As tragically evidenced in Brussels last week, we are at war with an enemy that is driven by ideology, and prepared to fight without mercy or restraint. This is not the first time we’ve faced such a foe. During the Cold War, the United States led a global fight of momentous significance against the threat of totalitarian communism. Many of its lessons apply to our war against totalitarian Islam — particularly the importance of offering refuge and freedom to those escaping ideological extremism.
Cold War conservatives recognized that the future of the free world depends on cultivating allies behind enemy lines and demonstrating the attractions of the liberal West. Every refugee from a communist country was considered a victory for freedom and a repudiation of Soviet propaganda.
Today’s conservatives take a very different approach. Rather than courting the victims of tyrannical Islam, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, the leading Republican presidential contenders, called for a ban on Syrian refugees in the aftermath of the Brussels attack.
This is a dangerous strategic mistake. Resettling refugees from Syria and other countries torn apart by Islamic extremism is crucial to a larger national security strategy for combating and ultimately defeat the Islamic State. Turning away potential allies needlessly damages our ability to defeat the enemy.
During the Cold War, the State Department developed a strategy to turn Soviet refugees into assets for the United States. In 1948, it recommended using “refugee resources … to fill the gaps in our current official intelligence” in the fight against the Soviets. They realized that a lack of information about the inner workings of the Soviet Union left the United States “ill-equipped to engage in political and psychological conflict with the Soviet world.”
“Sometimes we were asking them for the names and numbers of friends and colleagues, family members,” wrote Burton Gerber, a former senior American intelligence officer, describing how refugees became valuable intelligence assets in the Soviet Union. “Then we would use the refugee to … [get] a secure message across to the target to come over here and be interviewed and then possibly recruited.”
President Dwight Eisenhower said that Soviet refugees were “searching desperately for freedom” and “look to the free world for haven.” Accordingly, Eisenhower fought for a refugee program that brought more than 214,000 refugees from Soviet bloc countries into the United States in just two years.
Some of these refugees risked their lives by returning behind the Iron Curtain to perform reconnaissance, or lead resistance movements within the Soviet bloc. Others became researchers or spokespersons for freedom on Radio Free Europe broadcasts, counteracting Soviet propaganda that extolled the virtues of communism.
The operation was not without its risks. The Soviets planted spies among the refugees — both for the purpose of espionage and to undermine support for defectors in the West. “We do not intend to have Russia send in 500 or 1,000 fellows claiming to be refugees when as a matter of fact they are spies,” said Sen. William Langer in a 1953 hearing, stressing the importance of rigorous screening measures.
It is natural to belittle past fears to elevate present ones. But Soviet spies and propaganda were a real and extremely urgent concern. Soviet agents weren’t blowing themselves up in the streets, but the future of global freedom hung in the balance and the standoff between nuclear powers threatened a war that could destroy life on Earth. The risk posed by Soviet agents pretending to be defectors was arguably much greater than that of Syrian Islamic State operatives posing as refugees.
But the risk was worth it. The consequences of Cold War refugee policy was unequivocally positive for the United States. The list of defectors who aided the U.S. is lengthy and includes many KGB agents, soldiers, generals, scholars, physicists and others.
The lesson for today’s war is clear. Government officials have complained for years about a lack of intelligence in Syria. One official told the Los Angeles Times last year that Syria was “a black hole.” Yet as former-CIA intelligence officer Patrick Eddington explains, Syrian refugees from these areas are “the single best source of information on life inside ISIS-controlled territory.”
Muslim refugees who reject the ideology of the Islamic State, and who are willing to actively aid the United States in the fight against the Islamic State, ought to be welcomed, just as Ronald Reagan welcomed Soviet bloc anticommunists.
Conservatives should see the wisdom of America’s Cold War refugee strategy, and recast themselves as champions of those victimized by a common enemy.
The Islamic State is dangerous and must be stopped. Cutting ourselves off from the allies and intelligence we need to win gives the Islamic State exactly what it needs to live, and kill, another day.
David Bier is the director of immigration at the Niskanen Center. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
