dealmaking skills were of no use in the face of an aroused populace. Nevertheless, after Tien An
Men and Potsdam, Bush was rapidly emerging as one of the few world leaders who could becounted on to support world communism.
During the early months of 1990, certain forces in Moscow, Bonn, and other capitals gravitated
towards a new Rapallo arrangement in a positive key: there was the potential that the inmates of the
prison-housinvestments in infrastructure and economic modernization could guarantee that the emerging statese of nations might attain freedom and self-determination, while German capital (^)
would be economically viable, a process from which the entire world could benefit.
A rational policy for the United States under these circumstances would have entailed a large-scale
committment to taking part in rebuilding the infrastructure of the former Soviet sphere intransportation, communications, energy, education, and health services, combined with capital (^)
investments in industrial modernization. Such investment might also have served as a means to re-
start the depressed US economy. The pre-condition for economic cooperation would have been a
recognition by the Soviet authorities that the aspirations of their subject nationalities for self-
determination had to be honored, including through tin the Baltic, the Trans-caucasus, central Asia, the Ukraine, and elsewhere. As long as long as thehe independence of the former Soviet republics
Soviet military potential remained formidable, adequate military preparedness in the west was
indispensable, and should have featured a significant committment to the "new physical principles"
anti-missle defenses that had inspired the original Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1983.
Obviously, none of these measures would have been possible without a decisive break with theeconomic policy of the Reagan-Bush years, in favor of an economic recovery program focussed on (^)
fostering high-technology growth in capital-intensive industrial employment producing tangible,
physical commodities. The single US political figure who had proposed such a program for war-
avoidance and stability was Lyndon LaRouche, who had put forward such a package during a press
conference in West Berlin in October, 1988, iunification was very much on the agenda for the immediate future. n the context of a prophetic forecast that German re-
Bush was responsible for the jailing of LaRouche, and his policy in these matters was diametrically
opposite to this approach. Bush never made a serious proposal for the economic reconstruction of
the areas included within the old USSR, and was niggardly even in loans to let the Russians buyagricultural commodities. In November, 1990, Gorbachov addressed a desperate plea to world
governments to alleviate the USSR food shortage, and sent Foreign Minister Shevardnadze to
Washington in the following month in hopes of obtaining a significant infusion of outright cash
grants for food purchases from US stocks. After photo opportunities with Baker in Texas and with
Bush at the White House, all Shevardnadze had to take back to Moscow was a paltry $1 bichange. Within a week of Shevardnadze's return, he resigned his post under fire from critics,llion and
referring to sinister plans for a coup against Gorabchov. The coup, of course, came the following
August. It should have been obvious that Bush's policy was maximizing the probability of ugly
surprises further down the road.
Bush did not demand self-determination for the subject nationalities, but sided with the Kremlin
against the republics again and again, ignoring the January, 1991 bloodbath in Lithuania, or
winning himself the title of "chicken Kiev" during a July, 1991 trip to the Ukraine in which he told
that republic's Supreme Soviet to avoid the pitfalls of "suicidal" nationalism. Even though the
Soviet missle park was largely intact, Bush was compelled by his budget penury to take downsignificant areas of US military capacities. And finally, his stubborn refusal to throw the bankrupt (^)
policies of the Reagan-Bush years overboard guaranteed further US economic collapse.
But Bush was mindful neither of war avoidance nor economic recovery. In the months after
Panama, he basked in the afterglow of a dramatic increase in his poularity, as reflected by the public