HAMSTRINGING OUR FRIENDS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201100003-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: March 25, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201100003-8
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WASHINGTON TIMES
25 March 1985
Hamstringing
WILLIAM P. CHESHIRE Our
What a different world it
would be if Congress, so
circumspect in estab-
lishing standards of
behavior for our friends, would
apply the same rules to our adver-
saries. A case in point:
Evidently unimpressed that Sal-
vadoran voters, in a free election,
chose the moderate Jose Napoleon
Duarte president, a House Foreign
Affairs subcommittee last week rec-
ommended that Washington con-
tinue to attach strings to U.S. aid.
Restrictions now require the
administration to certify every six
months that El Salvador is showing
a "willingness to pursue a dialogue"
with the Communists who are trying
to shoot their way into office, is exer-
cising control over the military that
sometimes shoots back, and is work-
ing toward political and economic
reforms that are already in place.
Where has the Foreign Affairs
subcommittee been?
The same day this group went out
of its way to antagonize El Salvador's
friendly and democratic govern-
ment, the Agriculture Department
issued the heart-warming
announcement that the Soviet Union
had bought an additional 300,000
metric tons of grain from the United
States, establishing a new yearly
high - 17 million tons.
Under a long-term agreement
with this country, the Soviets are
permitted to buy only 12 million tons
annually without special permis-
sion. Special permission was
granted this year for the purchase of
an additional 10 million tons, half of
which has yet to be delivered.
Is this aid? Of course it's aid -
and aid of the sort that the Soviets,
unable to nourish their own people,
desperately require. Are political
strings attached? No. When the
hungry Soviets ask for more por-,
ridge, Washington follows the high-
minded - some would say
simple-minded - policy laid down
by President Gerald Ford.
In the aftermath of Washington's
mishandling of the 1972 grain deal,
Mr. Ford took a bad situation and
contrived to make it worse.
friends
Absorbed in the quest for
detente, Washington had per-
mitted the Soviets to buy 13
million tons of grain futures with
$500 million borrowed from the U.S.
Treasury at 61/8 percent - money it
paid back, The New York Times
reported, "with what are, for them,
half-price dollars."
"The high cost of the remaining
U.S. grain;' writes historian Paul
Johnson, "was one of the factors
which led OPEC to quadruple the
cost of oil;' precipitating worldwide
inflation, famine, and much
America-bashing (though no Soviet
bashing) at the 1974 World Food Con-
ference.
Struck by the wasted opportunity,
the Central Intelligence Agency rec-
ommended that "as custodian of the
bulk of the world's exportable
gain" America should use is
leverage to "regain the primacy in
world affairs that it held in the
immediate postwar period."
President Ford, a marvelously
decent man, would not hear of it. It
was not U.S. policy, he assured
America's enemies, "to use food as a
political weapon, despite the oil
embargo."
Mr. Ford was moved by a noble
spirit, and certainly in a world
where millions are starving to death
a case can be made for compassion...
But even in a hungry world, it makes
little sense for the'United States to
bail out Soviet agriculture. without
extracting political concessions.
The objection is made - the ears
fairly ring with it - that if the
United States doesn't put its
resources at the disposal of the Polit-
buro, someone greedier will get the
Kremlin's business. This solipsism
is put forward to justify all manner
of commerce, from the sale of food
to the building of factories where
army trucks are produced.
It. is pure twaddle.. The. United
States is so dominant in the interna-
tional grain market that, as a practi-
cal matter, the Soviets must do
business with us or risk widespread
famine. In the years of plenteous-
ness, they may not need our wheat,
but without it their people will
starve in the years of dearth.
T he Ukraine, once Europe's
breadbasket but now farmed
according to the quirky princi-
ples of Karl Marx (who wouldn't
have known a plowshare from a
clevice clevis), no- longer produces
food in any abundance. Assuming
that the Kremlin has no wish to
incite food riots, it should be possible
for Washington to engage in, shall we
say, a little constructive diplomacy.
Instead of leaning on Mr. Duarte,
it ought to be leaning on Mr. Gorba-
chev.
Even if El Salvador were not an
ally of ours, what sense would it
make for this cduntry to fiddle with
her domestic arrangements? We
demand Boy Scout deportment from
Salvadorans, but furnish 22 million
tons of grain to the Soviet Union, one
of the most hideous despotisms in
the entire history of the world. It
makes no sense.
For political reasons, we seem
determined to enrich Ka>asas
agribusiness by feeding the Red
Army. But shouldn't we apply the
Salvadoran test,-insisting that Mos-
cow show a "willingness to pursue a
dialogue" with, say, the Afghan
mujahideen, exercise control over
KGB "death squads," and work
toward political and economic
reforms? And perhaps we should lay
off El Salvador as well, whose gov-
ernment Moscow is attempting to
subvert.
Where American interests are so
plainly identifiable, it should be the
policy of our government to advance
them, instead of following a policy of
inconsistent piety that is pleasing to
our enemies, injurious to our
friends. How about a surcharge on
'.. wheat with which to finance anti-
Soviet insurgency groups?
William R Cheshire is editor of the
editorial pages of The Washington
Times.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201100003-8