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We Should Not Support Russian Imperialism

January 15, 1995 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

In a press release on January 3rd, the US State Department said that what the Russian Government is doing in Chechnya is perfectly OK because it is simply Russia keeping order in Russia.  They even made a comparison to our Civil War.  What a shameful statement!

Why has the Clinton Administration chosen to support Russian military action in Chechnya?  Very simply because they feel they have no other choice and that chaos might follow the end of the Yeltsin interregnum.  That is a poor basis for foreign policy formulation as George Bush found out in supporting Mikhail Gorbachev.

Despite the graphic and often disturbing pictures that are brought us by the public media, Chechnya and Groznyy are places that seldom intrude into our conscious concerns.  It all seems too far away, too remote.  However, what is happening there really does matter.  It matters not because of what is happening, but because of why it is happening and what it really means.

There are three factors at work in Russia today which could easily contribute to the further weakening, if not the outright disappearance of Russian Democracy.  They are Russian/Soviet history and the concern of myriad minority groups about Russian Imperialism, the recent rapid disintegration of the Russian Military establishment and the lack of strong approval and support of democracy by millions of Russians.

Russia is not simply a country, it is one of the last remaining Empires.  It was created by the Imperial Russian push eastward to the Pacific Ocean which subjugated millions of people and hundreds of cultures over a period of more than 400 years.  That Empire was maintained and even expanded by the USSR.  Apparently an attempt to continue the tradition will be undertaken by the current “democratic“ government of Russia.

The history of Russia is such that this move by the Yeltsin government has to be sending shock waves through all the national minority groups in the former USSR.  It is, quite simply, the first step down a very slippery slope.  If you are a member of any national minority group in the former Soviet Union you should be worried.  If we learn from history (and hear from the far right in today’s Russia) there is no reason to believe that this Russian exercise of Imperialism in Chechnya is not the first step in reassembling either the old Russian or the Soviet Empire.

By all counts, the Russian Army is in the process of being thoroughly humiliated by the Chechens.  If they are able finally to take Groznyy, the Chechens will almost certainly take to the hills where they are capable of putting on a performance that will make Afghanistan look like a picnic to the Russian leadership.

All of this results from the degeneration of personnel, materiel and leadership in what was once a proud, first-class military establishment.  Russian military units have sold equipment and supplies on the open market and sharply curtailed training simply to be able to quarter and feed their troops.  The formerly effective Soviet draft is now almost nonexistent.  Conscripts simply do not show up for service with the result that some units have more officers than troops.

This is a very unhealthy situation.  The greatest inherent threats to the fledgling democratic movement in Russia are probably the Russian military establishment and the political right.  The situation in Chechnya provides them with a situation around which to coalesce, and that is both dangerous and frightening since their ideology generally supports return to the old Imperialism.

It is important to  remember that the Russian people have exceedingly little experience with democracy.  The sole democratic government in Russian history was the Kerensky government which succeeded the Czar in July 1917 and fell to the Soviets in October of the same year.  That government had little opportunity to remake a population that had lived under a series of repressive Czars for 500 years.  Most Russians are currently unhappy with their current lot.  They are also passive and long-suffering – not healthy traits in the face of anti-democratic political change.

There is now a set of circumstances at work in Russia which could easily lead to the empowerment of a xenophobic, military-supported, right-wing Government that would not be a friend to the United States in particular or to the West in general.  It’s difficult to believe that the United States Government is actually supporting Russian anti-democratic activities when the only thing that can save democracy in Russia is the strengthening of democratic principles and processes there.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who specialized in Soviet and East European operations. He served in Prague, Berlin, Beirut, Tehran and Washington and now lives in Brookfield.

Posted in Russia |

Armed intervention demands full debate

September 13, 1994 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Burlington Free Press.]

The Clinton Administration is currently indicating a clear willingness to intervene militarily in Haiti.  This is an important milestone, because the administration has for some time been attempting to define a new foreign policy for the post-bipolar world that involves the use of US military power to put down certain local and regional conflicts.

Foreign policy revision is a necessary national exercise, but what is getting obscured here is the fact that conflicts we are now facing often are the result of hundreds, even thousands of years of ethnic, national or religious hatreds.  They are now reerupting because of the breakdown of central authority in the post-bipolar world.  Such conflicts in the former USSR, its satellites and its former client states or anywhere else, do not lend themselves to quick fixes.

