Ironically, it was television pictures of police brutalityagainst
black demonstrators that caused Congress to act--and theSouth
African government permitted such pictures to be taken becauseit
wanted to impress upon the United States that, racialdifferences
aside, it was a democratic state with a free press. Inpermitting
wider revelations of the Stalin period as part of glasnost,Gorbachev
made precisely the same miscalculation, and destroyed anyremaining
moral legitimacy for the continued rule of the Communist Party.Each
regime adopted elements of democratic ideas partly because itthought
it was the right thing to do, partly to avoid trouble, butalso
partly to make itself more acceptable to the United States; andeach
succeeded only in destroying itself. The most dangerous moment fora
bad government, de Tocqueville famously argued, is when it startson
the path to reform. In effect, the United States acted as boththe
source of the ideas that began the process of reform and the
instigator of a Tocquevillian revolution.

The Soviet case differed from the South African mainly in thatU.S.
policies toward it were much more reactive. The United States
sometimes acted in response to Soviet adventurism oraggression,
sometimes as a result of its own weakness, and sometimesbecause
domestic opponents of U.S. policy forced changes upon an
administration.

The Nixon/Kissinger détente is an example of a policy frameworkthat
arose largely from U.S. weakness--the result of the war inVietnam,
Watergate, and the need to prevent the Soviets using WestGermany's
Ostpolitik to destroy NATO. And yet it was a policy ofprofound
importance that did as much to undermine the defenses of communismin
the Soviet Union as any other American policy.

A different kind of détente was subsequently pursued by theCarter
administration, which soon developed its own form ofunpredictability
in the form of basic differences in approach between Secretaryof
State Cyrus Vance and National Security Advisor ZbigniewBrzezinski.
More from the pressure of events than from the differences amonghis
advisors, the president who began his administration by rejectingan
"inordinate fear of communism" ended it by initiating adefense
build-up in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

But, again, this period of division and weakness in U.S. policydid
much to undermine the Soviets. It lured them into over-confidenceand
complacency; Moscow over-extended itself abroad, let down itsguard
at home, and became dependent on trade and investment with theWest.
The full consequences of this did not become clear until theCarter
administration was succeeded by an administration more openlyand
definitively anti-Soviet than any since Truman's. The Reagan
administration banned most trade with the Soviet Union,suspended
Aeroflot's landing rights, reduced cultural, scientific, andexchange
programs, held no summit meeting for over four years, restrictedthe
entry of Soviet visitors, and generally intensified its effortsto
isolate the "evil empire." Covertly, it sought to strike at thevery
sources of Soviet power, and, through the Reagan Doctrine, atits
forays into the Third World.

The reasons for those sharp alternations of policy towardboth
countries varied. The interesting question is: What was theimpact,
not of the discrete policies themselves, but of their propensityto
displace one another with such bewildering frequency?

A Profoundly Subversive Force

Richard Nixon appeared to give the Soviets something theydesperately
desired: a recognition of and legitimacy to their claims overEastern
Europe. While Nixon dismissed "The Basic Principles ofRelations,"
the charter for détente, in two lines in his memoirs, to theSoviets
it was the major achievement of the 1972 summit. But thefatal
consequence of this achievement was the largest infusion ofWestern
influence into Russia since Peter the Great.

The jamming of Western broadcasts was suspended. As a result, inany
given week about 20 percent of the adult Soviet populationwas
exposed to at least one of the four major Western broadcasters:the
BBC, Deutsche Welle, the Voice of America, and Radio Liberty.
Vladimir Bukovsky tells the story of getting together with friendsto
sign a petition in support of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1970Nobel
Prize:

"As usual, Yakir. . .called around Moscow to collect thesignatures
of friends. Somebody jokingly suggested that he should ring
Khrushchev--after all, it was on his orders that Solzhenitsynhad
first been published. No sooner said than done. Nina Petrovna
Khrushchev answered the telephone and passed it to Nikita."

'Have you heard the news?' asked Yakir. 'They've givenSolzhenitsyn
the Nobel Prize!' 'Of course, of course,' said Nikitacheerfully,
'I've heard. I get all the news from the BBC.'

