AND ANOTHER THING
As world storm-clouds gather, time to light a candle in Britain
PAUL JOHNSON
Until recently it was a reasonable pre- diction that the century would go out on a high note: the Soviet Union destroyed, totalitarianism dying, all Europe liberated and democracy and free enterprise spread- ing fast everywhere. Now the shadows are returning. The mess Russia's uncertain rulers have made of introducing capitalism and the general criminalisation of society mean that the people who call themselves Communists there have a strong chance of winning the elections in June.
We need not fear the return of a Marxist command economy — nobody believes in Marxism now except a few silly dons — but there is a likelihood that a change of gov- ernment will put the old Russian Franken- stein's monster on its feet again — xeno- phobic, racist, intolerant, revanchiste, ready to bully its immediate neighbours, spoiling for a fight with its former colonies and satellites. One should never forget Tal- leyrand's adage: 'Russia is never as strong as it looks. Russia is never as weak as it looks.' Weak or strong, the bear is always a dangerous animal. No longer able to com- pete in the highest-tech thermonuclear weapons and defensive systems, Russia has ceased to be a superpower, and much of its existing strategic armoury is unmaintained, obsolete and inoperative. The recent record of its conventional forces against the Chechens reveals demoralisation, incompe- tence and corruption on a shocking scale.
But widespread shame and anger at Rus- sia's military performance is one reason the Communists may win. They will not have the resources to restore Russia's superpow- er status — though they will certainly have a try — but they will beef up the Russian army and improve its discipline. Then they will set about putting pressure on all the lost Soviet territories still in reach — the Ukraine, the Baltic states, Transcaucasia and central Asia. I have an uneasy feeling that they will resume their sponsorship of international terrorism and sell arms all over the world without restraint, primarily to restore the Russian arms industry. And of course they will crush opposition within Russia, not in the style of Stalin but in the traditional manner of the tsars. This angry bear, back in action and with a sore head, dreaming of lost empires and revenge, will be a horribly uncomfortable bedfellow not just for the little states cowering at its feet, but for us all.
Then there is Communist China, which still is an empire and treats colonies like Tibet just as it pleases. Its industrial and commercial economy is growing at an astonishing rate, it now has a rapidly expanding navy, has acquired huge quanti- ties of advanced weaponry from Russia for cash and is testing some dauntingly advanced strategic nuclear delivery sys- tems. So it too feels in the mood to bully its neighbours. At times in the 1980s there were real hopes that the narrow-based Communist regime would collapse or that the country would revert to the provincial warlordism of the past. But Peking seems to have recovered its nerve and reasserted its authority throughout China. Now its menaces towards Taiwan and its high- handed behaviour in its future colony, Hong Kong, are a crude but effective way of telling the world that it is the sole Asian superpower, with imperial longings, a right to a wide sphere of influence and the means to deal with any state in the conti- nent unwilling to kowtow.
These sinister developments in both Rus- sia and China ought to set our alarm bells ringing and lead to defensive counter- measures. As Margaret Thatcher has recently insisted, we must go ahead with anti-nuclear defensive systems as fast as we can. I will not be happy until Britain, as well as the United States, has a working thermonuclear shield in position. But we ought to be strengthening our collective security arrangements too. We should give Nato back its high profile and restore its centrality in Western decision-making. We ought to enlarge it to include Sweden, Fin- land and the Baltic states, Poland, Hun- gary, Czechoslovakia and the civilised por- tions of former Yugoslavia. We cannot do much to help the Chechens or the Armeni- ans, though we can certainly arm them if Russia resumes aid to international terror- ists. But we can draw firm lines, as we did in the 1950s, which Russia knows it may not cross. In Asia we ought to be thinking seri- ously about a collective security alliance on Nato lines, to include India and Japan as well as Korea, Malaysia and Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. With China on the imperialist warpath, we might find other neighbours of hers, such as Burma and the Indochinese states, anx- ious to come under the umbrella too.
But such measures will require courage, initiative and leadership of a high order from Washington, and there is no chance of getting any of these things from President Clinton. He has emerged as a man with a crooked past and a mendacious present, married to a Lady Macbeth who, when it comes to lying and skulduggery, is his malign mentor. Even worse, he is an insular figure who is uninterested in foreign affairs except insofar as America's domes- tic political lobbies dictate attitudes. He is ignorant, cowardly, unco-ordinated and in many ways deeply frivolous. I dread to think of Clinton leading, or rather not lead- ing, the free world into the next millenni- um. Yet that, I fear, is exactly what we are likely to get. Ever since General Colin Pow- ell, under the influence of his anxious wife, ducked running for the Republican nomi- nation, the GOP has drifted inexorably into the tired, superannuated hands of Bob Dole. He is an old, old man: looks it, sounds like it, thinks like it. Unlike Ronald Reagan, he cannot make people feel good, and even his jokes are the antithesis of Reagan's, invoking bitterness or cynicism rather than simple mirth. He is a kind of political toothache or colic, a walking uneasiness, bad news written all over his battered, lined mug.
So we have to face the probability, which would have seemed incredible a year ago, of the stained, discredited and worthless Clinton getting himself handsomely re- elected. It is an astonishing indictment of the way in which the most powerful office in the world no longer attracts candidates of merit. And it is a sombre prospect for the rest of us. The best that we in Britain can do to see ourselves safely into the 21st century is to ensure that Downing Street, at least, radiates the right signals. That is a powerful additional argument in favour of putting Tony Blair, a young man of strong character and high principles, in charge at the earliest possible opportunity.
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