Center Salutes Buchanan-Rosenthal Axis

The Center for Security Policy today took pleasure in noting the common view taken by two of the nation’s leading columnists concerning one of the most important issues of our time: Which side will the United States be on in the emerging contest for power in the Soviet Union — the increasingly repressive central authorities or the courageous democratic forces and reformist republics of the fragmenting USSR?

Differences between nationally syndicated columnist Patrick Buchanan and A. M. Rosenthal, former editor of the New York Times who currently writes a column for its editorial page, recently were cited as evidence of the end of a conservative consensus on key foreign policy subjects. While their disagreement over aspects of the Persian Gulf crisis appears undiminished, the virtually identical view each has recently expressed on developments in the Soviet Union and U.S.-Soviet economic relations suggests that on the fundamental question — support for freedom — both are of one mind.

On 14 December, in an editorial headlined "U.S. Food and Soviet Freedom," Abe Rosenthal wrote in the Times:

The democratic opposition to Mr. Gorbachev — and more and more Western specialists on the Soviet Union — fear that the inability of the Kremlin to govern in the face of public contempt will bring a national crackdown in six to eight months, maybe earlier….Ask any Soviet citizen if he trusts the shattered Communist central government to distribute foreign aid when it cannot even distribute food grown in the Soviet countryside….For friends of the Soviet people, the goal should not be to stop American food aid, but to try to make sure that it is used by the right people for the right reasons.

 

Today, an op.ed. by Pat Buchanan entitled "Bail-out for ‘Red Bear S&L’" appeared in the Washington Times, which said:

The battle now is between those who believe in constitutional rights, free markets and independence for republics, and those prepared to use force to keep Russia’s captive nations captive forever. Mr. Gorbachev is emerging as the leader and voice of the forces of repression. His regime — with its huge Marxist bureaucracy — now is the impediment to reform. To stuff Moscow full of cash and credit in 1990 is to give this failed regime the same lease on life we gave Vladimir Lenin in the ’20s, Josef Stalin in the ’40s, Leonid Brezhnev in the ’70s. This time, don’t bail ’em out, let ’em go under.

 

The Center for Security Policy believes that these commentators have correctly challenged the decision now being taken by President Bush and others — namely, to favor the "established forces" in the Soviet Union over those the true reformers and democratic opposition there. It joins them in urging a repudiation of this policy.