A World of Enemies -- is It All Reagan's Fault?

Call me a Cold War sentimentalist — but smile when you say it. I never felt so alive, as when I was passing through Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall, my heart in my throat, between free, West Berlin, and its garrisoned sister city in the East.

And how I lived, with a few American dollars in my pocket, on the other side of The Wall. Two weeks ago, on Joe Millionaire, I saw golddiggers and the ditchdigger spend nights in the sort of four-star hotels I once stayed in. In June, 1989, just months before The Wall fell, I ate chateaubriand in, and stayed at the Hotel Gellert, Budapest's most luxurious digs. The Gellert even had pissoirs fit for a king. Our room had a balcony overlooking the Danube. (I also got awoken from my dreams the next morning, at 6 a.m., by the screeching of streetcar wheels.) The Germans have a phrase, "wie Gott in Paris leben" — to "live like G-d in Paris."

Today, with the influx of dollars in the East, and attendant inflation, I could sell my wife and son to slavers, and still couldn't afford the fare to Budapest, and a night in the Gellert.

Alright, so maybe you're no beef eater, the Danube is only the title of a banal waltz, and as far as you're concerned, Germany is just "Old Europe." But you too have reason to miss The Wall.

With America poised to send hundreds of thousands of men in harm's way in Iraq, it is understandable that there should be a heated debate as to the merits of going to war, even if most commentators are now resigned to war. And yet, much of the debate has been dominated by false historical assumptions. The truth is not only intrinsically valuable, but in matters of war and peace, of great utility.

People usually seek to explain the fall of the Soviet Union and the East Bloc, via either of two competing theories. A theory popular in the U.S., especially among Republicans, holds that Ronald Reagan's 1980s arms buildup forced the Soviets to compete with us, a competition that eventually exhausted their economy, and caused their system to collapse. By contrast, the theory of choice among many American leftists and foreigners is that the Soviet Union and East Bloc were brought down by a bloodless, popular revolution – what fans (among them, journalist Paul Berman) of Czechoslovakian dissident playwright and contemporary President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel and his group, Charter 77, called the former Czechoslovakia's "Velvet Revolution."

During the 1980s, Ronald Reagan engineered the biggest peacetime arms buildup ever. On June 12, 1987 in West Berlin, he told the Soviet premier – thanks to speechwriter Peter Robinson – "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" And beginning in June, 1989, less than six months after Reagan handed over the reins of power to George Herbert Walker Bush, the world saw the biggest liberation, in terms of sheer numbers, in history. What's not to like?

If the conventional wisdom in the U.S. is correct, and Ronald Reagan's arms buildup caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, then Reagan must get both the credit and the blame for today's world order, or lack thereof. With all due respect, however, I don't think he deserves either. Reagan cared deeply about the millions oppressed by Soviet totalitarianism, but he did not cause The Wall to come down.

Alternatively, we are to believe that, inspired by a group of poets and artists who signed petitions and wrote editorials, in 1989, the Czechoslovakian people "shouted down" their communist rulers, and young East Germans simply decided to tear down the Berlin Wall. So, for 44 years, the Czechoslovakians and East Germans (not to mention all the other nationalities who suffered under the boot of Soviet terror) had needed only to mass in the street, and start shouting! Think of all of the missed opportunities! Such silliness will not convince any sober person above the age of consent, much less anyone familiar with the history of Soviet communism.

It was Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that caused The Wall to fall, but not because Ronald Reagan had succeeded in converting him to the cause of freedom, and not because Gorbachev sought to end the Soviet Union and the East Bloc. Rather, Gorbachev was a vain, confused man. Dreaming of being a beloved dictator, he sought to be both the dictator and the liberator of his people. As Stalin, Hitler, and Mao had already shown, however, the way to become a beloved dictator, is through murdering millions of one's own people, and terrorizing the rest. Most of the citizens whom a tyrant has not yet murdered, will learn to fear him, others will learn to love him, and some will feel both emotions for him. Witness the nostalgia for the "certainty" and "security" Stalin supposedly provided that is still widespread in "free" Russia, and the former Soviet Republics and East Bloc nations.

Gorbachev was a tyrant who stopped tyrannizing. In a tyranny, such a man is soon out of a job, if not dead. Gorbachev expected the Soviets to embrace him as their leader. Instead, they no longer recognized him as leader, but as the cause of a vacuum in leadership. Soon enough, Gorby was an ex-leader. In 1991, his resignation as Premier of the Soviet Union was redundant, since as many observers have commented, he was the ruler of a nation that no longer existed. Gorbachev is lucky to still be alive.

Had any other Soviet leader been in power on November 9, 1989, the East German border guards would simply have shot all of the protesters who massed at The Wall. But Gorbachev's confusion had spread west, and immobilized the East German apparat, as well, and so instead of shooting demonstrators, the East German authorities opened the border crossings.

In the summer of 1989, East Germans engaged in mass demonstrations, action that would have been suicidal before Gorbachev. They also began leaving the country by the tens of thousands for Hungary, which they could use to enter free, neutral Austria. (It did not help that the Soviets' man in East Berlin, Premier Erich Honecker, was then ailing, but the role of the East German premier was to follow orders. The Soviets always called the shots, when it came to the border.)

