Last week’s heated exchange between Secretary of State James Baker and his conservative critics charging “sellout” over arms control was anachronistic passion. What matters most now is the transformation of the Soviet Union and the debate over Mikhail Gorbachev’s role in that process. Lithuania’s challenge to Moscow has already produced new alignments in American politics. While the right has generally argued for a tougher stance by the Bush administration, neoconservatives like Irving Kristol and Charles Krauthammer have broken ranks, claiming that Lithuania’s desire for independence may have to be sacrifice] to larger goals in U.S.-Soviet relations. In the Senate, liberal Democrats Donald Riegle and Barbara Mikulski have joined conservative Republicans in urging Bush not to continue “business as usual” with the Soviet Union as long as Gorbachev continues to squeeze Lithuania. Such blurring of old ideological roles is a healthy sign.
Gorbachev is the prime example of the pitfalls of easy characterization. Describing the upheavals in Eastern Europe, Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, recently wrote: “Let us then neither forget that those changes were largely precipitated by Gorbachev nor lightly discard the hope that he may precipitate more.” The same Gorbachev has not only played hardball with the Baltic republics but also accumulated broad presidential powers. He has pushed through tough secession and emergencypowers legislation and a measure making insulting him an offense punishable by up to six years’ imprisonment.
The implications for Washington depend on the reading of Gorbachev’s motives. Is he fending off pressure from hard-liners? If so, the administration can justify its policy of giving him the benefit of the doubt. But the conservative threat has been exaggerated. In recent elections, party reactionaries and extreme Russian nationalists were soundly defeated, while radical reformers scored major gains. “Gorbachev is no longer the only game in town in the Soviet Union, or the leader of the forces whose triumph would necessarily be in our interests,” says Michael Mandelbaum of the Council on Foreign Relations.
A right-wing insurgency cannot be discounted out of hand. But for now, the military is weakened by the fact that below the conservative top brass it is “completely split, politically and ethnically,” says Alex Alexiev of the Rand Corporation. If events spin out of control, hard-liners may find it easier to counterattack. Chaos in a Soviet Union still heavily armed with nuclear weapons is hardly a reassuring prospect.
High tension: But neither is a Kremlin leadership intent on preserving its internal empire at all costs. Gorbachev’s handling of the Lithuanian challenge has only heightened tensions throughout the Soviet Union, radicalizing rather than intimidating other nationalist movements. Mykhailo Horyn, a leader of the Ukrainian Rukh organization, recently declared that the Lithuanian crisis has pushed him and his colleagues “to the conclusion that the regaining of national sovereignty within the Soviet Union was impossible.” He added: “The three Baltic republics can secede and the Soviet empire will not collapse; but if the Ukraine does, it will fall apart.”
The alternative is a Soviet leadership willing to bow to popular aspirations at home as well as in Eastern Europe. That means accepting the Baltic States’ legitimate claim to independence, and initiating negotiations with other non-Russian republics on their future relationship to Moscow. It means encouraging democratic nationalism in the Russian republic. This is not simple idealism: only a Soviet Union with a relatively open political and economic system can function as a global stabilizing force in tandem with the United States. American policy cannot produce such results on its own, but at the very least it should not impede the processes already in motion. To award most-favored-nation status when Gorbachev is seeking to stifle those trends would be counterproductive; to do so–and to throw in investment guarantees an enterprise fund and other incentives we are now offering Eastern Europe–would be fully justifiable once he moves in the other direction. If Gorbachev recognizes that a truncated but democratic Soviet Union is his own best hope, the United States should support him; this would increase the chances that successors will walk the same path. But Gorbachev is not a permanent ally, and certainly not a permanent interest.
