THE UNITED STATES AND CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE AMERICAN CENTURY

Ambassador Daniel Fried’s short, well-written set of essays comes at an appropriate moment, the 100th anniversary of Poland’s independence and the onset of Polish-American diplomatic relations.

Ambassador Fried takes up various issues, following in the footsteps of historians like M. B. Biskupski, Piotr Wandycz, Zbigniew Lewicki, and Boguslaw Winid. As an insider and participant in policy decision-making beginning in 1977 and ending in 2017, Fried was especially well-placed to recount the both the background of the process and the international and domestic dimensions of U.S. policy toward East Central Europe, the Soviet Union and Russia. His essays are a real contribution to the literature and will certainly become required reading in US foreign policy courses on both sides of the Atlantic. A must-read.

Dr John S. Micgiel Centre for East European Studies, University of Warsaw If we were to look for the most interesting parts of the work that would induce polemics with the author, then in my opinion this is a chapter devoted to Yalta. Of course, Fried is aware of its catastrophic consequences for the entire region and, indirectly, for American interests in the world. However, he interprets the Yalta arrangements as an effect and to some extent a logical consequence of American and world politics starting from the 1930s and Hitler’s rise to power.

Dr Bogusław Winid Polish diplomat, Embassy of Poland to the USA, DCM (2001–2006) Polish Ambassador to NATO (2007–2011), Polish Ambassador to the United Nations (2014–2017) Advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda (2018–2020)

LAT

ISBN 978-83-61325-92-5

Jubileusz

Studium

Europy Wschodniej

9 788361 325925

Uniwersytet Warszawski

1990-2020 STUDIUM EUROPY WSCHODNIEJ

U N I W E R S Y T E T WA R S Z AW S K I

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Amb. Daniel Fried’s book is an unexpected gift honoring the 100th anniversary of the United States recognition of the reestablished Poland hundreds of years ago in January 1919. In spite of being a relatively brief presentation it nevertheless it fills an important lacuna in a scholarly knowledge of the US-Poland relations. By thorough in-depth analysis of US policies over those years. So far, many scholars analyzed various aspects of complicated relations between the USA – a superpower and a newly reestablished Poland, but Amb. Fried’s book is by far the best written analysis of the history of the American-Polish relations which in reality were affecting not only the beginning in 1918 but also even affecting Poland’s contemporary status and development.

Prof. Anthony Z. Kruszewski Professor Emeritus of Political Science, The University of Texas at El Paso

BEO

Daniel Fried THE UNITED STATES AND CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE AMERICAN CENTURY

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B i b l i o t h e c a E u r o pa e O r i e n t a l i s

Ambassador Daniel Fried (Ret.) is an American diplomat, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from 2005 to 2009, and as United States Ambassador to Poland from 1997 to 2000. He also served as a Special Envoy to facilitate the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Cuba, and as a co-ordinator for United States embargoes. Fried retired from the State Department in February 2017, after forty years of service. Now visiting professor at the Centre for East European Studies, University of Warsaw.

Daniel Fried

THE UNITED STATES AND CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE AMERICAN CENTURY Essays From Lectures

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The United States and Central Europe in the American Century

B i b l i o t h e c a E u r o pa e O r i e n t a l i s

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Daniel Fried

THE UNITED STATES AND CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE AMERICAN CENTURY Essays From Lectures

Warszawa 2020

Editorial Reviews/Recenzje wydawnicze Prof. Anthony Z. Kruszewski Professor Emeritus of Political Science The University of Texas at El Paso Dr John S. Micgiel Centre for East European Studies, University of Warsaw Dr Bogusław Winid Polish diplomat, Embassy of Poland to the USA, DCM (2001–2006), Polish Ambassador to NATO (2007–2011), Polish Ambassador to the United Nations (2014–2017), Advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda (2018–2020) Editing of the series “30 volumes for the 30th anniversary of SEW” /Redakcja językowa serii „30 tomów na 30-lecie SEW” Marek Gołkowski (Studium Europy Wschodniej UW) Secretariat of the series/Sekretariat serii Aleksander Skydan (Studium Europy Wschodniej UW) Cover design/Projekt okładki Studium Europy Wschodniej UW (Hubert Karasiewicz) Layout/Skład i łamanie: Duo Studio Proof-reading/Korekta językowa: Author Indexes/Indeksy Studium Europy Wschodniej UW (Natallia Paulovich) Concept of the publishing series „Bibliotheca Europae Orientalis”/Koncepcja serii wydawniczej „Bibliotheca Europae Orientalis” Jan Malicki Printing & binding/Druk i oprawa Duo Studio Distribution/Kolportaż: tel. +48 22 55 27 990 e-mail: wydawnictwa.studium@uw.edu.pl © by Studium Europy Wschodniej UW & Daniel Fried Warsaw 2020 UNIWERSYTET WARSZAWSKI Third edition revised and completed Edycja trzecia, poprawiona i uzupełniona ISBN 978-83-61325-92-5 In the series „30 volumes for the 30th anniversary of the Centre” - volume No 10/30 W serii „30 tomów na 30-lecie Studium” – tom No 10/30

W serii „30 tomów na 30-lecie Studium Europy Wschodniej” tom No 10

Jubileusz. Studium Europy Wschodniej. 1990-2020 „30 tomów na 30-lecie” ZAS BIEGNIE niezwykle szybko. Tym na pozór banalnym stwierdzeniem chciałbym opisać odczucia moje własne, jako osoby od lat kierującej Studium Europy Wschodniej, a także i moich kolegów, którzy stwierdziwszy fakt zbliżającego się Jubileuszu 30-lecia, przyjęli to z ogromnym zaskoczeniem. To prawda, można się zastanawiać, jak to się stało, że 30 lat przebiegło tak szybko, ale ogromnie uspokaja nadzieja, wręcz przekonanie, że tego czasu nie zmarnowaliśmy.

Nasze 30-lecie to bowiem setki konferencji, to setki wydawnictw, to już tysiące absolwentów szkół i programów stypendialnych, to także rozległa współpraca międzynarodowa, która zaowocowała wręcz założeniem kilku Stacji SEW poza granicami. A wreszcie to przywrócenie, w 1998 r., po ponad półwieczu nieistnienia regularnych studiów wschodnich w Polsce (ostatni nabór studentów, w Wilnie i Warszawie, przeprowadzono latem 1939 r.). A dziś, w dniu Jubileuszu 30-lecia, Studium może się chlubić grupą już kilkuset absolwentów – młodych dobrze wykształconych specjalistów „od spraw wschodnich”, osiągających niekiedy już poważne kariery, pochodzących przy tym zarówno z Polski, jak i dzięki stypendiom rządowym, z całego regionu. Tu mogę jedynie potwierdzić – „kadry są najważniejsze”…

Zacząłem się zastanawiać, jak można i jak należy ten Jubileusz uczcić. Zbiegło się to z faktem, że rok 2020 jest naprawdę rokiem nadzwyczajnym. Rozwój epidemii koronawirusa przyniósł decyzję zamknięcia najpierw zajęć akademickich i przeniesienia ich do systemu on line, a następnie przejście całego Zespołu Studium na wiele tygodni do pracy zdalnej. To, wbrew pozorom, pomogło w decyzji o sposobach uczczenia Jubileuszu, albowiem pozwoliło zmienić

bieżące obowiązki administracyjne na spisywanie, opracowywanie i korekty tekstów.

Postanowiliśmy bowiem uczcić Jubileusz jednostki dydaktyczno-naukowej w sposób wzorcowo naukowy – przez wydanie serii książek. Początkowy plan obejmował jedynie edycję kilku podręczników profesorów wizytujących, którzy wykładali dla studentów Studiów Wschodnich w ciągu ostatniego 10-lecia. Ale następnie plany i ambicje stawały się coraz większe i rozległe. W ich wyniku seria podręczników profesorów wizytujących zajmie jedynie pierwsze 10 pozycji. Jest to seria bardzo ważna, bardzo znacząca, a książki te latami będą służyć studentom Studiów Wschodnich i zapewne nie tylko. Ale ta sytuacja wirusowa oraz kierująca niżej podpisanym ambicja nadzwyczajnego uczczenia Jubileuszu doprowadziły do rezultatu, jestem przekonany, również nadzwyczajnego. Oto w roku, w którym wirus zablokował lub uniemożliwił większość prac na uczelniach, nam udało się przygotować 30 tomów w ogromnej większości całkowicie oryginalnych, bądź na nowo opracowanych. Tak właśnie zespół Studium Europy Wschodniej przygotował i uczcił Jubileusz swego 30-lecia – „30 tomów na 30-lecie Studium”.

Dziękuję Autorowi niniejszego Tomu, dziękuję wszystkim Autorom całej serii, dziękuję wszystkim osobom, dzięki którym ten wspaniały plan udało się w tak trudnym czasie zrealizować. Składam gratulacje obecnym i dawnym Wykładowcom, Pracownikom i Współpracownikom Studium, którzy mają prawo do słusznej dumy z Jubileuszu.

JAN MALICKI Studium Europy Wschodniej Uniwersytet Warszawski

Tom niniejszy nosi numer 10.

30 years of Centre for East European Studies (1990–2020) „30 volumes for the 30th anniversary” IME IS RUNNING very fast. With this seemingly banal statement, I would like to describe my own feelings as the person who has been in charge of the Centre for East European Studies for years, as well as my colleagues who, having discovered the upcoming Jubilee, received it with great surprise. True, you may wonder how it happened that the 30 years passed so quickly, but it is extremely reassuring to hope, even to the belief that we have not wasted this time.

Our 30th anniversary means hundreds of conferences, hundreds of books published, thousands of graduates of schools and scholarship programs, as well as extensive international cooperation, which has resulted in the establishment of several Centre for East European Studies abroad. Finally, in 1998, after more than half a century of non-existence, the regular Eastern studies were restored in Poland (the last recruitment of students, in Vilnius and Warsaw, was carried out in the summer of 1939). And today, on the 30th Jubilee, the Centre can be proud of a group of several hundred graduates – young, well-educated specialists in „Eastern affairs”, already achieving serious careers, both from Poland and, thanks to government scholarships, from all over the region. Here I can only confirm – „Cadres decide everything”...

I began to wonder how this Jubilee could be celebrated and how it should be celebrated. This coincided with the fact that 2020 is truly an extraordinary year. The development of the coronavirus epidemic has resulted in the decision to first close academic classes and transfer them to the Internet, and then move the entire Centre team to work remotely for many weeks. Contrary to appearances, this has helped in the decision to celebrate the Jubilee, as it has

allowed us to change the current administrative duties into writing, editing and correcting texts.

We have decided to celebrate the Jubilee of the teaching and research unit in an exemplary scientific way – by publishing a series of books. The initial plan was only to edit a few handbooks of visiting professors who have taught to students of East European Studies over the past 10 years. Nevertheless, then the plans and ambitions grew larger and larger. As a result, the series of visiting professors’ textbooks will only take the top 10 positions. It is a very important, very significant series, and these books will serve students of East European Studies for years and probably not only them. But this viral situation and the ambition of the undersigned to celebrate the Jubilee in an extraordinary manner will also lead to, I am sure, an extraordinary result. Here is the year when the virus blocked or prevented so many activities in universities, we still managed to produce 30 volumes, the vast majority of them entirely original or reworked. This is how the team of East European Studies prepared and celebrated the Jubilee of its 30th anniversary – „30 volumes for the 30th anniversary of the Centre”.

I would like to thank the Author of this volume, and all the authors of the entire series, all the people who made this wonderful plan possible. I would like to congratulate the present and former Lecturers, Employees and Associates of the Centre who have the right to be justly proud of the Jubilee.

JAN MALICKI Centre for East European Studies University of Warsaw

This volume is numbered 10.

materials CSource ontents

The United States and Central: Europe in the American Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 First Draft of the American Century Wilson’s Fourteen Points, a New Europe, and Failure at Versailles . . . . . 13 The Road to Yalta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Finding the Cold War Consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 America Recalls its Grand Strategy: Brzezinski, Solidarity, and Reagan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 The Power of Freedom 1989 and its Consequences . . . . 67 Clinton’s Choice: The Strategic Turn to Grow the Free World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Achievement and Aftermath: What Went Wrong and What to Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Source materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

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– drawn from lectures in a course at Warsaw University’s Centre for East European Studies – was inspired by the 100th anniversary of Poland’s reestablished independence in 1918 and the emergence of other new or renewed nation-states from the Baltic to the Black Seas. Those events coincided with (and were advanced by) the rise of the United States and its first articulation of a Grand Strategy: President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points presented in January of that year. The Fourteen Points were an early, incomplete, and unsuccessful – but also a visionary and influential – attempt to set out a rules-based global order that favored democracy. hiS booK

The Fourteen Points were about more than Central Europe.

But they called for Poland’s independence and treated all of Central Europe as an integral part of an undivided Europe whose security would be guaranteed by the United States.

The Fourteen Points set the stage for the best American strategic thinking that followed. The Atlantic Charter of 1941, the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine of the early post-Cold War era, President Reagan’s advocacy of democracy, e.g., in his Westminster speech of 1982, and the foreign policy strategy of the subsequent US Presidents until 9

Daniel Daniel FriedFried

Donald J. Trump, all sought to advance as far as practical the objective of what came to be known as the Free World. All were inspired by the Fourteen Points.

Wilson was a flawed advocate for the Free World. His racism, bad even for his times, is a hard mark against him.

But, like America’s Founders, Wilson’s best ideas were at odds with his worst ones and, in the end, the good ideas proved more lasting.

This Grand Strategy for a Free World was not the only US foreign policy approach over the past 100 years, however.

Another tradition, rooted in power politics and a version of the doctrine of realism, has also played a major part.

This approach, among other things, does not regard Central and Eastern Europe as an integral part of an undivided Europe and further holds that the US had no core interests in it; that Central Europe can be treated as a function of US policy toward other powers, especially the USSR and later Russia. This view played a large part in US thinking in the run-up to Yalta and in the US policy of “détente” with the Soviet Union in the early 1970’s.

The essays that follow review US policy toward Central Europe from Wilson to the start of President Joe Biden’s Administration, a history that illuminates larger debates about fundamentals of US foreign policy. Some of the most consequential choices of US foreign policy over the past century were about Central and Eastern Europe. As President George H. W. Bush said in his 1989 speech to the Polish Sejm, the Cold War began and ended in Poland.

I am grateful to Professor Jan Malicki, Director of the Studium Europy Wschodniej, who invited me to teach at Warsaw University and commissioned this book, now translated into Ukrainian and Bulgarian. For this third edition, I have revised the final chapter, updating it to include a discussion of the Trump Administration’s engaged, often productive, but inconsistent policy toward Central Europe 10

Introduction

and expectations about the Biden Administration’s approach.

I have learned much from the students who have taken the course over the past three years: Poles, Ukrainians, Armenians, Belarusians, Georgians, and others from the former Soviet Union. They, like previous generations from Central and Eastern Europe, have experienced the consequences of the successes and failures of US policy in this part of the world.

For them, the themes of the course are not abstractions.

This book, therefore, is dedicated to Poles and other Central and East Europeans who, over the past century, pushed the United States to remain true to its best values, who recalled Americans to themselves when we strayed from them, and who worked with us to advance policies consistent with the old rallying cry of Polish patriots and fighters for freedom “Za Waszą i Naszą Wolność” “For Your Freedom and Ours”

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First Draft of the American Century: Wilson’s Fourteen Points, a New Europe, and Failure at Versailles

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of American policy toward Central and Eastern Europe arguably begins with President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points – presented in his January 8, 1918 speech to Congress – a rough draft of American Grand Strategy in what has been called the American Century. ne hundred years

It is worth recalling the moment: the Great War, the bloodiest in human history to date, was at its height and Germany was in a position to win. In the West, Imperial Germany occupied most of Belgium and held large areas of France. In the East, Germany had defeated Russia, now led by Vladimir Lenin, Lev Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks.

After just weeks in power, the Bolsheviks were preparing to capitulate to Germany, but far from feeling defeated, they proclaimed that the outcome of the imperialist war, as they saw World War I, was irrelevant. They believed that the time for socialist revolution had come; they predicted general revolution which would sweep away the old European order, and were nearly proven right.

For their part, the French, British, and Italian Allies, and Germany and Austria-Hungary as well, had fought within the established European balance-of-power framework. Their war aims were included in secret treaties which involved territorial seizures of the sort victorious European governments had practiced for centuries. Their peoples literally did not know what they were fighting for until Lenin and Trotsky published some of the secret arrangements to discredit the “imperialist” powers and justify their own position of removing Russia from the War. Meanwhile, the established Central European order was dying.

Created by force with the 1795 final partition of the Polish-Lith13

Context of Wilson’s Fourteen Points

Daniel Fried

uanian Commonwealth by Russia, Prussia (later Germany), and Austria, and affirmed and extended at the Congress of Vienna, the Central European status quo relied on the strength of these states. However, Russia was in revolutionary upheaval, Germany only months from its own near-revolution, and Austria-Hungary already on its last legs (for all the virtues of the conservative, multinational Dual Monarchy, history’s verdict was not going to be kind). The Poles did not yet know it, but the partitioning powers of 1795 were about to be put out of commission, at least temporarily. When that opportunity came in the fall of 1918, the Poles would launch their first successful national uprising since the defeat of Swedish rule in the 1650s.

America now entered this seething mix of war, revolution, and empires. America had declared war on Germany the previous April, confident that it had the power to reverse battlefield fortunes fast, correctly as it turned out. President Wilson and America’s senior military officer, General John Pershing, had held back American units from Europe, preferring instead to raise and train an army of overwhelming power and commit it to battle as a whole, rather than have individual units deployed and ground up piecemeal on the Western Front. By January 1918, with the American Expeditionary Force about to arrive in France in strength, Wilson delivered America’s war aims.

The Fourteen Points themselves had been prepared by a secret United States Government group – called “The Inquiry” – launched at Wilson’s instructions by his national security advisor (equivalent), Edward (“Colonel”) House. House sought out a rising young journalist from New York, Walter Lippmann, as one of the leaders of The Inquiry. The Inquiry’s work was colored by the public revelation of the Allies’ secret treaties which spelled out their war aims in Europe: among the arrangements, France would get from Germany Alsace-Lorraine and parts of the Saar; the UK would acquire Germany’s African colonies; Italy would pick up much of the Adriatic coast; and Japan would get China’s Shantung Peninsula.

The Bolsheviks’ publication of the secret treaties was a potential political disaster for Wilson, who had brought America into the War on more principled premises, on the basis of which he 14

Wilson’s Fourteen Points

had reversed his own reelection promise to keep America out of the war. After the publication of the Allied secret treaties, Wilson needed his own peace plan to counter that of the Allies; the Inquiry was tasked with coming up with one. On December 22, 1917, the Inquiry sent to the White House their memo, “The War Aims and the Peace Terms It Suggests”; Wilson took that memo and from it crafted his Fourteen Points and accompanying speech to Congress.

The Fourteen Points, by intention, challenged the substance of the Allied war aims and their zero-sum, balance-of-power premise; and simultaneously countered Lenin’s revolutionary theses: • Point One – open covenants openly arrived at – was not simply a call for good process or abstract fairness, as it has been sometimes described. Rather, it was a direct challenge to Britain, France, and Italy, America’s own Allies. Wilson was announcing that the United States would be fighting for its own vision, not theirs, and certainly not for the Allied secret treaties.

• Points Two, Three, Four, and Fourteen sketched America’s version of what is today known as the rules-based world order, including “freedom of navigation,” “equality of trade conditions” (not “free trade”), a rather vague proposal for disarmament; and the League of Nations to enforce the peace, “affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small [states] alike.”

• Point Five called for “adjustment” and qualification of colonial claims, with the colonizer acting merely as a temporary trustee with responsibilities for the administered territory. This was not yet a statement of anti-colonialism, but moved in that direction. Wilson was making colonialism conditional, a step toward undermining its legitimacy, and by implication including the newly captured US territories such as the Philippines.

• Germany was not included explicitly in the Fourteen Points, but in his speech to Congress presenting them, Wilson made clear that his aim was to integrate, not crush, Germany: “We have no jealousy of German greatness…if she is 15

A new American vision

Daniel Fried

willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations of the world…We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world.”

The U.S. and the breakup of Russian Empire

• Point Six covered Russia, which was to be “welcomed into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need.”

This was partly intended to signal to the Bolsheviks, whose character the United States did not yet know, that they had an alternative to surrender to the Germans through the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty then being negotiated.

Wilson was prepared to welcome post-Tsarist Russia to postGreat War arrangements, but as a country, not an empire. At Edward House’s instruction some months later, in preparation for the Versailles Peace Conference, Lippmann wrote an interpretive memorandum for Wilson1 that, among other things, spelled out that Point Six meant Finnish, Baltic, and possibly Ukrainian independence, and even some form of international protectorate for Central Asia. Decades later, this approach was still applicable: in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, US policy took up where Wilson left off, embracing the nations emerging from another Russian imperial collapse and, under the conditions that Russia abandon its imperial claims, welcomed Russia into the society of free nations.

The U.S. and Poland’s independence

• Points Seven through Thirteen outlined a general European and post-Ottoman settlement, including among other things ethnic-based nations in Central and Eastern Europe and the reemergence of Poland. Ambiguously, Point Ten called for “autonomous development” of the “people” (not “peoples”) of Austria-Hungary, still standing as of January 1918, and not explicitly for its breakup. Point Twelve did the same for the Ottoman Empire Somewhat inconsistently and famously, however, Point Thirteen called for the resurrection of an independent 1 Interpretive memo for Wilson by Lippman a. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/doc31.htm

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Wilson’s Fourteen Points

Polish State, including “territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations” with access to the sea, and its “political and economic independence and territorial integrity…guaranteed by international covenants.” That implied, per Point Fourteen, that Poland’s existence would be guaranteed by the League of Nations including – it was then assumed -- the United States. This was a remarkable political commitment to Poland’s security.

None of this would prove easy, either at the time or later.

