When our political intelligentsia gathers tomorrow at Beaver Creek, Colorado, for the annual retreat to think big thoughts under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute, the opening speech is going to be by the man with what a lot of us feel is the most relevant message in the world right now. We speak of Israel’s deputy prime minister, Natan Sharansky, who is emerging as a tribune on a global scale for the idea that the linkage between democracy and foreign policy is the key to winning the struggle against Islamic terrorism — the same way it was to winning the war against Soviet communism.

In New York en route to Colorado, Mr. Sharansky met with The New York Sun and sketched the key points. After being welcomed by President Ford, the 38th American leader, at Colorado, Mr. Sharansky, the man who faced down the Soviet regime and inspired the world, is going to give a reprise of how the world defeated communism. He is going to talk about the contest in the West between the pragmatists and the idealists, that is between the Nixonians and the Reaganites. He will talk about the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which made Soviet Russia’s access to trade with America contingent on Moscow allowing Soviet Jews freedom to emigrate.

Mr. Sharansky will then turn his attention toward the Helsinki summit, where in 1975 human rights were codified as one of the goals of Cold War diplomacy. He will then extol the age of Reagan, when America formally advanced its democratic ideal and the notion that the world didn’t have to seek an accommodation. Reagan understood the it would be possible to roll back of the Soviet communist dictatorship. Mr. Sharansky is going to move on to the great victory, which came not long after his own personal liberation. And then he’s going to talk about how, in the West, “we betrayed our own weapon.”

It is the weapon of linkage — the idea of linking our relations to the condition of democracy abroad, the idea of insisting on waging a moral struggle. He is also going to talk about the relevance of this idea to the war against Islamist extremist terrorism. In the Middle East, he is stressing the primacy not of the peace process but of the struggle for Palestinian Arab democracy. There is no more profit to be had from dealing with the Palestinian Authority than there was with the Soviet Kremlin, he will argue. The Palestinian Authority lacks, as the red regime in Russia lacked, the legitimacy that can come only from a democratic mandate.

In the audience will be the leading lights in the policy struggle — not only within the administration but within American business. Other speakers and guests will include the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi; a challenger to the Iranian theocracy, Reza Pahlavi; the chairman of the defense policy board, Richard Perle; Prince Hassan of Jordan, and scores of others. Vice President Cheney will give the closing speech. It’s a propitious moment, as the Bush administration struggles to find its inner commitment in what may be the most dangerous war America has ever fought.