European Document / What Should the West Do?
Revel, Jean-François
"European Document / What Should the West Do?" Month: A thumb suitable for sucking goes to Dusko Doder of the Washington Post, for his 11 September article entitled "Soviets' Global Position Eroding." Three columns wide, the "story" is an...
...After the rebellion was crushed, Eisenhower sent his Vice President, Richard Nixon, on a symbolic visit to the refugee camps in Vienna--but not to Budapest...
...One continues to .be shocked at the exploitation of American newsprint for Soviet nonsense, and Doder's "senior Western diplomats" appear to have memorized Pravda: the Camp David Peace process . . . reestablished U.S...
...positions in the Middle East and effectively denied Moscow a voice in the course of events there . . . the Soviet Union, while it has begun to export military power through the use of Cuban and Vietnamese proxies, remains a profoundly old-fashioned empire that regards territories contiguous to its own with greater concern than far away places . . . . The Afghan push.., is an effort to break what Moscow Sees as the hostile ring around the Soviet Union . . . the men in the Kremlin seem deeply troubled by a series of adverse events and by the threat of a new round in the arms race that would put additional strain on their economy...
...It is also, after all, the Kremlin leaders' know...
...In theory, it was possible for~he West in 1956 and even in 1968 to answer with an intervention of its own, or at least with a preventi;ce warning or a threat to help the resisters...
...This was seen when the Czechs were crushed in 1968, and in 1980 when there was fear of Soviet intervention in Poland...
...These weapons, at any rate, would have hampered r a t h e r than helped the strikers in their skillful and delicate maneuvers...
...WHAT SHOULD THE WEST DO...
...We have just proven that we respect these accords, since we did not even use the weapons of propaganda at the height of events in Poland...
...The Western governments displayed extreme reserve, even verbally, aware that any encouragement to the Polish strikers from them would provide the Soviets with an excuse to cry out about an imperialist plot...
...The Russians are chess players: They know what a gambit is...
...Following some desultory complaints, the West accepted the Afghan affair...
...sacrifice a piece, in view of ultimately winning the game...
...Does it not help the totalitarian powers to maintain themselves rather than improve their peoples' standard of living...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 33...
...rather it is the correlation of forces--the probable resistance of the Polish people, including, even, the Army...
...During the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Western governments offered repeated encouragement to the revolutionaries only to follow up with a spectacular and complete abandonment...
...This explains their remarkable caution, as well as the contradictions of their endeavor, which Jacek Kurofi, leader of KOR (Committee for the Defense of the Workers), defined, as he emerged from prison, this way: "We must enlarge the sphere of freedom and reduce the sphere of totalitarianism without crossing thelines drawn by Soviet tanks...
...His early moves after the war--such as accepting free elections in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, which the Communists lost-proved that in these countries he was prepared to be satisfied temporarily with a situation similar to the one in Finland...
...When, having tasted Communism for a few years, the peoples of the satellite countries began to rebel, the West once again underestimated its own assets and overestimated Soviet determination...
...They cannot provide material well-being or individual freedom or political democracy...
...The current policy, subsidized d&ente, raises two questions: Does it not nourish Soviet armament...
...Month: A thumb suitable for sucking goes to Dusko Doder of the IVashington Post, for his 11 September article entitled "Soviets' Global Position Eroding...
...With r e g a r d to Central Europe, the West has displayed, since 1945, a timidity that has often caused it to make concessions that the Soviets have actually not expected...
...Should we help men live or should we help governments oppress men...
...All this at a time when the Soviets are dazzled by a surfeit of tempting opportunities, and after a decade and a half of uninterrupted expansion of military spending...
...by J e a n - F r a n g o i s Revel The Polish people are not counting on much support from the West...
...In Poland and elsewhere, tomorrow just as yesterday, there will always be times when we will have to choose between governments and peoples, between the camp of the colonizer and of the colonized...
...It is sometimes best to Jean-Francois Revel is a columnist for L'Express magazine, from which this essay is reprinted...
...Three columns wide, the "story" is an account of a conversation with " s e n i o r Western diplomats" in Moscow, according to whom the poor Soviet Union is in deep trouble...
...Today none of this is possible even theoretically...
...The second alternative would aim at letting the system collapse under the weight of its problems...
...The condemnation of the USSR in the UN resulted of course in no action...
...As Kissinger notes in his memoirs, Stalin, at first, did not expect to be able to grab all of Eastern Europe and turn it into a satellite zone...
...The first alternative, in addition to offering us some economic advantages, aims at preventing the Soviet world from undergoing an implosion whose external repercussions could be dangerous...
...We would be making a big mistake if we forgot that totalitarian regimes, too, are fragile...
...Yet, it is not Western moderation that is keeping the USSR from intervening militarily...
...Who today remembers that during the 1953 workingclass riots in Berlin, Beria (still the strong man in the Politburo, just after the death of Stalin) even considered letting East Germany go...
...To make matters even worse, "even Soviets privately concede that both India and Vietnam draw far greater benefits from these ties than does the Soviet Union...
...Since then, this gap has been closed...
...As Francois Fejt~ writes in Budapest 1956, "There was a big gap between the virulently anti-Communist and interventionist propaganda broadcast by Radio Free Europe and Washington's concrete diplomatic activity...
...So why mess things up in Poland...
...Thanks to France, the Olympics turned out to be moderately successful as propaganda...
...What's more, between these two dates, the West presented the Soviet Union with a royal gift: the official recognition in the 1975 Helsinki Accords of the Soviets' sphere of influence in Central Europe...
...Our words are now consistent with our actions--like the latter, they are inexistent or insignificant, at least at the official level...
...This, of course, is the official Moscow apology for each new act of aggression, as it has been for every imperialist throughout history...
...Only afterwards, noting the blatant lack of interest in the West, did he set into motion the series of coups which brought socialism to power in Central Europe and erected the Iron Curtain...
...In fact, the Kremlin was said to see itself "surrounded by overtly or covertly hostile forces and left without friends on the vast Asian continent with the exception of India and Vietnam...
...But, in this global game, should the West continue to disallow itself from taking advantage of the weaknesses of the Communist side?When problems appear in the West, the Soviets do their best to make them worse...
...Naturally, this moderation did not prevent the Soviets from doing just that...
...When problems appear in the East, Westerners do their best to solve them...
...ledge that, after the invasion of Afghanistan, two colonial wars in less than a year would be a little much...
...The only leverage still left to us in influencing events beyond the Iron Curtain is economics...
...What's more, the Soviets have means at their disposal to exacerbate our internal conflicts, while we have no such means...
...Make it two thumbs for Doder and the Post...
...Should we continue:to help Communist regimes to os(ercome their difficulties or should we simply let them pay the price for their economic ineptitude...
Vol. 13 • November 1980 • No. 11
