Czechoslovakia-A Special Section Challenge to the West
RA'ANAN, URI
Challenge to the West By Uri Ra'anan The Soviet decision to invade Czechoslovakia was apparently reached, as in the case of Hungary, after stormy debate between the Russian leaders. Czechoslovak...
...Neither the present concept of coexistence (i.e., detente) nor the concept of spheres of influence can be maintained or respected while the USSR reserves the right to export its own brand of ideology upon the bayonets of the Red Army...
...But the USSR cannot seriously expect that the rest of the world will continue to passively accept armed invasion of Eastern European countries whose only "crime" is a modest evolution toward a more liberal, progressive and humane regime...
...and the remaining leaders seemed to be undecided at that time...
...Then came the explanations with their pat phrases about "spheres of influence," "overcommitment," the need for "continued detente," etc...
...Czechoslovak free radio stations, referring to persistent rumors circulating among the occupation troops no less than among their victims, repeatedly reminded Russian soldiers that Premier Alek-sei Kosygin and, strangely enough, Marshal Andrei Grechko were said to have submitted their resignations in protest against the invasion...
...Otherwise the Soviets would not have resorted to the most transparent lies and forgeries in a desperate attempt to make it appear that their invasion also falls within these accepted categories...
...Moscow is well aware of the fundamental, qualitative differences between its assault on Prague and the categories of (essentially defensive) actions enumerated above that the West has practiced in its own sphere of influence...
...More relevant at the moment is an examination of the "spheres of influence" concept now being advanced to justify a policy of paralysis in the face of Soviet aggression...
...4. To act against unfriendly governments within the zone that permit the rival superpower to erect a nuclear base (the 1962 Cuban missile crisis...
...De Gaulle has opted out of nato, leaving a hollow shell behind...
...Where Kosygin is concerned, there are indications that this story may be more than mere rumor...
...De Gaulle has acted in concert with Moscow on issues of vital importance to the U.S., such as Vietnam and the Middle East...
...Dubcek was not prepared to offend the Russians by following up on Prague's initial and very limited moves toward normalization of relations with Bonn...
...Moscow claimed to be responding to the "appeal" of unnamed Czechoslovak "Party and state leaders threatened by counterrevolutionary forces aligned" with the enemy abroad...
...The USSR may fairly expect that the countries of Eastern Europe will not be invaded from the West, become military bases for the West, or restore the ancien regime—personified by Horthy and the Polish Colonels' Clique...
...Yet no person of sound mind in the West has suggested conducting menacing troop movements along France's borders, not to speak of launching a massive invasion of France, seizing de Gaulle, Premier Couve de Murville and their colleagues, and issuing an ultimatum to the Gaullist party to elect new leaders forthwith...
...Judged by the history of this period, the West believes that dominance in a zone permits a great power to take the following steps: 1. To plan action with friendly governments within the zone for the strengthening of security against attack by the rival superpower (nato, seato, etc...
...Czechoslovakia's Foreign Minister, Jiri Hajek, apparently noticed that the Kremlin, failing miserably to produce enough Quislings to establish the right of intervention under category 2, was beginning to build its case around category 5 (intervention "in the abeyance of any acepted government or authority when a civil war threatens total chaos...
...But since it did not want to burn all its bridges to Moscow, the Committee hastened to add that it would persist in efforts "to strengthen its solidarity and cooperation with all Communist parties, and especially its bonds of fraternal friendship with the Communist party of the Soviet Union...
...Thus, an entirely arbitray and fanciful "symmetry" is created by mentioning Czechoslovakia, Vietnam and the Dominican Republic in one breath...
...The practices of the superpowers during the two decades since the partition of the globe at the end of World War II offer some general precepts...
...and since the Bay of Pigs it has been obvious that Soviet-armed Cuba will be tolerated within the Western Hemisphere, so long as it does not install Soviet nuclear-tipped surface-to-surface missiles...
...The anti-interventionist faction in Moscow quite naturally made the most of this...
...nists find themselves in an uncomfortable situation...
...Proponents of this policy draw the most inapt analogies between Soviet and Western behavior in their respective zones—analogies based upon willful confusion of reality as well as patent moral blindness...
...The Soviet leadership, to be sure, has far fewer illusions about the nature of its armed invasion of Czechoslovakia than the neo-isola-tionists in the West...
...From material provided by exceptionally knowledgeable sources as recently as four weeks ago, it was possible to roughly reconstruct the divisions within the Soviet Politburo over the Czechoslovak situation: At least four members could be identified with a hard, interventionist line...
...Disagreement centered primarily around the dimensions of the "danger" to Moscow posed by Prague's liberalization experiment, and the possible repercussions of any brutal Soviet act in what remains of the world Communist movement...
...Meanwhile, the French Commuerally acceptable under the spheres of influence concept...
...after all, as is well-known in crisis "games," the onus of proof is on the side advocating action...
...At this point, lo and behold, the Western press published reliable reports quoting the highest sources tc the effect that, regrettably, if th?Kremlin should move against the Czechs, the West could do nothing whatever...
...As they see it, the Kremlin's top men are now engaged in a struggle to the finish: Either their methods succeed in crushing the Czech spirit of independence, or Prague's leaders will soon be replaced by a new team willing to apply somewhat saner concepts of Socialist cooperation...
...Moscow's flimsy alibis show that it knows perfectly well exacdy which actions are, and which are not, genParis French Communist party leaders fear that the conflict between Prague and Moscow has just barely started...
