A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD POWER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100080011-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 17, 2007
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: March 21, 1977
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/04/17: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100080011-4
o:z 1'ritclic i? WASHINA,~3 i
GTON POST 21 March 1977
Look.- at a-11-111 U11rd Powell"
For } ears. -ymerica's cold warriors What a contrast Turner's detachment Yugoslavia and Romania long ao
g have been able to count on the govern- is with the almost frantic alarms of '?_aj. loosened their ties with Russia, which
ment's inteii;ence agencies to help Gen. George J. Keegan Jr.. who recently has good reason to fear that its restless
sustain the supposed threat of world retired as the Air Force chief of intellig- satellites in Eastern and Central Eu-
conques*- by supposedly all-conquering ence. Keegan believes `.Iosco?.v is net rope will also defect-at the' first good
Corn;mtuni_t Russia. But the cold war- only well on the way to subjugating the opportunity.
riors are getting cold comfort (so far at world, but has already achieved military Moreover the once-obedient Com-
least) from the new director of the CIA, superiority over the United States. monist parties in Italy, France and
Adm. St ar.sfieid ?urner. The differences between the incom- Spain. among others, have openly de-
The hardliners were, of course, de- ing intelligence officer and the out o- Glared their independence of Moscow,
lighted when they helped force the in g one are as sharp as those between and now are proclaiming their alle-
withdrawal o Ted Sorensen as Presi- Andrei.- Young, President Carters new giance to democratic government.
dent Carter's first choice to head the ambassador to the United Nations, and This contagious apostasy can be
CIA, and their satisfaction was com- Daniel P. Moynihan, who served at the largely traced to the spreading convic-
pounded when, as Sorensen's replace- United Nations before his election to tion that the Soviet ideology has seen
meat, the President named Turner, the Senate last fall. its best days, and can't be sold tolthe
then the commander-in-chief of Allied Moynihan, who downgraded the rest of the world. After all, communism
Forces in South n Europe. United Nation as- a theater of the ab- has sever in its history won a majority
Hov.ever, in his first meeting with surd,' also saw Russia as a rampaging anywhere (including Russia) in a free
the press, following his confirmation power that was hell bent on "recoluniz- election.
by the Senate, the admiral made a sus in," Africa. He warned that Mcscon's
prisingly restrained but shrewd answer intervention in Angola was just the It is even getting more difficult for
when he was asked for his views on So- first step in Sovietizing the dark Conti the Soviets to hold their own in strate-
vietstrength and intentions. nent. gic areas where not long ago they had
He coolly described the Soviet Union Ambassador Young, though, doesn't formidable footholds, as in the Riddle
as trailing the United states both eco- see communism as much of a threat in East and Southeast Asia. E; t ejected
nomieaiiy and technologically and pos- that region. What Africans are really the Russians bodily, while Hanoi, like
sessing an i effective and dying ideolo- concerned about, he notes, is racism..a Tito's Yugoslavia, now calls its own
gy. He sounded more like an objective to more Angolas, he says, "there isn't a shots.
scholar than the typical military hawk. rebel group that won't turn to the U.S." All that is good news, except to these
The Soviet Union, he said, is trying to for economic dealings "once it's in pow- who thrive on keeping the enormous
make up for these weaknesses by a 19th er." . i military industrial complex going by
century type of concentration on mili- Young seems to echo former Secre- magnifying the Soviet threat and by
tary strength. And he would have been tary of State Kissinger's admonition promoting the notion that Russia al-
on solid ground if he had added that that no good purpose is served by pie- ways strikes from strength. Actually, it
Soviet influence in the world, including turing the Soviets as "10 feet tall." Ill has been the most dangerous when it
the Communist sphere, has steadily ' the words of another critic, this endows was comparatively weak.
dwindled even as its military might in- them with a heroic stature they could In all the postwar years, it has pro-
creased. not achieve on their own. .,..U?! n.,t? *??., , ,.r : t,. _ ...: _
To the best of my knowledge, Adm. with the United States. The first was
Turner is the first American military the Berlin Blockade when the United
leader to publicly call attention to Rus-. States had a monopoly on the atomic
sin's greatest vulnerability-its fading bomb. The second was the 1962 Cuban-
ideological hegemony. missile crisis, when the United States
There was a time, in the aftermath of enjoyed an overwhelming nuclear ad-
World War II, when the entire Coin vantage.
munist world was tinder the thumb of. Since then, having attained military
Moscow. The Kremlin dominated not parity with the United States, Moscow
only the other Communist govern- has been more cautious. It even chose
merits around the globe, but controlled to ignore our bombing of Russian ships
as well the Communist parties in the in the harbor of Haiphong, North Viet-
non-Marxist world. But year by year tram, in 1971, rather than break off its
that hegemony has eroded. then budding detente with America.
Enlarged Soviet defense expendi-
tures won't make up for the loss of
Communist China, once Russia's great-
est ally, now its greatest enemy-a na-
tion of 800 million disciplined people,
with a huge army and growing nuclear
power. Imagine what the U. S. position "
would be if on one of our borders we
were confronted with a hostile power
of that magnitude.
STAT