European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - May 29, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes George f. Will world in an Era of maximum discontinuity the american preference for going deeply into the surface of things was George Bush s mandate. He was elected to preside Over continuity status quo plus not Only in relations but virtually everywhere else and go easy on the plus please. But Bush s presidency is coinciding with a moment of maximum discontinuity. Rarely has there been an Era so pregnant with momentous change without the midwife of War. Forty years is the Span of at most two generations. Forty years also seems to be. Today the threshold of decrepitude for some institutions. This is the 40th anniversary of the Triumph of map s revolution and the founding of nato. Both Are coming unstuck. Nato is convincing because the cohesion of a defense Alliance depends on consensus about the nature of the threat. Mao s legacy is blowing away like so much smoke because China yet again has refused in the end to be conquered even by chinese. Least of All would it submit forever to chinese seeking to supplant a Rich indigenous culture with bombastic speculations produced by a 19th-Century German in the read ing room of the British museum. Forty years after the russian revolution in 1957, sputnik seemed to confirm communism s Capac Ity to compete in material terms with capitalism. But the great political fact of this Era is a cultural fact 85 percent of the scientists who have Ever lived Are Pace of change is accelerating exponentially. One casualty of the information age is the essential totalitarian aspiration the conscription of minds by the state. I my years ago the lid of stalinism was being nailed Down on Eastern Europe. For two generations the imposed regimes used tanks secret police show trials terror and the politicization of publishing broadcast ing and education. Yet today there arc no communist East of the Elbe. None that is other than the heavily armed and increasingly nervous ruling classes. They cannot Compromise their claim to infallible insight scientific socialism without forfeiting everything. It is eerie to read professor Simon Schama s Citi cons a chronicle of the French revolution while watching events in China. One of Schama s theses i that France was destabilized before the revolution less by blocked change than by effects of modernization. Deng Xiaoping knew that when he sent abroad scores of thousands of students they would come Home with colourful clothes loud music and the infectious Bacillus of new aspirations. Deng deliberately let Loose forces for Reform. His mistake was in expecting gratitude. Henry Kissinger sees an Clement of tragedy in Deng s Fate As the focus of today s furies. He was after All. Twice purged by Mao for reformist . However this is a familiar spectacle a revolution feasting on its fathers. William f. Buckley or. The Fate of Deng an old Man matters much less than the lessons the soviet elite chooses to learn from what is happening to him. China s communist party i rapidly being reduced from a vainglorious Vanguard a supposed repository of scientific understanding to a ridiculed Rump faction. Surely the soviet elite is thinking it May face the same Fate at the hands of forces Gorbachev s glasnost has let Loose. Those Are forces that Gorbachev s per Stroika is signally failing to satisfy. What Franklin Roosevelt said of Douglas Macar thur never underestimate a Man who overestimates himself May apply to Gorbachev. So far however Tchaikovsky s description of Brahms music a Pedestal without a statue describes Gorba Chev s per Stroika. Soviet living standards have declined under Gorbachev. David run Mickoff the Washington Post s Moscow Bureau reports that people even in the wealthier big cities arc hoarding Kitchen matches Salt and sugar. Consumer goods such a stoves radios and refrigerators arc nearly impossible to until much More is known about the willingness of the soviet regime to run the risks that May be destroy ing Deng Bush should insist that nato note Well what we know. We know there is a conspicuous continuity in soviet behaviour crude Kremlin has threatened to quit destroying the missiles the inf treaty requires to be destroyed if the United states modernizes its Short Range missiles in Europe. That is the Kremlin says it will not do what it is obligated to do if the United states docs what it is in no Way constrained from doing. It is tempting 19 treat this crudity As a sufficient reason for proceeding with modernization. Lord Nel son handling a fire poker said it matters not at All in what Way i Lay this poker on the Root. But if Bonaparte should say it must be placed in this direction we must instantly insist upon its being Laid in some other but such spirited behaviour is made possible by clarity about one s adversary. Such clarity is one casualty nato s cohesion is another of today s Multi plying discontinuities. Washington Post under Sov of Low individuals have no rights there is wild talk going on about the cold War much of it unfocused. The Center for Security policy in Washington whose principal figure is Frank Gaffney former assistant Secre tary of defense for International Security affairs has issued a paper of great inter est that seeks to Cut through much of the muck. It is titled. An alternative National strategy review designing an effective policy for rela its principal thesis is that there is not much reason to assume that the situation in the soviet Union has decisively changed. The hoopla about personal freedoms and about political elections omits the Central Point which is that under soviet Law the individual actually has no rights. In any dispute with the state the word of the communist party is supreme. And for All the talk about electing and even writing in the names of soviet citizens who oppose the regime action that is wonderfully encouraging and symbolically exhilarating these men elected to the Congress of people s deputies have no Power. Ninety percent of them Are members of the communist party subject to party discipline according to which every communist must accept and repeat As his own opinion the Deci Sions of the oligarchical party the paper cites Boris Yeltsin who is the Sam Adams of the soviet situation who three times has had to ask forgive Ness from his communist party leaders for remarking the slow Pace of perestroika. The paper also cites the afghan Situa Tion As less than is widely heralded. It was Mikhail Gorbachev not his stalinist predecessors who when he first came to Power in 1985 insisted on a change in the soviet military command in Afghanistan. It. Gen. Boris Gromov began one of the bloodiest periods of the conflict a phase characterized by Mas Sive punitive raids against peaceful Vil lagers on a scale and at a level of brutal ferocity not seen since the nazi occupation of Europe in the second world what happened is that it did not work and the soviet Union the paper persuasively writes has gone Back to its traditional Means of subverting other countries which is through the use of native rather than soviet troops. The morning s papers bring the news of fresh provisioning of the satellite regime with bread and arms. A few weeks ago the economist Cut through the fog of soviet unilateral disarmament which has caused much of the West to swoon. In the past 12 months the soviet Navy has commissioned one Victor i nuclear submarine one sour Menny and two Daloy missile destroyers. It has proceeded with the development of the new Long Range super sonic Blackjack bomber 10 have now been built and May already be operation Al. Soviet air defense to Apps have just received 500 new Sa-10 missiles and the air Force has replaced 200 aging Mig-27s with 200 Su-17s and 150 Mig-23s and Mig-25s with the new Mig-29, the most threatening of All for the West. Meanwhile soviet ground forces on the Border with West Germany have received 300 new t-80 tanks along with hundreds of new missiles troop carriers guns mortars and Mobile artillery. One concludes that the tanks so publicly re tired during the past two weeks Calu Rettus of the 7 o clock news arc All classed As obsolete. Well Why not accept the figures of president Bush we arc outnumbered 12-to-l in missiles along the East West Frontier. Notwithstanding even such As the Wall Street journal arc proclaiming that if the cold War is Over the West has All that this Means is that the so Viet and chinese citizens know some thing right minded americans have known since of Well since 1917 namely that the whole communist approach to life is for doomed to fail. That it will not bring Freedom to the individual will not bring the withering away of the state will not bring on the Triumph of the proletariat will not eliminate Pover it took a very Long time for Many intellectuals to get the picture Mao tse Tung was something of a Folk hero for such As James Ruslon of the new York times. Sure we have won something that we never lost namely our grip on reality. What we have not won is Security from potential soviet aggression. The cold War cannot be won without the soviets renunciation of their claims on other countries of the world. If they wis to renounce those claims Why do they continue to Arm in such fashion As makes sense Only if they Harbor aggressive de signs Universal press Syndicate