We are now observing the results of centuries of European colonial domination, particularly in Africa.  In the process of putting together their empires they created what looked to them to be tidy nation states based on European models, even though the states created (Nigeria, Rwanda, etc.) reflected absolutely no African political or tribal realities.  Those difficulties have been compounded by the end of the cold war which had previously brought some measure of stability to American and Soviet client states.

Quite frankly, East and West alike viewed Africa primarily as a surrogate battleground.  Very little that was done there was based on any genuine desire to improve the lot of Africans.  Most of it was done to show the “superiority” of either the Soviet or American systems.

We are currently looking at the possibility of intervention In Haiti, Rwanda, and Bosnia. If we add in Somalia and Iraq where we already have recently intervened, are there any perceptible common threads?

It is probably safe to say that intervention in Iraq and Bosnia represent our national interests.  The only common thread in the other three is that they are all black countries.  It is likely that our preoccupation with them, as opposed to Bosnia where the carnage has been equally as horrendous, reflects the long overdue and growing involvement and influence of black American leadership in our foreign policy formulation.  Randall Robinson has recently exercised considerable influence on US foreign policy.

This is an extremely complicated issue, and American black leaders will have to learn to balance their understandable and legitimate interests in international black issues with the overall national interests of this country.  If they can do that, they will avoid the inevitable complications that have come in white-dominated foreign policy when decisions have been based on internal US political considerations rather than on objective facts and our acknowledged national interests.

Military intervention in Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia, or any other area, incurs long range obligations.  If we decide to intervene in those countries we will have accepted, like it or not, a long term custodial responsibility for first establishing and then keeping the peace.  We will not be able to stop the fighting and/or killing and then go home.  We seem somehow to have forgotten that as a result of a previous intervention, we spent almost two decades occupying Haiti, a country that has never had either democracy or stability of any kind.

This is not to say that we should not intervene either in Haiti or elsewhere.  It is only to point out that any such intervention will cost lives and resources and will require a major post-conflict commitment that could cost millions and last decades.   Even though we call ourselves the only superpower in the world, we do not have sufficient resources for unlimited interventions.  We got around that problem in the Gulf War by supplying the troops while others supplied the money.  Is that to be our future role – Hessians to the world?

Any new policy of suppressing conflicts where there is no real national interest will bring the same problems and ultimately negative political results.  If the Clinton Administration is arguing that such a policy is generically in our national interest, there needs to be a national debate on that change.  There simply has not been sufficient public examination and discussion of that issue.

Haviland Smith is a retired former CIA Station Chief who specialized in Soviet and East European operations.  He served in Prague, Berlin, Beirut, Tehran and Washington and now lives in Brookfield.

Posted in foreign policy, Yugoslavia |

Assess the damage and get on with CIA spying

March 6, 1994 by Haviland Smith

[Originally appeared in the Hartford Courant.]

Aldrich Hazen Ames is responsible for an unprecedented loss of CIA sources and methods that took years of effort and millions of dollars to develop. Worse yet, he has basely, callously and with premeditation caused the death of enough people to gladden the heart of a serial killer. This is an emotional issue for the CIA and the American people. We have all been rather crassly had, worst of all, by a mercenary.

Attempted long-term penetrations of intelligence organizations by hostile services, both socialist and western, are inevitable. Since World War II, almost every significant intelligence service in the world has suffered such penetration. For that reason, all intelligence services work compulsively both to penetrate hostile services and to protect themselves from such penetration.

During the post-war years, there were significant long-term Soviet penetrations of the British (Philby & Co.), French (Pacques), and German (Felfe) intelligence services, to mention but a few, as well as of American military intelligence services and the NSA. Those operations were defensive operations designed to protect the USSR from hostile services.

It is worth noting that until Ames turned bad in 1985, the only significant intelligence organization in the world that had not suffered long-term penetration was the CIA. That is an extraordinary accomplishment. Given the level of operational attention paid to the CIA by its adversaries, particularly the KGB, it is an absolute miracle that the CIA remained unpenetrated until 1985. That’s forty years of almost continuous high volume KGB operational activity against CIA employees around the world.

In the wake of the Ames disaster, Washington has become a hotbed of unhelpful suggestions and disingenuous political posturing: America should cut off aid to the Russians. All CIA employees should have to fill out personal financial statements. Russia should not be running operations against the CIA or presumably against any American targets.

Given the dangerously fluid political situation in Russia today, it is impossible to believe that we will suspend economic aid, or that we will stop running operations to collect positive intelligence on Russia or to recruit Russian intelligence officers to protect us against their operations. If we stop, we should have our heads examined.

