Toward an Overall Western Strategy for Peace, Freedom and Progress

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"The unity of the Alliance is the basis of any successful relationship with the East." The converse of this remark by President Reagan also holds true: agreement in the Alliance on policy toward the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as agreement on political, economic and military strategy-this is the basis of the Alliance's cohesion and its ability to act.

In the Summer issue of this periodical the German view was presented on the subject of military strategy.1 I shall therefore confine my observations to questions of political and economic strategy.

Ever since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and especially since the imposition of martial law in Poland as a result of Soviet pressure, these questions have been at the forefront of the discussion between Europe and America. In this debate we have managed to transform crises of the Eastern bloc into crises-or rather moods of crisis-in the Western Alliance.

What the outside observer sees is truly paradoxical:

- In Poland the fragility of Soviet rule over Eastern Europe is once more being demonstrated-and more clearly than ever. A communist party, deprived of its ideological strength and no longer able to rule on its own, cedes power to the military.

- The crisis not only of the Polish but of the entire communist economic system manifests itself: Marx had proclaimed that capitalism would founder on its contradictions, but these events make it clear that it is socialist planned economies in which the conditions of production are at variance with the productive forces.

- The Communist Party of Italy describes Soviet-style communism as a system "that does not permit any genuine democratic participation, either in production or in political affairs, and thus not only stifles freedom and creative forces but at the same time checks economic dynamism as well as technological and cultural development."

But those who do not read Unita will hear little of this. Instead they will gain the impression that a crisis in the Alliance between Europe and America was sparked off on December 13, 1981, when martial law was imposed in Poland.