GRAVE NEW WORLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640051-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 51
• Publication Date: May 7, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640051-2
A"T,^t r r.'"! EP! ED
WASHINGTON TIMES
7 May 1985
Michael Ledeen's
Grave
New
World
By Tod Lindberg
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
" hey have a whole society that does not work:'
Michael Ledeen says. `And those parts of it
that do work are all illegal. I frankly do not
believe that the Soviet empire could survive,
were it not for Western assistance:'
He continues. "The economic system is a shambles.
And a footnote: One of the curious things about all this
great press Gorbachev is getting is that no one bothers
to point out that he was minister of agriculture" before
his elevation to the supreme position of power in the
Soviet Union.
But wait, there's more. Agriculture "is the greatest
catastrophe they've ever had. Russia was the world's
greatest grain exporter before the Revolution and is
today the world's greatest grain importer. That's quite an
achievement. And part of it is due to Gorbachev."
Michael Ledeen is unhappy with the Soviet Union, and
he's not very happy with the swanky Jean-Pierre restau-
rant, either. It's lunchtime at Jean-Pierre. Mr. Ledeen, 43
- author, Senior Fellow at Georgetown University's
Center for Strategic and International Studies, con-
sultant to the State Department, the Defense
Department, and the National Security Council, and
once special adviser to former Secretary of State
Alexander Haig - has just finished
a heated but friendly argument with
the maitre d' over the merits of tar-
ragon.
c_^ Mock-obstinately, they have
agreed to disagree, and as a waiter
is bringing Mr. Ledeen his first,
course - without its usual tarragon-
laced dressing - he turns to his
favorite - or least favorite, depend-
irig on how you look at it - subject,
the internal crisis in the Soviet
Union.
There was, it seems, a factory in
the Soviet city of Cheboksary, where
heavy earth movers were built.
"They wanted to build these huge
earth movers. The first thing to be
said is that the current world market
for these things is about 850 units a
year. The Soviets wanted to build a
factory that would produce 40,000 a
year.
"They designed this thing - this
huge tractor - and they hired West-
ern companies to design the
machines to build it, which they did.
And they built a few exemplars.
"So far as I can tell, not one of
them has ever worked. The thing is
so heavy that nine times out of ten
the blade - within about 10 yards of
leaving the factory - or the tires
collapse, or the shocks go, or the
whole thing just caves in.
"It's just a catastrophe. It's like a
Walt Disney cartoon where one of
these monstrous devices just slowly
comes apart, springs popping out.
"That's really the Soviet empire."
But lest those who oppose the
Soviet empire think they are about
to have an easy time of it, Mr. Ledeen
hastens to explain that this is less
than half the story.
In the Soviet Union, he says, "You
have a combination of structural cri-
sis and great military strength. And
that's the most dangerous of all sit-
uations.
"If they were militarily weaker, if
we still had the kind of strategic
superiority we had in the 1960s ...
we could view this crisis with con-
siderable equanimity.
"No longer so today." Because of
their internal failures, he says, "the
Kremlin desperately and urgently
wants visible signs of victory with
regard to the United States:'
And to Mr. Ledeen's mind, it is by
no means clear that the United
States is capable of preventing such
victories. "The United States isn't
serious about foreign policy. It does
not have the people and the tradi-
tions in the area of foreign policy to
permit us to design and then manage
a serious, durable foreign policy.
"American history:" he says, "con-
tributes a great deal" to this lack of
seriousness. "The fact that we've
been isolated for so long, we don't
have hostile neighbors on our bord-
ers - we've never been compelled to
think in realistic terms about foreign
policy except when we're attacked."
And since the prospect of a direct
military clash between the United
States and the Soviet Union is not the
most likely threat this nation faces
- but rather a gradual, indirect ero-
sion of its strategic position - it's
likely that more realistic thinking, in
Mr. Ledeen's view, may never be
forthcoming.
I
new book, "Grave New World:
The Superpower Crisis of the
1980s," just published by Oxford
University Press. In it, as now over
lunch, Mr. Ledeen argues that the
current world situation is perilous
indeed, for both the United States
and the Soviet Union. The ongoing
structural crisis in the Soviet Union,
combined with the failure of the U.S.
foreign policy establishment, has
made for a world full of uncertainty
and danger.
"The world is becoming more
dangerous because neither we nor
the Russians know what we're
doing," he says. "And therefore, the
rest of the world finds us unpredict-
able"
Of the smaller countries of the
world, "The crazy things they would
never have undertaken some years
ago," when the United States and the
Soviet Union were each more in con-
trol of their destinies, "suddenly
become thinkable. And so they start
in on all kinds of crazy adventures
and say to themselves, well, if the
superpowers don't like it, we'll hear
from them and there will be time to
change our minds:'
The result, he says, is "a kind of
Balkanization of the world, where
little countries start to drive the big
countries. The clearest proof of this
is that you.now have tiny countries
with global foreign policies. You
have Cuba, you have Libya, you have
Israel - there's a whole series of
tiny little countries to which the
whole world reacts. Tails wagging
dogs."
rave New World" is already
provoking impassioned
reaction, especially from
critics on the Left. But even Timothy
Garton Ash, the foreign editor of the
politically eclectic English weekly,
The Spectator, was moved, in an oth-
erwise negative review in The New
Republic, to call the book "a fine
introduction to that part of an
America ideological shift generally
(but unhelpfully) known as neocon-
servatism :'
Mt'..Ledeen is indeed possessed of
solid neoconservative credentials.