Lippmann’s interpretive memorandum itself recognized the practical problems of applying Point Thirteen on the ground, where the lines of nationality did not correspond with the principle of national viability or self-determination. Lippmann went on to become America’s foremost foreign policy commentator and journalist of the 20th century, someone who for two generations defined the mainstream thinking of the American foreign policy establishment. The issues of Poland, Russia, and Central Europe would challenge him for years to come.

Read today, the Fourteen Points make a powerful impression.

What self-confidence America had! With the American frontier and Civil War still living memories, still considered cultural provincials, even by themselves, the Americans asserted world leadership in general and offered themselves, through the League of Nations, as the guarantor of a general European and Transatlantic peace. The Fourteen Points were the first rollout of the American Grand Strategy in the American Century. They were not simply abstract American “idealism” or charity, but based on canny assumptions: • Yankee ingenuity would flourish best in a rules-based, open world without economic empires.

• America’s interests would advance with democracy and the rule of law.

• America would prosper when other nations did as well.

• The US thus could make the world a better place and get rich in the process.

These assumptions about peace resting on principle were not original to Wilson: Immanuel Kant’s Theory of Perpetual Peace 17

The first American Grand Strategy

Daniel Fried

between Republics made similar assumptions about international security resting on a set of values shared among nations. But America had the audacity to try to put this into practice. This made America exceptional among the Great Powers.

Historians have not been kind to Wilson or the Fourteen Points. They have fairly noted the inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and nasty unintended consequences of Wilson’s outline of American global leadership. Self-determination is easier stated as a principle than put into practice. Wilson’s racial bigotry, even for his time, is a hard mark against him. But let us also consider the Fourteen Points by the standards of the competition: Lenin’s world socialist revolution or French Prime Minister George Clemenceau’s great power system which, to use the contemporary phrase, could be called France First. Wilson’s vision – a rough first draft of a rules-based, liberal world order or, as we have come to call it, the Free World -- stands up well 100 years later.

Failure of the Fourteen Points

Wilson’s Fourteen Points needed to survive their first encounter with reality, and did not fare well. Clemenceau gave a great and prophetic assessment of the Fourteen Points in his quip, “God gave us the Ten Commandments and we broke them. Wilson gives us the Fourteen Points. We shall see.” What American diplomat presenting a bold idea from Washington has not received that sort of French smackdown!

Indeed, the Fourteen Points faltered. At the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson almost immediately would have to face the gap between the principles he had set out, reality on the ground, and the interests of the other Great Powers. Upon his arrival in France, Wilson was greeted with rapturous crowds and counted on public pressure in Europe forcing Allied governments at least to bend in the direction of the Fourteen Points.

But he overestimated his ability translate popularity into political power.

Much has been written about the shortcomings of the Versailles Treaty and Treaty of Trianon, devoted to the post-Austro-Hungarian settlement. The American vision failed in three ways.

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Wilson’s Fourteen Points

The first, mostly unavoidable, was in Central Europe. The principle of self-determination, as it appeared in Point Thirteen calling for a Polish state including “territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations,” was easier said than done. In general, and particularly in Central Europe, people did not live in territories convenient for the drawing of new international borders. The Polish delegates at Versailles sought a Poland roughly based on (though smaller than) the vast pre-partition territory of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They had a case, and were supported by the French who wanted a big Poland as a counter against Germany and Bolshevik Russia.

Wilson and British Prime Minister Lloyd George, however, argued for an ethnically homogenous Poland. They also had a case. But the first option was beyond Poland’s power to establish under the chaos of the time, even if it had received more support from the French and Americans. The second option was impossible, given the reality of where people lived: cities were often Polish and Jewish; but the countryside was mixed, inhabited by Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, and Jews in the East; and Lithuanians, Poles, and Jews in the North. Western Poland, Silesia, and the corridor to Danzig/Gdansk, which Wilson had promised to Poland in Point Thirteen, contained many Germans.

No boundary line could create an ethnically-homogenous Polish state. National viability and reality clashed with ethnic homogeneity. In the end, Poland’s Eastern borders ended where the battles in 1919 and 1920 left them: Poland had not pushed its borders out to the 1772 lines of the old Commonwealth, but well past the closest thing possible to a line of ethnic demarcation.

Czechoslovakia was similarly complicated, with millions of Germans living in the Sudetenland and Hungarians in what is now southern Slovakia. Czechoslovakia itself was largely run by the Czechs, with Masaryk’s promise of Slovak autonomy largely disregarded.

Millions of ethnic-Hungarians found themselves outside the new borders of Hungary, instead in the Vojvodina region of the new 19

Daniel Fried

Kingdom of Yugoslavia or in Romanian Transylvania, where they lived not adjacent to the border but deep in the interior, with ethnic Romanians living between them and the new border with Hungary.

Wilson and his team discovered, as have generations of American leaders and policy makers after them, that realities on the ground complicate the best of theories. When the dust settled – when the post-1918 wars of imperial succession and revolution ended – Central Europe consisted of free and hopeful, but insecure, imperfectly organized, vulnerable, and sometimes poor countries: • Poland and Romania were nation states with large minorities and border disputes with their neighbors; • Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were multinational in theory but dominated by one constituent nation; • Hungary was more homogenous, but embittered by the loss of so much territory.

The second failure at Versailles involved Germany: Wilson had not achieved its integration into the post-War system, as his Fourteen Points speech had advocated, nor was he willing to invest the resources to occupy and control it, as the United States did after 1945. This failure was linked to the larger problem of European recovery. Clemenceau and Lloyd George, facing massive debts and (in France’s case) devastation, looked to German reparations to make up their losses. Lloyd George ran for and won re-election in December 1918 on the promise to squeeze the Germans. Versailles, notoriously, took the weak Weimar Republic and imposed on it insurmountable debt.

The alternative to financing French and UK recovery with German reparations would have been some sort of Marshall Plan, with the US in the lead, e.g., by canceling inter-allied debts as was advocated by the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, or some early version of the European Coal and Steel Community, forerunner of the European Union, as French Industry Minister Etienne Clementel proposed.

Such bold solutions would have been consistent with Wilson’s thinking and American Grand Strategy. But they were too much for the Europeans or even the Americans of 1919. Neither was 20

Wilson’s Fourteen Points

ready for such transnational thinking in practice. It would take another world war before transatlantic leaders would learn the necessary lessons about transcending nationalist thinking. At the time, the Americans were having none of it and, fearing being tied to European finances, agreed to harsh German reparations.

Unsustainable war reparations, forcing Germany to take political responsibility for the War, and leaving the new German republic in isolation opened the field to German nationalists, giving proWestern Germans no place to turn.

The third and most profound failure was America’s unwillingness to underwrite with its power the flawed but potentially workable peace which emerged. Versailles did not fully reflect the Fourteen Points. But it still left much for the US to work with to shape a European peace: the Bolsheviks were then weak and inward-looking; the emerging nations in Central Europe were seeking allies and models; even after Versailles, the Germans still had pro-Western leaders who might have responded to American offers. The weaknesses of Versailles (and Trianon) might have been overcome had the United States joined the League of Nations and taken responsibility for the implementation of the peace of which it was an author. The United States might have offered cancellation of Allied war debts owed to the US in exchange for less onerous reparations from Germany. It might have offered to underwrite European security, leveraging that offer to convince Clemenceau to ease up on Germany, thus bolstering the pro-Western Germans and making Weimer Germany potentially viable. In short, the United States might have offered resources commensurate with its vision to shape and implement the peace.

Instead, America went home. Wilson’s weaknesses – tactical rigidity chief among them – killed Senate ratification of the League of Nations in early 1920. In the course of his campaign to convince the Senate to pass it, Wilson had a stroke and never functioned fully as President again.

America left the Germans to themselves, the French to deal with the Germans, and, having acted as sponsor of Polish, Czechoslovak, and Yugoslav independence, decided that support for these 21

American retreats

Daniel Fried

countries was beyond us. America retreated from the vision of the Fourteen Points, not to return to it until after the next war.

Wilson, House, and Lippmann had sought to construct a postWar European order without presumption of a divided Europe; there was no principled difference in the Fourteen Points between Europe East and Europe West. But Wilson died and Lippmann never again attempted to think of Europe in undivided terms.

America would not make such a bold effort to look at Europe whole until after 1989, though Ronald Reagan was headed in that direction. The Fourteen Points were a high-water mark, to which the United States would not return for three generations.

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The Road to Yalta

A

Yalta Summit, held in Crimea on February 4-11, 1945 between US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Roosevelt and his Chief of Staff had the following exchange: t the end of the

“This [agreement on Poland] is so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without ever technically breaking it,” Admiral William Leahy, Chief of Staff to Franklin Roosevelt.

“I know, Bill, but it is the best I can do for Poland at this time,” Franklin Roosevelt.1 Both were right: the Yalta agreement may have been the best Roosevelt could do for Poland at that time, but it was a terrible deal for Poland, for Europe, and ultimately for America. At Yalta, the United States found itself in a position where it was accepting on faith commitments from a dictator – in the form of the Declaration of Liberated Europe – for whom faith meant nothing. In doing so, America appeared to be surrendering its commitment to and interests in its Polish ally, which had fought from the first day of World War II to the last, on all European fronts, without surrender or national collaboration.

In Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, America had included arrangements for Central Europe as an integral element of a general post-War settlement, assuming that European security could not be partitioned. But at Yalta, the United 1 “I Was There,” Memoirs by Admiral William Leahy. See also Burns, James

MacGregor “Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom”, p. 572

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Daniel Fried

States appeared tacitly to be giving up on Poland, and by implication on Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea. “Yalta,” in the American and Polish lexicon alike, has come to mean a betrayal of America’s allies, values, and interests.

How did the United States get to such a place one generation after the Fourteen Points? What was the road to Yalta?

Yalta was not simply the failure of one American President at one meeting. It was, rather, the consequence of the strategic position America allowed itself to fall into as the result of paralysis and political distraction throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Yalta was the product of the doctrine of isolationism and America First, themselves the product of a sad coincidence of overlapping views between parts of the American political left and right. As a result, by September 1, 1939, the United States and the West needed the support of one dictator, Stalin, to defeat another, Hitler. The consequences of such strategic weakness were catastrophic for general peace, for Europe, for America and, most of all, for Poland and its neighbors.

Isolationism Wilson had asserted America’s world leadership, but had run ahead of his political mandate; the debate in the US Senate about ratification of American entrance into the League of Nations was, in a sense, a debate about American leadership in the post-World War I world, and Wilson could not bridge the gap between his ambition and the sentiment of the country. The failure of the US Senate to ratify the American entry into the League of Nations thus was a crystallization of a national reaction against American world leadership. Warren Harding, while running for President in 1920, expressed that sentiment this way: “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”2 2 Warren G. Harding speech, Boston, Massachusetts, May 5, 1920

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The Road to Yalta

“Isolationism,” has been used since as the term to describe the political and policy expression of Harding’s sentiment, and it had both leftist and rightist variants.

Both variants built on an assumption that the Versailles Treaty was too harsh on Germany, and that Versailles reflected, so the argument went, the rapacious cynicism of the European Allied powers in which America should have no part. This view merged with a general cynicism about the First World War as a crusade in which America had no legitimate national interest, but had joined for insufficient cause, used and exploited by those same European powers.

Instead of the use of American power in support of a general European and world settlement, as Wilson had attempted, the principal larger commitment which the US seemed capable of making with respect to Europe in the 1920’s was based on abstraction. The 1927 Kellogg-Briand Pact was a treaty whose formal title, “General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy” spelled out its objectives. It passed the Senate 85-1. Tellingly, it had the support of one of the leading isolationists, Senator William Borah, who had opposed the League of Nations and opposed US entry into the World Court, yet could support a wholly declaratory treaty.

The populist version of isolationism held that the Great War had been generated by a cabal of European powers and arms merchants, with the phrase “Merchants of Death” being in fashion to describe munitions business interests.

In 1934, the Nye Commission, headed by Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota, pushed the thesis that America had a financial interest in Great Britain not losing the war. The conclusion, by Nye and many others, was that America must not again allow itself to be manipulated into another European war.

This view captured significant support on the political left, but also on the populist right, which also held international bankers and business in contempt. The default in the early 25

Source of American isolationism

Daniel Fried

1930s by most European governments (Finland a notable exception) on their World War I-related debts to the US intensified the sentiment that America had been badly treated by its European allies, fueling isolationism.

These views dominated the way in which the United States reacted to the rise of Hitler after 1933. Walter Lippmann, contributor to the Fourteen Points, had become by the 1930s America’s most influential foreign affairs commentator, almost on his own defining the baseline views of America’s foreign policy establishment. But Lippmann’s views had retreated far from their high-water mark of 1918.

Before Hitler’s rise to power, Lippmann shared the general American, isolationist view that the Versailles Treaty had been too harsh on Germany, and he had gone so far as to argue that some of German’s colonies taken from it after the war, as well as the Polish Corridor, should be returned to Germany3. The latter is especially notable: reflecting the spirit of the times, Lippmann had surrendered his commitment to a viable Polish State and its territorial integrity, included in Point Thirteen of the Fourteen Points which Lippmann himself had helped to write.

After Hitler’s rise to power, Lippmann opposed any territorial concessions to Nazi Germany. But he also opposed American leadership in seeking to contain Hitler. Indicating his own isolationist leanings and those of the foreign policy community generally, Lippmann did not oppose the Nye Commission and appeared to embrace its implications, writing that “As long as Europe prepares for war, America must prepare for neutrality.”4 Lippmann expressed sympathy for those “resisting the spread of tyrannical government. But sympathies do not make a national policy, and a cold appraisal of the American interest…lead[s] to the conclusion that we can contribute nothing substantially to the pacification of Europe today, that vague commitments 3 “Walter Lippmann and the American Century,” Ronald Steel, p.330 4 Walter Lippmann column “Today and Tomorrow,” (T&T), New York

Herald Tribune) 5/17/34

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The Road to Yalta

would only mislead Europe and mask the realities. For the time being, therefore, our best course is to stand apart from European policies.”5 By 1937, after the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact (the beginning of the Japanese-German-Italian Axis), Lippmann recognized the growing German danger: “The three fascist powers have obtained the initiative in world affairs… though potentially weaker than the rest of us, are in fact stronger, because they have the will to fight for what they want and we do not have it.” But Lippmann added that “This is not said in order to suggest even indirectly and by implication that there should be a military alliance to oppose this world-wide aggression.”6 This political thinking generated America’s paralysis in the 1930s, of which operational examples were the various Neutrality Acts, a series of laws which in succession prohibited the export of arms to belligerent nations (including the Spanish Republic, even as it was being assaulted by German- and Italian-backed insurgents); the transport of arms on American merchant ships; and, in early 1939, an expanded Neutrality Act eliminated even a provision to allow the UK to purchase American arms in cash and transport them itself (the so-called “cash-and-carry” provision).

Strategic Vacuum American strategic thinking as expressed in the Fourteen Points had included Central Europe. By the 1930s, it no longer did. Faced with Hitler’s rise in the 1930s, under the influence of isolationism, much of the American political establishment was unable to recognize American interests in even British and French security. To think of American security interests in Poland and Czechoslovakia at that point was beyond American capabilities.

President Roosevelt had attempted to breach the wall of isolationist thinking, but had failed each time. In 1933, in response to Japan’s aggression in Asia and Hitler’s as5 “T&T” 2/2/1935

6 “T&T” 11/6/1937

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America stays out

Daniel Fried

sumption of power, Roosevelt had suggested -- a modest step -- consultations with Allies in the event of international aggression; Senate opposition defeated this. In 1935, the Senate defeated Roosevelt’s effort to have the United States join the World Court. In 1937, Roosevelt proposed economic sanctions to “quarantine” aggressor nations, not even naming Germany, Italy and Japan. Even this triggered a wave of opposition, and Roosevelt abandoned the idea.

France tries to lead in Europe

In the absence of the United States, France, to its credit, attempted to take the lead. In fact, France, which had championed Poland’s security at Versailles as a potential counterweight to Bolshevik Russia and Germany, did its best to hold together a system of European security in the interwar period, including through an alliance with Poland and the creation of the Little Entente with Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania.

But a French-led alliance system had structural weaknesses. While France and Poland were concerned about Germany, the Czechs, Yugoslavs, and Romanians were initially more concerned about Hungarian or Hapsburg restoration; and the Poles were at odds with the Czechs (over the border territory of Tesin/Cieszyn) and with Lithuania (over Vilnius/Wilno). The French tried to compensate for this weakness by reaching out to the Soviet Union, which under Foreign Minister Litvinov was at least making crediblesounding statements about resistance to Hitler’s Germany.

But using Soviet power to contain Germany would have required Polish or Romanian agreement in advance to allow under crisis circumstances the entry of Soviet troops, which neither was willing to do, based on their reasonable assessment that Litvinov’s rhetoric of indivisible European security was not the final word in Soviet policy, and that Stalin would exploit any security arrangements which allowed for Soviet troops on their territory. The French did not have the national power on their own to compensate for these weaknesses, and America had taken itself out of the game.

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The Road to Yalta

War… “I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade”

WH Auden, “September 1, 1939” After September 1, 1939, Roosevelt asked Congress to amend the Neutrality Acts to allow the British and French to purchase American arms. Lippmann, ever the barometer of the American foreign policy establishment, supported this but still framed his argument in isolationist terms: the best way, he wrote in October 1939, “to keep Americans 3,000 miles from the war and keep the war 3,000 miles from Americans” was to aid the British and French.7 “I regard it of crucial importance that we should avoid getting into a situation where intervention in the European war is even to be considered.”8 It was not the fall of Poland, but the fall of France that shook America, Lippmann included. The great German assault in the West began on May 10, 1940. Six weeks later, France was defeated and the British were chased off the continent. On June 18, in a speech at the 30th reunion of his Harvard class, Lippmann shifted his tone, reflecting the deeper shift in American thinking as the ruinous consequences of isolationism emerged. “We here in America may soon be the last stronghold of our civilization – the isolated and beleaguered citadel of law and of liberty…Organized mechanized evil” was loose in the world, Lippmann said, its victories made possible by the “lazy, self-indulgent materialism, the amiable, lackadaisical, footless, confused complacency” of the democracies.

“Finally, we begin to see that the hard way is the only enduring way.”9 Lippmann now supported sending Ameri7 8 9

“T&T” 10/3/39 Lippmann to Vandenberg, 10/2/1939, from Ronald Steel, op. cit. p.378 “The Essential Lippmann,” pp 534-538, cited in Steel, op. cit. p. 384

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The Americans re-engage

Daniel Fried

can destroyers to the UK and, to outflank the isolationists, worked with the British Ambassador to Washington to exchange them for British bases in the Western Hemisphere, which became US policy.

Given this new political space, the State Department reached back to the thinking of the Fourteen Points, issuing in July 1940 the Declaration of Acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles (known since as the Welles Declaration) which stated American opposition to the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, and put that opposition in principled terms. “The people of the United States are opposed to predatory activities…The United States will continue to stand by these principles, because of the conviction of the American people that unless the doctrine in which these principles are inherent once again governs the relations between nations, the rule or reason, of justice and of law – in other words the basis of modern civilization itself – cannot be preserved.”

Finally, in the wake of the discrediting of isolationism, the US was resurrecting the principles -- and language -- of the Fourteen Points and attempting to apply them in Central and Eastern Europe.

The isolationists remained unpersuaded, and in fact doubled down on their views. The America First Committee, formed in the fall of 1940, brought together the right and left elements of the isolationists. On the left, progressive side, it included Senator Nye, socialist Norman Thomas, and Marxian historians Charles and Mary Beard. On the right, it included the anti-Semitic (and popular) radio priest, Father Coughlin; defeatists like Charles Lindbergh, who had argued that fascism was the “wave of the future”; and the right-wing Hearst media empire.

But isolationism had lost its hold on the American foreign policy establishment. In February 1941, Lippmann now acknowledged his own prior mistakes. “We all adopted the isolationist view of disarmament and separateness.

Having disarmed ourselves and divided the old Allies from each other, we adopted the pious resolutions of the 30

The Road to Yalta

Kellogg Pact, and refused even to participate in the organization of a world court. Then, having obstructed the reconstruction of the world, and having seen the ensuing anarchy produce the revolutionary, imperialist dictatorships of Russia, Italy, and Germany, we tried to protect the failure of isolation by the policy of insulation – by the neutrality acts which were to keep us safe by renouncing our rights.”10 Given the new political context, and the reality that Germany was winning the war in Europe, the Roosevelt Administration was again, now more successfully, moving toward a larger vision of the American interest. Of operational significance, in March 1941 the Administration pushed through Congress the Lend-Lease Bill, allowing arms for Britain (and later the Soviet Union) through loans rather than cash. Of strategic significance, in August 1941 Roosevelt and Churchill at their North Atlantic Summit issued the Atlantic Charter, drafted in large part by Sumner Welles who built on his work in the Welles Declaration on the Baltics. A remarkable document, especially considering that the United States was not yet even at war, the Atlantic Charter sought to apply the principles and spirit of the Fourteen Points to a prospective post-World War II settlement, including no annexations, freedom to choose one’s form of government, an open trading system, freedom from external aggression, and a broader system of general security.

Welles later wrote that those principles “must be guaranteed to the world as a whole” and Henry Luce, publisher of “Time” magazine, declared that America would have to lead the world in the American Century.11 America had returned to the larger vision of the Fourteen Points and American world leadership. But it had returned late: it did not possess the power on the ground to make good on its principles.

10 11

“T&T,” 2/27/1941 Steel, op. cit. 404

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The Atlantic Charter recalls the Fourteen Points

Daniel Fried

…and its Consequences When attacked at Pearl Harbor, America finally entered the war, and did so with war aims based on the Atlantic Charter, which in turn recalled the Fourteen Points. The American government, in explaining its war aims to its public, was starting to use the term “Free World.”12 But the military reality of World War II, the consequence of the years of American isolationism, had stacked things against this vision. In World War I, the Allies did not need Russia to defeat Germany. America’s entry in the War was decisive, despite Germany’s victory over Russia in 1918, because France and the UK on their own had held off Germany on the Western Front. But in World War II, Germany had beaten France. This time therefore, the Western Allies needed Russia to defeat Germany. The American vision of the Atlantic Charter was pitted against unfavorable real-world circumstances.

