Turning the Tables on Moscow

By Strobe Talbott

Guerrilla. Rebel. Insurgent.

In the American lexicon of the 1960s and '70s, those words were synonyms for the enemy. In the paddy fields of Indochina, in jungles and deserts and tumbledown villages elsewhere around the world, leftist insurgencies seemed to be the cutting edge of Soviet expansionism, a principal cause of American retreat and defeat.

A decade later, the U.S. has gone a long way toward turning the tables on Moscow. In many civil wars today, it is Soviet-backed regimes that face insurgencies. Frequently the U.S. provides some degree of support to the rebel forces.

-- In Nicaragua, the U.S. has waged what is probably the least secret "covert operation" in history, helping the contras against the Sandinistas.

-- Half a world away, in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union faces what is frequently, though simplistically, called its own Viet Nam: a made-in-Moscow clique is holed up in Kabul; caravans of Soviet-supplied armor venture forth by day into hostile hinterlands as helicopter gunships and bombers conduct a bloody pacification campaign, complete with carpet bombing. The U.S. is aiding the mujahedin rebels to the tune of many millions of dollars a year.

-- In Africa, Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) is waging a classic war of attrition in the bush. Its target, the pro-Soviet government in Luanda, relies heavily on some 30,000 Cuban troops, much as the South Vietnamese government relied on American forces until 1975. UNITA's principal backer is South Africa, but Savimbi has visited Washington as frequently as some anticolonialist revolutionaries used to visit Moscow.

-- In Indochina, the site of America's humiliation a decade ago, a loose coalition of anti-Soviet states in the region is aiding a guerrilla war against the Vietnamese occupiers and Hanoi-installed puppet rulers of Kampuchea.

There have been earlier instances of American support for uprisings against regimes inimical to the U.S., but they were sporadic and a number ended in failure. In the Nixon and Ford Administrations, Henry Kissinger worked through the Shah of Iran to support Kurdish separatists inside Iraq, but in 1975 the Shah pulled the plug on the Kurds in exchange for Iraqi concessions in a border dispute. When Kissinger sought to back the pro-Western factions in the Angolan civil war, he was thwarted by Congress, which was then in the throes of its post-Viet Nam withdrawal syndrome.

Ronald Reagan came into office fervently embracing the notion that Uncle Sam should take off his coat and tie, roll up his sleeves and actively oppose Soviet henchmen in the back alleys of the world. Reagan's motivation was quite explicitly connected with Viet Nam. He felt it was high time to demonstrate that the U.S. had recovered from the paralysis and pessimism caused by the trauma of the only war it ever lost.

Support for anti-Communist rebels was part of an overall attitude sometimes called "global unilateralism": by assisting indigenous armed resistance to Soviet-backed regimes around the world, the U.S. could leapfrog over its formal military alliances, thus bypassing nervous and sometimes unreliable foreign friends, and strike directly behind enemy lines. The Soviet Union had inadvertently invited precisely this American strategy. Moscow's surge of expansionism in the '70s had left it overextended and therefore vulnerable to Western harassment and counterattack in the '80s.

According to Francis Fukuyama, a former member of the State Department policy-planning staff now at the Rand Corp., there has been a "role reversal" between the superpowers. Today, says Fukuyama, "the Soviets may find themselves trying to defend the status quo, while the U.S., its allies and associates offer up challenges." The U.S. has an opportunity "to wean away Soviet clients from close embrace with Moscow."

Last year Stephen Sestanovich, an analyst on the staff of the National Security Council, wrote an article suggesting that the Soviet leadership has been debating whether its forces are indeed spread too thin and whether it should reduce its far-flung foreign entanglements. The question for the U.S. is how to encourage the Soviets to decide in favor of what Sestanovich calls "retrenchment." The answer favored by the Reagan Administration has been for the U.S. to turn the screws on governments that are dependent on Moscow, thus raising the price that the Soviets must pay for their adventurism.

This course is especially appealing to CIA Director William Casey, who would like his agency to get back wholeheartedly into the business of covert action. As Casey put it during a meeting at the White House, the CIA should be aiming "discreet but vigorous counterpunches against all forms of Soviet aggression."

Reagan, according to aides, likes the idea of using against the Soviets many of the rough-and-tumble techniques, accompanied by high-minded rhetoric, that Moscow used against the U.S. during the bad old days of the Viet Nam War. "I want to see us on the offensive and the other guys on the defensive for a change," he told a group of advisers early in his first term. Reagan also wanted to dramatize his belief that history is on the side of democracy and capitalism, not Marxism-Leninism, and that what the Soviets smugly term "the correlation of forces" is actually shifting in favor of the West.

In his State of the Union address in February, the President articulated what has since been dubbed the Reagan Doctrine. "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua, to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth," said Reagan. "Support for freedom fighters is self- defense."

Here was a new form of containment, part of what the Atlantic Council of the U.S., a private foreign policy study group, has termed "assertive deterrence." In its ongoing effort to oppose and restrain the Soviet Union, the U.S. must have capabilities offsetting Moscow's at every level, from % small-caliber bullets to multimegaton thermonuclear warheads; the Soviets must not be permitted a monopoly in any significant category of competition, military or paramilitary. To avoid the danger of escalation, the U.S. must have the ability to combat the Soviets and their proxies on their own turf, without resorting to higher levels of violence. In practice, the Reagan Doctrine has given the U.S. both the will and the way to punish and perhaps sometimes reverse Soviet expansionism.