The Russian world is simply too unstable, too dangerous and too innately given to secrecy to ignore.

Nor should the Russians quit operating against us. They have legitimate national interests here that cannot be satisfied with overtly obtainable information. We tend to protect secrets just as they do.

Col. Oleg Penkovskiy was an Anglo-American penetration of Soviet military intelligence who provided us with extraordinary positive intelligence and counter-intelligence on the Soviet military establishment. Purely objectively, he probably hurt the USSR far worse than Ames has hurt America and he was only one of a number of such penetrations. When the Soviets caught Penkovskiy they put the Colonel in front of a firing squad. They then assessed the damages, made the necessary changes and got on with their intelligence operations.

Given his rather conspicuous lifestyle and what seems to have been an almost suicidal lack of attention to his own operational security, Ames probably should have been caught much earlier than 1994.

However, the nature of our society makes warrantless monitoring of phones, bank and stock accounts, credit card transactions and our homes repulsive to all of us. CIA employees are no less citizens than anyone else. To single them out with special treatment will change for the worse the kind of people who might be attracted to work there.

What really hurts is that the CIA is the last of the major cold war players to lose its virginity. We lost it big time and we are shocked, angry and humiliated. However, since we lost it to the Russians, our operational effectiveness in the rest of the world should not seriously be diminished.

At least the Ames affair is over. Our next penetration of the Russian Intelligence Service will be the first day of a new era. It’s time to assess the damages and get on with intelligence work which has become much more necessary and important in the very dangerous new world we now live in.

Haviland Smith is a former CIA Station Chief who specialized in Soviet and East European operations. He served in Prague, Berlin, Beirut, Tehran and Washington, and has lived in Vermont since his 1980 retirement.

Posted in CIA |

A Yugoslav Trap the US Must Avoid

October 4, 1992 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Boston Globe.]

Although our evolving Yugoslav foreign policy is couched in humanitarian terms, there has been little public discussion of it beyond the immediate desire to put an end to the bloodshed.  As a result, Americans do not know what our real goals are, if we really have any.  The fact is that Yugoslavia is an extremely complicated area where local realities may preclude the eventual success of military policy options.

Unless you believe that the projection of US power is desirable per se, President Bush’s record in foreign affairs, despite his profound belief in his own expertise, is at best mediocre.  He stayed far too long with Gorbachev and thus actively contributed to the continued subjugation of the Soviet peoples.  His Panama policy was no success unless the incarceration of Noriega justifies the operation.  In today’s Middle East, Sadam Hussein’s continuing survival, the brooding Arab need for retribution and the replacement of Iraq  by an implacably anti-American Iran as the dominant power in a region that is terribly important to us, do not constitute foreign policy successes.

Understanding foreign cultures is key to the formulation of solid foreign policy.  Understanding today’s Yugoslavia is as important as our recent need to understand the Middle East.  Yugoslavia did not exist before WW I.  It has existed since then only because first the Serbs, then a Monarch and later the Communist Party had the will and the means to impose central control on a diverse population which had little desire for unity.  There are twelve national groups speaking almost as many languages in the former Yugoslavia.  Only force kept this “country” together in the face of ages old animosities.  It is really an unhappy agglomeration of tribal cultures and nothing more.

It was a favorite pastime in the CIA’s East European Division in the mid 1950’s, to listen in on angry, vitriolic verbal battles between members of the Yugoslav Branch.  Almost all of them had personal connections to Yugoslavia.  Their passions were unsettlingly deep.  Serbs hated Croats.  Everyone hated Serbs.  Those who had fought in the resistance with Mihajlovic did battle with those who had fought with Tito.  It seemed terribly complicated!

We stand on the threshold of another foreign adventure in an extraordinarily complicated culture.  We have committed “to air support only”.  What happens when the first US plane is hit by a missile?  Will we then “secure” the area to avoid a repeat?  How large an area would we have to “secure”?  Will that mean we will have to commit ground troops?  Will this become a second Beirut?  Yugoslavia is no Middle East desert.  It has inhospitable 9,000 foot mountain terrain which is ideal for guerilla warfare.  The Yugoslavs maintained  control of their mountainous regions against a force of 37 German divisions during WW II.

