Despite the oft-expressed misconception that Communism died with a whimper
during the bloodless revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
in 1989-1991, today Communism is making somewhat of a comeback in much
of the world to the point that approximately one and three-quarter billion
people live under Communist, renamed Communist Party or Marxist-Leninist
control today. While the People's Republic of China has taken up the USSR's
old role as the Communist motherland, other notable still-formally-Communist
states include North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and Cuba. Myanmar
is ruled by a military junta, which espouses Marxist-Leninism and has
closely aligned itself with Communist China. States governed by unrepentant
Communist apparatchik dictators-for-life include Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgizistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan
and Georgia are ruled by the same former Communist Party bosses that governed
them during Soviet times.
Even as Western Europe tilts to the political right, renamed Communist
party politicians are returning to power in Eastern Europe. The leaders
of their respective national renamed Communist parties have returned to
power via the ballot box in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Moldova, Albania
and have come to a power sharing arrangement in Bulgaria with the election
of a Communist President and head-of-state. Slovakia also seems set to
return to renamed Communist Party control in this fall's elections. Many
of these former Communist-bloc countries are either current NATO members
or will be considered for full NATO membership at a special NATO summit
to be held in November of this year. In Russia, the Communist Party controls
the speakership of the Russian Duma along with several of its committee
chairmanships, though with the recent break-up of the governing partnership
between former KGB spymaster and current Russian President Putin and the
Communist Party in the Duma, overt Communist influence is currently on
a decline. In Ukraine, the Communists remain a force to be reckoned with
in the Duma and President Kuchma seems to be increasingly aligning Ukraine
with KGB-led Russia.
Mbeki
In fact, Communism has advanced far beyond the Eurasian subcontinent.
In Venezuela, recently re-installed President Hugo Chavez has declared
himself a Communist and has stated that his goal is to transform his country
into a Communist "paradise" similar to Castro's Cuba. In South
Africa, the Communist-dominated and one-time terrorist organization, the
African National Congress, rules what has increasingly become an essentially
one-party state, which is only a decade or so behind its more radical
Marxist Leninist one-party dictatorship cousin in Zimbabwe in terms of
radicalization. The President of South Africa himself, Thabo Mbeki, unlike
his predecessor, is an actual member of the South African Communist Party.
In fact, virtually all of southern Africa with the exception of Botswana
is ruled by Marxist-Leninist regimes against which the US under which
the Reagan Administration fought proxy wars to defeat back in the 1980s.
In addition, Ethiopia and several other African states are ruled by revolutionary
Marxist regimes.
In what is likely to be the greatest Communist coup since Mao and his
Red Army proclaimed the People's Republic of China in Beijing in October
1949, Brazil seems set to elect its first Marxist President in October.
Ignacio Lula da Silva, the perennial candidate of Brazil's Communist Popular
Front, leads his closest non-socialist opponent by 27 percentage points
according to the latest poll, while socialist party candidates account
for an additional 28 percent of the vote likely to go to Lula in the second
round of voting. Lula has aligned himself with Fidel Castro of Cuba, Hugo
Chavez of Venezuela and the FARC narco-terrorists in Columbia through
his Forum of Sao Paulo organization, which he founded to increase the
influence and joint coordination of Marxist and Communist revolutionaries
throughout the Western hemisphere. Lula has further expressed an intention
to align Brazil with Russia and Communist China if elected and to provide
China with naval bases along his country's long Atlantic coastline.
It is imperative that US policymakers realize that the truth is that
the fight between the West and what remains of the Communist bloc never
really ended since the great majority of
people who lived in Communist nations in 1991 still suffer under Communism's
yoke today. America's fight against Communism isn't over and will not
be until the 1.3 billion people now enslaved by their murderous Communist
Chinese captors are liberated along with their compatriots still languishing
in the laogai death camps. America must deter and contain Communist
Chinese aggression and expansion and, yes, engage in a Reaganesque strategy
of rollback very different from the policy being pursued by the current
administration.
The main difference between the foreign policy of Ronald Reagan and that
of President George W. Bush is that while Reagan had a clear-cut vision
and strategy of how to defeat Soviet Communism, which ultimately proved
mostly successful, Mr. Bush appears to have no strategy to rollback Chinese
Communism at all, having chosen instead to pursue a failed strategy of
detente with the Communist Chinese. Even worse, the Bush Administration
has opted to continue the Clinton Administration's policy of appeasement
and accommodation towards the Butchers of Beijing. The US cannot hope
to defeat, rollback, or even successfully confront and contain Chinese
Communism without a strategy for victory, let alone without any strategy
at all. However, such a strategy will first require that the Bush Administration
affirm that Communist China is not only an increasing threat, but is still
a Communist adversary not merely some fanciful "market economy"
trade competitor as they have previously asserted.
David T. Pyne, Esq. is a national security expert who works as an
International Programs Manager in the Department of the Army responsible
for the countries of the former Soviet Union and the Middle East among
others. He is also a licensed attorney and former Army Reserve Officer.
In addition, he holds an MA in National Security Studies from Georgetown
University. Mr. Pyne currently serves as Executive Vice President of the
Virginia Republican Assembly. He is also a member of the Center for Emerging
National Security Affairs based in Washington, D.C. Mr. Pyne serves as
a columnist for American-Partisan.com, OpinioNet.com and America's Voices.
He is also a regular contributor for Patriotist.com. In addition, his
articles have appeared on Etherzone.com and AmericanReformation.org where
he serves as a policy analyst. (c) David T. Pyne, 2002