In a secret 1973 speech given--fittingly, with the latest strategic arms pact being signed there next week--in Prague, Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev conveyed a message of hope to his Communist Party comrades (scroll down to see Pat Buchanan's article). Papa Bear then said:
We have been able to accomplish in a short time with detente than was done for years purchasing the confrontation policy....By 1985, as a consequence of detente, we will have achieved most of our objectives in Western Europe....And a decisive shift in the correlation of forces was such that, come 1985, we will be able to extend our will whenever we need to.
(Skip the atrocious grammar, probably the translator's fault.)
Factor in that in 1978 at Harvard Russian dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned that the West's illusions would be "broken by the pitiless crowbar of events":
There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of petrified armor around people's minds. Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.
The apogee of President Carter's delusion came at the June 1979 signing of the SALT II accords in Vienna when Brezhnev, ruler of the world's most powerful atheist superpower in history, told Jimmy Earl: "God will not forgive us if we fail." Later he embraced Carter in a Russian bear-hug.
Six months later, as the SALT II Treaty languished under fire in the US Senate, Russian troops invaded Afghanistan. Carter plaintively exclaimed of Brezhnev that "he did not tell me the facts accurately." He added that the invasion had taught him more about the Soviets than anything else. It was an expensive lesson for us, and an even more expensive one for the Afghans, whose country has never recovered.
Which brings us to the delusions/illusions of Prague 2010. Team Obama believes that it is setting an example by deep cuts in American & Russian arsenals; it believes that others, including rogue states, will follow suit; it believes that China will see the light too; it believes that it is making unique progress in arms reductions. It believes that it has sacrificed nothing in missile defense options. It believes that Eastern Europe, formerly under Moscow's thumb, is now made safer. In sum, it believes that the Prague Treaty will make the world safer.
To the contrary: For reasons set forth at length in my Friday March 26 posting (see Archives) the world's rogue regimes laugh at our setting an example. China will see and likely grasp a strategic opportunity to build an arsenal larger than America's and press its claims to dominance in the western Pacific, notably regarding Taiwan. Russian protests over any missile defense options they dislike will put political heat on the administration to curb such moves, despite the lack of formal legal prohibition. Eastern Europe has been partially drawn back into Moscow's orbit.
Bottom Line. The world, far from being safer for peace & freedom, has been made a more dangerous place because of the Prague Arms Treaty of 2010.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Nuclear Proliferation, Arms Control, WMD, Foreign Policy, Conservative Politics
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