Show The Salt Lake Tribune Sunday November Commimism Appears Dead Everywhere But Vietnam By Stephen J Morris Special to The Washington Post Last month for the first time ever a foreign minister of Vietnam who also is a Communist Party politburo member was received by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Many committee members welcomed the closed-doo- r meeting with Nguyen Co Mach as an important step toward "normalization" of relations with a former enemy But these exuberant senators and their allies in the business community the bureaucracy and the media fail to recognize that the Vietnamese communists far from becoming more open to the tide of democratization and nationalism that has swept Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are moving to insulate their regime from it Stephen Morris Is an associate of the Center for International Affairs and a fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard Together with the Cubans and the North Koreans the Vietnamese communists are helping itoform a new rump communist bloc with inspirational center America's evolving post-Col- d War policy must take this new reality into account The concept of a hard-cor- e communist bloc in East Asia is not new It was the political reality of the early 1960s when Mao's totalitarian zeal in domestic and foreign policy put him at odds with the vacillating less fanatical Nikita Khrushchev Today communism is dead in Europe and rapidly decaying in the Soviet Union But commtmist orthodoxy is still found in the domestic policies of China North Korea and Indochina (Vietnam Laos and the rival communist parties of Cambodia) as well as Cuba Asia is the main site for the h stand of the communist world faithfuL One result is the new international order of the communist world Not only has Cuba abandoned its hostility toward China and North Korea its neutrality between China and the Soviet Union but now Vietnam is moving to restore comradely relations with China its erstwhile enemy This diplomatic warming comes in the wake of longstanding contention between Vietnam and China over the independence and alignment of Cambodia a rivalry that exploded into open hostility in 1979 and kept the two in a state of enmity for 11 years last-ditc- The first signs of anxiety over the security of the political system came in August 1989 when General Secretary Linh condemned the Polish Communist Party's sharing of power with Solidarity The Vietnamese leaders went so far as to stage mass rallies in Hanoi denouncing Poland's partial democratization as a "counterrevolutionary coup" The subsequent upheavals in Eastern Europe were reported with little comment silence concealing obvious shock and fear at the fate of Hanoi's staunch allies in East Berlin Prague and Sofia Then last March the eighth plenum of the party's Central Committee stated its view: "The imperialist and reactionary forces are thoroughly exploiting the difficulties of socialist countries in order to intensify their intervention and sabotage and to carry out peaceful developments with the aim of A fierce wiping out socialist countries struggle to protect and develop socialism is taking place" Party Secretary Linh has long been touted as "Vietnam's Gorbachev" by sympathetic Western commentators But Linh's 1989 Poland speech and his recent denunciations of democracy have pluralism and multi-part- y disabused many Vietnam-watcher- s The only serious candidate for the title "Vietnam's Gorbachev" was former politburo member 'rran Xuan Bach In the wake of the collapse of communism in Europe Bach made mild speeches calling for party reform system In response though not a multi-part- y Bach was removed from the Politburo Secretariat and Central Committee In May on the occasion of Ho Chi Minh's 100th birthday celebrations several prominent southern dissidents many associated with the southern communist Resistance Tradition Club were placed under house arrest to demonstrations prevent Tbe crackdown on Vietnamese communist dissidents even spread to friendly foreigners American businessman Michael Morrow a former journalist who reported from Saigon during the Vietnam War years was arrested In Da Nang on April 23 and accused of "espionage activities" and "attempting to destabilize the Vietnamese government" During his interrogation Morrow reports the Vietnamese authorities continually came back to questioning him about knowledge of a possible incident After three Tianatunen Square-typ- e weeks of detention Morrow was released pro-refor- m Together with the Cubans and the North Koreans the Vietnamese communists are helping to form a new rump communist bloc with War China as its inspirational center America's evolving post-Col-d policy must take this new reality into account What has changed the attitudes of Vietnam and the other communist states toward