Walter Lippmann’s „realism”

Turning his attention to post-War arrangements, Lippmann argued against a post-war return to isolationism.

He recognized that the United States would have to underwrite the peace, as it failed to do after Versailles. But Lippmann also argued that the United States would have to do so in concert with the other great powers, including the USSR. This meant, Lippmann further argued, that Soviet interests would have to be respected in designing a post-War settlement and specifically, that Eastern Europe not be made a “cordon sanitaire” of anti-Soviet states. Writing his 1943 bestseller called “U.S. Foreign Policy,” Lippmann argued that a viable post-war settlement depended on “whether the border states [his phrase] will adopt a policy of neutralization, and whether Russia will respect and support it.”13 It is not clear whether Lippmann understood the nature of Stalin’s rule and the consequences of the policy he was 12

13

The term “Free World” was used in the Frank Capra “Why We Fight” film series, produced by the US government to explain the origins of World War II. Walter Lippmann, “U.S. Foreign Policy,” p 152.

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recommending. Nevertheless, Lippmann, setting out an emerging “realist” school of the foreign policy elite, in opposition to Sumner Welles’s neo-Wilsonianism, implicitly accepted that the Atlantic Charter applied only to Western Europe, not to all of Europe.

The inconsistency between the “realist” and the Atlantic Charter visions of post-war settlement started emerging in 1943, as the Soviet Army was advancing West. Stalin’s ambitions grew with Soviet military success. At the Tehran Conference in November 1943, the first between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, Stalin made clear that the Soviet Union would annex Poland’s eastern territories, compensating Poland by giving it German territory -- creating a structural tension between Germany and Poland -- and thus implicitly placing Poland under Moscow’s protection in defending those new territories to the West.

This indicated Soviet intention to dominate Poland and, by implication, Central Europe generally.

If there was a moment to resist Stalin’s ambitions to seize Central and Eastern Europe, it may have been at Tehran.

The principles of the Atlantic Charter required strength to see them realized. The UK and US feared a separate German-Soviet peace, but Stalin feared a UK-US separate peace with Germany. The Allies thus had some leverage, not to make a separate peace with Germany, but to make Soviet behavior in territories outside the Soviet Union a key factor in the Allies’ relations with Moscow. Having not yet opened a second front, Roosevelt and Churchill might have conditioned their willingness to do so on a Soviet retreat from Stalin’s territorial demands.

This was not great leverage, however. By November 1943, the Soviet Army had retaken Kyiv and was poised to keep advancing West. In any case, the option of delaying the second front or using it -- or using Lend Lease -- as leverage to force Soviet commitments with respect to the Baltics and Poland was something the US never seriously considered and, under conditions of all-out war, would 33

Daniel Fried

have found politically challenging. Conditioning the timing or fact of the Normandy Invasion on Stalin fulfilling pledges with respect to Poland would have had other strategic drawbacks: the US and UK were not in a military position in any case to reach Poland or the Baltics before the Soviet military did, but they were in a position to liberate Western Europe, and it was important to get allied forces on the ground in the West as the Soviets were advancing from the East.

The US and UK proceeded with Normandy without seeking an understanding of post-War arrangements in Poland and Eastern Europe. This which assured Stalin of the Anglo-American commitment to defeat Hitler while not contesting the political implications of the advance of Soviet power westward. Stalin proceeded with the liberation but simultaneous re-occupation of the Baltic States, and the liberation but communization of Poland, which started shortly after the opening of the Second Front.

The Roosevelt Administration and Churchill still hoped that the momentum of wartime alliance and potential of post-War allied unity would moderate Stalin’s ambitions.

This would fail because the Western Allies did not comprehend the nature of Soviet rule, which like much of Tsarist rule, rested on the power of repression.

Poland’s dilemma

The American and British governments were ill at ease with the direction of events, but lacked good options to change it. Polish PM Stanislaw Mikolajczyk visited Roosevelt in June 1944 to explain Poland’s dilemma in being liberated from Nazi occupation only to find it had been occupied by another oppressor. Roosevelt and Churchill offered little. Hoping for the best, they recommended that Mikolajczyk try dealing directly with the Soviets. So, Mikolajczyk traveled to Moscow that July to plead the case of the Polish Government-in-Exile, looking for some soft landing.

Soft landings and reasonable accommodation were not Stalin’s style. On July 27, the day Mikolajczyk travelled to Moscow, the Soviets announced their agreement with 34

The Road to Yalta

the Soviet-dominated “Polish Committee of National Liberation,” known as the Lublin Committee, to give it civil authority over liberated Polish territories. Through this action, Stalin was establishing a rival government to the legitimate Polish authorities, one dominated by Sovietbacked and controlled Polish communists, and making clear his intentions to control Poland.

On August 1, the Polish Home Army, loyal to the Polish Government operating out of London, launched the Warsaw Uprising. Mikolajczyk was still in Moscow. Stalin understood the Uprising, correctly, as an attempt to forestall Soviet control of Poland by having the legitimate government’s forces liberate the capital city from the Germans. His response was to order a military stand down by the Soviet forces on the Eastern bank of the Wisla opposite downtown Warsaw -- which the Polish Home Army largely controlled in the Uprising’s initial phase -- and to deny the US request to use its bomber base in Ukraine to support air drops of supplies to the Insurgents. These actions made defeat of the Home Army certain.

George Kennan, then a diplomat at the US Embassy in Moscow and one of the few experienced Soviet hands in the US foreign service, had met with Mikolajczyk’s team. He remained skeptical about Washington’s optimistic hopes for post-War alliance with Moscow and was not yet persuaded

by Lippmann’s argument to give Stalin a sphere-of-influence over Central Europe. In his famous Memoirs, Kennan recalls that he argued the Warsaw Uprising provided yet another chance for the US to have a showdown with Moscow over Poland: to present the Soviets with a choice of continued support from the US but only under the condition that they change their direction toward Poland and Central Europe.14 This was not to be. US leverage by the summer of 1944 was weaker than it had been at Tehran, when the US 14

George R. Kennan, «Memoirs, » p. 211.

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Washington’s dilemma

Daniel Fried

had not used it. By 1944, Washington was still adhering to a declaratory policy based on the Atlantic Charter rooted in Wilsonian principles, but without the power to make good on it, and was not willing to risk Kennan’s recommendation of a near-term showdown with Stalin over Poland. Neither was the Roosevelt Administration ready to accept openly the realist alternative, advocated

by Lippmann, of a sphere-of-influence arrangement, under which the US would buy Soviet post-War cooperation by explicitly recognizing Moscow’s right to “friendly” governments in Poland, the Baltics, and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe. The US simply hoped for the best and approached the Yalta Summit in February 1945 in that spirit.

Roosevelt obtained much of what he sought at Yalta.

He achieved Stalin’s agreement to enter the war against Japan three months after victory over Germany a promise Stalin kept; and his obtained Stalin’s acceptance of Roosevelt’s signature initiative: the United Nations, the re-booted version of the League of Nations which was intended, as Wilson had intended for the League, to enforce the post-War order. But to obtain Stalin’s agreement to the UN, Roosevelt accepted a Soviet right of veto in the UN Security Council, a sweetener which weakened the UN from the beginning. Stalin also agreed to Churchill’s request for a French zone of occupation in Germany, to be carved out of the American and UK zones.

The bad deal at Yalta

In parallel with this, of which the war against Japan was the most concrete Soviet commitment, Roosevelt and Churchill negotiated the Declaration of Liberated Europe, as the “best we could get” for Poland and Central Europe at the time. A key passage read, “The establishment of order in Europe and the rebuilding of national economic life must be achieved by processes which will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of Nazism and fascism and 36

The Road to Yalta

to create democratic institutions of their own choice.

This is a principle of the Atlantic Charter – the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live. [T]he three governments [US, UK, Soviet] will jointly assist the people in any European liberated state or former Axis state in Europe where, in their judgment conditions require…to form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of Governments responsive to the will of the people.”15 As subsequent events were to demonstrate, this was not much, and in any case inadequate to forestall Soviet domination over the eastern third of Europe, the imposition of which was already in motion. (For example, the term “jointly assist” in the Declaration meant in practice a Soviet veto over efforts to form broad, interim governments.) But, as Lippmann pointed out, in the territories the Soviet Army held, “Stalin had the power to act; we had only the power to argue…The West paid the political price for having failed to deter Hitler in the 1930s, for having failed to unite and to rearm against him.”16 Lippmann was right. The principles of the Atlantic Charter were not supported by the power to make good on them. Lippmann himself, by too long defending isolationism, was part of the foreign policy community that had made this debacle possible. To his credit, he appeared to recognize this. Yet Lippmann neglected to add that while the West paid a “political price” for its mistakes, Poland and other countries of Central Europe paid a much higher one.

After Yalta, the consequences of this debacle became clear, and America debated what that meant.

15 16

See Yale Law School, Avalon Project, for a text of the Declaration of Liberated Europe.

“T&T” 2/15/45.

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38

Finding the Cold War Consensus

A

Yalta, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had reason to assume that the United States had given him the sphere of influence over Central Europe which he had sought. From a position of relative weakness on the ground, US President Franklin Roosevelt had accepted at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 the flimsy Declaration of Liberated Europe – which offered only general language about free elections without enforcement mechanisms or other means to implement them -- as a guarantee of Soviet respect for the sovereignty of Poland and other nations of Central Europe. fter

Yet almost immediately after Yalta, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sought to reopen the issue of Poland, and pushed Stalin to take seriously the Declaration’s language. On April 1, 1945 Roosevelt wrote to Stalin that a continuation of the “present Warsaw regime” would be unacceptable, and urged that a “new government” be established. “I must make it quite plain to you that any such solution which would result in a thinly disguised continuance of the present Warsaw regime would be unacceptable and would cause the people of the United States to regard the Yalta agreement as having failed.”1 Roosevelt explained, moreover, that a fair solution to the “Polish question” was, in his view, central to continued Allied unity more generally.

1 “Foreign Relations of the United States,” 1945,Europe, Volume V, April

1, “President Roosevelt to the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union (Stalin) . Subsequent letters between Roosevelt and Stalin can also be found in this a. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v05/d161

39

Daniel Fried The U.S. tries to hold the line

What did this mean? The structure of the Yalta agreements implicitly reflected the “realist’s rationale”: accepting Soviet domination of Central Europe, as Walter Lippmann and others had argued was unavoidable, because Soviet troops were present in Poland and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, and American troops were not. What then did Roosevelt intend through his April 1 letter? If Roosevelt were serious about applying the Atlantic Charter principles to Poland and Central Europe, why had he accepted such a weak commitment from Stalin at Yalta? If Roosevelt’s agreements at Yalta were mere cynical cover for a sphereof-influence deal with Stalin, why was Roosevelt trying to raise the Polish issue at all?

In dealing with Russian leaders, Roosevelt, like many American Presidents after him, appeared to believe that gestures of good will and allowances for what he thought were legitimate Russian interests would be sufficient to convince Russia to take a more tolerant of those interests. Roosevelt seemed to hope that the momentum of wartime alliance, and the prospect of post-war entente and US support, would appeal to Stalin as much as it appealed to him. If so, Roosevelt would not be the last American President to project his open mind on Russian leaders who did not share it. At the same time, while Roosevelt did not have the power to back up the principles of the Atlantic Charter, he was unwilling to abandon them. He hoped for the best. Naive hopes, if that explains Roosevelt’s actions, are not the same as cynical betrayal. In the final weeks of his life, moreover, Roosevelt may have been coming to understand the consequences of what he had done, and what a sphere of influence meant when applied by Stalin.

After Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, his successor President Harry Truman continued to press Stalin on Poland. In a letter dated April 23, Truman pushed again for Stalin to invite “a group of genuinely representative democratic Polish leaders” to Moscow to establish “a new Provisional Government of National Unity genuinely rep40

Finding the Cold War Consensus

resentative of the democratic elements of the Polish people….The Soviet Government must realize that the failure to go forward at this time with the implementation of the Crimean decision on Poland would seriously shake confidence in the unity of the three Governments and their determination to continue the collaboration in the future as they have in the past.”

The next day, Stalin responded by rejecting the argument, standing by the current, communist Provisional Government of Poland, noting that “Poland is to the security of the Soviet Union what Belgium and Greece are to the security of Great Britain.” This was a frank appeal to a sphere-ofinfluence arrangement. Stalin would not quarrel with the United States and UK working their will in Belgium and Greece, and insisted on the same privilege in Poland.

Stalin escalated his demands, making clear what a sphereof-influence meant for the Soviet Union. On May 4, with final victory over Germany imminent, Stalin sent to Churchill and forwarded to Truman a letter that made explicit that it was not enough that the Polish government be composed of Poles who were “’not fundamentally anti-Russian.’” Stalin insisted on more: “that only people who have demonstrated by deeds their friendly attitude to the Soviet Union, who are willing honestly and sincerely to cooperate with the Soviet state, should be consulted on the formation of a future Polish government.” To underscore what he had in mind, Stalin confirmed in that same letter the arrest of the Polish Home Army’s last commander, General Leopold Okulicki (who was later executed by the Soviets). Stalin’s message ended with an ultimatum: if the United States and UK did not accept the current, communist-dominated Provisional Government, their “attitude precludes the possibility of an agreed decision on the Polish question.”

Stalin intended to impose Soviet domination over Poland and, by extension, over Central and Eastern Europe. The Americans had drawn a line over Poland, but too late in the process.

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Drawing conclusions George Kennan, American diplomacy’s first Soviet specialist, had spent most of the past two years in Moscow warning against the optimistic American hopes that the experience of a wartime alliance with the West and prospect of its continuation would change Stalin’s world view and soften the consequences of the arrival of Soviet power in Central Europe. He had argued, unsuccessfully, for the United States to confront Stalin over Poland as early as the summer of 1944. That confrontation was now developing, and the Soviets were escalating it.

In a major speech on February 9, 1946, Stalin spoke of the capitalist world with general, principled hostility, at a time when Moscow was putting pressure on Iran and Turkey. Apparently, as Washington now discovered, Stalin’s ambitions were not confined to Poland. Truman and his Administration realized that they had misunderstood Stalin, but did not know what to conclude about Soviet motives.

George Kennan’s reputation ever since has been based on his role over the next two years in telling the Truman Administration, and Americans more broadly, what to think.

Kennan’s analysis of Soviet motives

In his famous “Long Telegram,” sent from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow on February 22, 1946, Kennan explained Russian thinking to the Truman Administration in ways that hold up well in retrospect (and could in fact be applied to Russian motivation and even tactics under Russian President Vladimir Putin). In the Soviet view, Kennan wrote, there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence between the USSR and capitalist countries. This view, Kennan further argued, reflected not the actual possibility of cooperation between the USSR and West, but an overwhelming Soviet political imperative: general insecurity in the face of their relative backwardness compared to the West, unwillingness to address that backwardness by reforms, and the subsequent desire to isolate the USSR on the one hand while engaging in subversion against the West on the other.

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Finding the Cold War Consensus

Kennan explained that “[t]he very disrespect of Russians for objective truth – indeed, their disbelief in its existence – leads them to view all stated facts as instruments for furtherance of one ulterior purpose or another…To undermine general political and strategic potential of major Western powers…[e]fforts will be made…to disrupt national selfconfidence, to hamstring measures of national defense, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity.…It is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure…”2 Fortunately, Kennan concluded, while “Impervious to the logic of reason…[Soviet power] is highly sensitive to logic of force….” Therefore, if a Soviet adversary, such as the United States, “has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so.”

On March 5, 1946, Churchill, now out of power, gave his Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri in which he echoed Kennan’s themes: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” Churchill famously announced. He concluded that the Soviets could be held in check only by a “fraternal association of English-speaking peoples,” backed by America’s nuclear arsenal.

That evening, Walter Lippmann and Roosevelt’s Vice President Henry Wallace, now Truman’s Secretary of Commerce, were having dinner at the Georgetown home of Dean Acheson, then Under Secretary of State. They argued about Churchill’s Fulton speech and the Soviet Union.3 Acheson, aware of Kennan’s Long Telegram, welcomed the speech, arguing that it was time to stand up to Stalin.

2 “Long Telegram,” reprinted in Kennan’s “Memoirs”

a. Also found on NSA archives instead of Kennan’s “Memoirs”: https:// nsarchive2.gwu.edu//coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm 3 Ronald Steel, “Walter Lippmann and the American Century,” pp 428429.

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America’s options at the start of the Cold War

Daniel Fried

Wallace, a man of the left, argued that Churchill’s call for an Anglo-American alliance would intensify Stalin’s fears of encirclement. He was not ready to abandon the pre-Yalta dream of a post-War alliance with the Soviets.

Lippmann was uncertain where he stood. He had never abandoned his support for a sphere-of-influence deal with Russia over Central Europe and generally supported Wallace in his argument with Acheson. But Lippmann was uncomfortable with Wallace’s sentimentality about the Russians.

Six months later, Wallace went public with his opposition to the emerging American readiness to resist Stalin’s ambitions. In a Madison Square Garden (New York) speech on September 12, 1946 he argued that the United States was as much to blame as Stalin for the growing tension.

But Truman had made up his mind. He fired Wallace.

Even Lippmann found the speech too much: Wallace’s sentimentality about the Soviet Union was inconsistent with Lippmann’s realism.

Truman accepted the Churchill-Acheson-Kennan approach – draw a line and push back against Soviet aggression – and framed it in universal terms, in effect applying the principles of the Atlantic Charter to the post-World War II world. On March 12, 1947, responding to Soviet pressure against Turkey and Greece, Truman made his famous Truman Doctrine speech, which included the following: • “…It must be the policy of the US to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”

• “…we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.”

• “…our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.”

Lippmann’s reaction was mixed. He did not oppose supporting Greece and Turkey, but objected to Truman’s open44

Finding the Cold War Consensus

ended definition of the struggle against Communism. Intervention based on a balance of power, Lippmann argued, was necessary; an open-ended commitment in the name of abstract principles, was wasteful. At another Washington dinner party in April 1947, Lippmann and Acheson went at it again, with Acheson defending the Truman Doctrine and Lippmann attacking it as extravagant.4 Lippmann’s evolution, reflecting an underlying shift in the thinking of the American foreign policy establishment, continued. He still accepted a Soviet sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe. But by 1947 he had concluded that the United States had to draw a line and defend Western Europe, then in economic crisis. He argued that the United States, faced with the possible collapse of Europe’s economy with devastating political consequences, should make a “large capital contribution” to European recovery, tied to a European economic union. Lippmann’s arguments brought into the mainstream what had been an outlying opinion; they formed the conceptual basis for the Marshall Plan and American support for what became the European Union.5 Lippmann had not, however, quite given up on reaching an understanding with Moscow. He argued that if the Marshall Plan were sufficiently generous, and open to the Soviet Union, it might attract Soviet participation and ameliorate Soviet control of Central Europe. But, of course, Stalin would have nothing to do with the Marshall Plan precisely for this reason: anything other than unqualified assistance would give the United States lever4 Steel, op. cit. pp. 439-440 5 Lippmann “T&T” columns, New York Herald, 3/20/47, 4/5/47

a. HYPERLINK “https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn78002169/ 1947-05-05/ed-1/seq-7/” \l “date1=1947&index=14&rows=20&words=LIP PMANN+WALTER&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1947 &proxtext=Walter+Lippmann&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1” https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn78002169/1947-05-05/ ed-1/seq-7/#date1=1947&index=14&rows=20&words=LIPPMANN+WAL TER&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1947&proxtext=Wal ter+Lippmann&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1 b. Also in Steel, op. cit. p 441

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age over Moscow and influence in Central and Eastern Europe, and was thus not acceptable.

The schools of American thinking for the next 40 years of the Cold War were becoming clear. On the left, Wallace argued that the Cold War was a grave misunderstanding, mostly on the part of the West, which was, he argued, needlessly suspicious of Stalin.

Within the Administration, Truman and Acheson, influenced by Kennan, were hostile in principle to Stalinism and communism, and prepared to organize systematic Western resistance to it.

The Realists, with Walter Lippmann as their spokesman, supported the Truman-Acheson policy of defending the West. Lippmann helped conceptualize the Marshall Plan and defended it against the skepticism of the still-extant isolationists, such as Republican Senator Robert Taft.

Lippmann’s book, “The Cold War,” helped popularize the term. But Lippmann did not accept Kennan’s arguments, now public in his “Mr. X” article of 1947, about the conceptual, long-term struggle with the USSR and communism. Lippmann thought of the Cold War in terms of defending Western Europe against a limited Soviet threat.

He was still looking to a sphere-of-influence deal with the Soviets, which would include a neutral Germany and Eastern Europe “friendly” to Moscow.

In February 1948, the Soviet coup in Czechoslovakia destroyed just the sort of independent, democratic, and Soviet-friendly government which Lippmann advocated as the solution to the emerging confrontation in Europe. In June 1948, the Soviets began the Berlin Blockade. These actions discredited the Wallace option and put aside Lippmann’s alternative.

The Truman/Acheson strategy became institutionalized with the establishment in 1949 of NATO, the security arm of the West which was intended, as its first Secretary General Lord Ismay famously (and accurately) observed, 46

Finding the Cold War Consensus

to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. In fact, by the late 1940s, American Cold War strategy was set along those lines: America would guarantee European security as it had failed to do after 1919; it would resist Soviet aggression; and it would reintegrate West Germany into the West, rather than leave Germany to its own devices as in the 1920s. The Americans would apply the principles of the Atlantic Charter -- based on the Fourteen Points -- as far possible to Western Europe.

Eastern Europe and the Ascendance of Cold War “Realism” Where did this leave Central and Eastern Europe, where the Cold War began? Lippmann’s “realist” view of the Cold War would leave it in Soviet hands. According to the Truman/ Acheson view, now policy, America sought the “liberation” of Central and Eastern Europe from Soviet domination. The internal Administration foreign policy document NSC 58/2, from December 1949, for example, noted that “Our objective with respect to the USSR’s European satellites must be the elimination of Soviet control from those countries.”6 The resources devoted to this goal were modest, but tactics from the late 1940s included covert operations, including providing arms and money to people on the ground. These operations ended mostly in failure.