More important than that, why are we doing this?  What are our specific goals?  Can we be successful?  It would seem that the major goal here is to find a way to permit Yugoslavia to disintegrate as peacefully as possible into its component regional/ethnic parts.  However, minorities in the various regions, particularly Serbs, do not want to be left to the brutal retribution of other regional majorities.  Additionally, Premier Milosevic seems to see himself as the Serb with the will and the means to keep the old Yugoslavia together.  In permitting (or encouraging) the bloodshed, he already may have seriously complicated any possible peaceful solution.  If there is a way to stop the bloodshed, it is to stop Serbian military, economic and political support of Serb minorities in the non-Serbian regions.  That is possible, particularly if we have the will to enact and enforce really tough sanctions.

We have long urged Europeans to accept more responsibility for their own military affairs.  Yet, even in Yugoslavia where European interests (minimizing refugee movement) are paramount, we seem ready to wade in and “solve” their problem.  Are we the new Hessians?  US military involvement does not meet any test for validity.  We do not seem to have clearly defined goals; it does not appear to be in our national interest; and it is unlikely we can succeed with any reasonable level of commitment.

It is appropriate for us to provide humanitarian support, but there should be no military involvement.  Sanctions with teeth are the key.  If perceived internal US political needs in this election year, whether Clinton’s or Bush’s, influence our policy toward the former Yugoslavia, that area easily could become America’s new international tarbaby.  Once you sink your first limb (US air support) in the tar, you’re in deep trouble.

Haviland Smith is a former CIA Officer who specialized in Soviet and East European operations.  He served in Prague, Berlin, Beirut,Tehran and Washington, and  has lived in Vermont since his 1980 retirement.

Posted in Yugoslavia |

Intelligence is Vital for US Security

July 12, 1992 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Hartford Courant.]

Unfortunately, the end of the Cold War has not ended our need for intelligence.  Even with the old Soviet nuclear threat all but gone, anyone who thinks the world is now a safer place is simply not paying attention.

even though there is no country in the world today that has the will and the means to obliterate us, the world is far less stable now than it was under US/Soviet bipolar domination.

The critical intelligence requirement of all US administrations is reliable information on the intentions and on the military-related R&D efforts of any nation or group that can impact US interests.  Without such intelligence, we are flying blind in critical foreign policy areas.  To know what sorts of weapons a Saddam Hussein is building and what he intends to do with them requires intelligence collection through old fashioned spies.  We have to know his most sensitive intentions, what he shares with his closest advisors.  Nothing else will provide what we need .

It is easy to prefer photographic collection from satellites (which is flashy, clean and inanimate) over spying (which is mundane, messy and has the inherent potential to cause embarrassing incidents).  In fact, satellite photography never really had the potential to produce intelligence on Soviet intentions or military-related R&D, our main targets of the time.  Can a camera read a man’s mind?

Much of the intelligence needed in today’s world will have to be gathered through old fashioned spying.  Satellite photography is unlikely to shed much light on the threats of our new world.  Certainly, despite satellite photography and absent the Gulf War, we would have remained unaware that the Iraqis were getting close to a viable atomic attack on Tel Aviv because we apparently did not have well placed spies.  Only spies can tell us that some country or group intends to build weapons of mass destruction or carry out a destabilizing assassination, terrorist operation or coup.

This produces major problems for those who manage intelligence operations  It was easy when we all knew the real enemy was the Soviet Union!  We ignored much of the rest of the world, particularly Soviet client states, because we knew the Soviets would keep them in check.  It is unlikely that the Soviets would have sat idly by and let the Iraqis invade Kuwait in August 1990.  They would have concluded easily that US national interests would prompt our intervention, leaving them the unacceptable choice of watching the Soviet trained and equipped Iraqi army get demolished, or of intervening to stop it.

The world facing us today is new and confusing.  With some exceptions, enemies will no longer be enemies by national origin.  Instead, we will have to cover any and all potentially dangerous groups.  Many of our targets will tend to be diffuse, shadowy and hard to identify.

Any country that has disgruntled national or ethnic minorities is ripe for unrest.  Current events in Yugoslavia offer a blueprint for the CIS, for Romania, Czechoslovakia, and perhaps for Hungary.  In that part of the world there is no longer any central authority with the will and the means to keep old national and ethnic animosities in check.  We cannot ignore the destabilization that such ethnic strife will bring and we have to worry about the existing missiles in the CIS.