Trade and investment, cultural and scientific exchanges, tourismand
cooperative ventures burgeoned, and with them, the number ofSoviets
who were exposed to reality, as opposed to the lies fed them bytheir
government. In the course of the 1970s, Soviet trade with theWest
tripled, and the American share of Western exports to theSoviet
Union grew from 8 percent in 1974 to 20 percent in 1979. TheSoviet
economy became intertwined with that of the West to the extentthat
the country was no longer autarkic.

This, in turn, made the Soviet Union vulnerable to economicpressure
and global dislocations. Overall Soviet trade, for example, grewto
$52 billion in 1982, before declining to $41.2 billion in 1986,a
reflection above all of the collapse in the price of oil.This
necessitated a sharp reduction in imports, particularly offood.
Grain purchases fell 52 percent in value, even more in tonnage. A20
percent drop in overall trade is drastic enough, but in the lightof
what we subsequently learned about Western miscalculation of thesize
of the Soviet economy, the implications become even moredevastating.
As late as 1991/92, the CIA's World Factbook estimated the1990
Soviet GNP as $2,660 billion. But the World Bank Atlas of1992
estimated only $479 billion for Russia and $121 billion forthe
Ukraine, and The Economist's publication, The World in 1993,guessed
$137 billion for Russia and $9.7 billion for the Ukraine. In lightof
this very steep downward revision, we have to revise sharplyupward
our appraisal of the Soviets' dependence on Western trade tohelp
transform their economy.

What made it doubly difficult for the Soviets was that thetechnology
they were now acquiring itself undermined the very basis ofinternal
Soviet power. In the early phase of computer development,large
mainframe computers strengthened the capacity for centralized
control. But as the emphasis shifted to decentralized systems,it
came instead to threaten authoritarian control. Private possessionof
printing presses or copy machines was forbidden, but everycomputer
or word processor connected to a printer became a potential sourceof
subversion. To prevent that, to locate all computers incentral
institutions under official control, would sacrifice thetechnical
efficiency of the new development. The impact of the computer
revolution on the Soviet Union has been compared to the"creative
destruction" that Joseph Schumpeter saw as characteristic ofperiods
of major technological change. It was more than that.Schumpeter
feared that capitalism might eventually destroy itself. Instead,one
of the greatest ironies of the twentieth century is thatcapitalism,
imported into the citadel of its greatest historical rival, endedup
destroying communism.

The advance guard, peacefully storming the Kremlin walls,was
business. Conservatives in the United States blanched whenAmerican
business, as usual all but innocent of ideology, "cozied up" tothe
Communists; and liberals bent every effort to get Americanbusiness
out of South Africa. Both were wrong. Business was--and is--a
profoundly subversive force. It is highly rational, whichdespotisms
are not and cannot afford to be. It is focused on theconsumers'
needs and wishes, which despotisms never are. It comes ladenwith
dangerous tools: intelligence, information, computers,telephones,
faxes, xerox machines. In retrospect, it is clear that Leninwas
wrong when he said that businessmen would manufacture the ropewith
which communism would hang them. Business may have made the rope,but
it was communism that was strangled by it.

In the case of apartheid the process was slightly different, butthe
result was the same. In South Africa, U.S. businesses soughtto
demonstrate their principles and protect their position byapplying
non-racial standards throughout their operations--theso-called
Sullivan Principles. Their individual actions may have beensmall,
but when followed by other foreign and South African businesses,the
cumulative result was revolutionary. It created a dynamic sectorof
the economy based on integration and racial equality. Dr.Hendrik
Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, recognized the danger tothe
regime when he said that he preferred a South Africa that waspoor
and separate to one that was rich and integrated.

The Vulnerablility of Elites

Engagement works for reasons that are so obvious that theyare
usually overlooked. Contact with other human beings makes animpact.
It elicits information. It provokes comparison. It induces change.It
subverts. It is ignorance that gives isolated andtightly-controlled
states whatever coherence they possess.

This obvious point was resisted by both Left and Right in theUnited
States for two reasons. Both Left and Right argued--with afine
disregard for consistency where it did not suit theirideological
stance--that contact conferred moral legitimacy on the pariahstate.
And both feared that the United States would be taken for aride.
They feared that the controls in the Soviet Union and

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