At the same time, support for anti-Communist insurgencies has its limitations. As Nicaragua makes clear, the U.S. is still incapable of waging truly covert warfare of any magnitude. In this respect, the Soviets enjoy a permanent advantage. The First Chief Directorate of the KGB, the principal clandestine arm of Soviet foreign policy, can engage in dirty tricks while preserving its "plausible deniability." The CIA's Directorate for Operations, by contrast, is subject to oversight by a notoriously leaky and fastidious U.S. Congress.

As Nicaragua also illustrates, Congress is nearly as reluctant today to approve secret wars as it was a decade ago, when Henry Kissinger wanted to bankroll Savimbi and other anti-Communists in Angola. Thus, while the worldwide network of Soviet clients is vulnerable to American counterpressure, it is difficult for the U.S. to sustain that pressure, not to mention apply it clandestinely.

Naturally the moral rationale for such tactics is not quite as clear-cut as Reagan made it seem when he proclaimed his doctrine. Almost by definition, doctrines make up in lucidity what they lack in subtlety. The enemies of our enemies do not always qualify as friends with whom the U.S. can feel comfortable. Even those Nicaraguan contras who are genuinely committed to building a free society and a pluralistic political system are uneasy about their comrades-in-arms who were Somocista national guardsmen.

Kampuchea offers a more extreme example. The anti-Vietnamese (hence anti- Soviet) resistance there includes the Khmer Rouge forces of Pol Pot, the deposed tyrant of that benighted country. He might be a pawn on the international chessboard; but, having presided over the murder of as many as 2 million of his own countrymen, he can hardly be called a freedom fighter.

Unfortunately, the nastiness of a regime often has little to do with its viability. Communist dictatorships, like the one that the Sandinistas would like to impose, almost always end up serving the interests of Moscow and ! therefore eliciting its stubborn support; by contrast, a right-wing junta like Chile's, largely because it is so distasteful to Americans, and to its own people, often ends up being in an isolated and untenable position, and therefore a geopolitical liability for the U.S.

While support for guerrillas is a useful instrument of U.S. policy, it can rarely be decisive all by itself. Rather, covert action can serve to soften up a situation so that it will be more amenable to a negotiated settlement, or to direct military intervention. Sooner or later the secret agents and jungle warriors must give way to the diplomats and politicians--or to the generals.

On this point there is no better example than Viet Nam. Guerrillas started the war; diplomats and politicians failed to end it; generals won it. Alas for the U.S., they were Hanoi's generals. When the last Americans left Saigon, they were fleeing not Victor Charlie in his black pajamas and Ho Chi Minh sandals but the uniformed and armored legions of North Viet Nam's army, then fifth largest in the world (now fourth, having supplanted India's army).

The guerrilla movements in which the U.S. is most involved, in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, may both be approaching turning points. The civil wars there have indeed succeeded in softening up the Soviets and their local comrades. The regimes in Managua and Kabul, while not crying uncle, are clearly hurting and may even be looking for a negotiated compromise. The rebels, while not about to win, are not about to surrender either. Soon the U.S., as their principal backer, may have to decide on the next step.

The application of direct U.S. military pressure is simply not feasible in Afghanistan; there are already some 115,000 Soviet troops there. Also, the Kremlin can fight fire with fire: most covert American aid to the mujahedin is channeled through Pakistan, a country that is painfully susceptible to "destabilization" by the Soviet Union. Logistically, it is easier to contemplate the introduction of U.S. combat troops into Central America, but the political obstacles there are considerable. Congress has made it clear that it opposes U.S. military intervention in the region.

That means the time may have come for the diplomats. A number of Western experts believe Mikhail Gorbachev is looking for a face-saving settlement in Afghanistan. In Nicaragua, continued American support for the contras might eventually force the Sandinistas to accept a peace plan along the lines of one put forward by Opposition Leader Arturo Cruz. He calls for a cease-fire in exchange for new elections and democratic guarantees. A settlement should also provide for a reduction in the Nicaraguan armed forces and limitations on Soviet and Cuban arms. The U.S. is not likely to ease up on the Sandinistas unless they accept such a deal.

Even if the U.S. pulled out the stops on its support for the contras, most experts agree these forces could not bring about the overthrow of the Sandinistas--an objective that the President has come within a hairbreadth of supporting. Nor is there much chance that Congress will restore direct aid to the contras unless they, and their sponsors in the Administration, are willing to accept a political compromise.

Last week the Administration took what may be an important step in that direction. Having previously pursued a strategy of fight and talk--supporting the contras while promoting negotiations--the President shifted to a strategy of fight or talk--offering the Sandinistas a limited respite in the contra campaign as an inducement for them to enter serious negotiations.

In Nicaragua, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the U.S. has clearly recognized that support for guerrilla warfare can be a legitimate and effective ploy in the great game of superpower competition. Recently the Administration seems also to have come around to recognizing that its hand, while strong, should not be overplayed.