CZECHOSLOVAKIA: PRELUDE TO WORLD W A R III
Kelley, John
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: PRELUDE TO WORLD WAR III? by John Kelley "If the Soviet Union hesitated even ten years ago, before intervening militarily in Hungary, how much less certain the Communist rulers...
...Indeed because of our confused understanding of the difference between Soviet aggression and the spread of Marxist-Leninist ideology, we have implicitly declared the entire world as our "sphere of influence...
...the tides of revolution in 1830, 1848 and 1860 repeatedly attacked that foundation until it went down under the force of Garibaldi, Cavour, Napolean III and Bismarck...
...We often forget that America lost about three hundred thousand men to the sword in World War II, while Russia suffered in excess of fifteen million fatalities...
...Divided Europe is looking towards the re-establishment of normal relations with Eastern Europe, not the cancellation of progress already made...
...Clearly the Russians must have felt very strongly about happenings in Czechoslovakia to intervene there...
...Presumably, one sovereign state takes sanctions against another state on the assumption that these sanctions will bring about a desired change in the other's behavior...
...Apparently not the least disconcsrted over Social Security's impending bankruptcy, Humphrey has called for a fifty per cent increase in Social Security benefits, and asked — believe it or not — that payment for this increase be met from current tax funds, necessitating a further tax hike above what'shis-name's surtax...
...Nor are the Russians going to do an about-face if we cancel nonstrategic trade with them...
...Seven years later we once more violated the OAS Charter in the Bay of Pigs fiasco...
...The most incredible aspect of this development of Pax Americana (to use the title of Ronald Steel's recent book) lies in the fact that prior to the 1949 ratification of the NATO agreement, with the exception of the ill-fated Franco-American Alliance of 1778-1801, the United States had never bound itself to the defense of another country's territories...
...Given this perspective Bratislava may be seen as the beginning, not the end, of freedom in Eastern Europe...
...In 1630 as the ship Arbella, carrying the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, sailed westward across the Atlantic, the leader of the group, John Winthrop, foresaw the unifying theme of American history: "Wee shall be as a Citty upon a hill, the eies of all people are upon us...
...I suggest a closer, and perhaps more accurate parallel: The Congresses of Laibach and Verona (1821-22) and the Carlsbad Decrees (1819...
...Page 10...
...by John Kelley "If the Soviet Union hesitated even ten years ago, before intervening militarily in Hungary, how much less certain the Communist rulers of Eastern Europe must be of this and lesser forms of help today...
...Break diplomatic relations...
...we feted the Hungarian hero, Louis Kossuth, but Henry Clay denied him any material support: "It would be far better to keep our light burning on this Western shore, as a light to all nations, than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen and falling republics in Europe...
...For some people who believe the United States invincible, that sphere of influence has become the world...
...Russia and China) are in a life and death struggle...
...While that is one possible conclusion to be drawn from Russian actions, there exist other views that I find more convincing...
...She refused to engage herself in the material support of European revolutions against monarchial tyranny...
...But as Ronald Steel has noted: "So long as the Federal Republic (of Germany) continues to claim legal titles to land beyond the Oder-Neisse and in the Sudentenland, the Poles, Czechs and Russians will continue to fear that some future German government might seek to recapture such territories by force...
...America's sense of "mission" stretches back in time to the first New England settlements...
...This cautious counsel of Washington, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay has gone by the board in the twentieth century...
...Send additional troops to Germany...
...the United States) and Communist barbarism (i.e...
...As a world power ever since the close of the Spanish-American War, the United States quite naturally carved out spheres of influence...
...Clearly the United States is not going to break diplomatic relations over an incident that took place entirely within the Russian sphere of influence...
...when the U. S. ordered the Marines into the Dominican Republic in 1965...
...Barry Goldwater, in 1964, attempted to expose this dole for the boondoggle it is, and immediately acquired the onus of persecuting the elderly — as well as wanting to NUKE the world...
...we applauded the revolt of the Spanish colonies in the New World, but we refused to join them in defensive alliances...
...Is it not likely that Pravda, noting our post-war interventions, has concluded: "We told you so...
...In 1967 the United States had seven hundred thousand soldiers stationed in thirty countries, was a member of four regional defense alliances and an active participant in a fifth, had mutual defense treaties with forty-two nations, was a member of fifty-three international organizations and was furnishing military or economic aid to nearly one hundred nations around the world...
...What should we do...
...This worldwide sphere of influence is hidden under the doctrine of "containment" of Communism...