China is not only communism's European collapse but also the defense of communism by the Chinese leadership in Tiananmen Square Mikhail Gorbachev is now seen as a revisionist heretic directly responsible for the collapse of Leninism in Europe The Chinese leaders on the other hand have demonstrated that a resolute communist party leadership can defend Leninist rule The members of the new communist bloc have concluded that either they hang together or else they will hang separately This judgment was admitted by the Vietnamese Communist Party general secretary Nguyen Van Linh in an interview with the French Communist Party newspaper L'Humanite on June 14 Linh argued that the Eastern European upheavals had made possible a counteroffensive by "reactionary forces" that were trying to destroy socialism "In this context it is necessary to maintain good relations with the forces which are defending socialism in the world We think that the CPC and the Chinese government are committed to the path of building socialism The international situation requires us to give new impetus to our relations" China and Vietnam have been developing trade over the past year their cross-bordEfforts to solve the war in Cambodia which foundered during several meetings earlier this year finally bore fruit in early September The situation has yet to be fully resolved but opinion in Hanoi seems to have tipped in favor of settling the Cambodia conflict politically rather than militarily This is the result of fear of the imminent drying up of Soviet aid combined with the fear of party cadres having been contaminated by "revisionist" ideas The profound political changes in the former Soviet bloc that led to the international realignment of Vietnam and the other communist states with China also are driving these regimes towards greater internal repression Once again the Chinese model is relevant Tiananmen was both a warning and a reassurance: It was a warning that the menace of "reactionary bourgeois" liberal ideas can result in a political challenge to the re- gime it also was a reassurance that a confident Leninist party leadership can loosen up its control over the economy and still maintain its rigid control over political life Vietnam began a process of economic liberalization after the Sixth Party Congress of 1986 But party writings have emphasized that the reforms which include a liberal foreign investment code and private enterprise in agricultural and service sectors will retain a large nationalized segment of what is still a predominantly socialist economy And the political system will not only remain unreformed but subject to more vigilant defense er Such developments provide the context for evaluating America's Vietnam policy Until now there have been two preconditions for "normalization" One has been Vietnamese cooperation in a political settlement in Cambodia the other has been cooperation in accounting for American MIAs Yet the failure to identify concern for human rights in Vietnam as an issue and the lack of specific details by the administration and Congress on what would constitute "normalization' have raised questions about the moral dimension of American foreign policy in this instance An American foreign policy which is realistic and concerned with all relevant moral issues will have to be discriminating and modulated For example if Vietnam abides by the provisions of the United Nations plan for peace in Cambodia or expedites the process of honest accounting for the American MIAs it has to be rewarded But normalization must be understood as a process not a single event And Vietnam's rewards — diplomatic recognition and the end of the international embargo against it — will each have to be modulated in piecemeal steps in accordance with evidence that Hanoi has actually abided by each phase of the long process of political settlement in Cambodia Hanoi's compliance will begin only with its signing an agreement It will next involve ending Vietnamese arms supplies to Phnom Penh withdrawing all its troops and advisers from Cambodia under UN inspection and allowing genuinely free elections to be prepared and held under a potent UN administration The United States simply cannot ignore Hanoi's record of violating signed agreements That record includes the 1954 Geneva Agree ments (for example Hanoi violated the provisions for free movement of civilians in 1955) the 1962 Geneva Agreement on Laos (it reinserted fortes into Laos) and the 1973 Paris Agreements (among other things Hanoi retained forces in Laos and Cambodia) But assuming Vietnam's cooperation on Cambodia and on the MIA question the issue of human rights will still remain The United States has special reason for concern on this matter since so many of the victims of rights abuses are those Vietnamese who fought in alliance with the United States and