All those who are caught up in the dangerous process of Gorbomania should come down to reality by studying an important speech given this year by Senator Malcom Wallop (R-WY) at a NATO conference in the Hague. It had almost no news coverage in this country, but it should be must reading for American politicians and media.
Wallop pointed out that the military success of NATO has been so impressive that Americans increasingly believe that NATO in Europe’s benefit and Americans increasingly believe that NATO is Europe’s benefit and America’s burden, and Europeans believe that NATO is America’s benefit and Europe’s burden. So, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic find it expedient to question their own nation’s level of commitment.
The result is, according to Wallop, that “the twin Soviet goals since the founding of the alliance now stand a very real chance of attainment.” Those goals are (1) decoupling of the United States from its European allies and (2) denuclearizing Europe.
Wallop called on NATO’s 16 nations to assume the political burden of explaining to their own electorates “why we need military forces” and what these forces would have to do if we ever had to call on them. Wallop charged that, instead, the participants in NATO conferences avoid this main issue and discuss only relatively non-controversial topics.
He also criticized the way that several leaders, including some from the United States, have implied that nuclear weapons are evil in themselves and must be done away with. On the contrary, Wallop said, they have been “the very glue of the Atlantic alliance for 40 years.”
Without nuclear weapons, the West would be at the mercy of the Soviets’ overwhelming superiority in conventional weapons. He could have quoted Winston Churchill as saying that there would not have been a free man left in Western Europe if it were not for the American nuclear umbrella.
The growing impression that Mikhail Gorbachev has opened up a new era in which the Soviet Union poses no threat to the West is our major problem today. Western leaders, Wallop said, have engaged in “a kind of contest to see which politician can say the most outrageously reassuring things about the Soviet Union.”
This kind of grandstanding makes it virtually impossible to argue for effective military preparation, and we are in the process of weakening one another. “How can politicians who have built their legitimacy on saying nice things about Gorbachev convincingly point to military realities that call Gorbachev a liar?”
Wallop doubts that any Western leader really believes that the Soviet Union is no longer a threat, and certainly “no one has tried to make the case this is so.” The Soviets have more than 6,000 warheads with a combination of nuclear yield and accuracy capable of destroying most U.S. missiles, bombers, and submarines in port.
Wallop took his audience through an examination of what’s going on in Russia. He called the recent Soviet elections “a well-executed purge” by which Gorbachev simply got rid of all his enemies.
None of the Soviet officials driven out of power was part of Gorbachev’s band. Wallop charge that Gorbachev is “ingeniously using the trappings of democracy to make the biggest power grab since Stalin.”
Wallop analyzed the so-called “reforms” ordered for the Soviet economy. No reform yet proposed, said Wallop, “has the slightest chance of improving it as a provider of civilian goods and services.”
In fact, Gorbachev’s “reforms” are largely an attempt to bring the underground economy out into the open so it can be registered and taxed, and the result is to reduce the amount of independent economic activity. As Wallop explained, “Gorbachev does not seem to want to risk even the temporary creation of a class of people who do not have to look to the state for their daily bread.”
No one who holds power in the Soviet Union is willing to give up power and control just to boost the economy! “It is far more important to them that citizens be dependent on the state than they be well-fed.”
Wallop issued a solemn warning to the NATO conferences that Gorbomania will appear to be in the short-term interests of the West, but actually is only in the interests of the Soviet Union. The situation calls for responsible words from politicians in all NATO countries.
Wallop said that our national security absolutely depends on “our willingness to recognize the political obscenity of Communist rule and the role of serious military forces in protecting ourselves.” He calls on us to “take up our heaviest burden” which, in the long run, will prove to be the most honorable and the safest.
