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18
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER
16, 1986
Mr.
Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, is planning a diplomatic
offensive in America's backyard by visiting a number of Latin
American countries next year. Top of the list is Mexico,
whose political stability is of deep concern to Washington.
Many American officials believe one of
MOSCOW'S
ultimate
goals is to see Mexico go the way of Cuba and Nicaragua in
falling into the Marxist embrace. Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua,
Argentina and Peru are also said to be on
Mr.
Gorbachev's
tentative itinerary. The only previous known visit by a
Soviet leader to Latin America was
Mr.
Brezhnev's trip to
Cuba in
1975
to attend the Communist party congress.
The Soviets clearly intend, as they always do, to capitalize on American
weakness. Charles Krauthammer, writing in the December
22
issue of
T&,
NEW REPUBLIC, analyzed the peculiar American vacillation between super-
'powerdom and crawl-back-into-the-hole isolation:
This affair
is
not a Reagan crisis nor a presidential crisis,
but a recurring American crisis, rooted ultimately in the
tension between America's need to act like a great power and
its unwillingness to do
so.
Into the breach between will and
necessity have stepped people willing to violate the law.
r e result is disaster.... In the current case, an
administration prevented by a deeply divided Congress from
funding the Nicaraguan contras used the Iranian arms deal to
get around the law.
The United States has a vital interest in preventing the
consolidation
of
a Soviet satellite in Central America.
There are compelling moral reasons, too, for preventing
Nicaragua from suffering the fate of Cuba. But the major
point, and the major contradiction, is strategic. The United
States has the responsibilities of a superpower, but not the
national inclination to carry them out. In retrospect, it
is
the bipartisan internationalism of the first two postwar
decades, and not the isolationism of the subsequent "Vietnam
syndrome," that constitutes the historic abberation. America
has reverted to its natural foreign policy instincts: a
feeling of national moral superiority harnessed to a desire
for isolated quiet. The result is a willingness to influence
the world by example only.
Last year a French commando team was caught red-handed
blowing up a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand. That pathetic
little vessel was harassing French forces conducting nuclear
tests in the South Pacific. One man died in the sinking.
When the French cover story collapsed and the operation was
revealed to be the work of the French secret service, there
was a brief whiff of scandale in Paris. Brief. A few weeks
of
newspaper revelations. A principled resignation or
two..
.
.
i
Compare the French reaction with the following. Two weeks
into the Iran affair, Bob Woodward's lead story in the
WASHINGTON POST revealed this: "The covert action...allows
the Central Intelligence Agency to interfere in the affairs
of a foreign government." Goodness. In what business
is
the