And what of the rest of the world?   The volatile Middle East could create extraordinary complications for us and our energy needs, not to mention our treaty obligations to Israel!  To avoid disaster, we must know what the radical muslim states, who do not like us and whose interests are often diametrically opposed to ours, are planning both directly and indirectly against Israel and the conservative Arab states.

In Latin America, military dictatorships and the uneven distribution of wealth will continue to cause instability.  Post-colonial Africa’s instability caused by poverty and population growth will haunt us.  In Asia, solutions to age-old national and ethnic problems elude us.  What will happen if central authority in China disappears?  Will old divisive animosities rule there as in the CIS?  Finally, there are things we need to know about major powers in Europe and Asia.  We will increasingly seek intelligence on politically friendly countries as economic competition heats up, particularly if we become less competitive.

Americans seeking a cutback in intelligence spending as a part of a “peace dividend” will probably be disappointed.  A new, increasingly unstable world in which small countries and small groups will have the potential to make major problems for the US argues strongly that we not greatly diminish our foreign intelligence collection activities.  A reoriented, fine-tuned and effective intelligence effort is our best, if not only hope for avoiding costly and dangerous international incidents.

Posted in intelligence |

Throwing off habits of lethargy main challenge now to the CIS

February 2, 1992 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and the Barre Times-Argus.]

A people unused to responsibility

In early January, authorities in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) moved toward converting their systems into market economies.  They began to let some prices find their own levels.

We applaud this change as a step toward making their systems functional.  In doing so, our assumption is that CIS citizens want to live as we do and that they are willing and able to accept the negative, interim consequences of such a difficult transition .  They have been told that the road to a good life is through a market economy.

They want the good life, but will they accept the hardship inherent in getting there?  We have decided that what is good for us must be good for them.  Maybe it is, but let’s take a look at the people whose futures we are trying to influence.

”We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”.  That statement typified the relationship between Soviet citizens and their employer, the state.

CIS citizens have functioned in master-slave relationships for centuries.  On one of the few occasions when they had a free choice, after the abolition of serfdom (peasant slavery) in 1861, the peasants did opt for privately owned farms, they joined together in collectives which continue to exist today.  The “collective” is part of the national psyche.

CIS citizens are the product of centuries of evolution.  They are non-competitive, knowing they have to blend in to survive.  They are jealous, resentful and vindictive toward those who try to get ahead.  They are highly paranoid and with good reason!  Life has taught survivors to keep their heads down.

Fifteen years before slavery was abolished, the great Russian writer (and landowner), Lev Tolstoy decided to unilaterally free his serfs and give them their own land.  They refused his offer, believing he was somehow trying to trick them!

The psychological imprint from this deep seated distrust of freedom and authority affected the workplace in important ways, giving rise to an incredibly inefficient Soviet system. In the workplace, this incredibly inefficient Soviet system has created a workforce that is essentially disinterested in what it does.

Workers do what they are told to do and no more.  Initiative and self-improvement are dirty words.  The system has never demanded excellence from them, only mediocrity.  They are lazy, escapist, unmotivated, inefficient, incompetent, apathetic, indifferent and impractical.  They have no work ethic.

CIS citizens are unquestionably and unavoidably as much a product of their recent Soviet past as they are of their national heritages.  Many cheat and steal whenever possible.  “Why not?  We take from the state, but we own the state.  You can’t steal from yourself!”

A tractor driver in an MTS (an organization providing mechanized support to collective farms) once described to me his way of doing business.

In order to earn his daily pay he had to plow 5 hectares (11 acres) to a depth of 30 cm (12 inches).  If he plowed more, he got a bonus for “overfulfilling his daily work norm”.  So he set his plow at 20 cm., was able to plow an extra 1-2 hectares and got a fat bonus.

His work was never checked and it was of absolutely no concern to him that he was damaging the subsequent harvest.

It can be argued that the Soviets designed and built some very sophisticated military hardware.  However, they did not build those weapons because their system was inherently efficient or competitive, but because their centrally controlled economy allowed them to concentrate unlimited resources in a linear fashion on specific goals.  Lacking a competitive system, the work was done at extraordinary expense by individual special design bureaus working in virtual vacuums.

Reaping the consequences

Stories are already appearing in the press about the movement of Soviet-made arms and equipment to Iran.  Certainly that is compatible with what we know about the character of CIS man.  In these very hard times when just about everything is for sale, it is to be expected that arms will be exported for personal or “collective” gain.

Our major concern should be that nuclear weapons, materials and know-how might be exported to countries that would like to use them.  With their feet to the fire, there are elements in the CIS who would do that even knowing that they might be used.

