Religious fronts against the Soviet empire: Evangelisation and Jihad

The war in Afghanistan which threatens to destabilise Pakistan is claimed to have begun a secret initiative by the US and the Vatican to use religion to weaken the Soviet Union. It is depicted as a pincer movement of Catholic dissidents on the Soviet empire's western flank and Islamic fundamentalists on its southern one. Today the Vatican is happy to take credit for the first, but doesn't mention the second.

In 1976, a Polish Archbishop, Karol Wojtyla, visited the US and had tea with a Polish-born American, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Though the following year saw changes for both of them, they kept in close touch: Brzezinski was appointed President Carter's national security adviser and Wojtyla was elected pope. Brzezinski convinced President Carter that the new pope, John Paul II, was the key to bringing about an enormous sea change in East-West relations. Accordingly, when Brzezinski went to Rome in 1978 as part of the American delegation for the papal investiture, he used the opportunity to begin some quiet diplomacy. James M. Rentschler, a former US ambassador and staff member of the Carter administrations National Security Council, in a recollection he wrote for the International Herald Tribune of October 30, 1998 talks about this secret initiative that some believed altered the course of the Cold War.

Excerpt from "The Secret Cold War Partnership between Pope John Paul II and White House Revealed" DEBKAfile Exclusive Intelligence Report 2 April 2005 http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1009

In great secrecy Mr Brzezinski also initiated Mr. Carters historic Cold War move, working with the man whose power and influence inside the Holy See were second only to the Popes himself, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican secretary of state, a tough yet subtle negotiator privately known among his Curia as Kissinger in a cassock. He and Mr. Brzezinski opened a private channel between the White House and the Holy See, which National Security Council operatives dubbed the Vatican hot line. It was a link that Jimmy Carter and John Paul II soon made operational with a personal correspondence of extraordinary breadth. [...] Rentschler notes that the forty still-classified letters cover a range of highly sensitive issues: arms control, human rights, famine relief, popular unrest behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan, the fate of Catholic missionaries in China, Cuban adventurism in Africa, the Middle East peace process, hostage-taking and terrorism. [...]

DEBKAfiles intelligence experts add: Brzezinskis 1976 tea with the Polish cardinal [Wojtyla] fathered American Cold War strategy which was, in a word, to prime the imperfectlysuppressed religious zeal pulsating in the Soviet Bloc masses as the Wests doomsday weapon in the Cold War. Pilgrimages by the Polish pope, with the help of secret agitators, were to rouse the multitudes to rise up against their atheistic oppressors. Once the Christians were on the march, Brzezinski proposed persuading militant Islam to join the mission of inflaming the Soviet Unions teeming Moslems. From the historical perspective, Brzezinskis plan of operation was the most radical applied in the Cold War till then, short of armed conflict. In comparison, the Nixon-Kissinger detente policy was much less aggressive, confining itself to photographing a given situation and freezing the arms race, while letting the Cold War go on according to agreed ground rules. Brzezinskis religious crusading offensive went outside those rules. [...] Brzezinskis brainwave of harnessing religious zeal to beat communism had two extreme though opposite effects. The force of Christianity was a major factor in undermining Soviet communist domination of East Europe. Its lands turned around to embrace democratic change, a pro-Western orientation and a market economy in a still-evolving process. In Asia and the Middle East, Carters national security adviser resorted to fundamentalist Islam to defeat communism. The CIA-supported Mujahideen did indeed drive the Red Army out of Afghanistan. But this same religious weapon eventually became a boomerang against America. It spawned Osama bin Ladens al Qaeda, the Islamic jihadist terrorist movement dedicated to destroying the West and its values.

See also: Richard Bernstein, "Did John Paul Help Win the Cold War? Just Ask the Poles", New York Times, 6 April 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/international/worldspecial2/06communism.html