The start of Russian freedom

by Stan Lowe, Chairman (retired), Wyoming Veterans’ Commission
Tuesday, December 4, 2007 2:13 PM MST

The book titled “HARD CALL: Great Decisions and the extraordinary people who made them,” written by John McCain with Mark Salter, is an unusually good read.

McCain uses an effective technique. The stories of the 20 people he writes about are categorized into a half-dozen groups of three or four articles under these labels: Awareness, Foresight, Timing, Confidence, Humility and Inspiration.

One story in the Foresight category titled “Turning Point” caught my eye as most appropriate for this column. It is about President Ronald Reagan and his uncanny ability to grasp the critical economic situation in the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.) that the aging leadership was struggling to deal with unbeknownst by everyone else in the outside world n except Ronald Reagan.

He also advocated complete elimination of all intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe. He called it the “zero-zero” option when he advanced it early in his presidency in 1981 while NATO and the U.S.S.R. were negotiating to limit European nuclear arsenals.

He was convinced the Soviet Union would collapse from inherent economic weaknesses in the communist system, and it was time to stop thinking of “containing” the Soviet threat and recognize the opportunities this situation presented.

He first advanced this theory in a June 1982 address to the British Parliament. At that time, though, he didn’t realize it would happen so soon.

Reagan said, “It may not be easy to see, but I believe we live now at a turning point.” He sensed the time had come for dramatic changes.

Naturally, political and media critics disputed his views, dismissing them as “a romantic idyll.”

What did Reagan see that the others did not? After stretching to keep up with his build-up of American military forces, the U.S.S.R. was bankrupt. It was falling behind in developing high technology for its weapons system.

Its heavy resources committed to the Afghanistan War, plus demands of its vassal and client states, combined to tax Moscow beyond its ability to meet America’s re-arming challenge.

His next step was to destabilize the Soviet empire by a series of National Security Decision Directives signed during 1982 and 1983, which were “tantamount to a secret declaration of economic war against the Soviet Union.”

One provided covert assistance to anti-Soviet groups in eastern Europe, particularly to Lech Walesa’s Solidarity labor union in Poland.

The second directive provided covert support to a movement in the middle of the Soviet empire.

A third imposed economic sanctions and denied the U.S.S.R. high technology and assistance for building a huge gas pipeline to sell gas to western Europe, eventually withdrawn in response to pressure from the west.

The fourth set in motion a process of change in the U.S.S.R. toward more pluralistic political and economic conditions to reverse Moscow’s expansionism.

This set the stage for a younger, more flexible communist leader to come on the scene, Mikhail Gorbachev, after the last of the old hardliners had died off. Reagan saw in him an opportunity for constructive negotiating.

Gorbachev shared the general Soviet view that Reagan was “an implacable foe and warmonger,” but he had to work with the man, recognizing that his strategy was effective.

The costly arms race, however, had to be stopped, so he decided to use his flair for public relations in dealing with Reagan and offer real arms reductions.

The two leaders met in a series of conferences, first at Geneva, next at Reykjavik, and lastly in Washington. Both men were convinced each was committed to peace, which contributed substantially to their negotiating efforts.

Reagan, unlike other presidents, actively participated in the negotiations. He pushed hard to overcome Soviet objections to his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) for intercepting inbound missiles. He even offered them the plans so they could have SDIs too, but they couldn’t afford them either.

Finally, a far reaching agreement that rewarded Reagan with his zero-zero option, while avoiding the SDI issue, was signed at the Washington meeting.

Afterward, Gorbachev convinced his colleagues for economic reasons to accept deep, unilateral cuts in Soviet conventional forces, withdraw from Afghanistan and then from other client states.

Another big change opened the door for all occupied nations to leave the Soviet empire and split up the U.S.S.R.. That ended the ailing communist system too.

Gorbachev certainly never intended to destroy communism and the Soviet empire. He determined necessary economic and government changes were needed to preserve the party’s leadership of the country and its satellites, but the freedom momentum, once started, could not be stopped.

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