"The
Enemy Behind Our Enemy"
by J. R. Nyquist
On
Saturday I received a phone call from a Czech immigrant (now a naturalized American
citizen). He was gloomy in his assessment of the world situation. “The
communists are still in control in the Czech Republic,” he explained.
“They are helping the terrorists.” Because he attempted to bring
publicity to this issue he has received threatening phone calls. “Get
your shovel ready,” one anonymous caller stated.
Another
friend, a citizen of the Czech Republic, upset by the prevailing power of secret
communist structures in the “former” east bloc countries, wondered
why the United States did nothing. There is evidence on all sides, she explained,
yet “the U.S. still keeps a blind eye towards Russia. Why?”
The answer is chilling to hear, but nonetheless true. Governments are made up
of men, and men are often deceived by appearances: by friendly smiles and solemn
promises. But most of all, they are deceived by their own hopes for the future.
“I was thinking about this Iraq mess,” she wrote. “There is
one big question I would like to find the answer for. Why the U.S. didn’t
attack the former USSR and its satellites when it was well-known that Russians
was, and is, building a nuclear arsenal, when their nuclear warheads were stored
all over our country, when Czechs trained terrorists, produced plastic explosives
and supplied arms to Muslim and terrorist countries, and still do so today.
Why was nothing done when human rights were abused here, and many people were
tortured and killed, when terrible gulags were everywhere?”
People
in Eastern and Central Europe were suffering. They were being tortured and oppressed.
But America, the world’s most powerful country, did very little to help
those caught behind the Iron Curtain. Now the United States is going to liberate
Iraq. But why should the U.S. be so selective in which dictatorship it topples?
Why doesn’t the United States confront Russia with its clandestine support
for Iraq, or its treaty-breaking and its proliferation of deadly technology?
“I just don’t understand,” she wrote.
An
unclassified report from the CIA to Congress now warns that Russia is spreading
dangerous nuclear and missiles secrets to other countries. China is also doing
this. If the so-called “axis of evil” possesses weapons of mass
destruction we have Moscow and Beijing to thank. And we also need to ask a very
simple though terrifying question. Is this proliferation a deliberate policy
adopted with the idea of hurting the United States and its allies? (1)
America’s
leaders hesitated to attack the Soviet Union when the U.S. had a monopoly of
nuclear weapons. Because of the terrible price we would have paid, we hesitated
to save those who were caught in the totalitarian web. The question of World
War III was studied after North Korea attacked South Korea in 1950. Military
experts concluded that most if not all our allies would abandon us at the outset
of a world war against communism (if America struck first). It was estimated,
in the early 1950s, that such a war would cost 10 American million lives and
last 10 years. The military experts believed victory was possible, but the cost
was too high.
American
leaders preferred to wait and see if communism would gradually die out. Their
wishful thought, as well, was that Russia and China would turn against each
other. President Eisenhower told Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that
our policy was to hold firm until changes occurred within the Sino-Soviet bloc.
“He felt these changes were inevitable,” wrote Dulles. Appearing
before Congress in early 1959 Dulles hopefully stated: “you could very
well have a struggle between … Mao Tse-tung and Khrushchev as to who would
be the ideological leader of International Communism.” In addition, President
Eisenhower believed that communism itself would change and that waiting for
this change was better than accepting the inevitability of nuclear world war.
And who would want to argue otherwise? (2)
The
leaders of the Soviet Union heard about the statements of President Eisenhower.
They knew what John Foster Dulles said to Congress. They knew all about America’s
long-range strategy against communism. They knew that America was waiting for
them to split apart and change from within. How, then, would Moscow use this
knowledge?
Nixon’s
outreach to China was a continuation of Eisenhower’s “divide and
conquer” idea. His détente policy looked forward to internal changes
within the communist regimes. Now it appears that Eisenhower’s strategy
and Nixon’s policy, followed by all subsequent presidents, was unsatisfactory.
Because of this plan China has been strengthened and Moscow has renewed its
old alliance with Beijing. Washington is assured that this alliance is not aimed
at America, but such assurances are fairy tales for adult children. Russia is
supplying China with advanced weapons, and together they have built up a bloc
of terrorist states in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It is now clear from
the statements of Fidel Castro, and from the actions of Venezuela’s Hugo
Chavez, that this bloc of countries intends to bring the United States to its
knees by means of economic warfare and terrorism. Third World states and small
terrorist groups will be used as proxies to directly attack the United States
and its allies, to disrupt their economies, to terrorize their leaders, and
to cripple their defenses.
