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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 8, 1985
The basic reason for the increasing tensions between the United
States and its Western European allies--and not only in the case
of Central America, which is more symptom than cause--is the di
vergence that has occurred, ever since World War II, in the
political ethos [guiding beliefs] of the United States and
Western Europe. This divergence can be simply stated: The poli
tical ethos of Western Europe has been significantly influenced
by socialist ideas and socialist modes of thinking, while the
political ethos of the United States has been only superficially
affected by them••••
There are two•••ways in which the socialist temper caused Western
Europe to recoil from a more assertive foreign policy. The first
has to do with its imperial past, about which most Europeans are
convinced they ought to feel guilty. They are, as a result, in
hibited from any action that might even seem to be "imperialis
tic."••• Secondly, because European socialism and European com
munism have a common root in Marxism, European socialism is at
least partially disarmed, ideologically, when confronting mil
itant Communism••••
It is a fact that, for over a century and a half now, the nations
of Central America have demonstrated an extraordinary incapacity
for self-government•••• The nations of the region are either in
turmoil or in potential turmoil. �nd now there is a new element,
in the form of Soviet-Cuban intervention in that turmoil, with
the intention of establishing Marxist-Leninist regimes in the
area, and throughout the Southern hemisphere as well.
Do such regimes necessarily constitute any kind of threat to the
United States? Europeans tend to think that the U.S. government
is indulging in hysterical exaggeration when it asserts they
are.... Why, they ask, cannot the United States live amiably
with neighbouring nations that have different socio-economic
systems?
The answer is, of course, that the United States has
little trouble doing just that. There have been left-wing and
quasi-socialist regimes established in Peru, Bolivia, even in
Mexico, and they have not precipitated any kind of crisis in U.S.
foreign policy• .
But Marxist-Leninist regimes, actively supported
with military aid and economic subvention by the Soviet Union,
are a new kind of challenge.
These tend to be totalitarian
tyrannies, not the more familiar left-wing dictatorships or one
party left-wing governments.
With massive Soviet assistance,
they are enduring tyrannies--as enduring as the Soviet tyranny
itself. And they (i.e., Cuba and Nicaragua) are active Soviet
allies in this hemisphere--which is to say, they are active
American enemies••••
From a purely military point of view, the movement of countries
such as Cuba and Nicaragua into the Soviet camp is not at all such
a trivial matter. Cuba today is, after the United States, the
largest and most powerful military force in the Western hemis
phere--much more powerful than Canada or Brazil, for instance•.•.
In addition, Cuba has provided--and is continuing to expand such
provision--submarine bases for the Soviet fleet and airfields