Heroes and Anti-Heroes

THE STRUGGLES OF people around the world to take control of their own futures, without interference from superpowers of the east of west, have provided the most inspiring international stories of the past year. Nowhere have the heroes in that battle been more appealing, more heroic, than in Poland, where the workers of a putative workers' state demonstrated the power of protest with persuasive eloquence. We joined all Americans in glorying in the slow but steady progress of Lech Walesa and his comrades; likewise we have scorned the lumbering belligerence of the Soviet Union in its refusal to grant the reforms that Poland's people demand.

But Americans have spoken with considerably less unanamity in another case of aggresive superpower imperialism: American activity in El Salvador. Through its active support of a hateful regime, the Reagan administration has, like so many misguided administrations before it, invested America's great power and prestige in a government detested by its own people. How many times before have we blunderingly thrown military hardware at a foreign nation's ruling elite in the hope that those guns would somehow confer legitimacy on our besieged buddies? And how many times has that policy failed? One of the most tragic case studies in the bankruptcy of that mentality came in Iran. While no one could approve the taking of American hostages by the Islamic militants, the depth of the Iranian's hatred of Americans convincingly illustrated how badly our previous actions in Iran backfired.

But the same policies that shattered America's respectability in the world have been ressurected in the Reagan era--all in the name of getting tough with the Russians. We are, apparently, no longer interested in the merits of the conflicts around the world; details like which side has the support of the people now pale in comparison with the larger goal of sending Moscow a message. This insidious American insistence on confrontation is an infringement on the self-determination of anyone who might be affected by a confrontation between the superpowers--meaning everyone.

This diplomacy of imagery lets the world slip even closer to nuclear disaster. America and the Soviets converse in an odious geopolitical dialogue--where the language is arms sales and the conversation is in the small (though growing larger) battles between our surrogates. Or the words are sometimes spoken with domestic arms build-ups like the one signaled by the President's first budget. This unnecessary hardware not only hurts our troubled economy, it also begs to be used--the most harrowing possibility of all. Direct negotiations between the superpowers for arms limitation and, eventually, disarmament, and mutual attempts to reduce arms sales around the world are the only sane alternatives for a planet already too close to Doomsday.

The Middle East--the volatile treasure island of the world's energy--continues to edge close to open confrontation. The Reagan administration has demonstrated its foolhardy policy of confrontation in its sale of high-technology airplanes to Saudi Arabia. The planes--certainly not needed by the Saudis by any stretch of the imagination--are meant as a demonstration of American "resolve"; a characteristically ill-conceived expression of the Reagan doctrine. The sale needlessly antagonizes a valued ally, Israel; does not help the Saudi government or its people; and demonstrates the ever-present problems of our dependence on Arab oil. Yet the Reagan administration's continued refusal to recognize imported oil as a significant cause of our economic, political and military instability reveals how the obsession with the U.S.-Soviet split distorts the true concerns of American foreign policy.

The superpowers are not the only nations insistent upon obsolete and corrupt relationships with those who seek freedom from outside domination. The last few months have witnessed the agonizing renewal of nearly open warfare in Northern Ireland, where Great Britain continues to demonstrate its unfitness to rule that battered region. Britain's refusal to grant political status to jailed Irish Republican Army members--a move supported even by many Protestants, if only to stop the bloodshed--represented just another example of the misguided sense of honor that has dominated British actions. All Ireland will eventually have to share in the creation of its future; the sooner the British realize that, and begin to leave a country that should not belong to them, the better it will be for all.

Though the past year did not yield many gains in the world-wide struggle for justice, the cause emerged alive, if often embattled. The world--especially those nations which carry the terrible responsibility of its nuclear safe keeping--might do well to learn from the examples of their own history. There are times, both America and the Soviet Union know, when the old ties must be broken and the universal desire for freedom must triumph. The work of fostering that dream should be the business of all nations in the years ahead.