Liberals see need for a Russian Monroe Doctrine

By Christina Ismail-Mahn

HAMBURG (JP): The United States has always been a master of political planning. Even before Washington entered World War II, experts had been asked to plan for the world after Hitler. After the U.S. entered the anti-axis-powers alliance, memoranda on the said subject mushroomed in different think tanks.

When fascism was defeated, the agenda was topped by concepts of how to win the Cold War. The planning had then become much more important because of Washington being the undisputed leader of the free world represented by NATO.

American archives are full of formerly top-secret documents, of concepts of how to respond to threats from the Soviet Union. The filled archives reflect a victory of democratic values over communist totalitarianism. Later President Ronald Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall, shouting his demand across that symbol of the divided world: "Mr. Gorbachev, take this wall down!"

The Soviet Empire collapsed and the Wall fell. By 1992, all the Pentagon's planning games became obsolete. One waited for somebody to open a drawer in Washington in order to take out a planning paper with -- the assumed title -- "The world after the defeat of communism". A paper which would also deal with the future of NATO. Six years have passed and it has become evident that there was no such planning.

It is agreed upon, admitted by all parties concerned, and proven by documents, that the world had been divided into two spheres of influence at the last conferences during World War II.

Fifty-one years later, some internal quarreling put aside, the Western sphere is intact. The Eastern sphere seems to have moved towards a political vacuum with Poland at its center.

The West has apparently forgotten promises given by NATO to Gorbachev on the eve of German reunification that NATO troops would never be stationed on former East German territory. The West keeps talking about strengthening European security. NATO, while planning to take Poland as a member, plans to leapfrog over East Germany, getting as close to Russia as 500 miles.

The U.S. and Russia have presidential elections this year, and much of the rhetoric can be set aside as campaign talk. But two questions will have to be answered soon, regardless of the outcome of the elections.

To avoid any form of nationalistic revanchism in Russia, the West has to provide a grant to the former Soviet Union to keep its sphere of influence. This has nothing to do with imperialism, it is purely a rational Russian national interest against possible dangers like expansionism from Turkey and radical Islam.

Russian liberals see the need for a Russian Monroe Doctrine which would and should exclude any military presence of former opponents on territory of their former sphere of influence.

Gen. Alexander Lebed, an outspoken Yeltsin opponent, told Reuters: "The Cold War is over. They won, and we all agreed to this. So why have you (the West) decided to re-open the competition?"

By traveling around and offering memberships right and left in a style of selling shares for a fancy golf club, the West will not avoid the answer to the question of what should become of NATO.

Formulating the answer cannot be left to the vast organization itself. Because one would ask God-like qualities from members of this immense international, military and bureaucratic octopus to decide upon which of its own, all and everything embracing arms, it should cut off.

Brussels just seems to have at the NATO headquarters a recycling factory for Cold War images, as the January issue of The Atlantic Monthly put it.

It is certainly a fact that the existence of NATO and the Warsaw Pact contributed to the longest period of peace in Europe. It might not be a coincidence that the situation in the Balkans could grow to the horrifying extent we have seen because the Warsaw Pact has dissolved. This speculation might be raised even knowing that Tito and his successors were not members of it.

One must not necessarily be a pacifist to question the value of tanks and missiles. The movement which brought communist totalitarianism down was started by an unarmed worker in a Polish shipyard, Lech Walesa. The revolution bringing down the Berlin Wall started during praying sessions of Lutheran Christians in communist East Germany.

Even the often blamed hippies of the flower generation with their often irrational cries for freedom did their part. Elvis Presley, the Beatles and even soaps like Dallas -- to name just a few -- crossed the barbed wires on the roads of electronic entertainment.

Cynics say that the way in which the Russian army is "laboring" in Chechnya proves that the Russian soldier is basically tired of fighting. How, they ask, could there be a threat to the West, if not provoked by NATO expansion?

Let Germany's Helmut Kohl remain Santa Claus and the promoter of East European wishes to join the European Union by taking down trade barriers. Let the Russians lose their fear of being fenced out of Europe by granting them what every American takes for granted, that no point on earth is too far away to not be of national interest.

Last but not least, thinking in geopolitical terms, one should not encourage Russia to look for better ties with China in her nostalgic wish to regain some of the influence she once had as a superpower.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Hamburg, Germany.