WHY IS THE WORLD SO DANGEROUS?
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP88B00443R001404110062-6
Release Decision:
RIFPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
5
Document Creation Date:
December 21, 2016
Document Release Date:
May 7, 2008
Sequence Number:
62
Case Number:
Publication Date:
December 8, 1983
Content Type:
REPORT
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8 Dec 83
Why Is the World So Dangerous?
1. [The dangers we face are not confined to military forces. The level
of global violence has risen sharply and suddenly. In just the last several
months we have seen the shoot-down of KAL Flight 007, the assassination of
Benigno Aquino, the murderous decapitation of South Korea's leadership in
Rangoon, the terrorist bombings of US, French, and Israeli soldiers in
Lebanon, the Libyan invasion of Chad, and the anti-Bishop coup in Grenada that
ultimately triggered our own successful action on that island. What makes
these acts of violence so especially disturbing is their common denominator:
each has hurt the citizens, governments, or interests of the Free World.]
2. [Clearly, the world has become a much more dangerous place. We need
to know why. Are these acts of violence somehow linked, or merely part of a
series of frightening, tragic, but unconnected events whose one-after-another
timing is mere coincidence?]
3. I believe the current outbreak of violence is more than coincidence.
More precisely, I believe it signals the beginning of a new stage in the
global struggle between the Free World and the Soviet Union. My contention
rests on a perception that present US policies have fundamentally changed the
course of history in a direction favorable to the interests and security of
ourselves and our allies. What we are seeing now is a Soviet-led effort to
fight back, in the same sense that the Mafia fights back when law enforcement
agencies launch an effective crime-busting program. Let me concede right now
that I cannot prove this -- if your definition of proof is restricted to
intercepts, photographs, and purloined documents. Of course these things
matter. They matter hugely. But to truly understand an alien phenomenon like
the Soviet Union, one needs to go beyond a listing of facts; one needs also to
make a leap of imagination:
4. Suppose four years ago the Soviet leadership had asked my
counterpart, Yuri Andropov, then chief of the KGB -- for his evaluation of the
global struggle. He might have replied: "Comrades, I'm delighted to report
that the correlation of forces is moving steadily in our direction." lie would
have cited the following trends to support his upbeat analysis:
-- The US economy was faltering.
-- US defense spending was too low to truly assure the
nation's security.
-- The Soviet Union had established a mechanism for the steady
flow of wealth from West to East.
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The Soviet Union had established a companion mechanism to
assure the steady flow of technology from West to East.
The Soviet Union, through the effective use of surrogates
such as Cuba and Vietnam, had developed a technique for
spreading its influence throughout the Third World by
targeting fragile countries, destabilizing them, and
swiftly taking over.
-- Through the massive deployment of SS-20s, the Soviets were
changing the balance of power in Europe.
-- In more and more countries, policymakers, elites, and the
masses were coming to accept the Soviets' long-standing
claim that time was on their side; that one needed only to
align with Moscow to be on the winning team.
5. Were the Chief of the KGB called in by Chairman Andropov today and
asked for his evaluation, I believe he would sing a very different song. He
might say: "Comrades something has gone wrong. The US is refusing to accept
history!" He could cite in support of this theses that:
The US economy is now growing sharply, with the only
argument focusing on the breadth and duration of the boom.
US defense spending is up, with the debate in Congress and
on the campaign hustings focusing only on the proper size
of the increase.
The flow of wealth from the West to the East is less than
the Soviets had anticipated it would be by now. (Moscow's
most audacious project, the Siberia to Western Europe
pipeline, had been literally cut in half by US opposition;
after all, the pipeline was originally to have comprised
two strands, and 'lately no one either in Western Europe or
the Soviet Union has even mentioned that second strand.)
The flow of technology from West to East is less than the
Soviets had anticipated it would be by now. In part, by
reducing the flow of wealth the US also reduced the Soviet
Union's ability to buy equipment and know-how. And the
US-led crack-down on illegal technology transfers had put a
crimp in that key effort.
The Soviet mechanism for gaining power over the Third
World, while still a considerable threat to Western
security, has run into unexpected resistance. Soviet
textbooks insist that anti-Soviet Third World insurgencies
cannot develop. Yet in 1983 there are five of them -- in
Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, Kampuchea and Afghanistan.
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Thus Moscow can no longer target a Third-World country and
assume that no serious resistance will develop. Most
worrisome of all is the shocking setback in Grenada.
-- With deployment now certain of Pershing Its and cruise
missiles, NATO is about to change the balance of power in
Europe back to its favor.
-- And most dangerous of all, by describing the Soviet Union
as "the focus of evil" US President Reagan has
singlehandedly deployed the one weapon for which the
Soviets lack even a rudimentary defense: the truth.
6. From Moscow's perspective, the immediate danger would be the
taking hold of a perception among leaders and voters throughout the
West, but particularly in the US, that this new course was not only
right but also successful. Surely Western politicians -- especially
those up for re-election -- would chortle: "You see, we were exactly
right to stand up to the Russians. We are defending our own
interests more effectively now, and it's working." The inevitable
result of this approach would be precisely what Soviet leaders
dreaded most: widespread public support for the new US course and,
therefore, a continuation or even an acceleration of it.
7. If Moscow's chief objective were to knock the US off its
course, Moscow's most likely strategy would be to discredit this
course through the following tactics:
Raise the level of violence, thus making the world a more
dangerous place. (Keep in mind that US tolerance of
violence has declined markedly during the last 10 years.)