Information operations were more successful. Radio Free Europe (RFE), established in the late 1940s and headquartered in Munich, was intended to offer exiles from Central and Eastern Europe a platform to reach their compatriots living under Soviet domination. It generated decades of quality journalism and commentary which found an audience. The head of the Polish-language service for 25 years was Jan Nowak Jezioranski, 6 NSC 58/2 can be found in “Foreign Relations of the United States,”

Volume V a. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1949v05/d17 b. Page 44-fourth paragraph

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an English-speaking, former Polish officer. Jan Nowak before the war had been a graduate student in economics, captured in combat with the Germans. He escaped and became a courier between the Polish Government in London and the Polish Home Army, and later led English-language broadcasting for the Polish insurgents during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Jan Nowak’s autobiography, known even in communist Poland, and his professionalism at RFE gave his broadcasts authority.

When Pope John-Paul II finally met Jan Nowak, Nowak started to introduce himself, but the Pope explained that he already knew who Jan Nowak was because, as Cardinal in Krakow, he had learned about developments in Poland from Jan Nowak’s Radio Free Europe broadcasts while shaving each morning.

Dwight Eisenhower made “liberation” of Eastern Europe part of his 1952 presidential campaign, and it remained part of the Republican Party’s vocabulary for years after, as well as the declaratory policy of the Eisenhower Administration. But events in the 1950s and 1960s suggested that Lippmann’s realist alternative with respect to Central Europe was ascendant in practice, if not acknowledged.

This became clear in 1956 when, in the wake of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party denouncing Stalin, Poland and Hungary revolted against their respective Stalinist regimes. The Poles achieved what they believed would be a softened, more “Polish” (rather than Stalinist) version of communism under a new Communist Party leader, Wladyslaw Gomulka. They succeeded, or at least appeared to for a time.

The Hungarians attempted to throw off Communist rule altogether and liberate themselves, but were crushed, and the Eisenhower Administration was able to do little more than condemn the Soviet military action. Reflecting on this collision of policy with on-the-ground reality, 48

Finding the Cold War Consensus

Lippmann supported the limited Polish push for a measure of local autonomy but did not support the Hungarian uprising. As he wrote, “…we must hope that for a time…the uprising in the satellite orbit will be stabilized at Titoism.”7 Lippmann was continuing to advocate a Cold War strategy that, on the basis of realism, drew the line of Western resistance at the Iron Curtain as Stalin had established it, and was willing to concede the reality of Soviet power east of that line. In doing so, Lippmann was describing the actual of the Eisenhower Administration more accurately than the Administration’s own spokesmen, and the Administration’s policy toward Central Europe would move in this realist direction over the next twenty years.

The Berlin crisis of 1961 reflected this emerging Cold War realist consensus: President Kennedy famously denounced the Berlin Wall, but saved his stance of actual resistance for the defense of West Berlin; his line, like Eisenhower’s, lay at the existing line of the Cold War.8 In doing so, the Kennedy Administration was reflecting Lippmann’s view of Germany expressed in 1959: “Every responsible European statesman realizes that [Germany} cannot be united within any foreseeable future...” German partition is “regarded on both sides as not intolerable, and on the whole, preferable to reunification” under any of the conditions which Lippmann could imagine.9 The Johnson Administration tried to take the logic of Cold War realism about Central and Eastern Europe and blend it with longstanding principles. In a May 1964 speech President Lyndon Johnson announced America’s intention to build “bridges across the Gulf which has di7 “T&T” 10/26/56

a. Cited in Steele, op. cit. p 507

8 Frederick Kempe’s book, “Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev and the

Most Dangerous Place on Earth” makes this point

9 Steel, op. cit. p 509

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Kennedy allerts Cold War realism in Europe

Daniel Fried

vided us from Eastern Europe. They will be bridges of increased trade, of ideas, of visitors and of humanitarian aid.”

The Johnson Administration’s „bridge building” variant

An internal State Department document produced shortly afterward, National Security Action Memorandum 30410, tried to give substance to “bridge building” and link it to long-standing US objectives. According to NSAM 304, bridge building sought to promote in the Soviet satellite states “(1) internal liberalization; (2) establishment of a certain degree of national independence from Soviet control; (3) pragmatic innovations designed to cope with pressing economic problems; and (4) progress in re-association with the West.…We seek thereby progress toward the realization of our ultimate objective in East Europe, that is: the establishment of conditions under which the people of each country may determine its [sic] own society; and where each country may enjoy national independence, security, and a normal relationship with all other countries. This will mean the final dismantling of the Iron Curtain and the free association of East Europe and the West.” The recommendations included developing relations with the communist governments in the region, increasing commercial ties, and expanded cultural and student exchanges.

For some in the Johnson Administration, including Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski who was then in the State Departments Policy Planning office, bridge building was a means to engage with the satellite nations, including with the societies and not just the communist regimes.

For Brzezinski and others, it was a more patient and potentially more productive policy than the hard rhetoric of “liberation,” and intended to achieve what was possible, working within the reality of Soviet domination and bearing in mind the experience of the Hungarian Revolution. For critics, often from the right, bridge 10 State Department Office of the Historian, 1964-1968 Volume XVII East

Europe a. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d12

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building was an unfortunate concession to communist domination. The investment in exchanges would bring profound benefits over time, but bridge building was a long-term investment.

The limits of “bridge building” became clear on August 20, 1968 with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, an act which caught the Johnson White House off guard, despite repeated warnings from CIA and the State Department. In reaction, the Johnson Administration cancelled a planned Summit in Moscow which was supposed to be devoted to arms control. But the U.S. reaction was, like its reaction after Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, rhetorical, and in the case of Czechoslovakia not even with strong rhetoric. While Congressman Ed Derwinski (R-Illinois) argued that Moscow should suffer consequences for the invasion, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Michigan) referred to the invasion as “a communist family struggle” that “we shouldn’t get mixed up in.”11 In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first American President to visit Warsaw, and did so within the framework of the ascendant “realist” model. But his version of realism went differed from the bridge building of the Johnson Administration. Instead of choosing tactics which served long-term American objectives toward Central Europe in the most practical way, as bridge building attempted to do, under Nixon, the long-term objectives were themselves becoming discarded. This shift was illustrated when President Nixon visited Poland on his way back from the famous détente Summit in Moscow, in May 1972, the centerpiece of which was strategic arms control.

In Nixon’s arrival remarks in Warsaw, he referred to Poland’s suffering in war, and put his visit in that context: 11 UPI report, August 21, 1968

a. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1968/08/21/Soviets-bloc-troops-invade-Czechoslovia/1144325881450/

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Under Nixon’s Realism triuphant

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“The major purpose of my visit here…is to build a new structure of peace in the world. Poland has suffered too much from war and Poland, along with other peoples in the world, wants peace, and that is our goal: to achieve a world of peace for all nations.”12 Nixon was speaking of peace, but according to this view, peace for Poland and Central Europe was no longer coupled with freedom. Peace, detached from freedom and implicitly guaranteed by the Soviet Union, was compatible with Brezhnev’s views of Central Europe’s place. Under the Nixon Administration, the Atlantic Charter would not apply East of the Iron Curtain, and détente with the Soviet Union could proceed nevertheless. The Nixon Administration had reached accommodation with Yalta.

12 Nixon’s remarks in American Presidency Project, #184

a. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-arrival-warsaw-poland-0 b. Eighth paragraph

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America Recalls its Grand Strategy: Brzezinski, Solidarity, and Reagan

B

1970s, under President Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, America’s Cold War strategy had settled on the following elements: containment of Soviet power, including resisting communist expansion both in and out of Europe; arms control, to reduce the risks of superpower confrontation; and, supported by the first two objectives, a general relaxation of tensions with the Soviet Union, called détente.

Together, these elements constituted a long-term “structure of peace,” as Nixon called it.1 y the early

America’s Cold War strategy had one great achievement to its credit so far: the United States had held Soviet power at the line of the Iron Curtain and defended Western Europe, which, under the American security umbrella, grew wealthy, democratic, and peaceful. Efforts to resist Soviet and Communist expansion outside of Europe were mixed.

After three years of fighting, the Korean War had resulted in the status quo ante. The United States did not achieve even that during the Vietnam War; in fact, the slow-motion debacle in Indochina may have contributed to American thinking that led to détente with the Soviet Union and an historic opening to China, as the United States sought sustainable accommodation with the principal communist powers. Nevertheless, the U.S. strategy in the Cold War had contained Soviet power in Europe and was contesting 1 For example, in Nixon’s Radio Address on November 4, 1972, just before

his re-election a. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v01/d123 b. Described in paragraphs 7-9.

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it outside Europe. The American strategy was working to some extent, and the United States and its Allies had done this without a general war.

Implicit in the Cold War “structure of peace,” however, was acceptance of the lines of Yalta Europe. Lippmann’s realism, including accommodation with the reality of Soviet power in Central and Eastern Europe, had prevailed in American and West European thinking. “Titoism” – meaning significant autonomy from the Soviet Union for a communist regime -- as Lippmann had put it in the wake of the Hungarian Revolution, was the outer limits of what the United States Government had at that point concluded was achievable east of the Iron Curtain. Variants of Johnson’s “bridge building” – cultural exchanges, economic ties, a modest bilateral agenda with the communist governments of the satellite countries – would be the U.S. tactics. But these served a strategy which increasingly accepted the permanence of Soviet power over Central Europe. In this view, the price of general peace with the Soviet Union was acquiescence to its European empire.

Nixon made these assumptions nearly explicit: “We are aware,” he stated in 1970, “that the Soviet Union sees its security as directly affected by developments in [Eastern Europe].…It is not the intention of the United States to undermine the legitimate security interests of the Soviet Union.…Our pursuit of negotiation and détente is meant to reduce existing tensions, not to stir up new ones. By the same token, the United States views the countries of Eastern Europe as sovereign, not parts of a monolith. And we can accept no doctrine [i.e., the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” which asserted a Soviet right of intervention in Eastern Europe] that abridges their right to seek reciprocal improvement of relations with us or others.”2 2 “First Annual Report of the Congress on United States Foreign Policy for

the 1970s,” February 18, 1970 a. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2835 b. Fifth paragraph in section “EASTERN EUROPE”.

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With such language, Nixon was defining the rights of the Central European countries in narrow terms: rather than standing in principle by the Atlantic Charter’s “right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live,” he limited the rights of the Central European countries to seeking “reciprocal improvement of relations.” Moreover, by recognizing the “legitimate security interests of the Soviet Union,” Nixon was signaling that the United States would interpret “reciprocal improvement of relations” in a narrow fashion.

Under Nixon, America’s Cold War strategy included assumptions which could satisfy his Soviet counterpart, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev: Soviet-US equality in general; a bilateral arms control agenda that assumed strategic parity between the US and USSR; limited competition beyond Europe, which the Soviets were able to intensify in times and places of their choosing, as opportunity arose; and acceptance of the existing lines of the Cold War in Europe. This was the best deal the Soviet Union ever got from the Americans during the Cold War, and they knew it, which explains the persistent Soviet (and later Russian) affection for the Nixon Administration.

Under the conditions of détente, feeling relatively confident that the United States had accepted Soviet domination of Central Europe, Brezhnev was willing to continue and even expand, modest space for limited, practical “bridge building” ties. In fact, détente would have worked out well for the Soviet Union, had communism worked at all. In 1972, the Soviets still thought that it might: a generation of post-World War II reconstruction had brought growth, development and, after 1956, and the end of Stalinism, even a measure of improved living standards. But the Soviet economic system had in some sense already peaked, and continued Soviet economic growth could no longer be sustained without more substantial economic reforms than the Soviet leadership was willing to contemplate.

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The axioms of détente

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Significant economic reform meant risking loss of control.

The Czechoslovak experience in 1968 suggested that significant economic reform risked stimulating uncontrolled political reform. Poland’s experience suggested that painful economic reforms without political reform sufficient to generate public support would fail. In Poland, the first step in economic reform – price rises – triggered riots in 1970, leading to Polish Communist Party chief Wladyslaw Gomulka’s fall and replacement by Edward Gierek. Economic reform that Polish society could except carried an unacceptable political price.

Credits and loans from the West could, however, provide the economic lift the Soviet leadership was seeking without the need for reforms, or so went the theory. For the Soviets, détente had the benefit that loans and credits were now available and the West was willing, even eager, to provide them. As it turned out, Western money would only take Communist economies so far; it was no substitute for reforms. By the mid-1970s, Communism in Central Europe had begun its terminal decline and Soviet economic decline followed shortly. But this was not yet apparent. Throughout most of 1970’s, the period of Nixon/Kissinger realism and false communist confidence, détente was ascendant. It brought results unanticipated by both the Americans and Soviets.

The Consequences of Détente: from below Under détente, conditions on the ground in the Communist bloc loosened a bit. Brezhnevism was not Stalinism.

This limited relaxation meant, among other things, new opportunities for Westerners to gain an understanding of communist countries on the ground, in ways impossible under Stalinism. US-Soviet student exchanges opened up.

A generation of American journalists and students, the latter funded by generous US scholarship programs intended to support Soviet specialists, now were able to flock to the Communist world. Traveling US government tours of American culture in the Soviet Union hired Rus56

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sian-speaking American tour guides. Future Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, future Assistant Secretary Toria Nuland, future Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle and many others, myself included, now had access to Russian, Polish, Czechoslovak, Hungarian and other societies in the “East,” in ways unthinkable for George Kennan.

American and other Western journalists in Moscow, Warsaw, and Budapest took advantage of the opportunity to develop contacts with a new generation of dissidents. In Moscow, this included Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, not yet exiled; revisionist Marxist Roy Medvedev; democratic dissident Natan Sharansky; and Andrey Sakharov, the renowned Soviet scientist turned a voice of democratic conscience. In Warsaw, it meant that the various schools of Polish dissidents and intellectuals, some of whom were forming the Committee for Defense of Workers (“KOR”) and other groups, including some associated with independent Catholic social thought, now had outlets. American embassies started assigning officers to a “human rights” portfolio, with the job of maintaining contacts with independent thinkers.

This meant that Central Europe and Russia were no longer mere abstractions to the West; dissidents’ ideas were entering the consciousness and vocabulary of journalists, students, diplomats, and intellectuals, and from them filtering out to the wider foreign policy establishment and society throughout the West. The impact of this new understanding grew over time. Among other things, it meant that the Polish and Baltic view of Yalta Europe was able to start challenging the “realists’” view.

In American political terms, this meant that left and center-left Americans started questioning their earlier assumptions about the nature of the Cold War; the old Henry Wallace view of a misunderstood Stalin was being challenged by Russians, Poles, Hungarians, and others who had direct and compelling understanding of what 57

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Soviet domination meant in practice. Simultaneously, it meant that the American right, anti-communist in principle, now had the ability to meet Poles and others who took anti-communism seriously.

The Consequences of Détente: from above Détente also had consequences for the structure of EastWest relations. The CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) process which started in Helsinki in 1972, was intended essentially as a framework within which the axioms of détente, the Nixon/Kissinger view of the Cold War, could be formalized through comprehensive, multilateral negotiations including most of the countries of Europe, the Soviet Union, and the US and Canada. The negotiations succeeded and produced a major document. Concluded in 1975, the Helsinki Final Act, the core of the “Helsinki Accords” as they became known, consisted of three “Baskets.” “Basket I,” security provisions, gave political backing to post-World War II European borders developed between the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conferences, and by implication the status quo in Europe which these had established. The USSR liked this part a lot. Basket II included economic cooperation, and the Soviets liked this as well. But Basket I also contained reference to human rights and fundamental freedoms, and Helsinki’s Basket III, with equal standing, upheld an agenda of social and cultural contacts and access to information.

The Soviet Union had resisted the inclusion of human rights in the Helsinki package but, in the end, had agreed to it as a necessary price for a document which seemed to enshrine détente and the territorial status quo. After all, the words about human right in the Helsinki Final Act were just that, perhaps as meaningless in practice as the words of the Declaration of Liberated Europe agreed to at Yalta.

In fact, many on the American right reached the same conclusion. Many criticized President Ford, who had suc58

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ceeded Nixon in 1974, for signing on to the Helsinki Final Act which, as they saw it, formalized Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. In the summer of 1975, just before the Summit to sign the Helsinki Final Act, Ford, at Kissinger’s recommendation, had been reluctant to receive Solzhenitsyn, just exiled from the Soviet Union, in the White House. Partly in reaction, Solzhenitsyn had condemned Ford’s support of the Helsinki Final Act as enshrining the “slavery” of Eastern Europe.3 As it turned out, however, the Basket III and human rights provisions turned out to be the most lasting element of the Helsinki Final Act. Rather than being consigned to a corner of lost chances, as was the Declaration of Liberated Europe, the Helsinki Final Act was embraced by dissidents throughout the Soviet Union and Central Europe and held up by their American and European supporters.

“Helsinki” groups sprang up across the West, with those in the East using the commitments their own governments had signed on to as protection, and a tool. The US Congress, reflecting a growing understanding of dissent in Communist Europe, established the “Helsinki Commission” to monitor compliance with the Final Act. This became a center of support for democratic dissidents.

Speaking later on the subject of dashed hopes, Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin famously quipped that “Khoteli kak luchshe, a poluchilos kak vsyegda,” (“We wanted the best, but it turned out as it always it does.”) But in the case of the Helsinki Final Act, “Poluchilos nie kak vsyegda.” (“It turned out not as usual.”)

Brzezinski and the policy of “differentiation” By 1977, when President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski were in office, the original precepts of détente were on the defensive. The American right resisted arms control, seeing it as a soporific in the face 3 “New York Times, July 22, 1975

a. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1975/07/22/79656886.pdf b. Mentioned in second page, second paragraph in second column

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of what they believed was growing Soviet power, and refused to accept détente’s implicit acceptance of Soviet power.

Carter did at first accept détente, especially when it came to strategic arms control. But, in contrast to Kissinger’s and Ford’s conflicted view of human rights as a measure of USSoviet relations, Carter and Brzezinski embraced human rights as a core American foreign policy interest, including with respect to the Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc. Carter was less willing than Nixon to embrace anti-Communist authoritarians and unwilling to accept indifference to dissent in the Soviet camp.

This shift in priorities occurred just as the Soviet leadership was trying to break the relations that had grown up between American journalists and Soviet human rights activists and dissidents. For Moscow, the Carter-Brzezinski human rights policy violated the understanding they thought they had with the Americans about détente, including the respect they thought the Americans would afford toward the Kremlin’s view of legitimate Soviet security interests.

These tensions in Carter-era détente were developing as the economic assumptions that underlay Soviet interest in détente were coming apart. Western loans and credits were unable, as was becoming apparent, to compensate for the inability of communist systems to reform. The Polish economy especially was under stress, and Western credits intended to fill the gap between Polish social expectations and Polish economic performance were mounting into unsustainable debt. Even the Soviet economy was visibly deteriorating by the late-1970s.

In this context, Brzezinski shifted US policy toward Central and Eastern Europe with his policy of “differentiation,” adopted in 1977 and built on Johnson’s “bridge-building” model, which Brzezinski had helped shape. Differentiation called for the US to increase ties with European communist governments which demonstrated either internal reforms (which meant especially Hungary, then in its period of “gou60

Brzezinski, Solidarity, and Reagan

lash” or consumerist communism) or a degree of external independence (in practice this meant Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu, which for all its Stalinism at home had carved out a measure of foreign policy independence).

Brzezinski’s policy recognized that Central Europe had some, if limited, agency. Conceptually, differentiation meant that US relations with individual European communist countries would respond to developments on the ground in those countries. The US would no longer view relations with countries of the Soviet Bloc solely as a function of its larger relationship with Moscow. In 1977, the practical difference that “differentiation” made was not great. But Brzezinski’s policy started shifting American thinking from the “Realist” axioms.

Brzezinski was changing the American approach to Central Europe in other ways. He invited Jan Nowak to move from Munich, where Novak had directed RFE’s Polish service for 25 years, to Washington, where this former Polish officer and courier between the Polish Government in London and the Polish Home Army could advise Brzezinski and other American officials who worked on Polish policy. Jan Nowak’s influence was narrow – few beyond those working on Poland or Central Europe knew him. But Nowak’s deep knowledge of Poland, as well as his sound judgment, meant that his influence within that circle was deep and would grow over time. Jan Nowak combined practicality in tactics – a realistic sense of what was and was not possible in a given situation – with a strategic commitment to Poland within Europe, along the lines of the Atlantic Charter, not Yalta.

Differentiation was initially understood at the State Department – where I had started working in 1977 – as an adjustment of the old “bridge-building” policy: a framework for tactical moves within an unchanged strategic framework. But the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II in 1978 widened the horizons of 61

Jan Nowak in Washington

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the possible in Poland, and thus broadened the scope of the differentiation policy. John Paul II’s trip to Poland in 1979 made clear that differentiation had the potential to play out in a much bigger way than even Brzezinski expected.

Solidarity’s Rise The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 ended Carter’s lingering acceptance of even his modified version of détente.

Solidarity’s establishment and astonishing rise in August 1980 – from a local strike to a mass national movement including millions of Poles – was of greater importance.

It blew apart the conceptual underpinnings of détente with respect to Central Europe on both the Soviet and American sides. The economic benefits of détente were not sufficient to allow otherwise unreformed Communist regimes to succeed. Communism in Eastern Europe was now in a deeper crisis than at any time since 1956, and the ancillary, limited loosening of control which the Soviets were willing to entertain in the 1970s as part of détente no longer seemed worth the risk. Détente no longer made sense to them.

Solidarity’s sudden rise meant that the nominal Soviet and East Bloc-regime commitments on human rights now took on importance. The Soviets understood this and did not like it.

For the West, détente’s tacit political understanding that accepted the reality of Soviet domination of Central and Eastern Europe, as Nixon had done, was overtaken by developments that challenged the viability of that domination.