One certainly hopes that the Bush administration has a policy for and is dealing with that potential problem.

You can safely bet that the stories appearing in the press right now about the lack of food in the stores is the result of someone, somewhere running some kind of scam.

The theory behind letting prices float was that higher prices would bring more goods to the market, which in turn would bring down prices.

That has not yet happened, possibly because someone is holding back goods, hoping to see prices rise even higher.  One short year ago in the USSR, this act was a serious punishable crime called profiteering.  Today’s consumers are in the impossible position of not having enough income to cover their basic needs.  Many of them long for the “good old days” when this was illegal.

We will see more of that.

On a personal level, many CIS citizens can be said to want the benefits of democracy without the attendant responsibility.  A KGB defector of the 1970’s used to berate us, his CIA contacts, for telling him what to do (not drink so much!), just as his former KGB boss had done.  In the next breath he would complain that we refused to tell him what job to seek!

CIS citizens probably do want all the trappings that democracy and a market economy would bring them.  We have to wonder if they will accept the privation they will have to go through to get there.

Knowing the Problem

Understanding how life has conditioned CIS citizens and their ancestors over 500 years should give us a better feel for whether or not they are equipped to travel the road which we think they must.  They have lived under a succession of repressive totalitarian governments which have told them what to do and how and when to do it.  They have never had any say in the governance of their own lives.  They are not conditioned to desire or seek choices.

What kind of a citizen does that produce?  Is he good raw material for a democratic market economy?  Does he really want the freedom of choice and responsibility that comes with such a system?

Is he even capable of understanding such a system?   Remember that almost no one alive in the CIS today has any practical personal experience with either  democracy or a market economy.

If the world is very lucky, the CIS will succeed in making the transition to a democratic market economy.  The West can probably help by providing enough short term humanitarian aid to smooth out the coming year’s radical changes.

On the other hand, there is ample historical evidence to fear that it will be an extremely difficult and complicated transition, one that may bring out the people’s basest traits and instincts.  If things do not go well, it is quite possible that the people will seek or accept leadership more in harmony with the authoritarian models of their past.  If that happens, we should not be surprised.

Unfortunately, there is very little we can do to influence the matter.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA officer who specialized in Soviet and East European operations with the agency from 1956 to 1980.  He lives in Brookfield.

Posted in Russia |

Hands off – Best US Policy toward Soviets

August 25, 1991 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

For the past week we have had a vicarious ride on the great Soviet rollercoaster.  We have gone from Gorbachev to the hardline conservatives and back to Gorbachev.  Where do we go next?  It has been a bit frightening and very difficult to understand what has been happening.  The real issue in the USSR was and still is whether or not to keep the country intact as it has been since World War Two.  Does anyone want to “save” the USSR and if so, who?  Can anyone save the USSR, anyway?  The alternative is simply to let the USSR break up into a number of smaller nations.

The USSR today is an unhappy amalgam of dozens of ethnic, national and linguistic groups which have little in common other than the fact that they all have been ruled for centuries by despotic Tsars and Commissars.  They have an unelected “head of state” (Gorbachev) trying to salvage the USSR.  There is nothing idealistic or altruistic about Gorbachev’s policies.  A glance at his personal history shows that he is both extraordinarily pragmatic and a hard-line, activist proponent of Marxism-Leninism.  His primary goals now are to maintain his own position and to keep the USSR together through the perpetuation of the power of the Communist Party.

A coup in the USSR is a dramatic and unprecedented event.  The conservatives who ran it; senior members of the armed forces, the party hierarchy, the KGB and the internal security forces (MVD), wanted to “save” the USSR.  They never wanted any change.  They never wanted glasnost (openness) or perestroika (restructuring).  They were Soviet reactionaries who simply wanted the USSR to continue the way it had for over seventy years under the repressive fist of the Communist Party.

These were the people who benefited and profited from the continued existence of the old structure.  They were the pampered Soviets with special stores, housing, schools, privileges and opportunities.  Why should they have wanted to give it up?  After all, they were the only ones who really profited from the system.  They were also the ones who bankrupted their country through mismanagement.  What sort of job opportunities would they have had in their own country under new management?  The future must have been extremely bleak for them.  Keep in mind that there are still millions of them in the USSR today and that they remain a potential threat to the process of democratization.

