TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071789/07178900.014

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 3.8 KB | 74 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 68

America Abroad

Beyond the Reagan Doctrine


By Strobe Talbott


    After years of carnage, all is relatively quiet on three
fronts in the cold war. The Afghan city of Jalalabad is still
holding out against a rebel siege. Most Nicaraguan insurgents
are sulking in their tents in Honduras. The various factions in
Cambodia are spending at least as much time these days
maneuvering against one another at international conferences as
fighting in the jungle.

    The mujahedin, the contras and the Cambodian guerrillas are
all foot soldiers of an American policy whose architect has
left office -- the Reagan Doctrine. To punish Leonid Brezhnev
for fomenting trouble in the Third World back in the 1970s,
Ronald Reagan launched a global counteroffensive in the 1980s.
By helping to arm virtually any group aiming to topple one of
the Kremlin's clients, Reagan gave new force to the old U.S.
strategy of "containing" Soviet expansionism.

    Then along came Mikhail Gorbachev, who has his own reasons
for scaling back the U.S.S.R.'s foreign entanglements: they are
expensive, diverting resources that might otherwise go to
domestic reform; and they provoke worldwide antagonism at a time
when Moscow is looking for capitalist goods and credits. So
Gorbachev has withdrawn Soviet troops from Afghanistan,
encouraged the Vietnamese to end their occupation of Cambodia
and warned Fidel Castro that the Kremlin will not indefinitely
underwrite the export of revolution in Latin America.

    George Bush has acknowledged this turnaround in Soviet
policy by proclaiming it an opportunity for the U.S. to move
"beyond containment." Already there has been a shift in U.S.
policy toward diplomatic compromise in all three of the
principal regional conflicts. In Nicaragua the Reagan
Administration wanted to overthrow the Sandinistas; the contras
were a means to that all-or-nothing end. The Bush
Administration, by contrast, is seeking a political settlement
that would entail some sort of power sharing between the
Sandinistas and their opponents. During consultations on
Cambodia in Brunei last week, Secretary of State James Baker
made it clear that the U.S. is more willing than it was a year
ago to accept the current Vietnamese-backed leaders in Phnom
Penh as part of a future coalition -- and more committed than
before to preventing any return by the genocidal Khmer Rouge.

    As for Afghanistan, American hopes for a quick, easy
mujahedin victory have faded. A protracted civil war might favor
the more fanatical, anti-Western elements among the rebels. The
U.S. has just said good riddance to one ayatullah in Iran, and
the last thing Washington wants is a Khomeini-like figure in
Afghanistan. There are also 3.5 million well-armed Afghan
refugees who are an increasing worry to Pakistani Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto. On a visit to Washington last month, she
persuaded Bush to endorse publicly a "political solution,"
implying an internationally brokered deal that might allow some
Afghan Communists to remain as part of a new government. Baker
has privately told his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze,
that the U.S. "has no interest in seeing a leadership in Kabul
that is hostile to the U.S.S.R." Such assurances, Baker hopes,
may lead Moscow to persuade its clients to accept a deal.

    If these trends continue, it could mean truce, then peace
on these far-flung battlefields. Wars, including cold ones,
don't end until people stop dying in them. By folding up the
Reagan Doctrine, the U.S. can provide some cover for Moscow's
retreat, perhaps helping end the expansionist phase in Soviet
history. Such a strategy might even come to be called the Bush
Doctrine.