In the United States and to lesser degree in Europe, Solidarity captured intense support across the political spectrum. The right saw vindication in a mass, anti-communist movement. The left, or much of it, saw a vindication of the human rights and dissident movement whose 62

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leaders many activists in the West now knew personally and with whose writings - such as Adam Michnik’s - they were becoming familiar. The right’s anti-communism and left’s support for democratic dissent were bringing American political sides together in support of Solidarity in Poland.

On a strategic level, Solidarity’s rise brought into question the realists’ assumption about the Cold War – about the durable nature of Soviet rule in Central Europe and permanence of “Yalta Europe” – which had developed after 1956, 1961, and 1968, and which Nixon had crystalized.

Brzezinski understood the potential of Solidarity and, under his influence, the Carter Administration was far more focused on Polish developments in 1980-81 than the Johnson Administration had been with respect to Czechoslovakia in 1968. I was serving in the US Consulate General in Leningrad in December 1980, a period when the US Government believed the Soviets were planning a military intervention in Poland. We were asked to report any information, even rumors, of impending Soviet action, and we were told that Brzezinski himself was following developments in Poland on a daily basis.

Americans were coming to look at Central Europe as a subject, not an object, of history; as an actor, and not simply a victim.

Reagan Returns to America’s Grand Strategy President Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981 accepting the right’s opposition to détente, including its skepticism of arms control. Détente was effectively dead after the invasion of Afghanistan, so initially, in operational terms, Reagan’s policies reflected continuity with postAfghanistan President Carter’s policies.

Under pressure from Moscow, General Wojciech Jaruzelski had imposed Martial Law in Poland in December 1981. This triggered a strong American reaction -- which included the imposition of sanctions on the USSR and 63

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Martial Law Poland -- far beyond anything the Johnson Administration had attempted after the August 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. These sanctions were relatively ineffective, however, partly because the Soviet economy was relatively detached from the global economy and partly because the US had not yet developed its menu of financial sanctions.

Unlike the Prague Spring in 1968, Solidarity had longerterm impact on American Cold War thinking. In the wake of Martial Law, Reagan challenged the “realist” assumptions about the Cold War: the Realists – intellectually led

by Walter Lippmann and put into polished policy terms by Nixon and Kissinger -- had accepted the Soviet Union as a presumed permanent feature of the international scene.

But Reagan began to question, explicitly and publicly, the viability of communism altogether. The Realists, especially Nixon and Kissinger, were willing to respect what they believed were legitimate Soviet security interests, which they defined in ways that meant accommodation of Soviet domination of Central Europe. This had been a feature of American thinking ever since Lippmann had made the argument in 1943. But Reagan resurrected Republican language about the roll back of Soviet power generally. The Reagan Administration’s National Security Decision Document 32, a then “top-secret” internal policy paper issued on May 20, 1982, included as a US “global objective” efforts “[t]o encourage long-term liberalizing and nationalist tendencies within the Soviet Union and [Soviet]allied countries.”4 Reagan’s Westminster’s speech

Reagan was going even further in his rethinking of American Cold War strategy. In his Westminster Speech of June 1982, Reagan identified American interests with the advance of democracy in the world, in terms which reflected Wilson, Roosevelt, and the Atlantic Charter. In effect, Reagan, from the right, was recalling America’s Grand 4 NSDD 32

a. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-32.pdf b. Second paragraph on second page

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Strategy from 1918, originally articulated by a progressive President, and putting it to work in the final phase of the Cold War. As in the Fourteen Points, Reagan was not willing to define Europe as limited to Western Europe.

“Poland”, Reagan argued in the Westminster speech, “is at the center of European civilization. It has contributed mightily to that civilization. It is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression.” Reagan was not willing to accept the permanence of Soviet control.

“From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to establish their legitimacy. But none – not one regime – has yet been able to risk free elections.” Nor was Reagan willing to accept “legitimate security interests of the Soviet Union” (Nixon’s phrase from 1970) as a red line in US policy. “Some argue,” Reagan noted, “that we should encourage democratic change in right-wing dictatorships, but not in Communist regimes. Well, to accept this preposterous notion – as some well-meaning people have – is to invite the argument that once countries achieve a nuclear capability, they should be allowed an undisturbed reign of terror over their own citizens. We reject this course.”

In a 1987 speech about US-Soviet relations5, Reagan described the origins of the Cold War in terms Nixon or the older Lippmann would not have accepted, but Wilson and the younger Lippmann would have. “Yalta,” Reagan noted, “produced tangible diplomatic results. And among these was an endorsement of the rights upheld in the Atlantic Charter, rights that would ‘afford assurance that all men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.’ And so, too, the right of self-determination of Eastern European nations like Poland were – at least on paper –guaranteed. But in a matter of months, Churchill’s worst fears were realized: The Yalta guaran5 August 26, 1987, Los Angeles Town Hall Remarks

a. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-soviet-unitedstates-relations-the-town-hall-california-meeting-los-angeles b. Third paragraph

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tees of freedom and human rights in Eastern Europe became undone. And as democracy died in Poland, the era of Allied cooperation ended.”

Reagan had redefined America’s aims in the Cold War. He had turned away from Nixon’s application of realism, and insisted, explicitly, that the Atlantic Charter in fact applied to all of Europe. What this might mean in practice was not yet clear.

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The Power of Freedom: 1989 and its Consequences

T

he liberation of Central Europe – America’s avowed goal since 1945 -- arrived in 1989, in the form of self-liberation which nobody expected. Few in the United States believed that communism would fall in Central Europe, even while it was happening.

President Reagan had prepared the ground for new thinking, and had himself foreshadowed communism’s fall. But even at the end of Reagan’s eight years as President, most of the American foreign policy community accepted a central axiom of the Cold War: that Central Europe’s fate was sealed; that Yalta Europe, divided Europe, was the only possible Europe.

In American universities and foreign policy circles, for a generation before 1989, it was standard to assume that Soviet domination of Central Europe would be essentially eternal. The “realist” school was taught as correct. In this view, outcomes for “Non-Soviet Warsaw Pact” countries (such was the terminology) were bounded by Hungarianstyle “goulash communism” at the better end and post-1968 Czechoslovak repression at the bad end. The choices for the East Europeans themselves included accommodation (as in Hungary), brave but futile revolt (as in Poland during the first Solidarity), or sullen passivity (as in post-1968 Czechoslovakia).

Within most of the State Department, where I was then working, and other US Government agencies, anti-communist dissent was regarded as noble but hopeless. The Eastern European nations and their corresponding ethnic communities in the United States were celebrated in Cap67

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tive Nations Week. But this was generally regarded as a ceremonial event, politically useful, but without strategic meaning.

In parallel with this view, many on the right still believed that communism was a more effective system than the messy democracies of the West. Many on the left still believed, a la Henry Wallace, that America was partly (or even principally) responsible for the Cold War, and they clung to détente as a means to restore stability in relations with the USSR. According to these views, challenging Soviet domination of Eastern Europe from within or without was either futile or irresponsible. “Realists” of the right and left would cite Radio Free Europe’s Hungarian language broadcasts in 1956, which could be interpreted as having incited revolt, as examples of such dangerous irresponsibility.

These fatalistic views were not the only ones, however. Détente of the 1970s had opened space for Western intellectuals to meet their East European counterparts, and these contacts had put a human face on democratic dissidents. This space expanded enormously during Poland’s first Solidarity period, when American labor unions, academics, journalists, and activists had developed direct contacts with Solidarity and the Polish democratic movement generally, as well as with outstanding other dissidents in Central Europe, such as the Czechoslovak Charter 77 group. The American democracy promotion community had grown, and now included strong organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy established by Reagan, the AFL-CIO union organization which supported Solidarity, the Helsinki Commission of the US Congress, and other groups.

Reagan believed that communism was not only a bad system, but failing and doomed, and a growing number of people on the right and left now agreed. Under the influence of Polish, Czech, Baltic, Hungarian, Russian, and other democratic dissidents, some on the left who a generation earlier might have harbored residual sympathy for the Soviet Bloc were beginning to look at Soviet commu68

1989 and its Consequences

nism as simply totalitarianism, and at Stalin’s takeover of Central Europe as a repression similar to Nazi occupation of Western Europe.1 On the right, also thanks to familiarity with democratic dissidents, more were coming to believe that the ideological challenge to communism from Solidarity and Poland, and indirectly from Pope John Paul II, was serious.

In the Soviet Union, CPSU General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had come to the conclusion that the Soviet system needed major reform if it were to survive. By the late 1980s, he had launched these reforms -- called openness and restructuring (“glasnost and perestroika”) – which had a foreign policy corollary of outreach to the West. Reagan was willing to work with Gorbachev on this basis. The new opening between Moscow and Washington would constrain Soviet options in Central and Eastern Europe, because Gorbachev’s agenda did not allow for a return to the deep freeze in Soviet-US relations that followed Martial Law in Poland in 1981.

History Begins Again These developments set the stage for the US to reengage with Poland. Reagan’s Vice President, George H. W. Bush traveled to Poland in September 1987, just as the communist regime was considering its options. The regime was coming to understand that it could not crush Solidarity, which, despite years of pressure, had retained its underground structures. To generate political stability, the regime sought economic growth. But economic growth would require either external funding, which was not available either from the Soviet Union or from the West, or internal economic reforms. Economic reforms in turn required social acceptance, because they would have to begin with cutbacks on state subsidies, meaning unpopular price hikes. Social acceptance in Po1 The “New York Review of Books” published in the 1980s first-class analy-

ses of the decay of the Soviet Union, the Soviet empire and Soviet ideology, e.g., //www.nybooks.com/articles/1988/09/29/the-empire-in-decay/

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land required some arrangement with Solidarity, which the regime was not yet able to accept. Faced with this dilemma, the regime froze, falling back on a wait-andsee policy.

Bush’s visit allowed him to meet the communist leadership, including Jaruzelski, and with Lech Walesa and the Solidarity leadership team. Bush thus knew the key players personally. That would turn out to be more important than anyone realized at the time.

New strikes in Poland

„Talks about talks”

New labor unrest broke out in Poland in the spring of 1988 and again in the fall of that year. The strikes demonstrated to the communist authorities that wait-and-see would not work; that waiting meant waiting for the next Polish social explosion. Intensifying pressure on Solidarity was both impractical (it had consistently failed since Martial Law) and ran counter to Gorbachev’s desire to improve relations with the West. Thus, the regime concluded, it needed to approach Solidarity, hoping to coopt it or reach an acceptable accommodation.

This policy conclusion led to a careful dance between Solidarity and the communist authorities – a sort of talks about talks – which some in the Catholic Church Episcopate in Poland were brokering. The US Embassy in Warsaw, led by Charge and later Ambassador John Davis, had sustained ties with Solidarity’s leadership throughout and after Martial Law. The Embassy therefore was in a position to report in detail the moves and counter moves between Solidarity and the regime. Late one evening in November 1988, reading the Embassy’s reports about this process as the State Department’s Polish Desk Officer, a low-level position, it suddenly struck me that I did not know how this process would end. That came as a shock, because if the outcome was uncertain, the assumption that post-Yalta Poland was the only possible Poland no longer held. If alternatives to Yalta Poland and Yalta Europe were now in play, America might no longer have to accept the consequences of its own 70

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policy failures of the 1930s, which had led to Yalta. This thought I kept to myself. At that time, it seemed too radical to advance within the Administration.

The Roundtable Talks The “talks about talks” led to agreement to open general negotiations between the Communist regime and Solidarity. The so-called Roundtable Talks began on February 6, 1989. By the end of the first day, the regime negotiators had offered re-legalization of Solidarity and, based on what they were hearing from both sides, the American Embassy in Warsaw concluded that the talks were serious and Poland was now venturing onto political ground had not seen since 1945.

At this stage, the regime’s intention was not to offer democracy, but a return to a looser political arrangement recalling the immediate post-World War II years (the period of so-called “people’s democracies”) with the communists in control but with latitude for other political parties, and this time without the violence prevalent as the Communists took over. In other words, the communists were looking for a soft landing, with the best case for them being cooptation of the opposition within arrangements which left the communists in charge.

Solidarity, on the other hand, while prepared to accept offers of its re-legalization and other regime concessions, wanted to roll back history not to a “people’s democracy” but to the Polish Republic which had existed before September 1, 1939. As Professor Bronislaw Geremek, one of Lech Walesa’s principal advisors and a negotiator at the Roundtable Talks, put it to a small State Department group when he visited Washington that spring, the Poles wanted their country back.

More important than the details of the talks was the emerging reality that the communists could no longer dictate the terms of politics in the country. The Roundtable negotiation process was dynamic and open-ended. I began to convey this sense of an open-ended process to 71

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anyone in the Administration who was willing to listen.

In thinking through the options, I had the help of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, my former Professor; Jan Nowak Jezioranski, with whom I was in daily contact; and my boss, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Tom Simons, later Ambassador to Poland. Jan Nowak combined moral authority and conviction with intellectual precision. Brzezinski was a strategic guru.

Tom Simons was a sanity checker and mentor.

Condi Rice

Given the prevailing policy consensus that Yalta Poland was still the only possible Poland, I had no takers until Condoleezza Rice, the new Director for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe on the National Security Council staff, visited my office in late February 1989. She understood the point at once. Rice had studied the USSR and Eastern Europe with Professor Josef Korbel, the father of future Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and a former Czechoslovak diplomat. Rice was intellectually prepared to make the leap from accepting Yalta Europe, to considering the possibility that Yalta might not be permanent.

Rice’s thinking, as I discovered later, combined a realist’s appreciation of obstacles with an idealist’s sense of potential, and the discipline to sort out the differences.

Later during of the Roundtable, Bronislaw Geremek’s political sub-group developed the agreement for the socalled “Sejm Kontraktowy” (the “Contract Parliament”), according to which 35 percent of the seats in the parliament (the Sejm) would be freely elected and the remaining 65 percent reserved for the Communist Party and other regime-permitted parties and groups. Most of official Washington regarded this as a static deal which, by giving the communists and their allies nearly two-thirds of the Sejm, would allow them to dominate post-Roundtable Poland.

The communists, as it turned out, had not understood the details of their own agreement. The 35 percent freely-elected bloc was more properly compared not to the 72

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pro-regime’s 65 percent, but to the Communist Party’s guaranteed 38 percent subset of that 65 percent. The difference between the guaranteed communist group and the freely-elected group would be just three percent. This meant that if Solidarity swept the Sejm elections for the freely-elected 35 percent, the balance of power in the parliament would be in the hands of the pro-regime parties, the “Democratic Party” (SD, in its Polish acronym) and the “United Peasant Party” (or ZSL, in its Polish acronym). In the event of a radically altered political dynamic, it could no longer be assumed that these parties would be reliable Communist Party allies. In any case, parliamentary numbers would count in Poland, as they had not since before World War II. George H. W. Bush Turns to Poland In late March 1989, Rice telephoned me in confidence to say that President Bush was thinking about throwing his weight behind the Roundtable Talks. If the Communists and Solidarity reached an agreement, President Bush might want to welcome it in public and pledge American support. She asked me to write a speech for the President along those lines.

This was an unusual request. State Department Desk Officers are not supposed to draft speeches for Presidents.

But Rice, new to government, either did not know the rules or did not care. In any case, I wrote a draft and, in according with State Department procedure, submitted it to the State Department’s “Secretariat” for transmittal to the White House. The Secretariat immediately rejected the draft with the following note, “Fried: you’re giddy.”

The Secretariat was reflecting the conventional skepticism about the possibility of a breakthrough in Poland or in any “East Bloc” country.

I telephoned Rice and explained that the State Department would never accept the forward-leaning language for President Bush with respect to Poland which she and I had discussed. If she wanted the draft speech, I would 73

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have to deliver it directly by hand (this was a pre-e-mail era). She agreed, and I walked from the State Department to the White House and handed her the draft, saying that, “From this point forward, I work for you.”

Bush’s Hamtramck speech

Lech Walesa and Polish Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak signed the Roundtable Accords on April 5, 1989. On April 17, on the day that Solidarity was returned to legal status in Poland, in accordance with the Roundtable Accords, President Bush gave in Hamtramck, Michigan the speech which Rice had organized and I had drafted. The speech2 contained two major points: • First: the Cold War would not end without freedom restored to Central Europe and Poland. “The true source of [Cold War] tension is the imposed and unnatural division of Europe.…The United States – and let’s be clear on this – has never accepted the legitimacy of Europe’s division. We accept no spheres of influence that deny the sovereign rights of nations.”

• Second: the United States would support Poland, including the Polish economy, in the uncertain transition period it was now beginning. “Democratic forces in Poland have asked for the moral, political, and economic support of the West, and the West will respond.”

The first point was significant. Bush was rejecting both the Nixon/Kissinger axiom that the Cold War should be managed through détente and arms control, and the Lippmann assumptions that stability and security lay through tacit acceptance of a Russian sphere of influence over Central Europe. The US, as these essays have argued, had wavered in its views of the importance of the division of Europe. In the Hamtramck speech, President Bush was returning to the Wilson/Truman/Reagan tradition.

The second point was a radical departure. Bush was flipping the US position from putting economic pressure on 2 Bush Speech in Hamtramck, Michigan

a. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16935

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Poland to supporting its economy. Bush’s initial list of proposed support was modest: in the Hamtramck speech, he offered tariff preferences, modest rescheduling of Polish official debt, support for U.S. investment in Poland, and training programs. But the policy shift meant that the US was going to support Poland, the question being not “whether” but “how much.”

Bush deepened the themes of his Hamtramck speech in his famous May 31, 1989 Mainz speech, when he used the phrase “Europe whole and free” as an American objective. Bush was committing the US to a European policy rooted in the Atlantic Charter and the Fourteen Points.

On June 4, as specified in the Roundtable Accords, Poland held the “Sejm Kontraktowy” elections. These produced two astonishing results: first, the Solidarity-backed group won every single contested seat in the Sejm, the entirety of the freely-contested 35 percent, and 99 of 100 seats in the newly-established Polish Senate. Second, the Polish regime acknowledged the results.

Poland and the West were now on new ground, not seen since September 1, 1939: On one level, the elections had changed nothing. Past efforts at political transformation in Central Europe had all ended badly, and this might as well. In a Washington meeting shortly before the elections, Bronislaw Geremek had pointed out to Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jan Nowak, Tom Simons, and myself that the regime still controlled all the elements of force, and reminded us that the Soviet military was present in force in East Germany and Poland.

The Soviets had the power to crush Polish democracy before it could take root. (Various dark jokes were circulating in Warsaw at that time, most ending with the characters in an internment camp.) But the elections had created, Geremek also noted, a new dynamic favorable to Poland’s democratic forces.

Under these circumstances, hopeful but fraught, Bush vis75

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Bush’s Polish Sejm speech

ited Poland and Hungary in July 1989. The public high points were his visit to Gdansk and meeting with Lech Walesa, and his July 10 speech to the Sejm which extended the themes of the Hamtramck speech and pledged more American support for Poland. “Poland is where the Cold War began,” Bush stated, “and now the people of Poland can help bring the division of Europe to an end. The time has come to move beyond containment to a world too long deferred, a better world.…And now, in part because of what you are doing here, the genuine opportunity exists for all of us to build a Europe which many thought was destroyed forever in the 1940s. That Europe, the Europe of our children, will be open, whole, and free.”3 This was America’s return to the principles of the Atlantic Charter, applied to all of Europe, and, unlike at Yalta, not simply in an aspirational context.

The most important action of Bush’s trip, however, might have been his lunch at the Warsaw Residence of Ambassador John Davis, which brought together Jaruzelski and leading communist regime authorities with the new Solidarity team about to enter government. At that lunch, Bush’s American message was clear: the United States would support Poland and had deep sympathy for Solidarity, but we wanted to support a smooth and peaceful, not violent, transition from communist Poland to a free Poland.

George H. W. Bush’s handling of Polish developments was one of his greatest achievements as President. He turned around American policy, burning through years of false assumptions about the permanence of Soviet domination of Europe, and giving both sides in Poland something to work with: a degree of respect for the communists on their way out while simultaneously treating the incoming Solidarity team as the legitimate leaders of their country. By doing this, Bush was also making clear to the 3 Bush’s July 10, 1989 Sejm speech

a. http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/items/show/45

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Soviets -- led by Gorbachev -- that the US was behind the Polish transformation. This was not Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Hungary in 1956, democratic efforts which the Soviets could crush at little cost.

Event unfolded quickly under pressure from Lech Walesa: the communist satellite parties flipped and gave the Solidarity-backed coalition in the Sejm a working majority; a Solidarity-backed government, headed by dissident intellectual Tadeusz Mazowiecki as Prime Minister, was in place by September; Jaruzelski was President, as part of a political compromise, but he backed the change. At each stage, Lech Walesa had made the critical decisions about how far and fast to push, judging correctly that democracy’s time had come. Walesa came to Washington later that year and, on November 15, addressed a Joint Session of Congress, earning as enthusiastic a reception as I have ever seen for a foreign leader as he began his speech, “My, Narod.” (“We, the People.”)

Surviving the “J Curve” (1989-1992) As it turns out, overthrowing communism was the easy part.

Lech Walesa said in those years that communism was like turning an aquarium into fish soup: no special skill is involved. But building democracy after communism was like turning fish soup back into an aquarium: harder to manage.

In Washington, belief in communism’s permanence was replaced by skepticism about the ability of the Poles (and Hungarians, Czechoslovaks, Romanians and others who were following Poland’s path) to create a normal country out of the ruin which communism had left behind.

In 1989, even before the June 4 elections, prominent American journalists were arguing that the communists had engaged in a clever trick by pulling back from political responsibility for inevitable economic ruin. When the ruin occurred, as it surely would (so the argument went), 77

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Solidarity would have to assume political responsibility and would fail on that basis, and the communists would return.

That nasty prognosis reflected a serious problem: no one had considered that communism could ever end, so no one had considered what post-communist transformation would look like. The Poles, soon to be joined by most of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe, were, as a contemporary saying went, flying blind, piloting a failing aircraft, and trying to repair it mid-flight. With no instruction manual.

