Carrots, not sticks
Timothy Garton Ash
Washington Stalin asked: 'how many divisions has the Pope?' There are influential advisers to the Reagan administration whose view of world affairs is almost as crude as Stalin's. In effect they ask: how many missiles has Solidarity?
They believe that the only way to combat the Soviet Union is to build up American military strength. Many of them believe it will be a good thing for the West if the Russians invade Poland. An invasion, they argue, will cripple the Warsaw Pact for a long period; discredit communism in the third world; and pull together the Western alliance by puncturing Western European 'illusions' about detente. Therefore the West should not lift a finger to help Poland. The Soviets should be left to 'stew in their own juice'. This argument is obviously wrong in both senses of the word. It is immoral. And it is an incorrect assessment of America's national interest in purely power-Political terms. Fortunately the State Department, at least, and probably the majority opinion within the Defence Department, recognise this. They are slowly working towards a large-scale Western aid package for Poland, to which the United States would contribute mostly agricultural goods worth at least $700 million. Yet there is no great sense of urgency about the project. Why should there be? Because anyone who has been in Poland recently will tell you that there is a real — in some places an imminent — danger of popular anger about the shortages exploding into violence. If the Polish army could not control it, then the Soviets would be forced to intervene whether they want to or not. It would be a terrible irony if the tragedy was finally precipitated by the sluggish indifference and shortsightedness of the West. Then, of course, the Polish Task Force would go into continuous session in Washington, just as the Berlin Task Force went into continuous session in 1961 — after the East Germans had cut Berlin in half. It would once again be a matter of too little too late. We would be very wise after the event.
Today we still have a unique chance. A skilfully co-ordinated programme of largescale aid will not merely help the Poles through the winter. It can also help to consolidate the immense gains which have been made since August 1980. And it can go far towards creating the conditions for a longterm economic recovery. This might, incidentally, get our bankers some of their money back (richly as they deserve to lose it for the frivolous way they lent to Gierek and Co). More importantly it would bring Poland that prosperity without which the country's political experiment in pluralism will fail in the eyes of her neighbours in the Soviet bloc, and eventually even in her own people's. Indeed many analysts consider this to be the Soviet Union's present calculation.
Perhaps we are witnessing a war of economic attrition against Solidarity. If so, the authorities are playing a very dangerous game. The Poles are the last people in the world to be starved into submission. They are far more likely to rise up than to subside into passivity. But anyway, the Soviets' lack of interest in a rapid economic recovery is hardly a good reason for us not to be interested in it. Clearly the Soviets do not want to see the Polish experiment working in a way which would be seductive even to their traditionally and currently hostile East German neighbours. A Poland with Solidarity and prosperity is the best hope for a peaceful evolution in all the nations of Eastern Europe — for what we have more than once called in these pages an 'Ot tomanisation' of the Soviet Empire.
Will the Soviets tolerate such a Western initiative? There is a surprising amount of timidity on this score in an administration which has taken such a tough public posture against the Soviet Union. A power ful Republican congresswoman told me that she opposes any government aid on the grounds that this would 'endanger' the Poles. Well, there obviously are limits. If the package was presented with all the ideological trimmings of Marshall Aid then the Soviet Union would no doubt force the Poles to reject it, exactly as they did 32 years ago. But consider. First, the Polish authorities themselves do not seem to be unduly worried about this. When Senator Kennedy proposed a $5 billion vote of aid to Poland (intended, by the way, as a signal to the Republicans that the Democrats would support a much larger bipartisan initiative) the Polish ambassador came in person to thank him. Moreover, Moscow has countenanced Poland's application for membership of the IMF. Second, it is rather difficult for them to say no, at least initially, to the clearly humanitarian parts of the package. It is especially difficult for them to say no to West European nations who they are trying to woo with honeyed words and Siberian gas. Third, I cannot see that we have lost anything when they do say no to some parts of the package. Did the United States 'lose face' in the eyes of the world when the Czech and Polish governments were forced by Stalin to turn down the offer of Marshall aid? I think not.
How much would it cost? Of course it is very difficult to say. A senior US official estimates that the West would have to provide the equivalent of $3 billion in 1981 simply to refinance Poland's existing debts. A futher $2 billion at least would be needed to begin the rescue of the economy. These estimates are probably conservative. Let us assume for the sake of argument that the requirement is $6 billion per year for five years. One can imagine the fury of Mr Stockman confronted with figures of such magnitude when he is desperately trying to cut the budget in the cause of President Reagan's economic policy (in which he apparently does not believe anyway). But we should retain our sense of proportion. This $30 billion over five years would be the total Western finance requirement. The money that the American administration would probably have to find to finance their share of it would not be more than they propose to spend on, say, 100 of the planned MX missiles. Now what is more important to the United States in its competition with the Soviet Union: 100 extra missiles to try and achieve some notional nuclear Parity? Or that Solidarity should survive and prosper to point the way for the gradual, peaceful transformation of the Soviet Empire?
The plain fact is that in the contemporary nuclear world the West can beat the Soviet Union far more effectively with carrots than with sticks. Moreover, at the moment we have more carrots than we have sticks.
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