WHEN COMRADES FALL OUT
The Gulf war is not helping the Soviet-American relationship,
Stephen Handelman writes
Moscow MANEZH Square is a forbidding expanse of concrete lying just outside the Kremlin walls, between the old Czarist military, stables and the Moskva hotel. It has witnessed some of perestroika's most stir- ring demonstrations in recent years. A year ago this month, half a million people, infused by the spirit of the democracy revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe, gathered there to call for the end of Communist Party rule. On Saturday, in a bloodless skirmish, it was reclaimed again by the forces of the 'evil empire'.
Young soldiers in iron-grey topcoats filled the square under banners celebrating Soviet Army Day. Elderly veterans, their chests filled with medals, marched along- side red-faced middle-aged civilians pro- claiming the 'unbreakable union of the army and the state'. Toss triumphantly claimed a crowd of 300,000. Eyewitness estimates varied between 30,000 and 100,000. But the symbolism of this gather- ing and its location was more important than counting heads.
`There are people who want to ruin our state by attacking the army,' thundered one speaker, leaving no one in doubt he meant the unsound and anti-patriotic `democrats' who have been using Manezh Square as their rallying point for months. The principal target on Saturday was Rus- sian President Boris Yeltsin, condemned by the official media for his effrontery earlier last week in calling for the resigna- tion of Mikhail Gorbachev. That led to something curious among those present: there were a few posters in support of Saddam Hussein, but for Mr Gorbachev there were none.
It was no coincidence. The Gulf war has introduced a new element of political clarity to this slushy winter of Soviet discontent. Some reformers here are sug- gesting that the first victim of the ground war in Kuwait may turn out to be Mikhail Sergeevich himself, at least in his Mark I reformer model. 'There is growing press- ure in the Soviet Union to stop supporting the multinational coalition,' commented the deputy mayor of Moscow, Sergei Stankevich. 'This internal pressure is be- coming unbearable for our President.'
Democrats have been arguing that the war is a proving ground for the Soviet Union's liberal, Western-leaning foreign policy. Increasingly, however, they are losing out to more resilient forces. The army, with evident widespread support, is asking aloud how it is that their govern- ment has servilely fallen into step behind a Western crusade for oil and hegemony in a region central to great Russian interests. The campaign explains to a large extent the Kremlin's remarkable and continuing peace offensive. Confusing and meddle- some as it may have appeared to the strategists in Washington, the Soviet Un- ion's 11th-hour intervention indicates hard times ahead for Mr Bush's post-Gulf new order.
The grand alliance struck in Helsinki last September, when Mr Gorbachev and Mr Bush, then the best of friends, issued joint warnings to the tyrant of Baghdad, looks increasingly infamous to Soviet patriots. `Now we see the meaning of our post-cold- war alliance with the United States,' sniped Izvestiya foreign affairs analyst Stanislav Kondrashov. 'The Americans fight the way they want to, expecting from us merely a confirmation of our loyalty.' The peevish tone turned to outright resentment after the 'eight-point plan' and 'six-point pack- age' — both concocted under a blaze of international publicity with Mr Tariq Aziz shuttling between Baghdad and Moscow— were politely shoved aside by Washington. While the Kremlin issued a statement `regretting' the decision to send tanks hurtling across the desert, it was left to Pravda to make abundantly and shrilly clear what official echelons really thought of the matter. 'This war is waged first of all for the ambitions of the USA towards sple leadership of the world,' wrote the news- paper's Middle East correspondent, burying the comradely East-West rhetoric of what now looks like a bygone era.
Baghdad has been attempting to use its Soviet allies to promote another set of vague surrender terms which may compli- cate the peace. It would be simplistic to suggest that Moscow is solely interested in protecting a former client. There is already noticeable restlessness about the war among the large Soviet Muslim population in the south, and the prospect of a victo- rious Western military machine, a missile's throw from its own borders, puts Moscow in the embarrassing position of having its future geopolitical interests in the Arab world defined by its former superpower rival. The aggressive manner in which it is pressing its case indicates a change in Soviet foreign policy thinking as fun- damental as the retrenchment in domestic reforms over the past several months.
There is evidence that the foreign minis- try, shorn of the liberal, pro-Western presence of Eduard Shevardnadze, is rapidly losing ground to the hawkish pat- `It's all right, Good Samaritan. I'm afraid I got plastered last night and I've been sleeping it off ' riots, Arabists and great Russian ideolog- ists in the president's circle. We are now told that a key central committee meeting in early February pushed Mr Gorbachev on the road to a 'tilt.' According to one published source, it recommended he re- double efforts to protect Soviet interests and 'authority' in the Middle East. By insisting on its version of a peaceful com- promise, Moscow is superbly positioned to exploit growing suspicions about US mo- tives in Arab and Third World nations, not to mention Europe.
Needless to say, this would greatly satis- fy the army, which is already smarting under the evidence of Western high-tech military prowess. In another unfortunate coincidence, Soviet troops began with- drawing from Germany — rubbing in Moscow's weakened claim to superpower status — on the day the ground war began. (Last week also marked the second anniversary of the withdrawal from Afghanistan). Abandoning a restless East European empire might be acceptable Realpolitik, but losing a Middle East client the same month could be considered down- right carelessness. The floridly imperial rhetoric at Saturday's demonstration underlined the point. 'Let our glorious army remember the boundaries which ex- isted in 1916, the borders of the great Russian empire, which then became the Soviet Union,' shouted one ardent patriot named Mikhail Lozhkin. Almost parenthe- tically, he suggested it might also be time to get Alaska back.
Stephen Handelman is Moscow bureau chief of the Toronto Star.
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