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Last month, the Center for Security Policy honored former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger with its annual "Keeper of the Flame" award. While Mr. Weinberger’s contributions to promoting freedom, democracy, economic opportunity and American strength certainly qualify him as a most distinguished citizen-patriot, history probably will regard him as something more — a Winston Churchill for his time.

In his acceptance speech, the man who personified the Reagan mandate of 1980 to rebuild the United States’ defenses and to assume once again for this country the role of leader of the Free World, enunciated a coherent, farsighted prescription for U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. In it, he characteristically and unapologetically took on the so-called "politically correct" view of Mikhail Gorbachev. Not surprisingly, Mr. Weinberger’s self-described "contrarian" recommendations sharply contrast with the Bush administration’s unquestioning endorsement of the Soviet leader and its headlong rush to prop up his floundering, authoritarian regime.

Consider just a few of Cap’s thoughtful, if provocative, statements on what may well be the most momentous decision now facing American and Western policy-makers: Which side will we be on as democratic forces struggle to transform — and possibly to terminate — the Soviet Union in the face of mounting resistance to such changes by the central authorities in Moscow led by Mr. Gorbachev?

First, he remarked on the striking similarities between the present choice and that made by President Reagan’s administration nearly a decade ago. "In December 1981 and throughout 1982 . . . Lech Walesa and his fledgling reform movement, Solidarity, were making their bid for individual freedoms and economic liberty in Poland. The established authorities — both those in Warsaw and in Moscow — staunchly resisted the demands of the upstart democratic forces. The authorities were committed instead to the old order, a system that assured centralized control over virtually all aspects of political and economic life."

While the United States’ European allies fretted about such a challenge to their comfortable relationships with the established order, Mr. Weinberger noted that the Reagan administration wanted no part of a go-along-to-get-along policy approach on Poland. Indeed, Mr. Reagan welcomed the sort of "instability" then being created by the Polish reformers that did so much to contribute to the subsequent liberation of most of Central Europe.

Mr. Weinberger argued that the West should similarly be refusing to align itself with the central authorities currently clinging to power in Moscow. "Each passing day makes it more clear that [Gorbachev’s] authority to rule by presidential decree — ostensibly for the purpose of advancing systemic change — is actually being used to preserve the centralized system and its absolute control over the all-union military-industrial complex."

Mr. Weinberger pointedly challenged many of the policies now being pursued by Washington and other Western capitals that would have the effect of helping Moscow center to stave off reform, while denying assistance to genuine advocates of systemic change pressing for democratic and free market systems in the Soviet Union. He objected to: "U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed credit and trade relationships with an ever-more-illusory structure such as the contemporary Soviet Union"; "energy-related assistance to Moscow, [in light of the diabolical] ends to which this strategic sector of the Soviet economy has been put in the past"; and "the dismantling of bilateral and multilateral export controls on militarily relevant Western technology flows to a Soviet Union that remains armed to the teeth — and dominated by a system designed to keep it that way."

Instead, in the best tradition of Churchill, the former defense secretary concluded that this country "must once again take the lead; we must once again stand with those seeking personal liberties, democracy and free enterprise in the fragmenting U.S.S.R. — as well as in Central Europe." He urged, in particular, that the Bush administration adopt a strategy designed to strengthen the hands of those at the local and republic levels who have had it with Moscow center and who will no longer accept any Gorbachev-conjured substitute for freedom and economic opportunity.

The Weinberger strategy would involve a four-part program of:

  • Trade and credit agreements between the individual reformist republics of the Soviet Union and the United States.
  • A Contingency Energy Fund to help the fledgling democratic governments of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia survive their present, critical shortfalls of oil and natural gas.
  • U.S. insistence that the European Community agree in the present GATT round talks on a radical reduction in trade barriers — particularly in the agricultural sector — that threaten to prevent Central Europe from exporting its way to prosperity.
  • A new political approach aimed at establishing and strengthening this country’s relations with the emerging democratic forces in all 15 republics of the Soviet Union — even if doing so entails somewhat less cordial ties with Moscow center.

Secretary of State James Baker — in the political equivalent of a "blue moon" — admitted recently that President Bush and he had erred in appeasing Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, a policy that contributed substantially to the present Persian Gulf crisis. He said, "There are some things that we did that we might have done differently if we had known that this was going to happen." Mr. Weinberger has served notice as to what will happen if the Bush administration continues to align itself with Mr. Gorbachev; there will be no excuses for failing to do things differently from now on.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the director of the Center for Security Policy.

Frank Gaffney, Jr.
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