Hungary had long had a unique status as the freest country in the East Bloc, where some people had private property, and as a result, the standard of living was the highest in the communist world.

During the early 1980s, while visiting East Berlin, I recall a pervasive climate of fear. In September, 1980, wandering through a pedestrian tunnel, two machine gun-wielding, East German "Vopos" ("Volkspolizisten" – people's police, though they looked more like soldiers than cops) stopped me. "Ausweis, bitte!" one commanded me. (Papers, please!) The point was to intimidate me – and it worked.

By contrast, the first time I visited Budapest, in spring of 1982, I was wandering around with a map, obviously lost, when two machine gun-wielding, Hungarian policemen stopped me. These guys, however, were trying to help. I tried to communicate with them, but they spoke neither German nor English, and my Hungarian was limited to "please" and "thank you," and "yes" and "no." Before I'd gotten very far, a forty-something Hungarian couple barged in, and started telling jokes and yucking it up with the policemen. I wandered away, without them even missing me.

In East Germany, the locals did not yuck it up with policemen, and foreigners did not wander away from the police unnoticed. (Between 1980 and 1989, I visited East Germany and Hungary three times each.)

Oddly, even Gorbachev has supported the popular revolution theory. In November, he told the Berliner Morgenpost (my translation), "Basically, the entire development showed that the Honecker Regime had blown any credit it had with the people."

So, it was all a legitimacy crisis? So, Stalin enjoyed great legitimacy with the Soviet people, as did Honecker and his predecessors with the East German people in earlier years? Only if legitimacy comes out of the barrel of a machine gun.

If my interpretation is correct, liberty arose in Eastern Europe, and chaos elsewhere, as a fluke.

While those who identify themselves as conservatives are the first to speak of "the law of unintended consequences" regarding their opponents' proposals, many of them put on blinders when it comes to their own plans.

It was the fall of the Soviet Union that opened the Pandora's Box of Islam, and led directly to today's world, in which America finds herself beset by enemies, particularly Islamic terrorists. As the saying goes, be careful what you pray for, because your prayers just might be answered.

To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Nicholas at adddda@earthlink.net .

From Venezuela, A Counterplot*** As Washington prepares a high-stakes military venture in the Persian Gulf, a growing physical threat is being posed by Iraq, Libya and Iran to the soft underbelly of the United States. Hundreds and possibly thousands of agents from rogue Arab nations are working hard to help President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela take control of South America's largest oil industry and create al-Qaeda-friendly terrorist bases just two hours' flying time from Miami.

Arab advisers now are reinforcing a sizable contingent of Cubans in efforts to reorganize Venezuela's security services, assimilate its industries based on totalitarian models and repress a popular opposition movement. "What happens in Venezuela may affect how you fight a war in Iraq," Gen. James Hill of U.S. Southern Command is reported recently to have told his colleague at U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks.

"Chavez is planning to coordinate an anti-American strategy with terrorist states," says Venezuela's former ambassador to Libya, Julio Cesar Pineda, who reveals correspondence between the Venezuelan president and Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi about the need to "solidify" ties between liberation movements in the Middle East and Latin America and use oil as an economic weapon.

Exhorting his countrymen to return to their "Arab roots," Chavez has paid state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran and signed a series of mutual-cooperation treaties with the rogue governments whose operatives now are flooding into Venezuela. There they can blend into an ethnic Arab community estimated at half-a-million.

Last Jan. 10, 18 Libyan technicians flying in from Tripoli via Frankfurt, Germany, were received at the Caracas airport by Ali Ahmed, head of Libya's "Commission" in Venezuela. He was accompanied by the parliamentary whip of the ruling Venezuelan Revolutionary Movement (MVR), Cilia Flores. Nicolas Maduro and Juan Baruto, two other bosses of the MVR party militias (the Circulos Bolivarianos) who had paid an extended visit to Tripoli in 2000, also were on hand to smooth the way for the Libyans coming off Lufthansa Flight 534.

The Libyan agents were identified as: Alsudik Alghariy, Elmabruk Najjar, Koaled Adun, Zeguera Adel, Sherif Nagib, Abubaker Benelfgh, Nabiel Bentahir, Abdulfat Enbia, Waldi Majrab, Amhamed Elkum, Abdulgha Nashnush, Mohamed Romia, Abdurao Shwich, Abdulnass Elghanud, Ezzedin Barhmi, Abdulssa Seleni, Hassan Gwile and Mhemmed Besha.

The high level of security provided for the Libyans' arrival was intended to avoid the havoc of previous days when the entry of Iraqi and Iranian groups touched off a riot. As word of the landing of 20 Iranians had spread through Simón Bolívar International Airport on Jan. 8, crowds of infuriated travelers banged counters and cigarette urns and chanted "Get out! Get out!" to protest what many Venezuelans perceive as foreign interference in their country's affairs.

…………. Meanwhile, Iraqi VIPs, moving under the protection of Chavez's secret police -- the Department of Intelligence Security and Prevention (DISIP) -- came to the attention of Venezuela's regular military when government agents tried to use air-force planes to fly five of Saddam Hussein's agents into the interior of the country. Military pilots requested special clearances before allowing the Iraqis onto the C-130s.