Poland’s economic situation the most miserable of any in Central Europe, possibly excepting Romania’s, and the reforms which the Mazowiecki government introduced to deal with it were the most radical. Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz and his Chief of Staff Jerzy Kozminski introduced radical macroeconomic and liberalizing reforms; termed “shock therapy,” aptly so. The Balcerowicz Plan, as it became known, was debated at the time and since, and whether an alternative course would have been more successful is difficult to determine.

In any case, the new Polish government made the conscious decision to front-load the pain of economic reform, accepting the political cost for the initial hardship while their political strength was near a peak, and hoping that the economy would turn around before their political mandate was exhausted. As Geremek remarked to me later, Poles took the political capital of liberation and invested it into the economy. A big bet.

Balcerowicz’s reforms were accompanied by parallel social reforms, as the Mazowiecki government, and then the Government of Jan Krzysztof Bielecki that followed, with Lech Walesa now President, tried to mitigate the adjustment shock. Jacek Kuron and Michal Boni, Solidarity veterans and the Ministers of Labor in the Mazowiecki and Bielecki Governments, helped design those mitigation programs. The rightwing government Jan Olszewski continued this course.

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Poland’s transformation was not easy. Politics soured, as the so-called “War at the Top” splintered the Solidarity-backed political coalition into new political parties, whose successors are active today. Inflation rose rapidly, followed by unemployment. In late-1991, when Poland held its first completely free parliamentary elections, a seven-party coalition was necessary to form a majority, and the economy was still sinking.

Many in the US government believed that Poland was already failing; that post-communist reforms were just too difficult Nevertheless, the Bush Administration deepened its support for Poland. New programs included a $1B currency stabilization fund, the $240M Polish-American Enterprise Fund, and a 50 percent debt relief initiative in the Paris Club for Poland’s official debt.

Poland did not fail. The political capital of liberation was deep enough. The reforms worked. I was Political Counselor at the US Embassy then, working for Ambassador Tom Simons, and through the most difficult period I had the impression that the Solidarity-origin leadership felt themselves the heirs of previous generations of Polish insurrectionists, fighting for their country. They carried within themselves the cause of the Warsaw Uprising and other Polish uprwings and, I sensed, would not let themselves fail.

Poland survived the “J-curve” of initial post-communist transformation. In April 1992, the Polish economy hit bottom and began to grow. It has grown every month since, and Poland’s per capita GDP has tripled. Politics started to stabilize, as the magnitude of this success began to sink in.

Proof of Concept (“Why Poland?”)

As Poland was poised at the brink, then Ambassador Tom Simons and I crafted a case for America’s interest in Poland. Our argument was that: 79

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• Post-communist transformation had never been attempted, not even contemplated, and it was not clear whether such transformation was even possible.

• The United States had committed itself to the success of free-market democracy as the answer to the problems of the post-communist hemisphere, but had no idea whether it would work.

• The importance of Poland therefore was not just its size, but that its reforms were, by necessity, the deepest and most radical of any in the post-communist world. (Reforms in the Baltic States would turn out to be as deep, but we did not yet know that.)

• Therefore, we argued, if post-communist transformation could succeed in Poland, it could succeed elsewhere.

• Success everywhere was not in the cards, we recognized, but for the American strategy to work, success had to be achieved somewhere. Poland was that test, the proof of concept.

By the summer of 1993, the Polish economy was gaining strength, and better economic news would keep coming, for years to come. This success was now recognized in Poland; the sense of crisis was passing and a sense of opportunity developing.

Poland had achieved its freedom and shown that the Third Polish Republic, as it was known in Poland, was viable.

The Warsaw Pact was gone. Yalta Europe was dead. Poland and its new democratic neighbors stood apart.

The Poles started to ask themselves and the Americans, now what?

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W

President William J. Clinton entered office in 1993, the immediate drama of post-communist transformation was over. The George H.W. Bush administration had faced the existential question of whether stable, free-market democracy could take root in Central and Eastern Europe. By 1993, it was clear that it could. hen

The Clinton Administration had to consider the strategic consequences of this profound success. Yalta was dead, but what would replace it was not clear. For many years, no one in authority in the United States had considered the possibility of a post-Yalta Europe, and therefore no one had thought about the options if this were to occur.

Events forced the United States to deal with these issues.

Through American leadership Germany was reunified in October 1990, on Western terms as a NATO member, and not a neutral country, as had been the case with Austria in 1955 and as Cold War Realists such as Walter Lippmann had earlier suggested as a model for Germany. As part of the negotiations on German reunification, then-Secretary of State Baker pledged to Soviet President Gorbachev on February 9, 1990 that, “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the East.”1 Germany was reunified and, as Baker had pledged, nonGerman NATO forces were not deployed to former East Germany.

1 Gorbachev-baker conversation, February 9, 1990

a. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=4325679-Document-05-Memorandum-of-conversation-between.

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The precedent of erasing the Iron Curtain line on terms favorable to the West thus was established, but the Bush administration had not considered whether this model might apply further East. NATO’s further enlargement was not on the minds of the Americans or the Russians in 1990. Even in Poland not many then were thinking about it. The Russians have used Baker’s exchange with Gorbachev to claim that the US had promised Russia not to enlarge NATO at all, and that the US betrayed this promise. This is a false charge; as even Gorbachev has since acknowledged2, nobody was thinking about NATO enlargement at that time, and the Baker-Gorbachev conversation concerned Germany alone.3 The Bush administration handled German reunification well, but that is where its thinking about the shape of post-Yalta Europe ended.

Clinton starts slowly

The Clinton Administration was slow to consider the future of post-Cold War Europe. At first, the Administration did not even understand that this was an issue. Vice President Al Gore visited Warsaw in April 1993, when I was still at the US embassy there. Gore’s draft speech looked backward to 1989. Its themes were of liberation after communism, but these were already growing stale. By the spring of 1993, the Poles were beginning to ask themselves and the Americans what post-Yalta Europe would look like, and we Americans had no answer. Ambassador Tom Simons and I urged Gore’s staff to inject into the speech 2 Interview with Gorbachev by “Russia beyond the Headlines,” October 16,

2014 a. https://www.rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbachev_i_ am_against_all_walls_40673.html b. Brookings post: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/ did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/.

3 The Russian government and it instruments have sought to create an “urban legend” that the USG offered to Russia a NATO non-enlargement pledge, a story which has been repeated by some in the West and even some within the USG. The record does not support such an assertion a. A record of a conversation between Gorbachev, Bush, Baker, and Shevardnadze in which they discuss German unification without any mention of NATO enlargement or any mention of a NATO non-enlargement pledge b. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB320/11.pdf.

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something about the challenge of post-Cold War Europe.

To his credit, Vice President Gore agreed. We changed the speech, which Gore made on April 20. But to raise the issue in a speech, in an indirect way as he did, is not to have an answer.4 The debate about post-Yalta Europe played out as a debate about NATO enlargement. NATO was the institutional focus because it was, as Clinton’s Deputy National Security Advisor Sandy Berger put it to me in 1993, the embodiment of the transatlantic alliance and America’s commitment to Europe. The US was not a member of the European Union and would not have a full voice there. If the United States wanted to shape post-Cold War Europe, NATO would have to be the instrument.

In early 1993, the American foreign policy establishment initially rejected NATO enlargement, preferring a Russiafirst approach. In this view, America’s principal strategic challenge after 1991 was to find a satisfactory relationship with post-Soviet Russia. That achieved, the argument went, European security would follow. In this view, NATO enlargement would be destabilizing. The Nixon, Kissinger and Lippmann axioms about deference to Russian security interests in Central Europe were persistent, almost reflexively. Initial American thinking about Central Europe still had not caught up to Wilson’s Fourteen Points. The Fourteen Points, after all, had welcomed post-Revolutionary Russia into the European family, but as a nation, not an empire, and regarded Central and Eastern Europe as independent and separate from Russia, as an integral part of Europe rather than a function of a policy toward Russia.

Pushing at NATO’s door The Poles were the first to push against the initial US government consensus that left them out of NATO and, by implication, the structures of post-Yalta Europe. As early 4 https://web.archive.org/web/20150304062118/http://dosfan.lib.uic.

edu:80/ERC/briefing/dispatch/1993/html/Dispatchv4no18.html

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as 1991, the center right “Center Accord” party, (PC, in the Polish acronym, forerunner to the current Law and Justice (PiS) Party) started calling for Polish entry into NATO. In 1992, the rightist government of Prime Minister Jan Olszewski made Polish NATO membership its official policy.

Radek Sikorski, then Poland’s Deputy Defense Minister, was a powerful advocate. By 1993, Polish liberals had joined this emerging Polish consensus, followed by the pro-Western wing of the Social Democratic Party, led by future Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

In April 1993, Polish President Lech Walesa and Czech President Vaclav Havel visited Washington for the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. They met with Clinton and pushed him hard to open the doors to NATO membership, warning against letting their countries fall into a gray zone of insecurity. The intensity of their arguments impressed Clinton and his National Security Advisor Anthony (“Tony”) Lake, though Walesa and Havel did not know that yet.

The Poles push Yeltsin to NATO

The Poles were aware of the American wariness about Russia’s potential reaction to NATO enlargement. So, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin visited Poland in August 1993, the Poles pushed him to offer a general statement of no objection to Poland’s joining NATO. Perhaps carried along by the emotion of the circumstances, Yeltsin did so.5 I had just started working in the Clinton National Security Council staff, as the Director responsible for Central and Eastern Europe, and learned of Yeltsin’s language through an urgent telephone call from the Polish Foreign Ministry Americas Director, Professor Zbigniew Lewicki. Lewicki urged the Clinton administration to seize the moment, and lock in Yeltsin’s statement before the Russians changed their minds. I had the hard task of telling Lewicki that the Clinton administration 5 For context and detail, see https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/26/world/

yeltsin-understands-polish-bid-for-a-role-in-nato.html a. Accurate link

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was nowhere near ready to capitalize on this opportunity, or even to appreciate it. I further conveyed that the Administration had not yet decided whether it wanted to enlarge NATO at all. I knew that Lewicki’s recommendation was the right one, but at that moment I could respond no better than I had.

Weakness has no viability: Prague 1994 and the Polish argument The Poles and Czechs were not deterred by the initial American hesitation. Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel had enormous political capital in Washington, and decided to deploy it to advance NATO enlargement. Their next opportunity came after the fall of 1993, when the Clinton administration announced its Partnership for Peace initiative.

The Partnership for Peace (“PfP,” as it was called inside the US government) was developed to be a light cooperative framework, tied to NATO, and open to all non-NATO European countries – whether neutral, former Warsaw Pact, or post-Soviet. PfP did not include a security guarantee and its initial conception focused on less sensitive military cooperation such as peacekeeping, humanitarian missions, and search and rescue. Its proponents intended PfP to address Central Europeans’ concerns about their future without alienating Russia.

It was also a way to postpone an internal US decision about whether NATO would ever enlarge. The initial American plan was ambiguous about whether PfP was a first step to NATO membership or an alternative to it.

Most in the Clinton administration, however, regarded PfP as a permanent alternative to NATO. Its flexibility gave PfP advantages as an umbrella for opening NATO relations with Central European and the emerging countries of the former Soviet Union. But in its initial, limited conception, PfP did nothing to address the larger problem of the structure of post-Cold War Europe. In fact, if it became a permanent alternative to NATO member85

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ship, PfP would risk tacitly perpetuating the Cold War line in Europe. For that reason, the Poles especially were wary of PfP. Nevertheless, Clinton took this limited vision for postCold War European security with him on his first trip to Europe in January 1994, where he planned to meet with NATO officials in Brussels and with the leaders of the “Visegrad” countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary) in Prague. Before the trip, Lake, recalling what Walesa and Havel had said at the Holocaust Museum opening the previous April, worried that the American vision for post-Cold War Europe might be inadequate to the historical moment.

His worries were confirmed by a pre-trip meeting in Milwaukee between Lake’s Deputy Samuel (“Sandy”) Berger and myself with a group of American leaders of Polish, Hungarian, and other Central European communities.

This group, influenced by Jan Nowak and led by Edith Lauer of the Hungarian-American Coalition, pounded Berger and me over what they saw as the weakness of PfP: they cited Yalta, the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, Polish Solidarity of 1980-81, and the overthrow of communist rule in Central Europe in 1989. They asked, rhetorically, whether the Partnership for Peace was really the best the American Government could do in response to all that history and the present opportunity.

Sandy Berger was impressed by the arguments he had heard. After that meeting, Berger understood, as did Lake, that the Clinton administration had a problem generated by a deficit of strategic vision.

Clinton left for Europe having been briefed about this meeting. In Brussels, his first stop, Clinton went beyond the papers the bureaucracy had sent him and in his formal speech on January 9, 1994 said that PfP “will advance a process of evolution for NATO’s formal enlargement.” However, Clinton’s speech offered no timetable or plan, and it also cautioned against drawing “a new 86

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line between East and West,” which was code language against any NATO enlargement.6 The speech was an internally inconsistent compromise between opposing options.

In Prague on January 12, 1994, Havel and Walesa, joined

by Hungarian President Arpad Goncz and Slovak President Michal Kovac, again pounded Clinton on NATO enlargement. Walesa, who spoke with the authority of the leader who had led the effort to take down communism in Poland, and by extension in all Central Europe, argued that the US had to create facts on the ground while still possible by advancing NATO enlargement.

PfP alone, he argued, would not do the job.

Clinton came out of those meetings uneasy about the limited policy his administration had given him, and at the press conference that day with the Visegrad leaders, went farther than he had just three days earlier in Brussels: “While the Partnership [PfP] is not NATO membership, neither is it a permanent holding room. It changes the entire NATO dialogue so that now the question is no longer whether NATO will take on new members but when and how.”7 This was a significant rhetorical step, but at that point there was no policy behind it. Those in the administration who opposed NATO enlargement, still an overwhelming majority, dismissed it as a gesture to appease Walesa and Havel. The tiny group that supported NATO enlargement saw it as an opening, which it turned out to be.

Out of the “Gray Zone” The NATO enlargement decision concerned the same questions that Walter Lippmann had dealt with starting 6 President Bill Clinton, “Remarks to Multinational Audience of Future Lead-

ers of Europe,” January 9, 1994, see also https://usa/usembassy.de.etexts/ ga6-940109.htm 7 The President’s News Conference with Visegrad Leaders in Prague, January 12, 1994 from the American Presidency project a. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=49832 b. eighth paragraph

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Daniel Fried The NATO enlargement debate

in 1943: did peace in Europe require recognition of a Russian sphere of domination over Central Europe? Did the United States intend to organize post-Cold War security in Europe through a deal with Moscow that would perpetuate the Cold War’s line? Stripped of its rhetorical scaffolding, that was what PfP as a final arrangement for Central Europe would mean.

Such an arrangement would mean abandoning the objective of Europe whole and free, the Atlantic Charter, the Fourteen Points, and two generations of American rhetoric during the Cold War. The arguments of the opponents of NATO enlargement, dominant at first, started looking less attractive when these implications began to emerge, especially when Walesa and Havel started pounding the point home.

Strobe Talbott, responsible for Russia at the State Department and later Deputy Secretary of State, was at first a skeptic but later a champion of NATO enlargement.

Talbott knew the history of Soviet behavior in Central Europe and his evolution led to subsequent re-thinking by others within the Clinton administration. Meeting in 1994 with a group of Central and East European-Americans, Talbott first pointed out that Yeltsin was no Stalin, and that the US should not exaggerate Russia’s threat to Central Europe. Jan Nowak, speaking for the group, remarked that Strobe’s optimism about Russia recalled similar views about the Kremlin’s intentions that he had heard from British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in 1944. “And what if you’re wrong, too?” Jan Nowak asked.

The opponents’ arguments against NATO enlargement were faltering in other ways as well. In 1994, I and others had suggested that the Clinton administration outline criteria that Central European aspirants would have to meet before they could join the NATO Alliance, e.g., NATO aspirants would have to be stable democracies with functioning free-market economies, have good relations with neighbors, civilian control over the military, 88

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and progress toward their armed forces’ compatibility with NATO.8 Opponents of NATO enlargement countered that the US should not offer the aspirants criteria for membership, because of the risk that they would meet them, which would then put a burden on NATO to accept them for membership. Such a position was odd, even perverse, because it suggested that the opponents of NATO enlargement would be uncomfortable with the success of America’s own policy of supporting post-Communist transformation.

As a fall back, opponents of NATO enlargement began to argue that the United States could hold NATO enlargement in reserve, as an option to be deployed if, but only if, Russia became a threat to European security. That argument failed on two grounds: it would give the Central Europeans an incentive to provoke Russia to elicit just such a threat, the opposite of what we sought; and, as Lake pointed out during one contentious meeting which I attended, those arguing for NATO enlargement as an insurance policy would still argue against it in the event of a Russian threat, on the grounds that enlargement under such circumstances would only make things worse.

Some weeks after the Prague meetings, Lake commissioned me to draft, for him and Sandy Berger alone, a new concept for post-Cold War European security, one that would flesh out the President’s Prague press conference remark that NATO enlargement was not a matter of whether, but when and how. Needing policy allies, I reached out to Alexander (“Sandy”) Vershbow, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary at the European Bureau at State and soon to become NSC Senior Director for Europe; Nicholas Burns, Senior Director for Russia at the NSC; and his deputy, NSC 8 Defense Secretary William Perry adopted this view and codified it as pol-

icy through the so-called “Perry Principles” for NATO aspirants a. Link below describes the “Perry Principles” and how they apply to NATO aspirants – page 3, first paragraph b. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/reportch3. pdf

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Director for Russia John Beyrle. Burns would later be Ambassador to NATO, Beyrle would be Ambassador to Russia, and Vershbow would be Ambassador to both. Outside government, I reached out to Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor and then with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and to Ron Asmus, then at the Rand Corporation, who had written a comprehensive study of NATO enlargement options and would soon join the State Department as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs.

The dual-track European security policy

This pro-enlargement group at the NSC came up with a dual-track approach to European security. On one track, we would advance the NATO enlargement process, holding candidate countries to strict criteria but not holding them back should they succeed. In parallel, we would develop NATO-Russia relations – an alliance with the Alliance, as Vershbow put it – which would develop as fast and as far as Moscow would permit. As we developed our thinking, Asmus and I recalled America’s aspirations in the Atlantic Charter and the failure at Yalta. We realized that the United States had the opportunity, and thus the responsibility, to make up for its past mistakes.

After consulting with Lake, we recommended that the Clinton administration lay the foundation for enlargement and advance the NATO-Russia relationship in its first term, and act on enlargement early in the second term. In the meantime, we would reach out to allies among Republican foreign policy experts, many of whom were friends and already disposed to support NATO enlargement. If Clinton were not reelected, we would hand over our work to the incoming Republican administration. In the spring of 1994, we presented these arguments to Lake and Berger, who consulted with President Clinton and then told us to move ahead. The administration now had a policy.

The politics of vision Even a Presidential blessing has its limits, however. Clinton and Lake supported NATO enlargement and the two90

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track approach, but the US government bureaucracy, Congress, and elite public opinion were still skeptical. The Germans, especially then-Defense Minister Volker Ruhe, supported enlargement on the strategic grounds that Germany should no longer be a front-line state, but would be better off if surrounded by Allies and friends. The German position was critical. But the British and French were not yet supportive, and all the Europeans were waiting to see whether the Americans were serious.

Presidential ideas without political backing can fail. NATO membership would require a two-thirds vote in the US Senate, so we also needed to build a political coalition bringing together the American right and left. We were aware of the failure of Wilson’s League of Nations to meet this threshold when up to Senate ratification, a failure that had brought catastrophe. Key personalities helped at this critical moment. Two Republican Senators, Hank Brown of Colorado and Richard Lugar of Indiana, came out in favor of NATO enlargement, and expressed willingness to work with the Clinton administration in common cause.

Senator Lugar sponsored a series of policy dinner discussions in the Capitol Building during which we could recruit allies in Congress.

Richard Holbrooke returned in the summer of 1994 from assignment as Ambassador to Germany to head the European Bureau at the State Department. Volker Ruhe had convinced Holbrooke to support NATO enlargement, and Holbrooke did nothing in half measures. Encountering the hesitant American bureaucracy, Holbrooke started confronting those wary of enlargement, including American generals. Holbrooke played the role of hammer, for which he was suited, forcing key players in the US government to take a position rather than try to kill enlargement through the customary bureaucratic tactics of delay and diversion.

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especially the Poles, to make the case and develop a unified argument to deal with the still massive opposition in America and hesitation in Western Europe. Two Polish diplomats stepped in. Then-Foreign Minister Andrzej Olechowski and the new Polish Ambassador in Washington, Jerzy Kozminski, who had been Leszek Balcerowicz’s right hand during the critical period of economic transformation, understood that the Clinton administration’s twotrack approach – NATO enlargement and NATO-Russia – was substantively stronger and politically more salient in America and Western Europe than a NATO enlargement policy rooted in fear of a Russian threat. Kozminski also understood American politics, and the need to build a bipartisan coalition.

Over the next two years, Kozminski and I helped crystalize a political alliance on behalf of NATO enlargement. It included Reagan Republicans, such as the right-wing Senator Jesse Helms, and Republican foreign policy thinkers such as Steve Hadley and Bruce Jackson; and “Freedom Democrats” such as then-Senator Joe Biden, and younger Democrats such as Ron Asmus, Tony Blinken (later Deputy Secretary of State), Jeremy Rosner, now a Democratic Party pollster, and Paige Reiff, a Democratic political consultant. The Republican fundraiser and later Ambassador to the OSCE Julie Finley, worked with Bruce Jackson to create the US Committee to Expand NATO, an informal bipartisan group that brought together pro-enlargement leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, to plan tactics.

NATO enlargement also required a broad popular coalition behind it, and so Kozminski and I reached out to those Central European ethnic groups, including the Polish-American Congress, who had backed enlargement from the first (and had pounded Sandy Berger and me in 1994). Jan Nowak, of course, was our trusted partner.

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restitution of Jewish community property (former synagogues, for example) were symbols of these larger concerns. But the American Jewish Committee (AJC), led

by David Harris, looked at Poland through the prism of its democratic breakthrough in 1989 and had developed contacts with the Jewish community in Poland, which had started to re-emerge after the end of Communism.