The
danger to the United States and to Western Civilization is very real. According
to Insight magazine, elite U.S. counter-terrorism units are on alert. Citing
intelligence and military sources, Insight has stated there “is a growing
body of evidence that terrorists associated with and/or sympathetic to Osama
bin Laden are planning a significant attack on U.S. soil.” Insight also
stated that “Senior U.S. intelligence analysts … say they fear such
an attack would involve a nuclear device.” America’s Nuclear Emergency
Search Team (NEST) has been activated. Some experts suspect that a nuclear bomb
plot against America was thwarted shortly after 9/11 when the U.S. rounded up
a large number of terror suspects. It is now believed that al Qaeda has recovered
from these initial losses. According to Insight magazine sources, “fresh
intelligence collected on al-Qaida's nuclear ambitions strongly indicates that
a new scheme to attack the United States with some sort of nuclear device has
been resurrected with the re-emergence of bin Laden and the reconstitution of
unidentified al-Qaida cells in the United States.” (3)
Last
week this column discussed the connection between Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez and al Qaeda. There is also a connection between al Qaeda and communist
China. Yossef Bodansky, director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism
and Unconventional Warfare, says there is a strong connection between Saddam
Hussein and Osama bin Laden. When all the connections are drawn, the spider
at the center of the web comes into focus.
Perhaps
the most fascinating detail offered by Insight magazine involves a former Soviet
official. In its attempt to thwart the next “spectacular” terrorist
attack, U.S. authorities were led to “a former KGB officer working at
the United Nations.” This man was allegedly involved in “brokering
deals for nuclear-weapons materials overseas.”
One
of the lessons we learn from reading Yevgenia Albats’s book on the KGB,
The State Within a State, is that KGB officers do not leave the KGB upon retirement.
They enter the KGB reserves and are given light duty, even in retirement. As
Albats shows, this practice continued after the fall of the Soviet Union. We
must therefore be skeptical of the word “former” when used in front
of words like “KGB” and “Soviet.” This also goes for
the leadership of the supposedly “independent” republics that broke
from Moscow over a decade ago. Many of these countries are still led by their
“former” Communist Party chiefs – like Eduard Shevardnadze,
formerly the head of the Communist Party of Georgeia; or “former”
KGB Gen. Gaidar Aliyev in Azerbaijan. As it happens, the former Soviet republics
in Central Asia are still ruled by the communists. Their transformation into
democrats is nothing short of miraculous. In Eastern Europe these men would
never have remained in place, but Central Asia is a long way from Paris and
London. What is not before our eyes is not present in our thoughts. And besides,
who in the West really knows anything about Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazerbayev
(a Politburo member under Gorbachev)?
My
Czech friends are depressed for good reason. They see America struggling in
the war against terror. They fear that the center of the terrorist web is not
some cave in Afghanistan, but an office in the Kremlin. Looking at the fraudulent
democracies of Eastern Europe, seeing the same old communist faces on all sides,
they wonder at the credulity of U.S. leaders. Does President Bush really think
he is fighting a small group of Muslim extremists with communist North Korea
tacked on as an afterthought? Or does he recognize the larger enemy behind the
Islamic front? Is President Bush falling into a trap as he moves against Iraq,
or is he aware that something larger and more dangerous is behind it all?
I
cannot answer these questions. Ever since the Cold War began we have been living
in a “wilderness of mirrors.” Deception has been the name of the
game, especially as the Russians play it. I suspect, however, that deception
should not be countered with deception. In that event the better deceivers will
win. Deception should be fought with truth. Our enemies should be named and
the evidence against them should be compiled and published. Many of us here
in America, worried about rising immorality and growing corruption, wonder if
a collapse has not occurred within our own country. Perhaps there has been a
certain hollowing out, economically and morally. Time will tell, of course.
And wars have a way of shaking things loose.
Notes:
CIA
Warns of Russia, China, Iran http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/1/13/184647.shtml
John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987),
p. 187.
Anthony L. Kimery, “Searching for Dirty Bombs,” Insight, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30084
©
2003 Jeffrey R. Nyquist
January 14, 2003
