FROM CONTAINMENT TO APPEASEMENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605120005-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: June 18, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605120005-6
NEW YOPK POST
18 June 1985
containment
From
appeasement
By NORMAN PODHORETZ
Me(3EORUE-_Bun i not further that President Rea-
'
the man he used to be. Nei-
ther is Arthur Schlesinger
Jr. As highly placed mem-
bers of the. Kennedy adminis-
tration, they both believed
that the United States had an
obligation to contain the
spread of Soviet power and
influence by any means up to
and including the use of
force. Today, back in the aca-
demic world from which
Kennedy originally elevated
them, it is that obligation,
rather than Soviet imperial-
ism, they seem most con-
cerned to contain.
Only last week, for exam-
ple, taking a little time out
from the tireless campaign
he has been waging against
various aspects of American
nuclear strategy. Bundy
urged that Congress cut off
all aid to the contras who -
as arguments like his force
one to keep wearily repeat-
ing - are fighting to reclaim
the democratic revolution in
Nicaragua that has been
stolen and betrayed by the
Communist Sandinistas with
the aid and encouragement
of the Soviet Union and Cuba.
Last week Schlesinger too
was heard from on the sub-
ject of Latin America. In a
two-part article describing
Fidel Castro in the kind of
glowing terms he usually re-
serves for members of the
Kennedy family, Schlesinger
called, among other things,
for a halt to "the militariza-
tion of U.S. policy in Central
America."
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said
that unlike his great rival Er-
nest Hemingway, who spoke
with "the authority of suc-
cess," he, Fitzgerald, spoke
with "the authority of failure."
On these matters, Bundy and
Schlesinger are in the line of
Fitzgerald.
Thus Bund bolsters his ar-
gument abandoning the
contras by bringin up his in-
volvement as Kin y sna-
tional securit adviser with
the cies of covert action
lythe CIA that led tote av,
of Pigs disaster. He asserts
gap "is just plain wrong_
suggesting tnat enn y~8
ohs on o L ven-
turis w c was indeed
strop won translate
today into suppor for covert
operations.
In his articles on Castro,
Schlesinger also alludes, in
similarly Fitzgerald-like
tones, to Kennedy and the
Bay of Pigs. And while he
does not say so explicitly, he
undoubtedly agrees with
Bundy that Reagan's policy
is inconsistent with the al-
,legedly wiser attitude Ken-
nedy developed after the Bay
of Pigs.
Yet in a book written when
he himself was still a be-
liever in containment,
Schlesinger admiringly
summed up this attitude in a
statement made by Kennedy
about the Dominican Repub-
lic under the right-wing au-
thoritarian rule of Trujillo:
"There are three possibilities
in descending order of
preference: a decent demo-
cratic regime, a continuation
of the Trujillo regime, or a
Castro regime. We ought to
aim at the first, but we really
can't renounce the second
until we are sure we can
avoid the third."
It would be hard to improve
on this as a description of the
Reagan administration's
policy in Central America.
In any case, it is Bundy
who "is just plain wrong" in
focusing the debate on covert
action, which was not then
and is not today the main
issue. The main issue was
and remains whether the
United States can respond ef-
fectively to Soviet expansion
by proxy.
Professing not to know if
the Sandinistas "will inexo-
rably persist in an increas-
ingly Marxist-Leninist
course, with increasing reli-
ance on Soviet and Cuban aid
and an increasing commit-
ment to the export of violent
revolution," Bundy is not so
far gone as to deny that, If
they do, the United States
will have to take "fully effec-
tive means ... to defeat and
reverse any such Nicara-
guan choice." At this point,
shifting from Fitzgerald's
authority of failure to Hem-
ingway's authority of suc-
cess, Bundy invokes the
Cuban missile crisis as a
model for action against the
Sandinistas. .
Yet even if we accept the
dubious claim that Ken-
nedy's handling of the Cuban
missile crisis was a great
success, all he accomplished
was the removal of Soviet
missiles from Cuba. This
supposedly great victory nei-
ther nudged Castro toward
pluralism, nor weakened his
ties to the Soviet Union, nor
lessened his commitment to
the export of violent revolu-
tion. What Bundy is offering
here is not a model for action
against the Sandinistas; it is
a formula for doing nothing.
Schlesinger, on the other
hand, does want to do some-
thing: he wants to cease
treating Castro as a "pari-
ah." There is, he tells us, a
"new Castro," more a prag-
matist than a revolutionary,
more a nationalist than a
Communist. Does this mean
that if we normalize rela-
tions with him, he will re-
nounce "his Soviet connec-
tion and his commitment to
revolutionary international-
ism"? No, says Schlesinger,
not at `all. There is to be no
quid for this quo.
In place of Bundy's formula
for doing nothing, then, Schles-
inger gives us a formula for
positive appeasement.
Obviously, Bundy and
Schlesinger, like that other
chastened Kennedyite Robert
McNamara, are trying to
atone for the other disasters
they participated in during
their time in office. And it is in-
deedtruethatinthe - yes -
noble cause ,f resisting the
spread of Soviet-backed Com-
munist regimes, the Kennedy
administration made unwise
use of American power, first
covertly at the Bay of Pigs ana
then directly in Vietnam. But
in urging us to go the other ex-
treme, the survivors of that
administration, far from mak-
ing up penitentially for the
damage they did then to
American power are instead
working prevent that dam-
age from finally being re
paired.
Norman Podhoretz, a leading
neo-coreervative, is editor of
Commentary magazine.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605120005-6