The Polish Jewish Community supported Poland’s NATO membership as much as other Poles. With this perspective, the AJC made a strategic decision to back NATO enlargement, making, in effect, a bet on Poland and Polish democracy. The AJC’s position was so strong that it neutralized potential opposition in the wider American Jewish community.

The American right backed NATO enlargement from the first, but the American center-left initially hesitated. First Lady Hillary Clinton fixed that. In July 1996, she travelled to Central Europe, accompanied by Madeleine Albright, then US Ambassador to the United Nations, and myself.

Initially unsure about NATO enlargement, she visited Krakow and met with Jerzy Turowicz, long-time editor of the independent journal “Tygodnik Powszechny” and other Polish intellectuals at Wawel Castle, and with Vaclav Havel in Prague. After those meetings, she spoke at the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, and her speech, “NATO: Alliance of Values,” made a values-based case for NATO enlargement.

Thanks to support of the bi-partisan Committee to Expand NATO; Polish-American, Hungarian-American, and other groups; the American Jewish Committee; and with a steady series of good news about Poland’s and other Central Europeans’ democratic transformation, NATO enlargement had behind it a strong political coalition.

NATO membership Invitations Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996, and in 1997 his administration prepared for the July NATO Summit in Madrid, where we hoped NATO would extend the first invitations.

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One key decision was how many countries to invite in the initial round. Another would be the future of enlargement after the initial round. We decided to limit the initial invitations to the three countries we considered most prepared – Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic – and which stood the best chance of securing the needed two-thirds vote in the US Senate for ratification. Slovakia was then ruled by the authoritarian-minded Vladimir Meciar, and Romania (which the French supported for an early invitation) had had a much slower start to its reforms in the 1990s.

The more profound issue, however, was whether NATO enlargement would be a one-time-only act, or whether the initial round of invitations would mark the beginning of a process. An acute subset of this issue was whether the Baltic countries would ever be invited to NATO. At Madrid, NATO decided to extend membership invitations to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic; Clinton then flew to Warsaw, where he spoke in Castle Square, declaring America’s and the West’s decision extend NATO invitations as a decision to build a united Europe.9 Clinton then flew to Bucharest to assure the Romanians that they stood a strong chance of an invitation at the next round.

Notwithstanding some concerns in the White House that the Romanians would receive Clinton coldly after not receiving an initial invitation, the Romanians – government and public – were enthusiastic about Clinton’s visit. They had confidence that NATO enlargement was a process, not a one-time act.

Nevertheless, Clinton did not travel to the Baltic States after Madrid. Such a visit by the US President after a NATO Summit – putting them visibly in the queue to join NATO – was still seen as a step too far.

The US Senate voted in May 1998 by 81-19 in favor of NATO enlargement. The political coalition from right to 9 HYPERLINK “http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=54391” https://

www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-citizens-warsaw-poland

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left, Republicans and Democrats, Polish-Americans and Jewish-Americans, held strong, supported by good news of continued successful reforms from Poland. In March 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic formally joined NATO. The next question was whether NATO enlargement would continue or was finished.

George W. Bush advances the frontiers of freedom George W. Bush ran for office in 2000 making the case for foreign policy caution, of realism rather than values. In office from January 2001, the new administration -- which I had joined as NSC Senior Director for Europe – decided to hold off decisions about NATO enlargement, including to the Baltics. Condoleezza Rice, the new National Security Advisor, made clear that she wanted to give the new President options for both NATO enlargement and for relations with Russia, now led by President Vladimir Putin, whom the administration did not yet know.

The decision about Baltic membership in NATO was a mirror of the original debate about NATO enlargement generally. Some in (and others outside) the administration argued that Baltic membership in NATO would be destabilizing with Russia. Others argued the reverse: that leaving the Baltics in a gray zone would invite instability or even become a tacit green light for Russian aggression.

Zbigniew Brzezinski privately suggested a compromise: the next round of enlargement should include Slovenia, Slovakia, and Lithuania.

The NATO enlargement team – Ron Asmus (now out of government) for the Democrats and Bruce Jackson for the Republicans – developed an alternative, which they called the “Big Bang,” or the “Magnificent Seven,” by which they meant a maximum push to invite all three Baltics, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria.

Bush’s own position developed along the lines of the Big Bang, foreshadowing his “freedom agenda.” In his first trip to Europe in June 2001, Bush met with NATO’s lead95

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ers in Brussels, the EU member state leaders in Sweden, and Putin in Slovenia, but he gave the trip’s major speech in Warsaw, before his meeting with Putin. In that speech, Bush took a forward-leaning position on Europe’s future, arguing against a “Yalta” approach and against a “gray zone.” Referring to the upcoming 2002 Prague NATO Summit, Bush said that NATO “should not calculate how little we can get away with, but how much we can do to advance the cause of freedom.”10 That speech, by design, framed Bush’s initial meeting with Putin: President Bush offered Putin American friendship and cooperation, but on American terms, not on the basis of a secret deal over the heads of the Central Europeans or Baltics. Bush maintained that position through the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, even as the US government sought and received some Russian support for the Afghanistan operation. Bush’s outreach to Russia did not include the sacrifice or surrender of other countries to Russian domination for the sake of such friendship. The Lippmann axioms and the Nixon-Kissinger “realist” approach were not coming back. Later, Bush instructed me personally to see to it that, at the Prague NATO Summit, all three Baltic States would receive an invitation to join the alliance.

At Prague, in November 2002, NATO indeed invited seven countries to join NATO: all three Baltics, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Following this decision, the leaders of the invited countries attended a NATO leaders’ dinner. At this dinner, Romanian President Ion Iliescu and Czech President Havel recalled that they had both been present at the final meeting of the Warsaw Pact, and that they preferred to be where they now were. The room applauded.11 10 Mike Gerson, President Bush’s chief speechwriter and I helped prepare that speech. Edition.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/08/15/bush.warsaw. trans 11 This is from personal recollection; I was present in the room

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The Prague Summit might have been the last opportunity for an invitation to the Baltics to join NATO. After that, divisions over the American decision to attack Saddam Hussein’s Iraq would have complicated such a decision, and by the time the divisions of the Iraq War were healed, the Russians were aiming to attack Georgia, which they did in 2008.

The decisions of Presidents Clinton and Bush to push ahead with NATO enlargement during the window in which it was possible changed Europe’s strategic picture.

As the advocates of NATO enlargement had hoped, EU enlargement followed NATO enlargement. By the mid2000s, Europe whole, free and at peace, once an aspirational slogan, had been advanced and nearly achieved, or nearly so. Given opportunity in the post-Cold War world, the United States had advanced the strategic vision of Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the Atlantic Charter, not limiting itself to a constricted sphere-of-influence alternative,.”

Jan Nowak died in 2005, having fulfilled his mission to secure his country and embed it into a larger free world.

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Achievement and Aftermath: What Went Wrong and What to Do

I

1918, the United States set out a Grand Strategy – embodied in President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points – just as Poland and other nations of Central and Eastern Europe were poised to gain or regain their independence. While inconsistent and in some of its details contradictory, that strategy generally advocated a rulesbased world, with sovereignty based on consent of the governed, and it regarded the emerging nations of Central Europe as an integral part of what was intended to be a lasting, peaceful European order, not as objects to be traded as part of a Great Power arrangement over their heads. n

Despite the flaws of the Fourteen Points, the failures of their implementation, and America’s feckless withdrawal from Europe, which contributed to the catastrophe of World War II and led to Yalta, the power of that Grand Strategy endured and America returned to it. After 1945, the United States put it to work in the part of Europe unoccupied by the USSR. After 1989, the United States put its strategy to work throughout Europe, extending the Free World as far as the values of Europe extended and as the strength of the West allowed. While that work remains incomplete, a generation has passed since 1989, and in that time the West has enjoyed its longest period of general peace since Roman times, along with unprecedented prosperity and democracy.

This happy result did not, however, mark a final stage of history. At the end of his novel “War and Peace,” Lev Tolstoy, who reminds us that Russia can produce better things than it is generating now, describes a moment of 99

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harmony and vindication at the end of the novel: Napoleon is defeated, in a sense by the spirit of Russia; Pierre and Natasha have grown up and are ready for a deeper love together; all is well. However, as Tolstoy cautions us, life goes on. In his epilogue to “War and Peace,” Tolstoy describes the changes that the years bring: Pierre, a liberal, finds himself at odds with his reactionary brotherin-law Nikolay Rostov in the aftermath of the Decembrists Revolt; and Natasha has lost her youth. Tolstoy’s point, which he makes without rancor or bitterness, is that dissonant notes always mar the triumphant chords of transient achievement, because that is what happens in life.

Tolstoy’s message is apt: life moves on to new challenges; perfection is beyond us. Yet, Tolstoy also makes plain that this cautionary principle of inevitable loss does not make our achievements any less worthy.

What Went Wrong?

If things have gone so well since 1989, for both Central Europe, Europe as whole, and the transatlantic world, why do things seem so fraught? Whence the doubts throughout Europe and in the United States about what the transatlantic community has achieved over the past generation?

Certainly, current challenges are serious. The West faces aggression from without – including from an assertive China and Putin’s Russia – and from climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences.

Close to Central Europe, Ukraine remains occupied by Russian and proxy forces, and the people of Belarus are struggling for democracy against a home- grown tyrant and Kremlin resistance.

But more alarming are doubts and divisions from within, including the West’s questioning of its own model and its own values, doubts which are now at their strongest since the 1970s or even the 1930s.

These internal challenges have been years in the making and exist throughout the West. Economic stresses are 100

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one source, including years of stagnation after the Great Recession and the damage from the pandemic. Unemployment, including that caused by the impact of new technologies (and China’s rise, aided by its exploitation of the international trading system), hit the US industrial Midwest hard. Youth unemployment hit southern Europe and parts of Central Europe. Income disparities, especially in the United States, where wage stagnation for many for longer than a generation stands in depressing contrast to explosive income growth for the already wealthy, are widening still. Another source of the West’s internal doubts is concern about national identity, which has generated nativist reactions against immigrants, refugees, and other migrants – Latinos in the United States and those from the Middle East and North Africa in Europe – during a period of increasing ethnic diversity.

The US reaction In the United States, the strains of years of inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have generated additional political stresses. President Bush believed, as did Clinton, in the advance of freedom as a US strategic objective. As instruments of this policy, both Presidents led the enlargement of NATO and supported the enlargement of the EU. But Bush also launched the Iraq War, which exhausted much American political capital at home and in Europe. Though the conflicts differed, the Iraq War, like World War I, generated a reaction in the US; in both cases, many Americans recoiled from what seemed to be excessive costs of leadership after what was regarded as a pointless war.

President Obama turned around the US economy and helped the West generally cope with the 2008 financial crisis. In foreign policy, he wound down direct US involvement in the Iraq War and tried to do the same in Afghanistan. He understood the war weariness that Americans felt and addressed it. But Obama did not make a sustained, strong case for US leadership in the world. He 101

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tended, rather, to speak of prudence. Even when Obama took important (and laudable) steps in Europe, such as leading NATO to send forces to Poland and the Baltics in response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its pressure on other European states, he generally couched such actions in the language of caution and did not place them in the context of America’s Grand Strategy, even as his actions arguably advanced that strategy.

Prudence is a virtue and often a wise tactic. It is not by itself a strategy.

American reaction

Despite progress in some areas, policy responses to these and other challenges from Washington, and from Brussels and many European national capitals, seemed inadequate, at least judging by the frequent electoral turn against mainstream political parties and candidates. Indeed, the perceived failure of political systems on both sides of the Atlantic to meet these challenges has generated widespread doubts throughout Europe and the United States about, and even reaction against, the fundamentals of the West’s strategy – against the concept of the Free World, the “rules-based order,” and, sometimes, even against the fundamentals of democratic political systems based on the rule of law.

In the United States this reaction has been dramatic and includes ugly and familiar elements from US history. As candidate and President, Donald Trump used the isolationists’ themes, even their America First slogan. President Trump’s expressions of skepticism about NATO and occasional hostility to the EU, including his argument that wily foreigners have been taking advantage of the United States, echo isolationist arguments from the interwar period about supposedly manipulative, debt-defaulting Europeans, who tricked America into World War I. Some of the Trump administration’s arguments against immigration, legal as well as illegal, parallel nativist and racist arguments from the 1920s about the dilution of so-called “real American” stock with “inferior” Southern and Eastern Europeans. Trump himself has consistently praised 102

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Putin as an exemplary strongman, recalling early sympathy for Mussolini by some on the extreme right.

President Trump’s world view reflected the US interwar tradition of unilateralism and right-wing isolationism included flirtation with balance-of-power, spheres-of-influence thinking, and an elevation of nationalism and sovereignty as absolutes. This differs in kind, not merely degree, from Ronald Reagan’s variant of America’s Grand Strategy and from the Clinton and Bush’s policies to advance that Grand Strategy through NATO and EU enlargements. Critical US alliances declined under Trump, as he made clear his dislike of them, and he withdrew the US from a number of multilateral organizations and international arrangements.

US policy under President Trump did not always reflect his own strategic instincts and statements. There was no unilateral American retreat from Europe or NATO, nor a reversal of NATO’s (and the US’s) new deployments on NATO’s Eastern tier. Despite initial consideration in the Trump White House, there was no unilateral lifting of US sanctions on Russia; these continued and expanded somewhat. The United States did not make a Yalta-like deal with Russia over Ukraine; in fact, in July 2018 the State Department even issued a declaration stating longterm US non-recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, explicitly recalling the Welles Declaration of 1940, which committed the United States to non-recognition of the Soviet seizure of the Baltic countries.1 Trump himself seemed sympathetic to Central Europe, particularly Hungary and Poland. Thanks to diligent work by his Administration (both career officials and political appointees, including Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell and the US Ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher), US relations continued to deepen with both, 1 See https://www.state.gov/crimea-declaration/. Ambassador Kurt Volker,

then the USG special envoy on Ukraine, was instrumental in developing the Crimea Declaration

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Communism and national memory in Central Europe

particularly with Poland, with the Trump Administration continuing many of Obama’s policies and advancing its own.2 But Trump also regarded Central Europe instrumentally: as a wedge against the European Union and a rightist ideological ally. Putting US-Central European relations on a partisan footing, as Trump himself and his ideological inner circle sought to do with the Hungarian and Polish governments, was not sustainable and would, if pressed by the US, have put Poland and Hungary in a difficult (and perhaps unsustainable) position vis-à-vis their own European allies and declared, long-standing interests in a united Europe. Though the Polish government’s desire to work with any US Administration is understandable (and some ideological sympathy between Trump and some Polish and Hungarian leaders is clear), Poland especially would not seem to be a natural partner for Trump’s NATO skepticism, or his fondness for Vladimir Putin, or his hostility to the American Grand Strategy that had proven so favorable for Poland and Central Europe.

Trump’s turn away from US Grand Strategy (as these essays have defined it) and his personal embrace of some of the worst features of US interwar thinking did not have a permanent impact on US policy. Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020 to Obama’s Vice President Joe Biden, long-time supporter of NATO enlargement, who in his successful campaign pledged to restore US alliances and to support democracy and alliances based on democratic values.

Nevertheless, the return under Trump of US unilateralist and nationalist thinking, and its support among some parts of US society, suggests that the struggle between broad and narrow American strategic concepts – the theme of this book – continues to be relevant.

2 Trump’s Ambassador to Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, was skilled at us-

ing Trump’s general support for Poland to advance sound initiatives such as the Visa Waiver Program, deepened military ties, and energy cooperation.

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Central Europe’s challenges of history and transformation America’s strategic debates have their parallel throughout Europe, including the dynamics that generated Brexit and strong nationalist or nativist parties in France, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. Central Europe faces its own version of the same trends and the specifics are worth exploring.

Central Europe experienced the trauma of two generations of war and communism, and a third generation of successful but uneven and stressful national transformation. For Western Europe and the United States, World War II ended in 1945. For Central and Eastern Europe, World War II in a sense ended only in 1989 or 1991.

Countries’ experiences over this time varied: Poland had perhaps the worst war and the Baltic countries the worst Soviet occupation, which for them started in 1940 and resumed after 1944, when the Soviet Army simultaneously liberated the Baltic States from Hitler and reoccupied them for Stalin. Even nominal independence for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was extinguished until 1991. Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia had an easier war, but were left with uneasy national memories of their World War II alliance, even if forced, with Nazi Germany.

Central Europe generally suffered from selective amnesia about World War II. Its experience included heroism and resistance, especially in Poland, but also collaboration with the Germans, in some cases by individuals but in other cases also by the German-allied governments where these existed, and that collaboration sometimes included aspects of the Holocaust.

This is not unique to Central Europe: after conquest by Germany, pro-Nazi governments in France, Norway, and other West European countries collaborated with the Nazis, including in the Holocaust. But West Europeans had two generations after 1945 to work through these issues, to recognize and come to terms with their actual wartime record – the good, the bad, and the mixed – 105

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while Central Europe, under communism, was denied that possibility.

Communist rule froze national life and historical memory in Central Europe. These countries experienced lack of agency and responsibility, lack of property ownership, and few personal stakes in larger society. Virtues that Leninists derided as “bourgeois” turn out to be essential to civic society. Subtly but profoundly, under the pressure and repression of communist rule, many people turned inward and carried within themselves frozen memories of the nation, a treasured recollection of an idealized, sometimes mythologized, past.

People living under communism had to make difficult choices about their daily relations with the imposed regimes that ruled their countries. Some collaborated outright and joined the regimes. Others made pragmatic accommodation, accepting favors – an apartment, a passport, admission to university for one’s children – in return for simply staying out of political trouble. Sometimes people agreed to inform on friends and co-workers, even on family. The regime’s interest in soliciting informers was not always to obtain the product of informing – the information that one person provided to the security services about another – but simply a person’s agreement to inform, which was morally compromising. Inducing moral compromise was often the point. Few could drop off the system entirely and few could remain unscathed.

I note this to understand, not to judge. Americans are ill placed to judge, including because Central Europeans had to make difficult choices under terrible circumstances that the United States had a hand in creating through its absence from European security in the 1930s.

Observers at the time and after generally regarded Central Europe’s dissident movements during the communist period as noble and heroic and regard the self-liberation of 1989 as a triumph of the good. This is true, but it is not the whole story.

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In Poland, anti-communist dissent was massive. Solidarity in 1980-1981 had ten million members, one quarter of the entire population. The committed anti-communist activists and intellectuals in or aligned with Solidarity numbered in the tens of thousands. The opportunity to join Solidarity meant that Poles could shed compromises that they had made with the regime and, in a sense, undergo a moral rebirth. Pope John Paul II understood this, I’m told, and the Holy Father’s trip to Poland in 1979 may have conveyed this message. By the late 1980s, mass dissent also took hold in the Baltics.

But in other countries under Soviet domination, dissent was tiny until near the end. After 1968, for example, most Czechs had simply given up; there just weren’t a lot of people hanging out with Vaclav Havel at Prague’s Magic Lantern Theater (a sort of informal meeting place for Czech dissidents). Dissident movements were often numerally small, not mass, movements.

The systemic transformation that took place in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 took place against this complicated background. The fall of communism occurred quickly, surprising even those involved in it. Transformation was successful, exceeding the most optimistic projections at the time. But success did not erase the legacy of the past. British Prime Minister Tony Blair used to say that Germany was haunted by its guilt, France by its shame, and Britain by its victory. Central Europe, despite its success in and after 1989, was haunted by ghosts of myth and memory. Like France after liberation in 1944, Central Europe’s national transformations after 1989 were built partly on foundations of selective amnesia, in which memories of compromises and bad actions were put aside but neither forgotten nor worked through.

For one hundred million Central Europeans, the norms for the first generation of politics after 1989 included freemarket economics, political democracy, and, often, liberal approaches to national questions and culture, even

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when socialist or rightist governments were in power.

Post-communist governments generally chose to draw a line with the past rather than to settle scores or engage in deep truth and reconciliation processes. There were good arguments for doing so: social peace rather than post-revolutionary purges or turmoil. Thus, post-communist elites were given space to function and to flourish, and many did so, using their old party connections, to the resentment of many who did not have such ties.

This approach worked, but left much unresolved, including the fact that the liberal consensus that governed politics in Central Europe after 1989 was not universal.

Anti-communist resistance, made in the name of the nation, cherished and remembered, succeeded. But as the countries of Central Europe joined the institutions of the West, they leaped into the post-national culture of modern Western Europe. That culture was not what many thought they had struggled for. Even in Western Europe, as Brexit, the French Front National, and other right-wing movements demonstrate, the European post-national ideal is not always popular and certainly does not speak for the entire society.

These issues have played out against the backdrop of radical economic and social transformation. Central European societies after 1989 were crashing through social, economic, and historical periods at two or three times the speed of Western European societies after 1945. Almost everybody in Central Europe gained from the post-1989 transformations. But while many gained massively, others gained only moderately. Warsaw and other large cities today are modern and well off. Smaller cities and much of the countryside have also developed well but did so unevenly. The professional classes and urban young have found new opportunities and sometimes new wealth.

Many others did not. After EU accession, EU structural and other funds have started narrowing this gap, but it remains. When Slovaks, Poles, Czechs, or Hungarians from

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smaller towns or the countryside go to their capitals, I’m told, they sometimes say that they feel foreign. (The Polish phrase “Warszawka,” meaning roughly Warsaw elite, is used in Poland in the same way that Americans use the term bi-costal elite, with the same pejorative connotation.)

Gaps between rich and poor in Poland, for example, are smaller than in Russia. But people judge according to their expectations and these have risen along with incomes.

Throughout Central and Eastern Europe, a gulf grew and widened between the new winners of post-1989 transformation and people of a more traditional, small-town, and national-minded outlook. Many of them do not seem to feel comfortable with what may seem to be a new, radical version of national life, cultural, social, and economic.

Meanwhile, Western economies generally were undergoing another sort of economic transformation, away from many branches of heavy industry. Central Europe had to make this transformation as well. The shipyard workers in Gdansk who founded Solidarity discovered that the new economy that they had helped bring to Poland meant that their original industry and thus many of their jobs were now at risk.