He is a frequent contributor to Com-
mentary magazine, and once wrote
a regular feature on the press for
The American Spectator. More
broadly, the dust jacket of "Grave
New World" is sanctioned by former
Secretary of State Haig; former U.N.
Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick; her
successor-designate, Vernon A. Wal-
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tern; and columnist George F Will.
But while the Left's reaction to
Mr. Ledeen's argument may have
been predictable, the hook is also
generating a certain measure of
controversy on the Right. One
observer says that Mr. Ledeen's anal-
vsis has assumed "the U.S. and the
Soviet Union could or would or did
exercise real control over their
spheres of influence." The United
States, this observer feels, has in fact
never had such control and has never
been an imperial power in the sense
the Soviet Union has. Moreover, the
Soviet Union's "loss of control or
power has been much exaggerated"
Another prominent analyst, per-
haps anticipating this charge of the
"fallacy of equivalence;' has said
that Mr. Ledeen has been "far more
sensitive" to how his thesis plays out-
side Washington, particularly in
European capitals craving a more
orderly world. "It's a very acute look
at the international system," this
observer adds.
Mr. Ledeen himself has had
some fairly extensive
firsthand experience of
Europe. After completing a Ph.D. in.
modern European history at the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin, he lived in Italy
from 1973 to 1977. He taught at the
University of Rome and was the
Rome correspondent for the The:
New Republic. He returned to:
become a senior fellow at
Georgetown's Center for Strategic,
and International Studies, and co-
editor of The Washington Quarterly.'
During 1981 and half of 1982, he
worked for Mr. Haig, until the time
of the latter's resignation as secre-
tary of state. Mr. Ledeen spent most'
of his time while at the State Depart-
ment, he says, on "an ongoing mis-
sion to the Socialist International,"
the independent organization of
Western socialist parties. The idea'
was to explore "a whole range of'
issues having to do with democracy,
and Soviet power," issues in which
even as conservative a government'
as the Reagan administration might!
have interests in common with the
socialists.
"There was a lot of initial suspi-
cion of this" initiative, he says. Simi-
lar efforts under the Carter,
administration had met with no con-
spicuous success. "People thought,
why do it again when it didn't work,
with a left-wing government? Why
should a conservative government
be able to do someting that a liberal
government couldn't?"
Stijl, he says from the vantage
point of today, "we were quite suc-
cessful in a number of cases."
Indeed, he says. "I'm tempted to
believe that part of the ease right
now between the Reagan adminis-
tration and the socialist govern-
ments of Spain, Portugal, France,
Italy, and the socialist prime min-
ister in Israel;' is due "to the fact that
I Secretary] Haig was far-sighted
enough to realize that we had to be
able to work with these people."
A fter leaving the direct employ
of the government, Mr.
Ledeen returned to'
Georgetown's CSIS, and took up con
suiting, duties to the State and
Defense Departments and the
National Security Council. About
much of his consulting work, he is
slightly reticent - his activities
"deal in part with counterterrorism,
and in part with the series of ques-
tions I was working on before, Cen-
tral America, Poland, some West
European questions" But, he says,
after a pause in the conversation,
"there isn't anything particularly
sexy about this work. It's analytical"
Among his sexier activities as a
consultant was his stint as one of the
government's analysts of the tens of
thousands of pages of documents
captured in Grenada after the U.S.
invasion. These documents - copies
of internal communications of Mau-
rice Bishop's New Jewel Movement
and government - provide, he says,
an unprecedented and unique look at
how Marxist-Leninists come into
and consolidate their power.
This in turn led to another consult-
ing assignment, this time for ABC's
weekly television news program
"20/20" "We want to Grenada for a
week, trying to find out what hap-
pened during the four years of com-
munist rule" there.
Mr. Ledeen had become
reasonably well-known as a result of
his essays and his regular feature in
The American Spectator and for his
sharply critical views of the
American media, especially televi-
sion news.
But his praise of ABC's work on
the Grenada program is
unqualified: "They did an absolutely
super job. I was very impressed with
their diligence, their discipline. We
never once got to the beach in a
whole week on Grenada, which tells
you something. It broke my heart,"
he says mock-wistfully.
S ays Martin Clancy, the veteran
producer responsible for the
segment (tentatively scheduled
for broadcast on July 4), "Here's'a
guy who had sat down and gone
through all these documents. He
brought us the concept, the idea" for
the program. And Mr. Ledeen was "a
joy to work with," Mr. Clancy says.
The feeling was mutual. Says Mr.
Ledeen, "I was very impressed with
him."