were left behind in the shameful exodus of 1975 American policymakers will have to ensure that the terms of any trade agreement status are the and carrots to he held in reserve pending improvement of Vietnam's human-right- s policies It may still be argued that extensive personal economic and cultural contacts with the West will necessarily soften the human-right- s policy of the regime But the recent example of China should surely have put that argument to rest Bush Breaking By Jon Talton Cox News Service That sound you bear is the disintegration gsq011 t-- 4 0'" r474-t-7----4-Y1-:0- 1Ak 411 Or r1411 ( of the Great Reagan Coalition When George Bush repudiated his pledge and House Republicans repudiated Bush it signified much more than the usual Beltway soap opera The broken promise broke the harness that for a decade held together the social conlibertarservatives ians Jackson (Scoop not Jesse) Democrats e and Republicans who made up the Reagan Coalition Economics represented the last compelling issue that held the Reaganites together With the winning of the Cold War the Soviet threat no longer held sway With Washington's continuing ascendancy through 10 years of "conservative" presidencies the opponents of Big Government were frustrated and impotent Despite much sound and fury social conservatives never much called the tune of the Reagan years What remained was Dutch's most potent economic-government- old-tim- ee 1111 vi 10-Ye- ar 4t lt1414)1 President Bush -- - -- al 11 1990 A21 nITIottajltyiyctles 1c111111 Iiiii4'mit 1 ItitAtilliE wiLurile TotTSWIS allictICS 111111)1)S1 M11 StilliSi &111) ELLI Ictirtgi t ‘ dik ‘ illi‘ :t ' : 1 477 ku 2 nios er- 4 1 ‘ t it rek:::2 t ILt'' t' t dik I t ''': '' - A vp: ' 111- - ' a - 1 t -- - - 4rt - 0 ip'' i 1 - t- 1 N - 1 ' --- 1 ' A ' v ' I '' '4'' 7 'X''' s ' ' - 4 va' ' ' - elP: Itilgt ' 4 ' z ' 11 ''' y i r- k4s‘ ' 4k ‘''" oa It e ' ''' ' e 1 k ' '44 - ) - 2rItSu '9'" VL ' it '4 t itleytilk 4 If I t ' 4 A' '' ' 5 frl Ifft --tlr' '4'‘I'i I 1 V- i ' elk - -- ' lev ' k 41 ' "4- A 4 It Dcvs - - - u- AIOLZ! i:411 N-- ' uric - '1' ' A - lot : ' -‘ 11 i14 "144 ‘ ok i i t III " 11: r'' P 7: It' eV 111 4 ' aIs t 11 il li ' kt - - I "1- it Op All God's Children Have Guns Amendment Doesn't Protect All Guns' By Erwin N Griswold Special to The Washington Post In the recent congressional debate over crime control there was much talk about the Constitution Defendants' rights were hotly contested as were legal and moral constraints on capital punishment The constitutionality of the laws is certainly a legitimate issue to be considered on the floor of Congress It is not legitimate however to manufacture a constitutional issue when the courts have agreed for years that the "issue" in question does not exist This is what has happened in the recent debate about control of military-styl- e assault weapons where reasoned debate was overcome by the unsupportable claim that restrictions would violate the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms ("Gun Lobby Emerged a Winner on Hill" Washington Post front page Nov I) All rhetoric aside these lawmakers and their mentors in the National Rifle Association should recognize the undeniable fact that the Second Amendment has never been an impediment to laws limiting private ownership of firearms Last year the Bush administration recognizing a special threat to the public safety from drug dealers gang members and other criminals barred 43 specific foreign-mad- e assault rifles from importation On the unassailable theory that an AK-4- 7 made in America is no less lethal than one made abroad the administration also supported a provision in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1990 that would have prohibited domestic manufacture of identical rifles Incredibly lawmakers instead amended the bill to explicitly preserve the right to manufacture these weapons Prodded on by the NRA legislator after legislator charged that restrictions on the domestic manufacture of assault weapons would violate the right to keep and bear arms Such distortion of the meaning of the Second Amendment should not go unanswered The full text of the Second Amendment reads: "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed" The amendment is unique among the guarantees of the Bill of Rights because its purpose is clearly expressed in its text This was explicitly recognized by the Supreme Court in its 1939 opinion in United States v Miller where it said that the "obvious purpose" of the amendment was "to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness" of state militias and that it "must be interpreted and applied with that end in view" v Sills) the court dismissed for lack of a "substantial federal question" a ran owner's ap- peal from a state court decision holding that the Second Amendment permits regulation of firearms "so long as the regulation does not impair the maintenance of the active organized militias of the states" In Lewis v United States (1980) the court ruled that legisla-- : tive restrictions on the use of firearms do not "trench upon any constitutionally protected liberties" Following the Supreme Cottrt's lead the lower federal courts have shown a remarkable unanimity in applying the Second Amendment Never in history has a federal court invalidated a law regulating the private ownership of firearms on Second Amendment : grounds Indeed that the Second Amendment v poses no barrier to strong gun laws is perhaps d the most proposition in American constitutional law Yet the incantation of this phantom right continues to pervade congressional debate The National Rifle Association and Its friends in Congress are of course free to ar- gue against new gun laws on policy grounds Let them put forth whatever case they can for the wisdom and morality of allowing anyone to sell and utilize weapons like the AK47 weapons that can fire scores of bullets in sec- onds with murderous effect However to assert that the Conbtitution is a barrier to reasonable gun laws in the face of the unanimous Judgment of the federal courts to the contrary exceeds the limits of principled advocacy It is time for the NRA and its followers in Congress to stop trying to twist the Second Amendment from a reasoned (if antiquated) empowerment for a militia into a bulletproof personal right for anyone to wield deadly weaponry beyond legislative control Al well-settle- Erwin N Griswold former dean of the Hat yard Law School was solicitor general in the Nixon administration MmorwmNiioN010 The clear meaning of Miller is that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to be armed for private purposes unrelated to the organized state militia whether they be huntThe ing recreation or even fact is that no American today owns an AK47 or any other kind of firearm for reasons even remotely related to the organized militia or the "security of a free state" The days when militiamen were required by law to muster for military exercises in the town square complete with their own guns and horses — are long gone Since Miller the Supreme Court has twice more reaffirmed that the Second Amendment protects only state militias not the private ownership of guns In a 1968 ease (Burton v well-groom- 3 1 Kahane Moves From Marginal to Martyri By Dov Aharoni Special to the Los Angeles Times Rabbi Melt Kahane emerged from America's political ferment in the 1960s In those days if you had the spirit of a political activist you marched for a cause: Vietnam Kent State lettuce grapes Wounded Knee America was ripe with political radicals and ethnic militants like H Rap Brown Stokely Carmichael Abbie Hoffman Huey Newton Mark Rudd Bobby Seale and Russell Means Kahane provided the Jewish angle by catapulting the Soviet Jewry issue which had lain dormant for half a century into an international problem that had to be solved With 200000 Jews entering Israel this year from the Soviet Union it is hard to believe the hopelessness of their plight 20 years ago He did not get them out but he laid the groundwork on which other national Jewish leaders could build When I speak to immigrants from the Soviet Union most of them want to thank two people — the prime minister of Israel whoever that may be at the time and Kahane Still his methods were highly controversial Most Jews told him "We agree with your goals but we disagree with your methods" Winking with a New Yorker's cynical sense of humor he often responded: "Yeah and Abbie Hoffman told me during a TV debate that he agrees with my methods but he disagrees with my goals" His campaign for Soviet Jews offered a wonderful outlet for my energies as an undergraduate at Columbia University But I did not support the tenor of his more recent cam paigns So I went a different route After working for a number of prominent American Jewish organizations I ultimately became national director of a major American Zionist group So Rabbi Kahane sent a group of Jewish Defense League members to stage a sit-i- n in my office We were not close afterward Rabbi Dor Abaroni is former national rector of the Jewish Defense League di- Kahane was 58 and nearing the end of his political career The Israelis had effectively blacklisted him from ever again serving in the Knesset The United States had revoked his citizenship and he was expected to lose his appeal next month The loss of American citizenship would bar him from entering the United States again denying him access to the funds he needed for his programs He was on the brink of becoming marginal But now he is a martyr His burial in Israel will provide a first indication of the depth of his grass-root- s support Already Jews on the street who disagreed with him are speaking in