grunwald@uiuccsb.UUCP (11/20/83)
#R:ihuxm:-71600:uiuccsb:11000066:000:786 uiuccsb!grunwald Nov 18 12:21:00 1983 Actually, the U.S.S.R. complaining about our missles in Germany makes as much or more sense than our objections to Soviet missles in Cuba. This still doesn't mean it's nice though. The current complaints about the U.S.S.R. having missles in Eastern Europe is, however, another story. An example would be the U.S.S.R. complaing because we have missles near one of their client-states, Cuba. The fact that those missles lie within our own borders is a moot point. This is essentially the situation that U.S.S.R. faces. Most of their missles are situated within their country. Only the U.S. has fixed missles in its client-states in Europe. And yet we complain because they are too close to our allies (Germany). While this is not nice either, it certainly explains their paranoia.
eich@uiuccsb.UUCP (11/20/83)
#R:ihuxm:-71600:uiuccsb:11000074:000:4189 uiuccsb!eich Nov 18 18:19:00 1983 One of the recurrent themes that Charles Krauthammer of The New Republic orchestrates so well in his pieces there and in Time is that, Santayana notwithstanding, facile analogies and psychoanalysis from afar are not historically sound. Yet many historians of various stripe (Arthur Schlesinger[weeell, he used to be a historian] and John Lukacs spring to mind) have argued that to a remarkable degree, post-1917 Russian foreign policy has recapitulated pre-1917 Russian foreign policy. An obvious reason is geography. Germany to the west, China to the south-east, Islam to the south-west, and latterly, Japan rising in the east have at various times posed as enemies. Alternatively, the Asian Tier, Central Europe, and the far East have often been fair game for Russian Empire. It is a commonplace of the so-called Revisionists that the Kremlin quakes daily at the prospect of invasion. At the very least, the West is taken to task for arousing nagging Soviet racial memories of bellicose Huns, Tartars, Poles, etc. sweeping through the heart of Mother Russia. While it is a mistake to impute perfect rationality to one's enemies, Leninists tend to quite conversant with the art of the possible (yes, Lenin took a big chance at Brest-Litovsk, but the 1917 Peace Campaign offered a bigger payoff: power). Since World War II, Western attributions of deep paranoia have lost historical foundation, and are strategically laughable in many cases. What threat does the USSR face from the West? German aggression? Not unless Germany is re-united and militarized (a united Germany may be in the cards -- the Russians and the rest of Europe would find it a convenient carrot by which to demilitarize and neutralize Germany). The Poles? Hungarians? These are the worst cases, and they can't even secure a modicum of freedom, let alone dream of expelling their Leninist masters. And if, per impossibile, they did free themselves, Russia would outgun them on all fronts for a long time thereafter. In the south, the USSR does indeed face a long term threat, namely resurgent Islam. Not so much in Afghanistan, even though brutality isn't sufficing to restore the status-quo ante Babruk Karmal, but within the southern Socialist Republics themselves. By 2000, Moslems may constitute 25 percent of the Soviet population. The Kremlin's long term strategy against this is to intermarry Russians and Muslims, and absorb the latter into Soviet culture (a kind of oxymoron). This is not working, despite the most brutal means (again, practiced by the Czars previously against the muslims) combined with the usual totalist suppression of native language, culture, and history. Solzhenitsyn recommended that the Kremlin just withdraw forthwith and save itself the expense of an anti-Islam policy. Observers claim that only in the southern SSRs is there something that can be called optimism: the future is theirs, not the Bolshevik infidels'. China? A huge militia, and not enough firepower. And the possibility of rapprochement, which the Russians may initiate to free up SS-20s and manpower on the China border. Modern Japan does not merit comment. Since SS-20s (model 3) in the east can reach western North America, the not-quite-so potent Pershings could be viewed as reciprocation. Of course they are being deployed because of the more numerous SS-20s bristling in Eastern Europe. These were meant to replace fairly ancient SS-4s and -5s; however the Soviets have been delinquent in dismantling their SS-4s in Czechoslovak and East German territory, while 1 triple-mirved, 4600-mile-range SS-20 roles off the line every five days (then there is the possibility of a potent tactical Atlantic force: nuclear-armed Whiskey-class subs). The SS-20 is no defensive weapon. It is a political weapon. The Soviets have learned from von Clausewitz better than we have. Just so, however, the Pershings and GLCMs are a political response. Whether that response is tenable given the state of the Alliance and the ability of the Kremlin to muster peace offensives (even unto paying for Western pacifist advertising, and wining and dining CND'ers on the Black Sea), remains to be seen.