LITHUANIA OTHER COMMENTARY : On the Rabid Right, Old Habits Are Hard to Break

The boys who spent the Cold War in the bleachers--when the poor and the “ethnics” were out fighting Vietnam--are back in business. You can read in their columns and see it in their faces. The right-wing drumbeaters can’t wait for the standoff between Vilnius and Moscow to bring the half-century’s greatest hope for peace, Mikhail Gorbachev, tumbling to his knees.

We must not listen to them.

Before we let American-Russian relations return to the subfreezing level, we should ask ourselves a simple question: What’s in the best interests of the United States? That Lithuania attains immediate and total independence? Or that Lithuania achieves effective self-rule now with the opportunity to formalize its sovereignty when the dust has settled?

Now for the killer question. Is immediate and total Lithuanian independence, recognized by the Soviet Union, worth Gorbachev’s demise?

Some on the American right seem to think so. Listen to the talk-show commentators. One after another, they are latching onto Gorbachev’s problems with Lithuania as a pretext to jump-start the Cold War. If Gorbachev acts to restrain Lithuania, the right is ready with its triumphal condemnation. If he fails to act and loses control of events in the fragmenting Soviet Union, right-wing spirits will soar even higher.

The reasons are edifying. The liberation of Eastern Europe and the changes in the Soviet Union these recent years have, after all, revealed a deep division on the American right.

On one side there’s the pragmatic crowd. These are the folks who fought the good fight against Soviet communism. They watched what the Soviets were doing in the world and made their judgments accordingly. They saw the Soviet grab for Berlin in 1948, the crushing of Hungary in 1956, the death of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. They decided that the leaders of the Soviet Union were the bad guys.

These are the reasonable people of the right. They have no ax to grind, no bone to pick with the Russians as a people. They know that it’s simply not in our interest to have a superpower enemy in the world. It costs too much; worse yet, it may blow up the world some day.

These are the Americans who root for Mikhail Gorbachev today, who see the difficulties he faces, who try to understand, who pray for his survival. These are the conservatives--Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and, a bit belatedly, George Bush--who believe that Gorbachev is the great Russian savior we have all been waiting for.

Then there are the haters, the vicious ideologues who would lose all purpose if Gorbachev succeeds.

These are the fans who can’t get enough of the Cold War. When Poland broke for freedom and Gorbachev held back, the haters on the right simply glared. When Hungary opened the door and Gorbachev held back, they kept their silence. When Czechoslovakia made its peaceful break from Moscow and East German astoundingly did the same, they bit their tongues.

That’s understandable, I suppose. To those unaddicted to the Cold War, the events in Eastern Europe have been exhilarating. To those who have thrived on the American-Soviet standoff, it was something different. If you’ve spent your whole adult life cultivating a habit of ideology, as if it were alcohol or nicotine, the Cold War still looks a lot more appetizing than cold turkey.

It’s an awful thing to say, but the rabid right sees in Lithuania a chance to get the juices running again--like the old days.