reverential terms His photograph is going up in homes and offices throughout Israel and America Like his boyhood hero Ze'ev Jabotinsky n called "Vladimir whom David Hitler" and whose bones were barred from Israel for a generation Kahane did the dirty work raising the questions and issues that others preferred to ignore Despite the controversies surrounding his tactics he was the rare Jewish leader who said: "We have been Ben-Gurio- sitting in Judea and Samaria for 23 years now without deciding if we want to annex it or give it up Let's make up our minds already" He has become greater than life a martyr Like Spartacus and Rabbi Aki VII and Malcolm X and the Kennedys he is now a force in histo- ry His was not the message of Lincoln and King and Gandhi but martyrdom does inter- - 4 esting things in tandem with the processes of I history Now Jewish children will learn about him in their history books — about the rabbi who I freed the Jews from Russia like Moses who moved to Israel like the Jewish philosopher Z and poet Rabbi Yehuda Halevy who studied the Torah and fought Israel's enemies like Ju- das Maccabaeus who inspired a generation like Jabotinsky and who was martyred as t4 Rabbi Akiva was by the Romans History has a way of doing those things for martyrs Thirty years from now he will be a p symbol for Jews in the way that Cesar Au-gusto Sandino's 1934 assassination inspired' Nicaraguans two generations after Anastasio :t Somoza killed him The assassinations of Benigno Aquino Zulfikar All Bhutto and bundreds like them came back to haunt their killers Jabotinsky's followers did not rest until he was reinterred in Jerusalem and his poron the Israeli trait outranked currency Kahane's chapter in Jewish history was about to close and he bad lost his campaign to dominate the hearts and minds of Israel Now instead a new chapter — the martyr's legend — begins t t 's Republican Coalition Built by Reagan brew: jobs and prosperity thanks to lower taxes and a limiting of the inefficient wasteful public sector This message had appeal throughout the electorate and for years kept the Democrats on the defensive Then inexplicably Bush threw it all away The Democrats shrewdly hung the "friend of the rich" collar around Bush's neck And the populist rallying point for a decade of Republican success vanished With media attention captivated by the budget mess the significance of this watershed has been largely overlooked But it will plague Bush long after these new taxes have been spent Its ugly when political coalitions come apart The Democrats have never recovered from the unraveling of Franklin Roosevelt's alliance of big-cit- y machines Southern Democrats blacks and labor Now the Republicans must learn the same pain In one of history's sublime ironies the president who destroyed Marxism presided over a coalition torn by internal contradictions The for instance have little common ground with the entrepreneurial libertarians most of whom doubt that the state has a role in promoting private morals In economics the rifts were obvious if not widely understood Traditional conservatives personified by writers like James Burnham and Malcolm Muggerage are profoundly uncomfortable with modern capitalism Not only do they disdain its materialistic streak they also rightly associate capitalism with liberalism which they believe (wrongly I think) inevitably leads to totalitarianism People like Burnham and economist Joseph Schumpeter argued that liberalism and the market economy would eventually erode morand als Yet these conservatives happily marched with millions of people who were economic drawn to Reagan's message as well as his foreign policy and governmental philosophies The economic libertarians wanted tax cuts slowed government growth deregulation and a booming open economy But many would have been deeply uncomfortable with the co arm-in-ar- free-mark- et ercive leanings of the social conservatives had not Reagan (like his hero FDR) been such a master of coalition politics George Bush a traditional Republican proved less adept at the balancing act Now he is in danger of being maneuvered into the Nixon model of a minority administration where the executive merely reacts to inherited problems and agendas set by the opposition This is hardly the way to deal with a slow economy or build political ascendancy One political lesson of the 20th century is that the most effective Republican presidents are outsiders Theodore Roosevelt Coolidge Eisenhower and Reagan all were disdained by the GOP establishment and the nation's political and intellectual elites On the other hand Harding Nixon and Ford were party regu' lars v Another lesson is that Republicans live or die on the strength of the economy Neither lesson bodes well for President Bush who stands to be deserted by the coalition he inherited but did not understand i |