In their eagerness to support President Bush's national missile defense, Republicans are willfully ignoring the threat of an arms race with Russia.
By Daniel Plesch
Aug. 7, 2001
LONDON -- Russian officials are now in Washington to negotiate on nuclear weapons and President Bush's proposed national missile defense system. Against this backdrop, Moscow continues to oppose the administration's policies on a number of issues, yet uncharacteristically, Republican leaders are ignoring behavior that a few years ago would have produced a storm of criticism.
Just look at the record.
After Bush meets Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time in May, the American leader announces the ex-KGB man is trustworthy, and there is no outcry from Sen. Jesse Helms. The Russian Army continues its brutal repression in Chechnya, but Bush says nothing about human rights violations. Russia threatens a missile build-up and tests a new rocket, and Republicans are silent. Russia and China announce a new partnership, but conservative columnists dismiss the Sino-Soviet pact as insignificant.
What is going on here? For decades the Republicans clubbed us with the menace Russia posed to Western security. The slightest report of a new Soviet weapon was enough to drive Washington into building expensive new weapons to counter the threat. Any one who questioned if the threat was exaggerated or if Moscow had the cash to build up its weapons was routinely denounced as a communist sympathizer and a traitor to the nation.
Ronald Reagan dealings with the Russians were summed up in his phrase, 'Trust but Verify.' But today's Republicans don't feel the need for treaties and verification. Informal agreements suit them just fine.
What's happening is a United States, triumphant after winning the Cold War, behaving in what it thinks are its own best self-interest. These days the Pentagon sees almost all of Russia's nukes as sitting ducks to American smart weapons. China is in an even weaker position. So, runs the argument, the US can repeat the arms build up that is claimed to have brought down the Soviet Union, and perhaps this time it will lead to the fall of Communist China. To these theorists, the government of Taiwan is well placed to take over in Beijing.
Meanwhile, a whole new array of space based lasers, space planes and anti-satellite weapons will allow the United States to seize the ultimate strategic high ground, creating a celestial system for offensive and defensive operations, of which Bush's national missile defense system is only one part. So don't worry about the Russians, runs the argument. There is nothing they can do. The real game is to keep China in its place. It is this logic that rules in much of the Republican party.
The reason for the Republican's dismissive response in Congress
to Russian actions is simple: If these Cold warriors reacted as
they did in the past, they might undermine the administration's
plans for unilateral military build-up by calling attention to
the arms race it is provoking.
Giving no credence to bad news from Russia today is as irresponsible
as was the exaggeration of the Soviet threat during the Cold War.
Both attitudes lead to the conclusion that we don't need to take
notice of the Russians or listen to what concerns them. We remain
silient at our own peril. (end)
Daniel Plesch is Director of the British American Security
Information Council which analyses national security policy.(Copyright
2001, Global Beat Syndicate, 418 Lafayette Street, Suite 554,
New York, NY 10003 http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate).