TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042291/0422002.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10.6 KB | 226 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 45

DIPLOMACY

A Superpower at the Abyss


By building bridges to the reformers, a former President argues,
the U.S. may be able to induce Gorbachev to end his unholy
alliance with the reactionaries

By RICHARD NIXON


    As his country slipped deeper into domestic chaos, Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev last week unveiled an "anti-crisis
program" designed to reassert Moscow's central control and curb
the spreading economic and political unrest. In a speech long
on apocalyptic warnings and exhortations to discipline -- but,
as usual, short on fresh ideas -- the President called for a
moratorium on strikes and demonstrations to be coupled with
additional measures to stabilize the economy. Gorbachev
threatened tough action against republics that refused to
cooperate, but he offered no specifics on how he planned to
enforce his program.

    Gorbachev's speech was immediately greeted with two acts
of naked defiance. Georgia became the first republic outside
the Baltics to declare outright independence. The next day tens
of thousands of workers in Minsk, the capital of once quiescent
Belorussia, answered the call for a strike moratorium by
walking off the job, joining the estimated 300,000 miners on
strike. The cost of these labor disruptions is already estimated
to run into the billions. This can only worsen a budget deficit
that has in the first quarter already exceeded the government's
projection for the entire year by more than 4 billion rubles,
owing to a shortfall in contributions from the republics.

    Two weeks ago, Richard Nixon had the opportunity to
observe firsthand the country that now appears, even in the view
of its embattled leader, to be on the brink of catastrophe.



    In our meeting in the Kremlin, Mikhail Gorbachev assured
me that his current turn toward the reactionaries is just a
temporary detour. But the evidence is overwhelming that he is
leading the U.S.S.R. toward the abyss. In the absence of radical
reform, the Soviet Union will become an irrelevant and crippled
empire -- a nuclear superpower with a Third World economy,
unable to play a major role on the world stage. This is good
news in one sense because it means a declining Soviet threat.
But it is also bad news because, as I told Gorbachev in 1986 and
again in our recent meeting, the security of one nuclear
superpower cannot be built on the insecurity of the other. We
need the U.S.S.R. as a reliable international partner in
building a new world order.

    During my recent visit I found a mood of depression unlike
anything I had ever encountered before. Previously I had seen
people living in poverty and fear, but they still had some hope
the system could work. Now there is an absence of fear but an
absence of hope as well. The communist regime is totally
discredited. The Soviet economy is collapsing.

    Gorbachev seems unable to realize that there is no halfway
house between a command system and a free market, and that there
can be no successful private enterprise without private
ownership. He is unable to cut the umbilical cord to the
Marxist-Leninist philosophy that has nurtured him all his life.

    His insensitivity to nationalist sentiments and his
rejection of the legitimate aspirations of the Soviet republics
have aggravated the secessionist tendencies that are now tearing
the country apart.

    In his heavy-handed approach to Lithuania, Latvia and
Estonia, Gorbachev has alienated many of his former reformist
allies. At the other end of the spectrum, the reactionaries
charge him with insufficient ruthlessness to implement an
effective crackdown. All sides accuse him of being unreliable,
weak, indecisive -- a talker rather than a doer. The unkindest
cut I heard was from one former ally who called him a "cruel
wimp."

    Gorbachev is left with no genuine political base of his
own, and his flip-flops have damaged what is left of his
credibility. His reform-minded advisers, like Eduard
Shevardnadze and Alexander Yakovlev, have either deserted him
or been deserted by him. His small circle of advisers is now
composed mostly of yes-men, who tell him what he wants to hear
rather than what he needs to know, and communist functionaries,
who are nostalgic for the superficial stability and artificial
imperial glory of the Soviet totalitarian past.

    Some of Gorbachev's supporters told me that his alliance
with the reactionaries is only a marriage of convenience. How
ever, such marriages often produce unwanted children. Already
we see ominous restrictions on glasnost, as well as emergency
police measures such as bans on demonstrations and strikes. As
a result, the democratization of recent years is being reversed.

    Gorbachev took pride in ending the Soviet obsession with
what he termed the "enemy image." Yet he is now resorting to
the old habit of blaming Soviet failures on unnamed Western
opponents and "troublemakers."

    Gorbachev feels he has no choice but to seek the help of
the reactionaries to stabilize the situation, particularly the
dangerous deterioration of the economy, before giving his
reforms another push. But he must realize -- and realize soon
-- that stability at the cost of freedom is too high a price to
pay because it means no progress, while freedom at the cost of
some instability is a price worth paying in order to achieve
progress.

