From: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Subject: Gelb's spiel (Who Won the Cold War?)
Reply-To: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 01:50:17 GMT



WHO WON THE COLD WAR?
by Leslie H. Gelb
NYT, 8/20/92, Op-Ed [Copied w/o permission]

Republican claims this week that they won the cold war prompt me to
reveal an off-the-record conversation I had with the Chief of the
Soviet General Staff in 1983.  Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov told me at that
time -- before President Reagan's increases in military spending fully
took hold, six years before the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe
crumbled and eight years before the Soviet Union itself collapsed --
that the cold war was already essentially over, if not finally won by
the West.

I had know the beribboned marshal for years, when I was a Government
official and a correspondent.  He was always brilliant, plain-spoken
and hard-line.  We talked on a wintry March afternoon, just days after
Mr. Reagan's speech aptly described the Soviet Union as "an evil
empire."

I began that afternoon by attacking Moscow for amassing forces that
far exceeded defensive needs.  He waved me off with a tolerant smile.
Then he proceeded to make the most astonishing argument I had ever
heard from a Soviet official.

Number of troops and weapons mean little, he said.  We cannot equal
the quality of U.S. arms for a generation or two.  Modern military
power is based upon technology and technology is based upon computers.

In the U.S., he continued, small children -- even before they begin
school -- play with computers.  Computers are everywhere in America.
Here, we don't even have computers in every office of the Defense
Ministry.  And for reasons you know well, we cannot make computers
widely available in our society.

Then came his portentous punch line: We will never be able to catch up
with you in modern arms until we have an economic revolution.  And the
question is whether we can have an economic revolution without a
political revolution.

In so many words, Marshal Ogarkov was acknowledging that the Communist
system was not working and could not work.  He was saying, in effect,
that the Soviet Union without radical change was incapable of
competition with the U.S.

Less than a year after our conversation, the "authorities"
mysteriously removed Marshal Ogarkov from his high office -- without
explanation.  Several years later, the marshal's volcanic logic was to
be resurrected publicly by Mikhail Gorbachev as he launched
perestroika and glasnost.

Honest historians and politicians will honestly contend over exactly
who won the cold war and how.  But the following propositions seem to
me to be roughly true:

 * The Soviets lost the cold war because of the rot of the Communist
system far more than we won it by the policy of containing Soviet
power.

 * Containment was an essential ingredient, and Democrats created that
policy and promoted it as fervently as Republicans.  After the Vietnam
war, however, Democrats emphasized diplomatic and economic means over
military power, and Republicans stressed the reverse.  True, many
liberal Democrats naively believed Moscow could be loved into good
behavior.  As true, many conservative Republicans exaggerated Soviet
might and espoused confrontations that could have provoked war.

 * In combating Soviet thrusts abroad, Democrats approved aid to the
Afghan mujahedeen fighting Soviet troops as solidly as Republicans
did.  Many Democrats hesitated about aid to Angolan rebels because
they seemed as bad as their Communist opponents.  Republicans demanded
arms for the Nicaraguan contras, but most Democrats resisted aid
without serious negotiating efforts, a position President Bush
ultimately adopted.

 * The Reagan military build-up, backed by a minority of Democrats,
certainly added to Soviet economic woes and probably speeded up
Communism's demise.  Most Democrats, however, felt and feel that
whatever was gained by this course was far outweighed by costs to the
American economy and domestic priorities.

The shameless distortion of this record by Republicans in Houston can
be partially pardoned as politics.  Unpardonable is their continuing
blindness to the principal lesson of the cold war -- the Soviet empire
collapsed abroad because it had failed at home.

Thus Republicans in Houston still seem more interested in praising
themselves unduly for slaying an already dying Red Dragon than in
preparing to restore an America they virtually ignored for 12 years.




--
But this is.

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