President Reagan acted wisely and decisively in imposing sanctions on the Soviet Union to encourage the lifting of martial law in Poland. He also announced that “further steps may be necessary” and that he will be prepared to take them.
A good subject for the next round of sanctions would be the closing down of the electronic listening devices which the Soviet Union maintains on top of the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. This electronic surveillance system, operated under the direction of the Soviet K.G.B., monitors all long-distance telephone calls in and out of Washington, DC.
Pictures taken by planes flying over the Soviet Embassy reveal an ominous array of high-frequency antennas. The Soviet listening apparatus is so sophisticated that its computers can even key into specific telephone numbers belonging to U.S. officials in order to listen to incoming and outgoing telephone calls.
How can we stop the Russian listening devices since they are on Soviét property in Washington, D.C.? Just tell the Russians to close down the listening devices or we will close up their Embassy altogether. About 40 percent of the Embassy personnel are espionage agents anyway.
The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think-tank, recently issued a list of helpful suggestions for other sanctions which the United States should impose on the Soviet Union. They would go a long way toward tightening their seriously lax system of trade with members of the Warsaw Pact.
The United States should revamp its present inadequate system for determining which items are strategically important to the Soviet Union. The list should be expanded to include obviously strategic items which are currently excluded.
We should prevent the flood of “information leaks” to Russia from their thousands of agents traveling our country, masquerading as business visitors, scientists, industrialists, and students. These visitors are a prime source of technical information to Russia.
We should re-establish the International Coordinating Committee (COOM), which was formed in 1950 to set a control policy for trading with Russia. Effective limitations on strategic trade with the Soviet bloc depend on the cooperation of the Western allies.
At the same time, we should stop pretending that the flow of strategic materials is really the fault of our Western friends. American requests for exceptions to the COCOM list rose from 1.6% in 1962 to 23.6% in 1970 to 62.5% in 1978.
The United States should develop an adequate system for determining “foreign availability” so that it cannot be used as a slogan to justify the sale of almost any Anerican technology. It simply is not true that the Russians can get fram other countries some of the advanced technology that they are so eager to buy from us.
The United States still has the conpetitive edge over other Western nations in computers, machine tools, radar components, jet engines, satellite reconnaissance systems, and seismic tools for oil exploration. Even though other Western nations may have some of those items, they cannot match us in quality or production rates.
The above recommendations were prepared by Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon, herself a refugee from Communist Romania. While she presented them as recommendations for dealing with the Polish crisis, they ought to be put into effect anyway in order to stop the U.S. buildup of the Soviet military capabilities.
For example, the Zil truck plant in Russia, which manufactures military vehicles such as missile launchers and armored personnel carriers, was built with the help of $13 million worth of U.S. computers and spare parts. America gave $500 million toward the building of the Kama River plant, which is manufacturing not only 10-ton multiple-axle heavy-duty trucks but also armored personnel carriers, heavy assault artillery, rocket launchers, and dual-use transport vehicles.
Sales to the Soviet Union have a negligible impact on the U.S. balance of trade; in 1979, total U.S. sales to the U.S.S.R. amounted to less than 2% of all U.S. exports, of which only .05% involved high technology goods. Yet those goods have been a critical element in building Soviet military and economic power.
Stealing American industrial, military, and diplomatic secrets has been an essential part of the Soviet game plan since the days of Lenin, who predicted that the Communists could not “be satisfied with the collapse of capitalism. It is necessary to take all its science and technology.” And, indeed, they have.
