On the Right

Streetwise Soviet-watchers know something as certainly as astronomers know what time the sun will rise tomorrow. This is that Gromyko, when he meets with Secretary of State Shultz on January 7, 1985, is going to come up with a new ifyou-don’t-agree-to-this-forget-it demand. Last year, of course, it was that we should not deploy missiles in Europe to oppose the new generation of Soviet SS-20s. We went ahead. Now it will be that we freeze our SDI. (That stands for Strategic Defense Initiative. That stands for Star Wars. You can tell a pro-SDI from an anti-SDI by a simple voice test. The antis say “Star Wars.” The pros say “High Frontier.”)

We have, traditionally, gone a long way to propitiate the Soviet Union, when preparing to sit down to bargain with it. Jean-François Revel has written a gruesomely accurate portrayal of our weakness when face to face with the Soviets called How Democracies Perish. The news that came from Washington last week could have added an extra illustrative chapter to Mr. Revel’s book, whose thesis is that the West, paradoxically, is always apologizing for any effort it makes to defend itself against the Soviet effort to overcome us.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

Streetwise Soviet-watchers know something as certainly as astronomers know what time the sun will rise tomorrow. This is that Gromyko, when he meets with Secretary of State Shultz on January 7, 1985, is going to come up with a new ifyou-don’t-agree-to-this-forget-it demand. Last year, of course, it was that we should not deploy missiles in Europe to oppose the new generation of Soviet SS-20s. We went ahead. Now it will be that we freeze our SDI. (That stands for Strategic Defense Initiative. That stands for Star Wars. You can tell a pro-SDI from an anti-SDI by a simple voice test. The antis say “Star Wars.” The pros say “High Frontier.”)

We have, traditionally, gone a long way to propitiate the Soviet Union, when preparing to sit down to bargain with it. Jean-François Revel has written a gruesomely accurate portrayal of our weakness when face to face with the Soviets called How Democracies Perish. The news that came from Washington last week could have added an extra illustrative chapter to Mr. Revel’s book, whose thesis is that the West, paradoxically, is always apologizing for any effort it makes to defend itself against the Soviet effort to overcome us.