...But if such a hike were added to the present Administration's monstrous budget, the Administration could hide it easily within those twelve digits...
...We wished France well as she stormed the Bastille, but failed to carry out the terms of the Franco-American Alliance...
...The point of this article is not an evaluation of the wisdom of these American interventions, but a simple acknowledgement that "spheres of influence" are very much with us today...
...Cancel all American-Russian airflights...
...As long ago as 1966 West Germany carried on seven hundred thousand dollars of trade with East Germany, a country that Bonn refuses to acknowledge through diplomatic recognition...
...The Russians are not likely to cry crocodile tears over losing commercial air flights to the United States...
...With this as our criteria, let us look at these suggestions...
...With time and encouragement they may wear away the substructure of the Russian system...
...Bring our ambassador home for consultations...
...And hopefully, in this year of our National Political Circus, Social Security will become one of the featured acts...
...Many in the United States are particularly outraged by the government's failure to act against the Russian aggression...
...Some commentators have seen America's failure to act in the Czech crisis as another Munich...
...They acted, realizing that many Communist parties around the world (including those of Italy and France) would condemn their actions...
...But Metternich's system stood on a foundation of sand...
...Max Frankel in SOVIET AND CHINESE COMMUNIST POWER IN THE WORLD TODAY (1966) The recent Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia prompted the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers of similar ilk to proclaim: "We told you so...
...or "treason...
...Kennan, Stimson and Harriman dissented from this position at the time, and have been proven correct by recent Cold War history...
...It is a myth to believe that the Social Security Page 6 CZECHOSLOVAKIA Continued from Page 6 It would not be too difficult to trace a line linking the manifest destiny writings of John Fiske, Josiah Strong and John W. Burgess with the Truman Doctrine and John Foster Dulles' call for "liberation" of East Europe...
...I can not help wondering what the Russians thought of our 1954, 1961 and 1965 Latin American interventions...
...Winthrop's exhortation has been very much with us in the ensuing 358 years...
...For those whose minds are controlled by this aberration, the disintegration of monolithic Communism we have witnessed since Tito's 1948 revolt holds no special meaning...
...You can't do business with the Communists...
...For with Social Security taxes currently being drawn from workers' paychecks at a rate close to ten per cent, workingmen would hardly support an increase in this sector...
...Those same currents of freedom are active in Eastern Europe today...
...Indeed the cynical might ask if W. W. Rostow et al have ever bothered to read the 1928 Clark Memorandum...
...soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our God in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world...
...The drawbacks to this approach (beyond those weaknesses of the present system) should appear obvious, even to an economic illiterate like Hubert...
...Through most of the 19th century, America was satisfied with redeeming the Old World by high example...
...Our "allies" will be only too happy to pick up the trade...
...With rising inflation — which, incidentally, hurts pensioners most — it would appear exceedingly foolhardy to escalate the trend...
...Near the end of the Second World War, Cordell Hull went into ecstasy over the possibility of ending spheres of influence: "As the provisions of the Four-Nation Declaration are carried into effect, there will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, for balance of power or any other of the special arrangements through which, in the unhappy past, the nations strove to safeguard their security or to promote their interests...
...Continued on Page 10 THE ALTER NATIVE by Jefferson S. Davis Sand Down A Rat Hole Until recently berating Social Security was analogous to questioning the sanctity of motherhood — it was irrefutable...
...After the Fall Carnival of 1964, it appeared Social Security would glide blissfully along, tapping the workingman and employer every payday for a fund with no assurance of solvency when the worker reaches retirement...
...You can't do business with capitalist America...
...For under close scrutinization, Social Security appears a dismal failure...
...Cut all trade ties...
...In 1954 the United States government, operating through the CIA, overthrew the legallyconstituted Guatemalan government of Guzman Jacobo Arbenz...
...from some American circles...
...By these actions Metternich successfully suppressed liberal movements in Italy, Spain and Germany...
...Evidently President Johnson's advisers forgot the 1933 Montevideo Conference Resolution ("No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another...
...To suggest that the Russians intervened in Czechoslovakia as we have in Guatemala, Cuba and the Dominican Republic for the same reason — fear for their security — is to draw charges of "heresy...
...To them Russia's recent invasion of Czechoslovakia merely reinforces their conviction that Western civilization (i.e...
...Many in the United States have come to see the world as a dichotomous conflict between the forces of good and evil between Christian capitalism and atheistic Communism...
...But now divine inspiration appears to have caused Hubert to move Social Security to the front lines of the current campaign...
Vol. 2 • October 1968 • No. 2
