May 5, 1996, Sunday, 2 STAR Edition

SECTION: ZEST; Pg. 29

LENGTH: 1291 words

HEADLINE: Neoconservatives get credit where it's not due

BYLINE: JOHN W. SLOAN

BODY:
''ON THE BRINK: The Dramatic, Behind-the-Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women Who Won the Cold War. '' By Jay Winik.

Simon & Schuster, $ 30.

THE conservative movement has been fighting what it calls the liberal establishment for decades. Conservatives not only have battled to replace liberals, but they also have sought to duplicate liberal structures and practices by putting forth their own counter-establishment.

Thus, conservatives have set up their own journals (the National Review), think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute), pundits (George Will and William Safire) and mythical heroes (Ronald Reagan).

Professor Jay Winik, a Yale Ph.D.who teaches foreign policy at the University of Maryland, continues this trend by writing ''On the Brink.''

This study is modeled after David Halberstam's ''The Best and the Brightest,'' a book that inspired many anti-Vietnam War liberals during the early 1970s. Winik's treatise is designed to tell an epic story of how neoconservatives were able to help President Reagan lead the United States to a historic victory against the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

His thesis is that Reagan's foreign policy moved beyond containment and detente to pressure the Soviet Union at multiple points (from Afghanistan to an expensive arms race), which eventually caused the evil empire to implode.

Neoconservatives constitute an important sect within the conservative movement. Led by such intellectuals as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, they are mostly former Democrats who were alienated by George McGovern's winning the Democratic nomination for president in 1972. Neoconservatives believed that leftist liberals like McGovern and Ted Kennedy were blind to the threat of communism and to the need for a stronger defense policy.

They charged that liberal Democrats had lost their nerve and will to defend vital national security interests because of what happened in Vietnam. They urged the Democrats to resurrect the muscular foreign policy of Harry Truman and John F.Kennedy. Their champion in the Senate and candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1976 was Sen. Henry ""Scoop'' Jackson.

The failures of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy caused many neoconservatives to break away from the Democratic Party and become available for positions in the Reagan administration.

Winik tells the story of Reagan's foreign policy largely through the eyes of four neoconservatives whom he interviewed extensively. The most important figure is Richard Perle, a former staff member of Jackson's and an assistant secretary of defense under Caspar Weinberger.

Perle was a major player in the formulation of the administration's arms control policy. For his opposition to most arms control proposals, his enemies nicknamed him ""the Prince of Darkness. ''

A second neoconservative was Jeane Kirkpatrick, who served as the United States' first female United Nations ambassador. She played a major role in constructing the administration's Central American policy during the first term.

Her aspirations for promotion to either National Security Council adviser or secretary of state were opposed by pragmatists (like George Shultz and James Baker), who found her prickly. An embittered Kirkpatrick resigned early in 1985.

Max Kampelman might have become Hubert Humphrey's secretary of state if the vice president had been elected president in 1968. Instead, this talented lawyer became Reagan's chief negotiator for human rights and arms control.

Elliott Abrams, with his Harvard law degree, worked as chief of staff for Democratic Sen. Daniel Moynihan before becoming, at the age of 33, assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration.

Abrams played a significant role in dealing with Central America in Reagan's second term. He became engulfed by the Iran-Contra morass and eventually pled guilty to lying to Congress.

President George Bush, who does not receive much praise from Winik, pardoned Abrams in December 1992.

The author's style is to make each of the neoconservatives endearing to the reader because: Each was propelled by patriotic motives rather than personal or political ambition; each was concerned with spending more time with his or her family; each was viciously attacked by the cynical media; and each would prefer to eat hot dogs and hamburgers with family, friends and loyal staff than eat in fancy restaurants.

Liberals, according to Winik, are ambitious for higher office, always attempting to dominate the media, willing to sign arms control agreements that will endanger U.S. national security, never inclined to call home and inquire how their families are doing, likely to prefer cocktail parties in the sophisticated salons of Georgetown to barbecues with their families.

Instead of presenting a scholarly explanation of Reagan's foreign policy, Winik writes in terms of mythical heroes and despicable villains.

Facts and events that do not fit his thesis are either neglected or underestimated. A pragmatic conservative like Secretary of State George Schultz was far more responsible for Reagan's success than any of these neoconservatives.

While asserting the conservative myth that Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) played a large role in the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the author disregards the facts that Congress cut the SDI budget in 1987 and that no operational system was ever put into place.

While emphasizing how much Reagan admired Kirkpatrick, Winik fails to see that she was publicly campaigning for a higher position and that the president was willing to let her leave the administration.

Winik's acceptance of Abrams' defense, namely that the young, naive assistant secretary for inter-American affairs was misled by the CIA and Oliver North, is tough to accept.

North's reputation for stretching the truth was widely known within the administration, and surely Abrams had learned something about the CIA's commitment to veracity while at Harvard and while serving as a Senate aide.

And, finally, it is ridiculous to argue that Reagan's Central American policy made a major contribution to the downfall of the Soviet Union. The collapse of communism was caused by a number of factors that will surely be debated by scholars for many years.

There is no doubt that the Reagan administration made a significant contribution to the Cold War victory of the United States. Winik is correct when he credits the fortitude of Reagan in deploying intermediate missiles in Europe in 1983 - against the threats of Moscow and the pressures of the nuclear freeze movement in the United States and Western Europe - for bringing a new sense of realism to arms control negotiations.

But the author is wrong when he underestimates the internal contradictions of the Soviet system that erupted when Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power, and he is wrong again when he overestimates the influence of neoconservatives in bringing about the defeat of communism.

The problem with this book is that it preaches to the choir. Winik acts more like a press agent for neoconservatives than like a scholar. Because the author was so dependent on his interviews with these four neoconservatives, he falls into the trap of exaggerating their impact. He even condemns the Bush presidency for not appointing prominent neoconservatives to any foreign policy positions.

The fact that the Soviet Union disintegrated even though Bush and Secretary of State James Baker were not advised by neoconservatives suggests that the author inflated the significance of his heroes and heroines.