Still, though, problems with the
media, in his view, do persist. "The
most sinister thing about the press
is that it has become part of the gov-
ernment" ' The press offices that
reporters maintain in government
buildings make for a high degree of
access that is in turn exploited by
government officials in serious
games of politically motivated leak
and counterleak.
"There is a tendency here-19-
believe that every morning the world
is created anew. It remains to e
defined by the major media every
morning," he says. "And from my
own experience in government. I can
tell you that the most important doc-
uments on the desks of cabinet sec-
retaries every morning I are not in]
the intelligence nouch. hut the morn-
ing press clips. That is what drives
the days's agenda
It is a significant contributing
cause, in Mr. Ledeen's view, to the
inability of the government to take
foreign-policy making seriously.
Another, he urges, is "lack of exper-
tise."
As an example, he cites the fail-
ure o f American
policvmakers to understand
the revolution in Iran, the forces that
toppled the shah and broug ht the
Avatollah Khomeini and his radical,
reactionary brand of Islam to power.
"At the time of the Iranian crisis,
even at CIA, there was no full-time,
experienced Iranian analyst. The
man in charge of the original CIA
task force to deal with this problem
was a Gulf States expert. He was an
- Arabist. Iran is not an Arab county .
The station chief in Iran at t h e
time of the crisis was a man who had
spent most of his professional
career in the Orient." He quickly
adds, "This is not to criticize these
people. On the contrary, both of
those people were and are
extraordinarily good - very intel-
ligent, very skilled, very well-
trained - in their areas of expertise.
Their areas of expertise just didn't
happen to be in Iran"
Iran, of course, was the Carter
administration's responsibility:
What about the Reagan administra-
tion? "It's better than Carter, but not
nearly good enough. Very often," he
says, pointing to a third major factor
in the United States' unseriousness,
"it comes up with good policies, but
too late.
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-~ .
"Very important questions like
timing are hard to raise in this coun-
try." As an example, he points to
"Haig's enormous frustration," early
in the Reagan adminstration, "with
the refusal of the White House to be
serious about Central America.
"Now, they had their reasons,"
mostly the White House's view that
the crucial issue for the first year
was the economy. "Still in all, the
case that Haig made about Central
America was that it is urgent - we
have got to deal with it now, in the
first year - because these things
can only be done in the first year of
a new administration; then the
political curtain drops and we're in
electoral politics again."
Mr. Ledeen speculates that "if
we had done for Central
America in the first two
years of Reagan what we did in the
last two years of Reagan, we would
probably have had a solution," by
which he means furtherance of "the
democratic revolution" in Central
America, and the suppression of the
totalitarian revolution.
These are some of the things that,
in Mr. Ledeen's view, have contri-
buted to the inability of the United'
States to exploit the difficulties the
Soviet Union is having. "All previous,
totalitarianisms either have contin-
ued to survive to the present day, or,
were blown away in war. We don't'
have a model for the breakdown of a
totalitarian system."
He sees two different possibilities
for potential Western action, direct
or indirect. One that "might have an
enormous impact internally" on the
Soviets would come "if they suffered
a clear military defeat someplace,"
Afghanistan being the most likely,
though not the only possible, can-
didate. A second thing to be borne in
mind, he says - thinking, certainly,
of such instances of Soviet incompe-
tence as the heavy-earth-mover
plant at Cheboksary - is that "the
real lever we have against the Soviet
empire" comes from the Western
superiority in "money and technol-
ogy" and "know-how."
But, of course, exploiting that -
to say nothing of exploring the pos-
sibilities of a "clear military defeat"
for the Soviets somewhere
requires just such serious policy-
making as Mr. Ledeen has found
sorely wanting. Is he, then, pessi-
mistic about U.S. prospects?
s it pessimism?" replies the
trim, bearded man in the gray
corduroy jacket that is prob-
ably too heavy for the unseasonably
warm weather. "Yeah, it's pessi-
mism," he says, lighting a fat Hondu-
ran cigar at the table a waiter has
just cleared and crumbed. "Anyone
who is realistic about the way our
policy is being designed and con-
ducted nowadays has to be pessimis-
tic."
But perhaps Mr. Ledeen is not
quite so pessimistic as he claims.
After all, the Soviets are not trying
to build 40,000 heavy earth movers
for nothing. They mean to use them
for no less a project than reversing
the flow of a large number of the
Soviet Union's Siberian rivers.
There is an acute water shortage in
the central Soviet Union. By
changing the flow of rivers to north-
to-south, the Soviets hope to restore
the water supply squandered on the
now-failing hydroelectric con-
structions.
But, as Mr. Ledeen puts it, revers-
ing the rivers, if they achieve it, of
course, will be the end of Russia" -
ecologically speaking, at least.
A spokesman for the press office
in the Soviet Embassy in Washington
says that the project, though it "was
widely debated" and approved, is
now temporarily in abeyance. "Some
environmental protection groups
said it would cause problems," he
says, just as if he were speaking of
lobbying efforts of the Sierra Club
and the Wilderness Society.
But, he hastens to add firmly, the
project "has not been cancelled."
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