Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site qantel.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!intelca!qantel!gabor From: gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik) Newsgroups: net.followup,net.politics Subject: Re: Star Wars Defense... Message-ID: <207@qantel.UUCP> Date: Thu, 6-Sep-84 14:45:36 EDT Article-I.D.: qantel.207 Posted: Thu Sep 6 14:45:36 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 12-Sep-84 03:14:21 EDT References: <302@ihu1e.UUCP>, <406@oliven.UUCP> <740@flairvax.UUCP>, <429@oliven.UUCP>, <746@flairvax.UUCP> Organization: MDS Qantel, Hayward CA. Lines: 54 Baba ROM DOS from Palo Alto writes in and says: >Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary demonstrate that the Soviet Union >is an expansionist power. That's troublesome. It should be kept in mind, >however, that we did some amusing things to Mexico and Spain in the pursuit >of our "manifest destiny" in the nineteenth century. I don't believe that my >great grandfather's generation were bent on enslaving the world. I see no >reason to believe that the Soviets are either. They will, however, spread >their power to whatever extent realistic political and military situations >allow. To the extent that their gains are our losses, we must oppose them. >The bent-on-world-domination demonology, while useful in whipping up support >for military expenditures, can be a hinderance to addressing the very real >issues of day to day coexistence with a fellow nuclear superpower. Here Baba seems to be repeating a well-known Kissinger argument: let's forget about Cold War rhetoric and treat the Russian-American conflict as a traditionalbig-power rivalry; nothing that can't be solved by a dose of shrewd diplomacy and a couple of agreements on spheres of influence, buffer states and the like. I feel this is fine as far as it goes but it is also entirely correct to point out that the Soviet regime is a menace to humanity in a way that 19th century America (or Spain, for that matter) was not. Through a series of historical misfortunes over the last 600 years Russia has evolved into a heavily militarized, centralized, hierarchical police state with no traditions of pluralism, tolerance, free discussion, limited government, civic courage, accountability of government power, distinction between opposition and treason, privacy, free flow of people and ideas, civil disobedience, local autonomy or rules of succession. Now most of this is the Russians' problem, not ours; much of it has existed before 1917. Our problem is having to deal with a ruling elite acting in a vacuum, insulated from pressures that would keep them from persisting in disastrous policies indefinitely. This is what makes them far more menacing than your run-of-the-mill expansionist power. So Reagan's 'evil empire' talk doesn't bother me much; I'll even swallow Jeane Kirkpatrick's rather lame distinction between 'authoritarian' and 'totalitarian' regimes. What does bother me in all this rhetoric is that Reagan and the people around him seem to consider the USSR as an unstable regime teetering on the edge of imminent collapse: all it takes is a few more turns of the screw, a bit of economic warfare and an intensified arms race. This is an appalling misconception because a) the regime is stable and enjoys the support of most of the population; b) the violent collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting wars, revolutions and famines are not in the American national interest. There would be no guarantees of a better regime emerging in the end (remember, many Iranians thought nothing could be worse than the Shah and plenty of Germans were sure nothing could be worse than the Weimar Republic). c) We have no mission to set Russian history right and, anyway, we can have only a very marginal effect on the evolution of their society and policies.