Attribute the increased violence and danger to the
inevitable result of reckless US policies. (It could be
safely assumed that members of the US media and other
elites would swiftly pick up and amplify this theme.)
Hope that voters will force a change of course, either by
replacing the incumbent leaders or forcing them to adopt
more "moderate" policies.
8. To implement this strategy, the Soviets would not need to commit each
and every act of violence themselves. They would commit some, arrange for
others to be committed by surrogates or allies, and generally create an
atmosphere in which violence flourishes.
9. Some Soviet experts believe, and some of them may be in Moscow, that
if the Soviet Union does not achieve its ambition to displace the US as the
world's pre-eminent power within -- very roughly -- the next 20 years, the
Soviet Union will never succeed.
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The Soviet Union has failed utterly to become a country.
Of more than 100 nationality groups there is not one major
non-Russian nationality group that is content with the
present, Russian-controlled arrangement; not one that does
not yearn for its political and economic freedom.
If present economic trends continue, living standards will
decline. We should under-estimate the Russians' capacity
for belt-tightening, but there is a limit, and that limit
is coming closer every year.
The Soviet Union is a demographic nightmare. Today only
about half the country's population can speak Russian; for
an industrialized, technologically-advanced society, this
is intolerable.
-- The East European satellites are becoming more and more
difficult to control. Already economic growth rates in the
key satellites are marginal, non-existant, or negative.
These rates will decline further as the Soviet Union moves
to insulate itself from the rising costs of empire by
squeezing its satellites harder, for example by raising the
prices of its raw materials and paying its satellites less
for the finished goods the Soviet Union then buys.
Economic trouble leads inevitably to political unrest, so
the question is not whether Moscow's difficulties will
mount but rather how bad things will get.
10. The Soviet leadership simply cannot make the changes necessary to
either reverse these trends or cope with them. Kremlin leaders could boost
their country's economic growth rate only by slashing the defense budget or by
enacting massive economic reforms. Either remedy would threaten the Communist
Party's grip on power, thus neither remedy has the slightest chance of being
administered. The demographic nightmare is equally difficult to end. Moscow
cannot transfer industrial-production capacity from the Russian to the non-
Russian, and especially non-Slav, republics. Doing so would give these
republics more power over Moscow than Moscow is willing to risk. And Moscow
cannot import workers to Russian factories from Moslem republics because these
workers (a) don't speak Russian, (b) don't want to come, and (c) would be
bitterly resented by Russian workers, who would be required to share scarce
housing and food with individuals they view as racially inferior.
11. In sum, time is not on the Soviet Union's side. This assertion is
now widely accepted among Western observers, as I've noted. But its
staggering implications have scarcely been absorbed. To do so we need to make
yet another leap of imagination, this one to consider the phenomenon of
thwarted ambition:
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12. We have all known individuals who have come to recognize that time is
no longer their ally: the 45-year-old corporation vice president who realizes
that he may never make chairman; the 35-year old childless woman who lies
awake at night, listening to the relentless ticking of her biological clock;
the campaigning politician who has confidently brushed aside polls that show
him trailing his opponent by 20 points, and who now realizes that with just
two weeks left before election day, that lead may be too big to close. The
perception that time is no longer on one's side may take weeks or even years
to develop, and often it is obvious to others first. But by definition the
perception comes suddenly.
13. There are, in fact, just two ways to cope with the perception that
time has become an enemy. The first is to accept the unpleasant reality, and
to resign one's self to reduced expectations: life as a mid-level corporate
manager isn't so bad, there are advantages to not having children, it'll be
nice to leave public life for a while. This is quite often an honorable and
perfectly sensible approach.
14. The second response is to go for it. That is, to refuse to meekly
accept one's likely fate, and instead to work or even fight for whatever it is
one wants. This, too, is quite often an honorable and perfectly sensible
approach. But it is a phenomenon of human nature that from the moment one
concludes that time is an enemy and that the proper response is to go for it
-- all is changed. Ideas and actions that were unthinkable the day before are
now quite thinkable and even appealing. Why? Because the alternative is
failure, and this is judged to be unacceptable. Ambitious, seemingly defeated
mid-level business executives who have taken desperate and daring measures
populate our corporate boardrooms. They populate our prisons, too. The
35-year-old single woman who conceives a child before finding a husband has
gone from a scandal to a national trend. And the history of desperate
politicians in the final days of their campaigns is the stuff of Washington
legends.
15. All this means that if present trends continue, we're going to win
the Cold War. That is, the US will continue to be the world's pre-eminent
power and the Free World will both survive and flourish.
16. It has long been fashionable to view the Cold War as a permanent
feature of global politics, one that will endure through the next several
generations at least. But it seems to me more likely that President Reagan
was absolutely correct when he observed in his Notre Dame speech that the
Soviet Union -- "one of history's saddest and most bizarre chapters" -- is
entering its final pages. In short, the Free World has out-distanced the
Soviet Union economically, crushed it ideologically, and held it off
politically. The only serious arena of competition left is military.
17. We should be optimistic, for if present trends continue we will
win. But we must also be on guard, for incumbent or future Soviet leaders may
not choose to await their fates quietly while their empire completes its
shattering descent into history. The current outbreak of violence may thus be
merely a prelude to the most dangerous years we have ever known.
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