...3. To answer the appeals of friendly governments within the zone subjected to aggression by any other state (military aid to Malaysia when it was threatened by Sukarno...
...In all likelihood, this is what helped sway the remaining four undecided members of the Politburo...
...arms caches" near the frontiers, supposedly intended to equip the "counterrevolutionary forces...
...On August 22, their party's political bureau went on record expressing its "reprobation" of the Soviet invasion, and the Central Committee voiced its "disapproval" a day later...
...As it was, the legitimate, universally recognized Dubcek regime never "invited" the Russians into Czechoslovakia, and the West was so far from intervening or remotely encouraging this regime that the West Germans moved their seasonal troop maneuvers hundreds of miles from the Czeoh frontiers in order not to be "provocative...
...Moscow's interpretation of coexistence was tolerable to the West precisely because it appeared to hold out the hope of some peaceful, evolutionary progress toward a more enlightened form of political life for the still enslaved nations of Eastern and Central Europe?though they would remain militarily allied to the USSR...
...The truth, of course, is that unless the symmetry is genuine and complete, the whole notion of spheres of influence becomes meaningless...
...To fully appreciate this fact, one must be willing to abandon bogus comparisons of Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia with U.S...
...Clearly, Moscow wanted to place the Soviet invasion within the second category of permissible actions ("To respond to the appeals from friendly governments within the zone threatened by hostile domestic forces which are armed, supplied, organized, led or instructed by enemies beyond their frontiers...
...5. To intervene in the abeyance of any accepted government or authority when civil war threatens total chaos (the Dominican Republic in 1965...
...three, including Kosygin, were rather strongly opposed to such an adventure...
...At no time after the postwar division of the globe, however, has the West threatened—no less carried out—acts of force against a legitimate government merely because that government's composition and domestic (or, for that matter, foreign) policy was not to its liking...
...2. To respond to appeals from friendly governments within the zone threatened by hostile domestic forces which are armed, supplied, organized, led or instructed by enemies beyond their national frontiers (Vietnam and the 1958 landings in Lebanon and Jordan...
...If the concept?and the policy of coexistence—is to remain valid these distinctions must again be sharply defined and emphasized...
...During his dramatic UN address, Hajek stressed that the Dubcek regime had been in total and unchallenged control of the country prior to the invasion (as, indeed, every visitor and correspondent reported...
...But no action was taken to counter the 1955 Egyptian arms deal...
...It may be objected that it was not so much the Dubcek regime's foreign policy that offended Moscow as its domestic liberalization—the threat to the supremacy of the Communist party...
...The Paris comrades felt this was the only way for them to retain a certain...
...A sixth category once existed that the West appears to have totally abandoned: To take action against unfriendly governments within the zone that open up their military and security establishments to Soviet leverage by accepting Soviet weapons shipments (the 1954 expedition of Guatemalan exiles against the Arbenz regime, which had just concluded an arms deal with Moscow...
...I will not attempt to explore here the validity of the frequently repeated but never adequately analyzed assertion that the West is of necessity physically impotent in Central and Southeastern Europe...
...Neo-isolationists who mislead themselves and the Soviet leadership in this regard are taking upon their shoulders a grave moral and political responsibility...
...The defeated anti-interventionists must have wondered why the West ignored the old adage that when you have nothing intelligent to say, keep your mouth shut and leave everyone guessing...
...In the very heart of the Western zone, for example, there is a government—Charles de Gaulle's—whose offenses against Washington far outweigh those of Prague against Moscow...
...Even after the invasion, the nation demonstrated remarkable discipline in responding almost unanimously to the instructions of its kidnapped leaders...
...in contrast, Dubcek demoted the Czech officer who suggested some modest reforms of the Warsaw Pact...
...The interventionist clique in the Kremlin was thus presented, gratuitously and on a silver platter, with the "proof" it otherwise surely could not have produced...
...What would be the point of building bridges if in the end the Red Army was to squash the more liberal regimes, while Western leaders stood by shamefully paralyzed and mumbled vaguely about "spheres of influence" (some even referred to the rape of Prague as a "minicrisis...
...There also appears to have been a third question, though, which troubled the Soviet leadership: The confident assertions of neo-isolation-ist ideologists in the West notwithstanding, the Kremlin was initially by no means indifferent to the possibility of Western countermeasures in the event of a Russian assault upon Czechoslovakia...
...This ploy was reinforced by the convenient "discovery" of German or U.S...
...Antonin Novotny, while still the legitimate Czech head of state, had really appealed for Soviet aid, and // his opponents had really been armed, organized or instructed at that time by Bonn or Washington, the Russians might have had a passable case...
...intervention in Vietnam and to take up a legitimate parallel...
...With Czechoslovakia still occupied, they doubt that last month's negotiations really solved anything...
...If that is true, then Moscow has finally and irrevocably reneged on its position of "no export of revolution, no export of counterrevolution," without which any policy of genuine coexistence between political opposites is impossible...
...What did "bridge building" mean, if not just that...
...And while it was perfectly true that the neo-isolationist wave in the West had reduced the probability of serious countermeasures, the Soviet anti-interventionists rightly demanded that the rival faction demonstrate with certainty that the United States and its nato allies would not intervene when the Red Army entered Prague, the heart of Europe...
Vol. 51 • September 1968 • No. 17
