Impeccable touch brings U.S. a foreign-policy win

Press, 26 April 1988, Page 16

Impeccable touch brings U.S. a foreign-policy win

!■ " ' ! THOUGH the real heroes are the Mujaheddib, and the most interesting de!velopment is the Russian I aboutface. the Americans ! helped mightily over Afghanistan and did so with sophistication and subtlety.; And Washington deserves; credit where credit is due.

lII' himself an impossible goal: he wanted the Sandinistas to “cry’ uncle," to surrender power to the contras. He ijever set any such! impossible target |n Afghanistan,; merely to get he Soviets out. If! the Afghans then want to keep a[ communist government, that’s, their affair. ] I '<. j l What is mpre, (he United; States has never taken sidesbetween the various' factions of! the Mujaheddin.; They will fight; it out, after the Soviets are gone.! and the United ;States will theri offer the hand of friendship to whoever wins, j | I I The diplomacy of the Geneva negotiations was difficult — and largely irrelevant. It reminded a few old-timers j[ of the Paris negotiations thrit [led to the Vietnam peace agreement, in March; 1973. If you ; remember, those talks took months to start as the various participants argued over the shape of the table, which was a cover for arguing whether the two sides in South Vietnam ' would sit down together.

To get the point, just compare it. with ! Nicaragua. The differences are very striking. First of all, in [ Nicaragua, President Reagan'made it a crusade. He was going to drive out Communism before the rfed tide rose to Harlingen, Texas. IHe put his own[ prestige on the line, with all sorts of frightful [ consequences: the Iran-contra| affair, the shady deals with drug smuggling generals in Panama and Honduras, the ham-handed bullying of all Central America. , !. In Afghanistan,' the United States did everything nqcessary to get the Soviets out, bdt never subordinated all other concerns to it. I ■ I

President Reagan was never able to persuade a solid majority In Congress that the Sandinistas were a present danger! to the security of the United States. On Afghanistan, there was[ strong, bipartisan support from Congress, from the beginning. In Nicaragua, Mr Reagan set

In Geneva. the| two sides never talked to er other. Instead,

Patrick Brogan, of the “Observer,*’ contrasts America’s handling of two strategic issues

there were "proximity talks," through a United Nations mediator When the Vietnam deal was finally concluded, | Dr Kissinger had to send his gofer, General Alexander iHaig, toj Saigon to tell President JThieu that, like it or not, the treaty would be signed. Mr Gorbachev sent his Foreign Minister, |Mr Edward Shevarnadze, to Kabul — land then went to Tashkent himself to see President Najibullah and confirm, in person, that he was pulling the Plug- I The lash-minute bickering over arms deliveries was less important than it sounded. In Vietnam, the United States’ and the Communists agreed to suspend arms deliveries.; In fact, the United States had delivered such vast quantities ;of arms to South Vietnam that no more were needed. When the Communists reached Saigon, in April, i 975, they found enormous | quantities of American arms, unused, in the arsenals. Conversely, the Communists stopped deliveries to the Viet Cong. When the final push came, ill was the North Vietnamese

iir i L ' army that moved in. not the Viet Cong. . Ji; In Afghanistan, the Soviets have doubtless left enormbus stocks of weapons for the Kabul Government. And the Afghans now jin Pakistan will Invade, as soonjas the Soviets leave, taking their own huge stock of arinaments with them; | Sol the agreement that both sides will refrain; from arming their] clients until;the dust settles will not lin fact change anything.

The United States armed forces moved out of Vietnam in good order in 1973, Two years later, the embassies in Saigon arid I Phnom Penh j had to I be evacuated by helicopter. The Soviet Army will doubtless leave Afghanistan in good order by] the end of this year. 'But Kabul is too far from the frontier (and across a 14,00pft rriountain range), for helicopters toj be much use if the worst comes to the worst? The ambassador they leave! behind, not to mention President Najibullah, may have a ; few nervous moments.

The - Soviet intervention in Afghanistan has cost perhaps 15,000 iSoviet lives, has killed 100,000'Afghans and driven five million into exile. The sufferings of the Afghans have been appalling. but the most interesting of those figures is the first.

Fifteen thousand is not a very large total for a country as big as the Soviet Union, and with such a tradition of mass sacrifice. By comparison, the United States lost 55,000 dead in Vietnam — and the Soviets at least 15 million lin the Second World War. Why did they give up in Afghanistan so easily?

They! gave up because that was the smart thing to do, and they now have a smart Government. This is probably the most important lesson of recent events, | The Soviets have had consistently stupid governments since Lenin died. From Stalin through Chernenko, all Soviet leaders hopelessly misjudged the rest of the world. Stalin was so sure his] friend Adolf would never attack him that on June 22, 1941, as the Panzers rolled across the bor-! decs, he ordered the Red Army! not to fire, for fear of provoking a misunderstanding.

Krushchev thought it was a neat idea to put missiles into Cuba. Brezhnev thought investing in SS-20s in Europe made a lot of sense — and invaded Afghanistan. It’s a pretty impressive re r cord of idiocy.

Mr Gorbachev decided to cut his losses. Occupying Afghanistan served no useful purpose and caused j immense damage to “peace-loving” image. The notion of American conservatives and neo-conservatives that ’the Russians wanted Afghanistan as a stepping stone to the Persian Gulf is patently ridiculous.

Clearly, they can’t read a map. For Russia to attack Teheran by way of Kabul makes as much sense as the United States invading Canada by way of Alaska. | But seeing the futility’ of staying wasn’t enough reason to give up. any more than 15,000 deaths would deter a Russian marshal. The Soviets do not easily abandon their mistakes: look at the collective farms, or the centralised economy, which have been national disasters for 70 years.

Giving up Afghanistan was really smart. The question now, is whether Mr Gorbachev and his friends are smart enough, bold enough — and desperate enough — to give up all the rest of the rotten legacy they have inherited — from collective farms to the occupation of eastern Europe. Copyright — London Observer Service