Czechoslovakia-A Special Section Fears and Spheres
MORGENTHAU, HANS J.
Fears and Spheres By Hans J. Morgenthau Our reactions to the events in Czechoslovakia are only somewhat less distressing than the events themselves. These reactions result from the same kind of...
...For it is another existential fact, which has dominated the fate of Europe, East and West, that Germany—by virtue of its geographic position, size and quality of population, political organization, and industrial potential—is the most powerful nation on the Continent...
...Cm the one hand, it signifies the final liquidation of the myth that the Soviet Union is "the fatherland of Socialism...
...Soviet policy in Eastern Europe has since Yalta been burdened with an inner contradiction: Following in the footsteps of Tsarist imperialism, it sought the establishment of friendly governments which would serve as a buffer against foreign invasion and keep out Western, particularly German influence...
...Consequently, Germany exerts a natural attraction upon its weaker neighbors, especially those to the east...
...It is upon this proviso that the future of Communist government depends...
...There is, of course, no doubt that much of the verbal attack the Soviet Union has launched against West Germany is propaganda and so is not to be taken seriously...
...In the measure that a nation such as Czechoslovakia moves away from the Soviet Union, therefore, it must move closer to Germany...
...Moscow could rely on them as long as it could maintain control through the instrumentalities of a monolithic Communism...
...The question I am raising here is not whether this is good or bad policy...
...The Soviet Union regards this alternative as a threat to its security and the stability of Europe...
...This concession, if it proves to be permanent, profoundly alters not only our judgment of the Cold War as it has been waged during its first decade, but the objective nature of the Cold War to be waged in the future...
...We continue to attribute to Communism what is more plausibly explained by reference to the traditions of the Russian state...
...And therein lies the threat to the security of the Soviet Union...
...By the same token, the Cold War of the future will lose its main issue if both sides continue to refrain from trying to change the 1945 line of demarcation...
...Thus we attribute what happened on August 20 to Communism...
...Secondly, it demonstrates that the Soviet Union is not "the fatherland of Socialism" tied to other Communist governments and movements by a natural harmony of interests, but that it has been trying to impose its will upon these movements and governments in order to be able to use them for the purposes of the Russian state...
...It demonstrates, first of all, that Communist governments after the Soviet model are not expressions of popular will but creatures of an elite monopolizing political power...
...Thus Stalin proceeded to establish such governments...
...While the attraction has been powerfully counteracted by the terror the Nazi armies spread throughout the region, it is testimony to its force that it is making itself felt again...
...While this reasoning, using one superstition to support another, has strengthened our resolve in Vietnam, it cannot strengthen a non-existent resolve with regard to Czechoslovakia...
...The Soviet Union now stands revealed as just one state among others, compelled to pursue its aims with a particular ruthless-ness, since its claim to the spontaneous support of all Socialist peoples has proven to be false...
...They discredit once more the Marxist-Leninist philosophy, and to the extent that they do they weaken the political movements and governments whose legitimacy derives from that philosophy...
...This is especially true of the government of the Soviet Union both at home and abroad...
...This is true even of truncated West Germany today...
...These events made obvious what some of us had suspected all along, that the United States was actually pursuing a policy of containment conceived in terms not of liberation, but of an implicit and thus far unacknowledged agreement to recognize the existence of spheres of influence...
...The only governments in Eastern Europe that could be expected to be friendly were Communist governments, set up by the Soviet Union and subservient to it...
...A freely elected government in any of these countries," he said, "would be anti-Soviet, and that we cannot allow...
...Germany provides, by dint of its very existence, the natural alternative to the Russian orientation of the nations of Eastern Europe...
...If this interpretation of the Soviet move in Czechoslovakia is correct, then that move constitutes not so much an affirmation of Communism as a denial of some of its basic tenets...
...These two revelations are bound to have far-reaching consequences...
...Having also attributed what has happened in Vietnam to Communism, we are happy to find confirmation for our actions there in what the Russians are doing in Czechoslovakia...
...The need of the other East European nations for Russian assistance, however, is not so clear-cut...
...The secularization of the Soviet state has taken another big step forward...
...But underneath the verbal excesses there is a genuine fear nourished both by the history of a century and the experiences of World War II...
...For, with the exception of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia, all the nations of Eastern Europe have traditionally perceived Russia, Tsarist or Soviet, as a threat to their national independence if not as their hereditary enemy...