Gorbachev also wants to “save” the USSR.  In order to do so, he will need massive infusions of aid and technology from the west, probably more than even exists.  He clearly enjoys his position and would like to perpetuate it.  What will he do when the USSR fragments?  He has never been elected by popular vote to anything and he currently enjoys very poor approval ratings in the USSR.

The coup may turn out to have been a blessing for Gorbachev.  Although it probably won’t have much effect on his popularity at home, it certainly will boost his ratings abroad and his potential to get western assistance.  Having had a glimpse at the potential consequences of conservative governance of the USSR, Gorbachev becomes infinitely more attractive to us in the west.  In the murky world of Soviet intrigue, claims will be made that the whole show was orchestrated by Gorbachev to strenghten his hand abroad.  Even if this is not true, it can’t be denied that he has really benefited from the coup attempt at a time when his political future was becoming increasingly dim.  If the coup hadn’t happened, he would have been forced to invent it.

Does anyone else want to “save” the USSR?  Certainly most of the people who live there do not! Citizens of the Baltic states, Central Asia, the Ukraine, and particularly people from places like Moldavia, Karelia, and Tadzhikistan, who have national, religious and ethnic ties to countries outside the USSR, have no desire to continue under the yoke of central Soviet control.  In fact, as a result of years of Soviet and Tsarist suppression  of their legitimate yearnings, most Soviet citizens have no desire for any kind of association with any kind of central government.

The  Bush administration’s past Soviet policy does not provide much comfort.   The pre-coup policy of strong support for Gorbachev had a number of negative  aspects:  it would very likely have left the status of Soviet military and internal security forces unchanged and it would probably have perpetuated Soviet domination of national minorities.    In addition, it would have permitted the Soviets not to have to face either  rapid democratization,  or political and economic decentralization and liberalization.

One wonders if it was a concensus policy of the National Security Council or if it had much input from other Soviet specialists either inside or outside the administration.  If our Soviet specialists had been involved, President Bush would not have made his recent gaff in the USSR when he addressed an audience in Kiev as “Soviet citizens”.  He did this in the capitol of the Ukraine, where their continued participation in the USSR is very much in doubt, and where nationalist feelings against central Soviet government run high!   He appears either ignorant of or insensitive to current Soviet realities, something that would never have happened if he had been coached by our Soviet experts.

It is more likely that it was the personal, private policy of a president who is convinced that he has a profound understanding of foreign affairs.  If George Bush had been a Democratic president pursuing such a Soviet policy, the Republicans would have crucified him!  It was the kind of policy to which Republicans have always objected.  It was poorly thought out and counterproductive.  It put the United States in a curious moral and practical position.  We found ourselves actively supporting a system that only recently had given its peoples the right to speak freely, which still withheld their basic right to self-determination and which had done almost nothing to change the system that had failed them.  We have been assisting the Soviets in the further subjugation of their citizens!    The current argument that the coup could have been obviated by additional aid begs the issue of the negative results of that aid.

Will the Bush administration continue to support Gorbachev – a man who has never been elected to anything by popular vote?   Maybe we should be supporting someone else, like Yeltsin, or no one at all.

In explaining our Soviet policy, much is made of the need to “keep Gorbachev in power”.  An excellent case can be made that keeping Gorbachev in power, per se, is irrelevant and that his departure would hasten the changes that we hope for in the USSR.  Gorbachev doesn’t want to scrap the system, he wants to save it.  Despite all his talk, other than “openness”, he has implemented very few tangible changes which would be beneficial to us.  Quite the contrary, Gorbachev’s clear enjoyment of his position and power, his past accommodation of the conservatives, his inclination to compromise and his disinclination to act can be seen as impediments to constructive change.   The fact is that there has been a lot of talk and precious little action under Gorbachev.

The USSR is in the process of economic collapse.  Collapse may be an acceptable answer from our point of view.  Given the facts of our own economic situation, we have absolutely no hope of “saving” them ourselves.

Nor should we wish to do so.  The USA has major (but limited) interests in the USSR.  We want to peacefully render the USSR non-threatening to ourselves and the rest of the world and we would like to see the peoples of the USSR exercise their rights of self-determination.

We can accomplish both of these goals by encouraging the peaceful, non-violent break up of the USSR into its component national parts and, if the Soviet people desire it, some type of future confederation.

The US needs to back off.  We don’t need to grant the Soviets Most Favored Nation status.  We don’t need to grant them or to help them get credits.  We really don’t need to help perpetuate the reign of the Communist Party at all.