Military sources also report that the recently arrived group of Libyans is billeted at the Macuto Sheraton Hotel in La Guaira, which they share with Cuban commandos who have been conducting strike-breaking operations around the nation's oil ports. Local units of the National Guard, the branch of the Venezuelan armed forces responsible for internal security, were reported to be refusing government orders to repress strikers.

According to Capt. Jose Ballabes of the merchant-marine union, the Cubans improvised floating concentration camps on board oil tankers, threatening officers and crews to get them to move the paralyzed vessels. When the Venezuelans still resisted, "such methods as sleep deprivation, often used against political dissidents in Cuba, are being systematically employed against our people," says Ballabes.

Sources in Venezuela's merchant navy name two of the Cuban agents on the tankers as Arturo Escobar and Carlos Valdez, who were presented as "presidential advisers" operating with DISIP. Venezuela's internal-security organization now is reported to be controlled by a command cell of undercover officers from Fidel Castro's military-intelligence service. Venezuelan sources say the Cuban operatives also run a computerized war room inside Chavez's presidential palace, Miraflores. It is in this war room that the repressive policies now afflicting the country have been planned, according to serving officers in the Venezuelan army, navy and national guard consulted by Insight.

The Libyans, like the Cubans, are specialists in military intelligence and security, but are described as computer specialists brought in to operate and reprogram crashed systems at the oil refineries, according to industry sources.

"The West must expect deepening relations between Venezuela and Islamic states," says professor Elie Habalian, a specialist in petroleum economics and a consultant to PDVSA President Ali Rodriguez Araque, who is identified by Venezuelan military sources as a one-time communist guerrilla chief. Aided by Cuban intelligence and Islamic workers, the government has managed to get oil production back up to 34 percent, a level sufficient to supply basic domestic needs. "It's a war between two models," continues Habalian, "one seeking total control over oil policy and the liberal international policy represented by PDVSA's previous management" effectively eliminated by the government, which has ordered the mass dismissal of 7,000 oil-company employees.

Interfacing of Venezuela's oil industry with the radical state systems also facilitates plans for a possible oil embargo against the United States in the event the military assault on Iraq is prolonged. While international oil experts consider such a scenario unlikely due to Venezuela's desperate need for export earnings, Venezuelan opposition leaders fear that Chavez could take advantage of a conflagration in the gulf to consolidate his dictatorship with the support of Cuban and Arab agents already in place.

"Chavez has violated the constitution on 34 counts and is moving to nationalize banking," says a leading member of Venezuela's business community. "He has packed the high courts with his judges, neutralized the army and turned the national assembly into a rubber-stamp parliament. All that's left to do is shut down the independent media and decapitate the opposition." According to this source, Chavez is most likely to move when world attention is fixed on Iraq.

……….. Undercover police officers report that the group has ties to a Hezbollah financial network operating from the Caribbean island of Margarita under Mohammed al Din, an important Chavez backer and a close friend of hard-line MVR deputy Adel el Zabayar Samara, a key link between Islam and Latin America's radical left.

The Caracas cell is involved in recruiting Venezuelan Arabs for terrorist indoctrination and military training at isolated camps in the country's interior and on islands off the coast, according to intelligence officers who claim that members of al-Qaeda are hiding out in Margarita. They say these members include Diab Fattah, who was deported from the United States for his possible connections with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Four Venezuelan officers investigating terrorist activities on the resort island were killed in 2001 when Chavez moved to dissolve DISIP Section 11, which had targeted radical Arabs. ***

Then quite honestly, you were reading a totally different article. This backhandedly, and it was quite a feat, both discredited him for winning the cold war over Gorby, and at the same time blamed him for the ending of the cold war causing "unintended consequences" which sophist's way of saying, we'd like to blame him for this but we can't find anything to say he supports terror.

You can't have it both ways, and I don't know how anyone can take this seriously. Either he was the principle figure in ending the cold war, and we can say ending it was bad, or he wasn't and then the rest of the nostalgia was unrelated to him. You can't have both.

You're the sophist, Peep. You have deliberately misrepresented the article, which said that IF Reagan was responsible for winning the Cold War (as per the conventional wisdom which you believe in), then he is also responsible for the disorder that followed. However, the writer concluded that Reagan was responsible for neither, because the conventional wisdom was wrong.

As for trying to have it both ways, Peep, you're projecting. You want Reagan to get all the credit for ending the Cold War, but without getting any of the responsibility for the disorder that followed. You've turned a man into a God.

The article doesn't seek to discredit the man at all, except in the eyes of his idolators. Rather, it is a sober-minded look at recent history which would probably be just as despised by lefties, as it apparently is by Reagan-worshipers.

"If the conventional wisdom in the U.S. is correct, and Ronald Reagan's arms buildup caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, then Reagan must get both the credit and the blame for today's world order, or lack thereof. With all due respect, however, I don't think he deserves either. Reagan cared deeply about the millions oppressed by Soviet totalitarianism, but he did not cause The Wall to come down."

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