European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - December 19, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 columns the stars and stripes James peace should be approached with caution Washington All of a sudden peace is break ing out All Over. It is therefore a Lime of peril. It May also be a Lime of Opportunity for the Reagan bus administration but the peril comes Fust. Consider these past several months Iran and Iraq suspended their bloody War. Mikhail Gorbachev announced unilateral reductions in conventional arms. Yasser Arafat professed palestinian concessions. Representatives of South Africa Angola and Cuba Corn melted themselves to Independence for Namibia. The series of events to breathtaking. Surely the temptation is Strong especially in the Christmas sea son to round up a hallelujah chorus and o Herald the brotherhood of Man. Let me sound a Small still voice of Camion and dissent. Looting Al the persian Gulf one sees not an Agre Mentlo keep the peace but rather an agreement to cease the fire. This is a fragile agreement brought an by Mutual exhaustion the underlying animosity Between Iran and Iraq has not vanished. The causes that led to their protracted War causes rooted in religion in geography and in Oil have not changed. The truce has permitted the United slates to withdraw Large elements of its Fleet in the Gulf and for that the Navy May be grateful. But Given the kind of fanaticism that rules in Baghdad and Tehran we ought to recognize that the flames of hostility have no been put out. They have merely been banked. The soviet Union s Gorbachev brought off a Public relations coup in new York. He promised to Cut soviet forces in Europe by 500,000 men Over the next iwo years he will pull out 10,000 tanks. These pledges mounted to one More wave of glasnost or detente or per Stroika Call it what you will. It would take a Ostrich to insist that nothing has changed in the soviet Union. Manifestly things have changed. Ii would be equally foolish to believe that thin shave fundamentally changed. The United Stales and the soviet Union arc enemies. Our political and eco nomic systems Are fundamentally in conflict. Our sub marines lie in wait by their shores their submarines prowl ours. Both nations spend billions on espionage Gorbachev says that in this nuclear age the threat of Force no longer can be an instrument of foreign poli the statement comes with a curiously hollow ring from the nation that has stockpiled the nuclear equivalent of 4 billion tons of int. Their missiles Are loaded cocked and aimed so Are ours. Gorbachev is in deep trouble at Home. His Domestic reforms have released ethnic and economic passions too Long suppressed. During his Brief visit to new York he seemed supremely confident of his Power but the dark history of the Kremlin suggests that supreme Power May be supremely illusory an uneasy Crown said Tennyson George will sect government before rembs Anenson is ice on summer seas. Before the United states commit the Folly of impulsive response to Gorbachev in the a lure of precipitate troop withdrawals of our own let us see How this withdrawal develops. The same attitude of prudent suspicion ought to govern a . Response to the pious ambiguities of Yasser Arafat. It was a mistake for the administration to deny this rogue a visa the stale department s Bull headed animus served Only to redouble the audience Arafat obtained by going instead to Geneva the mis take is beyond correction the damage has been done and much of the world swoons to Arafat s Appeal looking at the israelis and the palestinians one is minded to say with mercutio a plague on both you houses the israelis Are behaving stubbornly but they have much to be stubborn about. Arafat has his dirt fingers crossed. Nothing in the developments of recent weeks suggests hat we have come very far along a Radlo lasting peace in the Middle East. The angolan settlement looks better but a certain scepticism cannot be suppressed. What happens in Namibia is not of surpassing importance. That largely primitive land is not Likely to go clip Munsil in an significant Way. Angola is of greater importance,.and the tripartite Accord leaves a great gaping question about Angola s future what is to become of the heroic Jonas Sav Imbi he has waged the Good fight against marxist Rule. Is his cause now to be abandoned. I Don t mean to spoil the Christmas party. The Sud Den wave of change May portend great things. We All Hope so. But if one More quotation May be forgiven Tot us recall the French proverb the More things change the More they stay the same. .-.