it comes to begging from the West, a Solidarity-led government holds the shinier cup...
...But if the new Polish regime of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki is to prevent popular unrest, it needs much more than relief from onerous debt payments...
...Indeed, it is somewhat ironic, that the latest White House arguments for failing to act carry geopolitical trappings...
...Since Poland became part of the buffer zone the Kremlin forged with an iron fist at the end of World War II, it has piled up an external debt of $39 billion, much of it a legacy of the free-spending 1970s...
...Now, when there is a real chance of Poland returning to the democratic camp, Congress must prod a reluctant George Bush to increase the token assistance he has offered the struggling country...
...Back in July, when Bush prepared to visit Poland, arationale beyond budget constraints was crafted to deal with Warsaw's heightened expectations...
...To be sure, this would require a high level of diplomatic prowess and the coordination of a substantial commitment of public and private resources...
...The polttical calculus changed when the Communists, having spent more than 40 years seeking to convert Poland into a Socialist state, gave up and turned the management of the economy over to once-outlawed Solidarity...
...And aside from armored divisions, the Soviets also have precious little left in the cupboard to share with their Socialist brothers...
...Whenever it comes to Eastern Europe, Bush's budget chief, Richard A. Darman, has easily persuaded fellow policymakers that with deficits running in the hundreds of billions of dollars the United States can ill afford to do more...
...In the process, the President and his advisers have failed to grasp the true nature of the crisis sweeping through much of Eastern Europe...
...The petrodollars that commercial banks pumped into huge loan packages for needy nations during the "recycling" binge of the 1970s have nearly dried up...
...Apparently it was decided that the safer course was to hang back and watch events play themselves out...
...In truth, the Soviets have lost the economic and cultural struggle in the region and are about to lose the political one as well...
...Andrew J. Glass, a frequent New Leader contributor, is head of the Cox Newspapers bureau in Washington...
...From the perspective of the White House, all those very neat rows of Solidarity figures proved an untidy complication in the pursuit of the politics of evasion...
...In addition, to improve production efficiency the government would have to break up the big state monopolies in steel, shipping and other heavy industries, and close some unprofitable factories...
...An alternate course of action, one that would help Poland enter the mainstream of European democratic society, albeit in a fashion designed to allay rational Soviet security concerns, has not been seriously considered...
...The West Germans are patently eager to resume economic colonization of Eastern Europe—minus, naturally, the former nasty stuff...
...But the dynamic anti-Communist disposition within the region will probably deepen anyway, no matter what Bush does...
...Had the President acted boldly to aid Eastern Europe and coupled the help with major unilateral reductions of U.S...
...As everyone knows, Poland's balance sheet is in awful shape...
...Under this procedure, Warsaw signs papers that allow the bankers to pay themselves back and the Poles actually net a mere pittance...
...By nature a conciliatory person, Bush has bent a bit to demands from some leading Congressional figures, particularly Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine and his Republican counterpart, Robert Dole of Kansas...
...Moreover, its choice of lenders is limited...
...In the case of Poland, that would mean cutting major subsidies on nearly every commodity to create realistic prices...
...In Marxist-Leninist terms, the consequent ersatz Boulangism of General Wojciech Jaruzelski was no less heretical than his subsequent abdication to the spiritual heirs of Alexander Kerensky...
...The gesture, though, was made in response to intense Congressional pressure, not as a result of any broad internal change in outlook...
...forces stationed in West Germany, he could have handed Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev some much-needed running room...
...This year, the United States will pump a total of $5.1 billion into Israel and Egypt in hopes of keeping the Middle East from exploding...
...Bush, nevertheless, remains content to duck the mounting Polish challenge...
Vol. 72 • September 1989 • No. 14
