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A Strategy for Freedom
| Article
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12411 |
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Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
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| Issue
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1 / 1987 |
5,095 Words |
| Author
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Jack Kemp
Jack Kemp is a Republican congressman from New York and a
presidential candidate. |
"Democracy," writes Jean-Francois Revel, "may, after all, turn out to have been a historical accident, a brief parenthesis that is closing before our eyes."
A decade ago, it appeared that his observation was dangerously close to being true. Saigon had just fallen to the communist forces of North Vietnam, and Congress had enacted the Clark amendment prohibiting U.S. assistance to the resistance in Angola. The Brezhnev Doctrine--decreeing that no state once brought within the Soviet orbit can ever leave--appeared firmly entrenched in Eastern Europe and throughout the world.
Détente was the order of the day. The United States was retreating in the world, and the Soviets were advancing. From Afghanistan throughout Africa, Asia, and the Americas, the Soviet empire accumulated allies, and hopes for freedom were dashed. The faith of our allies was shaken, while lesser nations were divided between following the Soviet model or simply hedging their bets. Worst of all, our own leaders sounded an uncertain note. Some even wondered whether we had not begun an irreversible decline. Things were going so well for the Soviets that Leonid Brezhenv was moved to say, "By 1985, as a consequence of what we are now achieving with détente . . . we will be able to extend our will wherever we need to."
The Revitalization of the West
But the world of 1986 is very different from the world of 1975, and for that the entire world owes Ronald Reagan an enormous debt. He broke the pattern of his predecessors by exposing the falsity of moral equivalence. He saw clearly that our freedom rests ultimately not on concessions and diplomatic accommodation but on clear-eyed determination. His policies and actions have served to rebuild Western economic and military strength and to revivify our liberal values.
Today, there is no question that President Reagan is right when he says freedom is on the march. The West is stronger, and in the great contest of the modern age between democracy and totalitarianism, the forces of freedom are in the ascendancy.
The Alliance
Contrary to the dire predictions of the late 1970s, the NATO alliance has not disintegrated, but has survived and indeed grown stronger. One of the most important foreign policy objectives of the Soviet Union during President
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