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]]]] GOVERNOR DUKAKIS IS TOYING WITH DEFENSE, AND AMERICA [[[[[
by Midge Decter, (10/4/88)
Executive Director of the Committee for the Free World
[and long-time AtE subscriber]
NEW YORK TIMES Op-Ed Page 10-3-88
[Uploaded by Freeman 07656GAED]
Anyone of voting age knows enough about the world to take for granted
that when he listens to campaign oratory what he will get is a character-
istically and intentionally debased form of discourse. Thus, the Presi-
dential debate should not in any way have disappointed normal expecta-
tions.
But when it comes to the issue of defense policy and United States-
Soviet relations, even by the special standards of campaigning Gov. Mi-
chael S. Dukakis has been giving disingenuousness a whole new dimension.
He is trying simultaneously to soar with the hawks and feed with the
doves. The irony is that he must endorse the results obtained by Ronald
Reagen while disavowing the means that were necessary to obtain them.
It is no secret that Governor Dukakis long numbered himself among the
ardent opponents of nuclear weapons. If that in any way qualifies as an
actual position rather than a mere posture, he has indeed a position.
Back in the days when there was an active movement for a nuclear
freeze--the days, remember, when the United States was threatening, or
promising, to deploy intermediate-range missles in Western Europe to
offset the already-deployed Soviet SS-20's, while the Soviets on their
side were engaged in a massive effort to keep this from happening--Gover-
nor Dukakis was a member of that movement in good standing.
Currently, it is not unfair to say, he teeters back and forth very
close to the edge of outright unilateralism, offering an occasional grac-
ious nod to the Stealth bomber, say, but steadily opposed to all or any
of the weapons systems that have been declared necessary to a modernized
nuclear deterrent: that is, the MX, the Midgetman, and last but not
least in the litany of what he is aginst, the Strategic Defense
Initiative, S.D.I., he insists,will, among other disasters, sink our al-
ready overburdened economy. His own defense policy is to strengthen what
he deems to be our shamefully neglected conventional forces.
But the members of the peace movement who have for all these years been
advocating such a policy, and most especially Michael Dukakis, are now in
something of a pickle. Having declared that the arms race in and of
itself would inevitably end in nuclear war, they are now confronted
with the achievement of Ronald Reagen, "warmonger" par excellence, who
has succeeded in getting Mikhail S. Gorbachev to agree in principle to a
mutual reduction of nuclear arsenals.
One need not share President Reagen's faith that arms reduction by
itself will contribute to our security--many of us, in fact, do not--to
recognize that Moscow's concessions could only have resulted from Soviet
worry about the renewal of American military strength: the renewal, need
it be pointed out, that the Reagen Administration undertook and that
Michael Dukakis opposed.
Though Governor Dukakis has in recent weeks taken Mr. Reagen to task
for having left the initiative in Mr. Gorbachev's hands, surely a man
intelligent enough to have got himself nominated for the Presidency knows
in his heart what did in the end actually bring the Soviets to the point
of serious negotiation.
There is no way he cannot know that it was the ungrading of our nuclear
weaponry, the deployment of intermediate-range missles and the decision
to launch the S.D.I. No doubt there are peace movement true believers
who, in loyalty to their old-time religion, refuse to acknowledge the
proof of Ronald Reagen's nuclear pudding; but unlike Michael Dukakis,
they are not engaged in asking the American people to hand over to them
personal responsibility for the nation's destiny.
Mr. Dukakis would clearly prefer that his audiences quickly skip over
the question of just how the country happened to get where it presently
is vis-`a-vis the Soviets and move on to other things. During the
debate, for instance, he observed that for 40 years we have regarded the
Soviets as enemies and now President Reagen has signed two arms control
treaties with them--following which, without even a hint of what might
have connected them in his mind, he turned to George Bush and demanded
to know what he intended to do now anout the Soviet need for economic
help.
Leaving aside the almost comically inappropriate tone of triumph in
which Mr. Dukakis issued this challenge, as if it were George Bush and
not he who had been caught out in a contradiction, one can hardly blame
him for his haste. Given the chance to think it over, people might have
been reminded that had his own views on defense policy prevailed, the
Soviets, far from finding it advisable to reach agreements with us,
would have had a hard time deciding whether to laugh with relief at their
luck or with contempt for America's incapacity to grasp the real
properties and uses of power.
Of course, Mr. Dukakis could do what some people do when they have
learned about some formerly cherished opinion: say no and move on. But
for some reason, candidates for high office do not seem to find this a
possible option.
So it appears that Michail Dukakis will go on until Nov. 8, on the one
hand unable, lest it cost him the election, to be the full-throated dis-
armer his true constituents want him to be, and on the other hand hemmed
in and disarmed himself by the need to pretend that he means to beat
Ronald Reagen and George Bush at their own game.
The truth is, however, that this is a game his ideas would disqualify
him even from playing, let alone winning.
* * *
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