Once the Party and Gorbachev are gone, it will be time to re-evaluate our position to see what we can do to help.  Until then, we and the Soviet peoples will profit most from benign neglect.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA officer who specialized in Soviet and East European operations from 1956-1980.  He lives in Brookfield.

Posted in Russia |

U.S. must find cure for Palestinian problem

February 25, 1991 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Burlington Free Press.]

The real issue now is not how we got into o the Persian Gulf War, but what happens when it is over and who the winners and losers will be.

Will the outcome be clear cut enough to answer that question?

If the United States suffers heavy casualties, it will pay the attendant political and economic costs as well.  On the other hand, if we force the Iraqis quickly and conclusively out of Kuwait without suffering extensive casualties, we will be able to claim that we have won.

However, if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein remains in charge of his country- regardless of the damage he sustains – he will be considered to have won by his own people and by most of Arabs as well.

The only clear-cut winners will be Iran and Israel.  Iran will win because we will have accomplished what it could not in eight years of war with Iraq – the destruction of the Iraqi military machine.  This will give the Iranians clear advantage in their quest for dominance in the Gulf.

Israel will win because if we had not gotten involved in this war, Israel would likely have faced a nuclear-armed Iraq at some point in the next five years.  Now they won’t have to take on the Iraqis themselves.

Our Arab allies in the Gulf will be on the winning side if we win, but only if they are not destabilized by their own citizens after the war.  There were pro-Iraq demonstrations by over 300,000 people in Morocco on Feb 3.  Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states also appear vulnerable to destabilization as well as Lebanon and perhaps Syria.

Why are there so many variables?  The answer is quite simple – Palestine.  There will be neither peace nor stability in the Middle East until the Palestinians have a homeland.

Arabs aw well as many Westerners and some Israelis feel that Israel’s refusal to address this issue is unjust.  It is the only issue that unites the Arabs.  The unflinching U.S. support of Israeli policy has made Arabs angry and frustrated with the United States as well.

For over 40 years, since the Palestinians lost their homeland in the wars of 1948 and 1967, we have ignored their legitimate aspirations for their own homeland.

We are told over and over that the situation in Kuwait was important enough to our national interests to have us commit more than 5000,000 of our citizens and tens of billions of dollars to the war.  If it’s that important, we cannot pack our bags and come home afterward without trying to bring some stability to the region.

The Palestinians have hurt themselves horribly in the United States buy supporting Saddam.  The fact that they have done so is a measure of their desperation.

U.S public opinion has always strongly supported Israel.

Americans have not forgotten the Holocaust.  Until very recently, Israel has been able to manipulate U.S. policy in the Middle East so that it has always served Israeli interests, but not necessarily our own.  Out interest now must be stability.

There is pretty good reason to believe that the Arab states would sign a peace treaty with Israel guaranteeing its border in exchange for return of the occupied territories to their pre-1967 owners; creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state on the west Bank and a change in the status of Jerusalem.

The Unites States should certainly support that solution and should be prepared to act as a guarantor to it.

The problem is that the Israelis are no0t interested.  Israeli policy, particularly under the Shamir administration, has been to move settlers to East Jerusalem and the West Bank.  The purpose has been to establish some sort of permanent, legitimate Israeli presence there.

Given our past unflinching support of Israel on the Palestine issue and our demonstrated national interest in the area, it would serve us well to lead the way to an equitable solution of the Palestine problem.

This will not be an easy course.  There will be much Israeli resistance.  The Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, and Palestinian support of Iraq have further polarized feelings.

Now we “owe” the Israelis for staying out of the Gulf war.  In repayment, will we be asked to ignore the Palestine problem?

The United States is unequivocally Israel’s best friend in the world and perhaps the only country with enough influence to move the Israelis toward peace.  Do we have the resolve to put that kind of pressure on an old friend?

If we don’t get involved, or if we obstruct a solution as we have in the past, we will have to fold our tent and go home.  That will almost certainly bring instability to the Middle East and International terrorism.

The Middle East is America’s tarbaby.  Having made the major commitment of a war against Iraq, we now have one hand stuck in the tar.  The only way to let go of that tarbaby is to find an equitable solution to the Palestine problem.  If we can’t or won’t do that, there are likely to be hard times for us ahead.

Haviland Smith of Brookfield spent 24 years as a Soviet bloc specialist at the Central Intelligence Agency, including time in Tehran and Beirut.

Posted in Israel/Palestine |

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