...A ruling group armed with the modern technologies of communication, transportation, and warfare can keep itself in power against a rebellious population only if the spirit of freedom does not affect the ruling group itself...
...It is resolved to oppose even the beginnings of the realization of this alternative by all means, fair or foul...
...This policy not only recognizes the special interests of the Soviet Union east of the 1945 line of demarcation, but also pledges non-interference with Soviet policies east of that line...
...It is tantamount to a unilateral recognition of a Russian sphere of influence wherein the United States concedes, without receiving any concessions in return, what it has consistently refused to concede since Yalta, and what Winston Churchill urged us to concede only in the give and take of a negotiated settlement...
...This convergence has existed in the relations of the Soviet Union with some of the nations of Eastern Europe, but by no means with all of them...
...But power thus maintained is bound to be precarious...
...To paraphrase Stalin's statement quoted above, this the Soviet Union cannot allow...
...Stalin, who was a paranoiac tyrant but also a great statesman, saw the contradiction clearly at Yalta when he countered Western demands for friendly and democratic governments in Eastern Europe by pointing to the impossibility of this combination...
...It makes the Cold War of the past, in so far as it was fought for more than strict containment, look like a rather quixotic affair fought for the sake of appearances rather than of substance...
...Once the nationalism of the Communist nations of Eastern Europe reasserted itself, the Soviet Union had to rely for its security upon the convergence of the national interests of those nations with its own...
...hence, we are right in opposing it in Vietnam...
...Poland, almost extinguished by the German Drang nach Osten, seeks protection from the Soviet Union...
...The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia is indeed an event of great historic significance...
...This diplomatic revolution, this acceptance of the division of the world into two gigantic spheres of influence, with the consequent disappearance of the main issue and justification of the Cold War, conforms to the Stalinist conception of the postwar world...
...Yet the Soviet Union was in no position to permit the formation of friendly governments which would be popular too...
...They have a freedom of maneuver that is foreclosed to Poland and East Germany...
...Clio, goddess of history, must savor the irony of a situation which sees Stalin disavowed both in the heritage of his own deeds and in the words and deeds of his Kremlin successors, and yet proven right by his main opponent...
...One of these neighbors is Russia...
...The United States, far from seeking out or creating opportunities for opening the door to liberation, has proved to be unwilling even to enter the door when a satellite nation kicks it wide open...
...Communism, so the argument runs, has shown its true colors in Czechoslovakia...
...The American abstention in the face of the German uprising of 1953 and of the Polish and Hungarian revolts of 1956, coupled with the renunciation of force on the latter occasion, has made it perfectly clear that liberation for the United States is a matter of desire and hope, 'a consummation devoutly to be wished,' but not an objective of policy to be pursued by deliberate action...
...the other, Germany...
...Our complete passivity gives the lie to our professions of concern for freedom, democracy, and resistance to aggression...
...The Soviet rulers, unable to rely upon that support and faced with the hostility of peoples thirsting for freedom, have no recourse other than brute force to keep themselves in power...
...These reactions result from the same kind of misunderstanding of the character of Soviet foreign policy that has bedeviled our intellectual understanding and foreign policies at least since the Yalta Conference...
...On the other, it reaffirms Western recognition of the Soviet sphere of influence and, hence, the spuriousness of the U.S...
...It is ironic that, while the Russian imperial state stands ideologically naked before the world, we continue to reason not only as though the ideological vestments of the Soviet Union were still intact, but as though their existence could explain the events in Czechoslovakia...
...What I said in February 1957 on the occasion of the Hungarian Revolution applies here: "The events of the fall of 1956 have opened up a gap between our verbal commitment to a policy of liberation and the actual policy we pursued when the opportunity, not to initiate liberation but to support it after it had already been achieved, arose in Hungary...
...I raise only the question of what the policy of the United States in regard to the satellite countries has revealed itself actually to be...
...dedication to the freedom of the nations of Eastern Europe...
...East Germany, an artificial creation serving the Kremlin's interests, depends for its very life on Soviet support...
...It is an existential fact, which has determined the fate of the nations of Eastern Europe for centuries, that none of them can stand on its own feet but must lean on one or the other of its powerful neighbors...
...This attraction terrifies the Soviet Union...
Vol. 51 • September 1968 • No. 17