-. In us pint styx Liciu preparing the Sony ground los Angeles the National endowment for democracy one of this decade s Good deeds this month celebrated its fifth birthday As quietly As it docs its work and with the scant Public acclaim to institutions that arc unobtrusively useful. This private and bipartisan Grant Mak ing body funded by Congress was originally viewed with suspicion by people too fas Lydious. To countenance any ."inttrfapnce,". However delicate in the internal affairs however promising of any nation however situated. Today Ned s spending is the biggest bargain in government. It is one reason Why the percentage of Floc world s population classified by Freedom House As living in free coun tries is 38.3 percent an All i Mehigh. The people at Ned know Loo much about the complexities of popular govern ment to claim inordinate credit for the undeniable Progress of democracy in this dec Ade. But they Are teacher of the Learned Artof democracy. They know How to prepare the Siony ground of authoritarian societies for the seeds of democratic skills organization mass persuasion. Ned s Mission is 16 direct open support financial and technical to groups working to enrich the institutions of civil society beneath the Brittle crust of oppressive re Gimes. Ned contributed to the crumbling of that crust in Chile in october. In the referendum against the Pino Chet dictatorship democracy won a Nar Row 54 percent Victory because of a huge turnout 92 percent of the Electo rate the margin of Victory can reason ably be credited to polling and other assistance from american political consultants organized by Ned. Fund from Ned helped 200,000 poor voters acquire the Small photographs required of voters. This Cost just 115,000, Ned is one reason Why Poland today has a thousand Independent cultural institutions publishers of books and periodicals film makers schools. Such Small efforts can cumulatively crack political Concrete. .-.-. ,. Carl Gershman Ned s president believes that for Many centuries Many factors the crusades which decimated the no Bles the printing press which spread knowledge to All classes the discovery of America which gave Opportunity to Mil Lions have had a tendency to help democracy. But he also knows Hal a tendency is not an inevitability. And he knows that this Century with its most important political innovation totalitarianism has posed the danger that new tendencies bureaucratization refinement of terror propaganda and other Means of social control might mean that democracy is an arrange ment accessible Only to a minority of privileged nations. The year 1975 was Pivotal. Indochina fell to communism and Indira Gandhi s state of emergency turned the world s larg est democracy into the world s second larg est dictatorship. But regimes in Portugal. Spain and Greece were democratized. Forthe firs Lime in history. Western Europe was cleansed of dictatorship Larry Diamond of the Hoover institution writing in the Washington quarterly notes that since then there has emerged a kind of global zeitgeist for starting from various Points there have been varieties of Prog Ress in the Philippines South Korea Taiwan Thailand the dominican re Public Grenada Haiti Argentina Bolivia Brazil Ecuador Al Salvador Guate Mala Honduras Peru Uruguay Nigeria among other nations. In North Atlantic nations democracy often came gradually and from above with the slow widening of Competition among elites. Today the task in the third world is the transition from authoritarianism by Means of gradualism from below what Diamond Calls the efflorescence of associational life requires the reconstruction of a Boundary be tween the state and civil such reconstruction is Ned s speciality. Authoritarian regimes become poro Usas civil society becomes enriched with Independent business labor religious cultural and other mediating institutions serving As buffers Between the individual and the state. As the autonomy of society grows so do channels for articulating interests. Something else grows the Roost potent solvent of hegemonic regimes the Road and rapid diffusion of ideas aspirations information and awareness of possibilities modernisation accelerates the circulation of people and information and the evolution of political consciousness. This confronts authoritarian regimes South Korea has been a Case study with what Diamond Calls a legitimacy contradiction a kind of Calch-22."if such regimes do not produce socioeconomic dynamism they lose legitimacy because such Progress is their justification for monopolizing Power. If they do produce dynamism it has political repercussions in intensified demands for participation which the regimes cannot satisfy without liquidating themselves Ned is a forthright but Del instrument for helping others bring about peaceful liquidations yet its tiny budget is 5.8 Millionth source of so much leverage has been repeatedly Cut. Surely the government can find a More eligible target for frugality
