Staunch allies?

STAUNCH ALLIES?

QUITE THE greatest advantage theSoviets have over the West is continuity of leadership and policy. With the continuity goes a quite remarkable staunchness toward allies and "assets' (such as spies).

We in the West cannot possiblycompete with totalist systems in continuity of leadership, for to do so would contradict one of the fundamentals of our democracies. In principle, however, there is no reason why we should not aim at continuity of policy and staunchness toward friends and allies.

Let me illustrate these propositionswith examples. First, one or two exceptions on the Soviet side. The rule is: total dependability of support for Moscow-line Communist parties. Only occasionally will the Soviet ruling CPSU sacrifice a national party for reasons of expediency, as it did with the Communist parties of Algeria and Egypt.

Algeria's minuscule Communist partycalls itself the Parti de l'Avant-Garde Socialiste, or PAGS, and its membership certainly does not exceed five hundred. It is illegal and therefore clandestine. When the Algerian rebellion broke out in 1954, it was clear to the men in Moscow that the PAGS was going to be a hindrance, not a help. It was equally clear that the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) was in all but name a Communist party, although perhaps inspired by Chinese and Vietnamese models rather than the CPSU. Clear also that should the FLN, applying the principles of people's revolutionary warfare, defeat the French (meaning wear down their political will to press on with the protracted conflict), the resulting regime would be a one-party state committed to "socialism.' Not an unconditionally pro-Moscow regime, but usefully anti-Western. So there has never been any question of helping the PAGS to stir up a subversive challenge to the FLN. However, the PAGS does get a consolation prize: Two of its leaders, Sadiq Hadjeres and Ali Malki, are allowed to contribute to the Soviet-edited World Marxist Review.

With Egypt, there is a similar storyto tell. As elsewhere in the Islamic world, the Communist party in Egypt is small in number and fragmented. It did unite, for a while, in 1958, but Moscow's instructions were clear: cooperate with the ruling Arab Socialist Union. At least that way Egypt's Communists could be freed from jail.

As you see, I am scraping the barrel.In general, the Soviets are loyal to those who help them and take their orders. For 14 or 15 years, they recruited and trained terrorists and guerrillas of the Angolan MPLA, against the day (which duly came, on April 25, 1974) when the overthrow of the post-Salazar regime would give the MPLA its chance to wrest power from the anti-Communist freedom-fighters.

Indochina? Ho Chi Minh wastrained in Moscow's University of the Toilers of the East and sent far-east-ward to set up his Communist Party. Without Soviet help, the Vietnamese Communists would not have defeated either the French or the Americans. Between 1930, when Ho created the original Communist Party of Indochina, and 1975, when the Vietcong forces moved into Saigon, the simple arithmetic records 45 years of staunchness.

I only wish the Western powerscould match this kind of record, or even come within measurable distance of it. We are, on the whole, short-term friends, and it grieves me to say that this applies even more to the U.S. than to Britain.

The U.S. was a year-by-year annual-contractally of the South Vietnamese. After the Paris Accords of 1973, Congress even voted to deny its erstwhile South Vietnames friends the weapons and supplies they needed to resist the Communist aggressors. As for Angola, where was the U.S. when the MPLA took over? Observing the miserable Clark Amendment, that's where.

Until Ronald Reagan came along,things were getting worse, as the late Shah of Iran could testify. In 1953, a joint Anglo-American clandestine operation put him back on his throne, from Roman exile. In 1978-79, the Brits and Yanks stood by and watched as the Ayatollah's fanatics took over.

ON THE British side, the will todo something has nearly gone. In Malaysia, between 1957 and 1970, the British took on the Communist terrorists and defeated them, in the process devolving sovereignty upon the peoples of the peninsula. An impressive performance.

A less impressive performance wason offer in 1978-79 in Rhodesia, when, with Mrs. Thatcher in power but with Lord Carrington as Foreign Secretary, the government decided that it was not going to help the (legitimately elected) government of Bishop Muzorewa to stay in power by taking on the anti-white guerrillas. Hence the advent of Mugabe's "Marxist' government in what is now Zimbabwe. Hence also the nonsense of Britain's helping the "Marxist' regime in Mozambique (with American approval) against the anti-Communist guerrillas.

What is to be done? The answer,very sadly, seems to me: not very much. The British lost the will to do much about such challenges after the Suez fiasco of 1956, although there was a stirring flicker of the old flame with the Falklands expedition. As for the United States, the return of the will to act came with Ronald Reagan, burned brightly, then died with Irangate and the advent of the very nice Mr. Howard Baker. Rejoice, Mikhail Gorbachev: The Congress of the United States can be relied upon to look after your interests.