    Not surprisingly, he appeared less dynamic and optimistic
than he did five years ago. But his formidable intellectual
skills and instincts as a political survivor remain intact. It
is not too late for Gorbachev the reactionary to become
Gorbachev the reformer once again.

    He has shown before that he is capable of 180-degree
turns. This is the same leader who declared he would never let
East Germany join West Germany or let a unified Germany remain
in NATO. It is the same leader who vowed he would never abandon
the Communist Party's monopoly on power in the Soviet Union.

    We can hope he will reverse himself again. Meanwhile, it
would be a serious mistake for the U.S. to tie all its hopes for
a good relationship with the Soviet Union to one man -- even
one as remarkable as Gorbachev. We must face the reality that
his power is slipping away from him.

    On each of my previous six visits to the U.S.S.R., I had
discussions with only the top man -- Nikita Khrushchev in 1959,
Leonid Brezhnev in 1972 and 1974, Gorbachev in 1986. This time
I had meetings not only with Gorbachev but with the chairman of
the KGB, the ministers of Defense, Foreign Affairs and the
Interior. I also met with Boris Yeltsin and other top opposition
figures in Moscow as well as with their counterparts in
Lithuania, the Ukraine and Georgia. Power is being dispersed;
there are now, in a way that was unthinkable a short time ago,
competing constituencies.

    I have seen firsthand the degree to which some of the
republics have been able to gain control over their internal
affairs. They are attempting to develop foreign policies of
their own as well. This is true not only in the Baltic republics
and Georgia, which are seeking complete independence from the
Soviet Union, but also in the Ukraine, where the communist
government is refusing to take orders from Moscow.

    These developments require an unambiguous, positive
American response. As inconvenient as it may be in terms of
conventional diplomacy, the U.S. should start immediately to
build political, economic and cultural bridges to the newly
assertive republics.

    This is particularly true with the largest of the
republics, Russia. I met with Yeltsin, the chairman of the
Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, for over an hour with
only his interpreter present. After being led to expect a
lightweight and a demagogue, I quickly realized how inaccurate
media reports and assessments by Establishment diplomats can be.
The Russian leader projects steely determination and strength
of conviction. He has the physical magnetism that is so
important for an effective politician. He is not as intellectual
and sophisticated as Gorbachev, but he is still a political
heavyweight. Gorbachev appeals to the head, Yeltsin to the
heart; Gorbachev dazzles his listeners, Yeltsin moves them. If,
as some of his critics claim, Yeltsin were seeking power for its
own sake, he could be a very dangerous dictator. Fortunately,
his critics are wrong.

    I'm not surprised that the American media, with their
tendency to put style over substance, prefer Gorbachev to
Yeltsin. But in evaluating Yeltsin we should focus on what he
stands for rather than his personal style. Yeltsin totally
repudiates the communist philosophy; Gorbachev does not. Yeltsin
supports private ownership; Gorbachev does not. Yeltsin would
give immediate independence to the Baltics; Gorbachev would not.
Yeltsin would cut all Soviet aid to Cuba, Afghanistan, Angola
and other Third World losers; Gorbachev would not. Yeltsin seeks
a mandate to rule by winning a free election; Gorbachev will not
take that risk.

    Most significant, Yeltsin's advisers, some of whom used to
advise Gorbachev, are more able than the reactionaries who
counsel Gorbachev today. They are the best hope for reform.

    I am not saying that the U.S. should start interfering in
Soviet internal affairs and side with Yeltsin against Gorbachev.
The U.S. must continue to deal with whoever is in charge of the
other nuclear superpower's foreign policy. Today that happens to
be Gorbachev, and for the time being there is no alternative to
him.

    But at the same time we can and should strengthen our
contacts at all levels with the reformers in Russia and the
other republics. Gorbachev will not like that. But we must
remember that he needs us far more than we need him.

    The future of U.S.-Soviet ties is organically linked to
the fate of reforms inside the U.S.S.R. Supporting reform is
morally right. It is also very much in America's national
interest. Ironically, it is in Gorbachev's interest as well. If
we support the reformers, they will be better able to bring
pressure to bear on Gorbachev to realign himself with them, to
end his current detour and return the country to the road of
reform.

    Gorbachev must abandon the unholy alliance that he has
formed with the reactionaries. If he sticks with them, he may
save his position of power but lose his place in history. It
would be tragic if he were to suffer the fate of so many
reformers in the past: those who plant the seeds of reform
seldom reap the harvest.