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Some go further, contending that the $2 trillion Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s made possible the opportunities for ending the cold war in the 1990s. In other words, had it not been for the whole panoply of post-detente Western pressure tactics, starting with the imposition in 1974 of the Jackson- Vanik Amendment linking improved U.S.-Soviet trade to increased Jewish emigration from the U.S.S.R., there would be a different man in the Kremlin today. Or at least there would be a very different Gorbachev, one who would still be suppressing dissidents, sending refuseniks to Siberia, invading neighboring countries, propping up dictators, financing wars in the Third World and generally behaving the way central-casting Soviet leaders are supposed to.
If one believes that, then it follows naturally enough that there should be no basic change in the main lines of U.S. policy. It was largely this logic and the smugness that went with it that earlier this year helped the Bush Administration rationalize its initial passivity in response to Gorbachev.
But Gorbachev is responding primarily to internal pressures, not external ones. The Soviet system has gone into meltdown because of inadequacies and defects at its core, not because of anything the outside world has done or not done or threatened to do. Gorbachev has been far more appalled by what he has seen out his limousine window and in reports brought to him by long-faced ministers than by satellite photographs of American missiles aimed at Moscow. He has been discouraged and radicalized by what he has heard from his own constituents during his walkabouts in Krasnodar, Sverdlovsk and Leningrad -- not by the exhortations, remonstrations or sanctions of foreigners.
George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker are realistic enough to see that there is little the U.S. can do to "help" Gorbachev turn his economy around in the near- or even medium-term future. By the same token, there was never all that much the U.S. could do, or did do, to hurt the Soviet economy. The inertia, the wastefulness, the corruption -- these have always been inherent in the Soviet system. Therefore their consequences are self-inflicted wounds rather than the result of Western boycotts or other punitive policies. The imposition more than 15 years ago of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was politically symbolic but marginal in its impact; the same is likely to be true if and when the amendment is waived next year.
It is a solipsistic delusion to think the West could bring about the seismic % events now seizing the U.S.S.R. and its "fraternal" neighbors. If the Soviet Union had ever been as strong as the threatmongers believed, it would not be undergoing its current upheavals. Those events are actually a repudiation of the hawkish conventional wisdom that has largely prevailed over the past 40 years, and a vindication of the Cassandra-like losers, including Kennan.
If Kennan's view and his recommendations had prevailed, the world would probably at least still be where it is today, beyond containment, and perhaps it might have arrived there considerably sooner and at less expense.