Central Europe’s challenge: politics These stresses – technological changes which threatened heavy industries, post-communist social transformation that brought for some a degree of political alienation, the complexities of national memory, and exhaustion of many liberal and social democratic parties – led to new political alignments in Central Europe, just as in Western Europe.

Poland’s 2015 elections, which brought the Law and Justice (“PiS”) Party to power, revealed an urban-small town/rural split much like that in the United States in the 2016 elections that resulted in Trump’s victory. That Polish government, reelected in 2019, has delivered a lot for its electorate and the country, e.g., the child subsidy “500+” program (providing 500 Polish zlotys per month 109

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per second and subsequent children) and improved Value-Added Tax (VAT) collection rates. Economic growth remained strong until the pandemic.

However, the Polish and Hungarian governments have moved in directions that have generated concerns – sometimes exaggerated – among their friends. Poland’s government has gotten into repeated stand-offs with the European Commission through its attempts to weaken, in the view of opponents and many observers, the independence of the judiciary, in what Polish experts regard as a violation of the Polish Constitution. These and other governments in Central Europe have indulged in anti-EU rhetoric, using tropes about faceless Brussels bureaucrats imposing an alien vision, even as they accept billions of Euros in EU funds. Some in the government camp in Poland have indulged in anti-German rhetoric, talking loosely about demanding from Germany World War II reparations. This may play well with a portion of the Polish electorate, but is poison in Germany, Poland’s most important economic partner and a key player in the EU. The current Polish and Hungarian governments have raised questions about their commitment to independent media.

Democratic politics after 1989 helped Central European nations, with Poland the trendsetter, succeed in a free-market transformation that was thought impossible.

Another kind of politics, if the most worrisome trends continue, could undo many of Central Europe’s gains. Its isolation and marginalization within Europe could deepen. Questions about the rule of law in Central Europe may do long-term damage to economic development; a politicized or patronage state may not be able to check itself. The generation of achievement after 1989 could, in the worst case, look like a happy but ephemeral phase.3 3 Slovakia stands as a counter example after the 2019 election of President

Caputova, a liberal political leader, and a center-right government in 2020.

Central European political trends are subject to change.

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What should America do now?

Given these multiple challenges – in Central Europe, Europe generally, and in the United States itself – what should be the US approach to Central Europe as the second century of relations begins?

First, showing up is half the battle: the US needs to be present in and with Central Europe, including with a strategic message about why the West and its values matter, a message it needs to send to itself as well. The Obama Administration, at least until Putin’s attack on Ukraine, seemed to believe that with EU and NATO membership, the work of the United States in Central Europe was largely over. The Trump Administration paid much attention to Central Europe but, as discussed above, sometimes put the relationship in a right-wing partisan context, not always in ways consistent with the democracy and valuesdriven approach that has driven the US and Central Europe relationship at its best.

The Biden Administration needs to avoid the mistake of turning away from Central Europe in over-reaction to what it may regard as problematic political trends or as a reflex after Trump’s partisan embrace of the region. The achievement of a united, democratic Europe (including Central Europe) that took generations to achieve is an asset in a dangerous world. During the 2020 election campaign and after, the Biden foreign policy team emphasized that rebuilding relations with Europe as a whole would be a major foreign policy priority and that the Biden foreign policy would seek to bring together the world’s democracies in common cause. It may look to continue close relations with Central Europe – for example by continuing support for the Three Seas Initiative – while urging Poland in particular to avoid self-marginalization in Europe.

Success will require Poland and other Central European governments to work to this end.

Second, US messages to governments and societies in Central Europe must take account of reasonable Central 111

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European concerns, such as sensitivity about newly regained national sovereignty. Patriotism, the nation, and national pride are good things, and Western political culture needs to make space for them; though patriotism can degenerate into chauvinism, it is not the same as chauvinism.

Third, the United States needs to keep helping the Central Europeans defend themselves against Putin’s Russia, both from overt military pressure and ongoing aggression through disinformation and propaganda. The Obama Administration – having learned the limits of its “reset” with Putin – reversed 25 years of US military drawdown in Europe. Stationing a US armored brigade in Poland, even on a rotational basis, was a major step. The Trump Administration built on this and the Biden Administration is likely to continue the military relationship. The Americans may have been late to recognize the security challenge posed by authoritarian Russia but, this time, they were not too late.

The Biden Administration is apt to be more consistent than the Trump Administration in its support for Ukrainian sovereignty and internal reforms, for Moldova’s and Georgia’s democratic and European future, and for Belarus’s beleaguered democratic movement. The Biden Administration may also strengthen ties with Russian society, including its struggling independent media. Poland, the Baltic States, Romania, and other Central Europeans (with the possible exception of Hungary) could be natural and important partners in these efforts to continue the extension of freedom eastward. Making progress will require major effort, and that effort must be based – as was the greater challenge of NATO enlargement – on a US-Central European (especially Polish) commitment to the Free World and common values, including democracy and rule of law.

Fourth, without unproductive lecturing, the United States needs to convey that its relations with Central Europe

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ultimately rest, as they have for over one hundred years, on shared values. “For Your Freedom and Ours,” as the Polish patriotic saying goes, still sums up the foundation of US-Polish and US-Central European relations.

In dealing with questions about the rule of law and media freedom in Central Europe, the United States need to be judicious, not shrill, in its language and selective in the issues it chooses. Humility is important: President Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss of the 2020 elections, including by exerting extra-legal political pressure on the election system, shows that challenges to democracy can occur anywhere.

Still, the United States should make clear that issues of democratic values are central, not peripheral, to US foreign policy, including relations with Central Europe. The Trump Administration’s messages on democracy were mixed at best. The Biden Administration should not care about the partisan nature of Central European governments. But it should (and likely will care about policies – whether from the left or right – that could undermine the Free World or its institutions, a dismantling of Europe, a weakening of transatlantic society through NATO, renationalization of intra-European relations, deterioration of the rule of law, or actual moves toward authoritarianism.

At the same time, the United States should act with care, and urge the EU to do the same, and not risk a bifurcation of Europe. The United States should avoid partisanship.

After 1989, the United States stayed out of partisan politics in Central Europe and supported all manner of elected Central European governments: those on the liberal right, more nationalist right, ex-communists and social democrats, technocrats, peasant parties, and exotic coalitions.

The US government simply did not care about particular partisan complexion because all these governments were, more or less, moving in a democratic, free-market direction, under the rule of law.

Democracy, rule of law, and human rights are not a luxury or peripheral. One hundred years of American policy 113

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toward Central Europe demonstrates that the American commitment to democratic values is linked to its support for an undivided Europe within a rules-based international order. The alternative – indifference to democracy and preference for balance of power politics – was tried and found wanting. The United States fought World Wars and a Cold War to put an end to that.

Finally, American leadership in the West and the Free World more broadly, remains indispensable. One hundred years teaches that when the United States does not lead, others will fill the vacuum. Americans need to recall America’s Grand Strategy, a century after Wilson’s Fourteen Points gave first expression to a comprehensive foreign policy in what turned out to be the American Century. Americans and Central Europeans together realized in the lifetime of one generation a common goal of freedom.

It remains a common task to defend this achievement for future generations.

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Source materials Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” January 8, 1918

Gentlemen of the Congress ...

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the objects it has in view.

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world’s peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this: I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such ques-

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tions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of an autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

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XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this program does not remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world, -- the new world in which we now live, -- instead of a place of mastery.

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination.

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined.

It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.

Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test.

Source: Arthur S. Link et al., eds., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 45 (1984), 536.

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Interpretation of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points

by Colonel House At my request Cobb and Lippmann have compiled the following respecting your fourteen points. I shall be grateful to you if you will cable me whether it meets with your general approval. Here follows memorandum: 1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

The purpose is clearly to prohibit treaties, sections of treaties or understandings that are secret, such as the [Triple Alliance], etc.

The phrase „openly arrived at” need not cause difficulty. In fact, the President explained to the Senate last winter that the phrase was not meant to exclude confidential diplomatic negotiations involving delicate matters. The intention is that nothing which occurs in the course of such confidential negotiations shall be binding unless it appears in the final covenant made public to the world.

The matter may perhaps be put this way: It is proposed that in future every treaty be part of the public law of the world and that every nation assume a certain obligation in regard to its enforcement. Obviously, nations cannot assume obligations in matters of which they are ignorant; and therefore any secret treaty tends to undermine the solidity of the whole structure of international covenants which it is proposed to erect.

2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

This proposition must be read in connection with number 14 which proposes a league of nations. It refers to navigation under the three following conditions: (1) general peace; (2) a general war, entered into by the League of Nations for the purpose of enforcing international covenants; (3) limited war, involving no breach of international covenants.

Under „(1) general peace,” no serious dispute exists. There is implied freedom to come and go [on the high seas].

No serious dispute exists as to the intention under „(2) a general war entered into by the League of Nations to enforce international covenants.” Obviously such a war is conducted against an outlaw nation and complete nonintercourse with that nation is intended. „(3) A limited war, involving no breach of international covenants” is the crux of the whole difficulty. The question is, what are to be the rights of neutral shipping and private property on the high seas during a war between a limited

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number of nations when that war involves no issue upon which the League of Nations cares to take sides; in other words, a war in which the League of Nations remains neutral. Clearly, it is the intention of the proposal that in such a war the rights of neutrals shall be maintained against the belligerents, the rights of both to be clearly and precisely defined in the law of nations.

3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

The proposal applies only to those nations which accept the responsibilities of membership in the League of Nations. It means the destruction of all special commercial agreements, each putting the trade of every other nation in the League on the same basis, the most-favored-nation clause applying automatically to all members of the League of Nations. Thus a nation could legally maintain a tariff or a special railroad rate or a port restriction against the whole world, or against all the signatory powers. It could maintain any kind of restriction which it chose against a nation not in the League. But it could not discriminate as between its partners in the League.

This clause naturally contemplates fair and equitable understanding as to the distribution of raw materials.

4. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest points consistent with domestic safety. „Domestic safety” clearly implies not only internal policing, but the protection of territory against invasion. The accumulation of armaments above this level would be a violation of the intention of the proposal.

What guarantees should be given and taken, or what are to be the standards of judgment have never been determined. It will be necessary to adopt the general principle and then institute some kind [of international commission of investigation] to prepare detailed projects for its execution.

5. A free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty, the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

Some fear is expressed in France [and England] that this involves reopening of all colonial questions. Obviously it is not so intended. It applies clearly [to those] colonial claims which have been created by the war. That means the German colonies and any other colonies which may come under international consideration as a result of the war.

The stipulation is that in the case of the German colonies the title is to be determined after the conclusion of the war by „impartial adjustment” based on certain principles. These are of two kinds: (1) „equitable” claims; (2) the interests of the populations concerned.

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What are the „equitable” claims put forth by Great Britain and Japan, the two chief heirs of the German colonial empire, that the colonies cannot be returned to Germany? Because she will use them as submarine bases, because she will arm the blacks, because she uses the colonies as bases of intrigue, because she oppresses the natives. What are the „equitable” claims put forth

by Germany? That she needs access to tropical raw material, that she needs a field for the expansion of her population, that under the principles of the peace proposed, conquest gives her enemies no title to her colonies.

What are the „interests of the populations?” That they should not be militarized, that exploitation should be conducted on the principle of the „open door,” and under the strictest regulation as to labor conditions, profits, and taxes, that a sanitary regime be maintained, that permanent improvements in the way of roads, etc., be made, that native organization and custom be respected, that the protecting authority be stable and experienced enough to thwart intrigue and corruption, that the [protecting] power have adequate resources in money and competent administrators to act successfully.

It would seem as if the principle involved in this proposition is that a colonial power acts not as owner of its colonies but as trustee for the natives and for the interests of the society of nations, that the terms on which the colonial administration is conducted are a matter of international concern and may legitimately be the subject of international inquiry, and that the peace conference may, therefore, write a code of colonial conduct binding upon [all] colonial powers.

6. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their goodwill, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

The first question is whether Russian territory is synonymous with territory belonging to the former Russian Empire. This is clearly not so because proposition 13 stipulates an independent Poland, a proposal which excludes the territorial reestablishment of the Empire. What is recognized as valid for the Poles will certainly have to be recognized for the Finns, the Lithuanians, the Letts, and perhaps also for the Ukrainians. Since the formulating of this condition, these subject nationalities have emerged, and there can be no doubt that they will have to be granted an opportunity of free development.

The problem of these nationalities is complicated by two facts: (1) that they have conflicting claims; (2) that the evacuation called for in the proposal may be followed by Bolshevist revolutions in all of them.

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The chief conflicts are: (a) between the Letts and Germans in Courland; (b) between the Poles and the Lithuanians on the northeast; (c) between the Poles and the White Ruthenians on the east; (d) between the Poles and the Ukrainians on the southeast (and in eastern Galicia).

In this whole borderland the relations of the German Poles [sic] to the other nationalities is roughly speaking that of landlord to peasant. Therefore the evacuating of the territory, if it resulted in class war, would very probably also take the form of a conflict of nationalities. It is clearly to the interests of a good settlement that the real nation in each territory should be consulted rather than the ruling and possessing class.

This can mean nothing less than the [recognition] by the peace conference of a series of [de facto] governments representing Finns, Esths, Lithuanians, Ukrainians. This primary [act] of recognition should be conditional upon the calling of national assemblies for the creation of de facto governments as soon as the peace conference has drawn frontiers for these new states. The frontiers should be drawn so far as possible on ethnic lines, but in [every] case the right of unhampered economic [transit] should be reserved. No dynastic ties with German [or] Austrian or Romanov princes should be permitted, and every inducement should be [given] to encourage federal [relations] between these new states. Under proposition 3 the economic sections of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk are obliterated, but this proposition should not be construed as forbidding a customs union, a monetary union, a railroad union, etc., of these states. Provision should also be made by which Great Russia can federate with these states on the same terms.

As for Great Russia and Siberia, the peace conference might well send a message asking for the creation of a government sufficiently [representative] to speak for these territories. It should be understood that economic rehabilitation is offered provided a government carrying sufficient credentials can appear at the peace conference.

The Allies should offer this provisional government any form of assistance it may need. The possibility of extending this will exist when the Dardanelles are opened.

The essence of the Russian problem then in the immediate future would seem to be: (1) the recognition of provisional governments; (2) assistance extended to and through these governments.

The Caucasus should probably be treated as part of the problem of the Turkish Empire. No information exists justifying an opinion on the proper policy in regard to Mohammedan Russia--that is, briefly, Central Asia. It may well be that some power will have to be given a limited mandate to act as protector.

In any case the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest must be canceled as palpably fraudulent. Provision must be made for the withdrawal of all German troops in Russia and the peace conference [will] have a clean slate on which to write a policy for all the Russian peoples.

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7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

The only problem raised here is in the word „restored.” Whether restoration is to be in kind or how the amount of the indemnity is to be determined is a matter of detail, not of principle. The principle that should be established is that in the case of Belgium there exists no distinction between „legitimate” and „illegitimate” destruction. The initial act of invasion was illegitimate and therefore all the consequences of that act are of the same character. Among the consequences may be put the war debt of Belgium. The recognition of this principle would constitute „the healing act” of which the President speaks.

8. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

In regard to the restoration of French territory it might well be argued that the invasion of northern France, being the result of the illegal act as regards Belgium, was in itself illegal. But the case is not perfect. As the world stood in 1914, war between France and Germany was not in itself a violation of international law, and great insistence should be put upon keeping the Belgian case distinct and symbolic. Thus Belgium might well, as indicated above, claim reimbursement, not only for destruction but for the cost of carrying on the war. France could not claim payment, it would seem, for more than the damage done to her northeastern departments.

The status of Alsace-Lorraine was settled by the official statement issued a few days ago. It is to be restored completely to French sovereignty.

Attention is called to the strong current of French opinion which claims „the boundaries of 1914 [1814]” rather than of 1871. The territory claimed is the valley of the Saar with its coalfields. No claim on grounds of nationality can be established, but the argument leans on the possibility of taking this territory in lieu of indemnity; it would seem to be a clear violation of the President’s proposal.

Attention is called also to the fact that no reference is made to status of Luxembourg. The best solution would seem to be a free choice by the [people of] Luxembourg themselves.

9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

This proposal is less than the Italian claim; less, of course, than the territory allotted by the treaty of London; less than the arrangement made between the Italian government and the Yugoslav state.

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In the region of Trent the Italians claim a strategic rather than ethnic frontier.

It should be noted in this connection that [Italy] and Germany will become neighbors if German Austria joins the German Empire. And if Italy obtains the best geographical frontier she will assume sovereignty over a large number of Germans. This is a violation of principle. But it may be argued that by drawing a sharp line along the crest of the Alps, Italy’s security will be enormously enhanced and the necessity of heavy armaments reduced. It might, therefore, be provided that Italy should have her claim in the Trentino, but that the northern part, inhabited by Germans, should be completely autonomous and that the population should not be liable to military service in the Italian Army. Italy could thus occupy the uninhabited Alpine peaks for military purposes, but would not govern the cultural life of the alien population to the south of her frontier.

The other problems of the frontier are questions between Italy and Yugoslavia, Italy and the Balkans, Italy and Greece.

The agreement reached with Yugoslavs may well be allowed to stand, although it should be insisted for [the protection of] the hinterland that both Trieste and Fiume be free ports. This is [essential] to Bohemia, German Austria, Hungary, as well as to prosperity of the cities themselves.

Italy appears in Balkan politics through her claim to a protectorate over Albania and the possession of Valona. There is no serious objection raised to this [although the] terms of the protectorate need to be vigorously controlled.

If Italy is protector of Albania [the local] life of Albania should be guaranteed by the League of Nations.

A conflict with Greece appears through the Greek claim to northern Epirus, or what is now southern Albania. This would bring Greece closer to Valona than Italy desires. A second conflict with Greece occurs over the Aegean Islands of the Dodecanese, but it is understood that a solution favorable to Greece is being worked out.

Italy’s claims in Turkey belong to the problem of the Turkish Empire.

10. The people of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

This proposition no longer holds. Instead we have [today] the following elements: (1) Czechoslovakia. Its territories include at least a million Germans for whom some provision must be made.

The independence of Slovakia means the dismemberment of the northwestern countries of Hungary.

(2) Galicia. Western Galicia is clearly Polish. Eastern Galicia is in large measure Ukrainian (or Ruthenian) and does not of right belong to Poland.

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There also are several hundred thousand Ukrainians along the north and northeastern borders of Hungary and in parts of Bukovina (which belonged to Austria).

(3) German Austria. This territory should of right be permitted to join Germany, but there is strong objection in [France] because of the increase of [population] involved.

(4) Yugoslavia. It faces the following problems: 1. frontier questions with Italy in Istria and the Dalmatian coast; with Rumania in the Banat; 2. an international problem arises out of the refusal of the Croats to accept the domination of the Serbs of the Serbian Kingdom; 3. a problem of the Mohammedan Serbs of Bosnia who are said to be loyal to the Hapsburgs. They constitute a little less than one-third of the population.

(5) Transylvania. Will undoubtedly join Rumania, but provision must be made for the protection of the Magyars, Szeklers, and Germans who constitute a large minority.

(6) Hungary. Now independent and very democratic in form, but governed by Magyars whose aim is to prevent the detachment of territory of nationalities on the fringe.

The United States is clearly committed to the program of national unity and independence. It must stipulate, however, for the protection of national minorities, for freedom of access to the Adriatic and the Black Sea, and it supports a program aiming at a confederation of southeastern Europe.

11. Rumania, [Serbia], and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

This proposal is also altered by events. Serbia will appear as Yugoslavia with access to the Adriatic. Rumania will have acquired the Dobrudja, Bessarabia, and probably Transylvania. These two states will have 11 or 12 million inhabitants and will be far greater and stronger than Bulgaria.

Bulgaria should clearly have her frontier in the southern Dobrudja as it stood before the second Balkan War. She should also have Thrace up to the Enos-Midia line and perhaps even to the Midia-Rodosto line.

Macedonia should be allotted after an impartial investigation. The line which might be taken as a basis of investigation is the southern line of the „contested zone” agreed upon by Serbia and Bulgaria before the first Balkan War. Albania could be under a protectorate, no doubt of Italy, and its frontiers in the north might be essentially those of the London conference.

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12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development; and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

The same difficulty arises here as in the case of Austria-Hungary concerning the word „autonomous.”

It is clear that the Straits and Constantinople, while they may remain nominally Turkish, should be under international control. This control may be collective or be in the hands of one power as mandatory of the League.

Anatolia should be reserved for the Turks. The coastlands, where Greeks predominate, should be under special international control, perhaps with Greece as mandatory.

Armenia must be [given] a port on the Mediterranean, and a protecting power established. France may claim it, but the Armenians would prefer Great Britain.

Syria has already been allotted to France by agreement with Great Britain.

Great Britain is clearly the best mandatory for Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Arabia.

A general code of guarantees binding upon all mandataries in Asia Minor should be written into the Treaty of Peace.

This should contain provisions for minorities and the „open door.” The trunk railroad lines should be internationalized.

13. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenants.

The chief problem is whether Poland is to obtain territory west of the Vistula, which would cut off the Germans of East Prussia from the empire, or whether Danzig can be made a free port and the Vistula internationalized.

On the east, Poland should receive no territory in which Lithuanians or Ukrainians predominate.

If Posen and Silesia go to Poland, rigid protection must be afforded the minorities of Germans and Jews living there, as well as in other parts of the Polish state.

The principle on which frontiers will be [delimited] is contained in the President’s word „indisputably.” This may imply the taking of an impartial census before frontiers are marked.

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14. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small [states] alike.

The principle of a league of nations as the primary essential of a permanent peace has been so clearly presented by President Wilson in his speech of Sept.

27, 1918, that no further elucidation is required. It is the foundation of the whole diplomatic structure of a permanent peace.

Source: PRFA, 1918. Supplement 1: The World War, Vol. 1, pp. 405-413.

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The Declaration of Liberated Europe Yalta Conference, February 1945

Earlier in the war, choosing not jeopardize Soviet cooperation in the joint efforts to defeat the Axis powers by refusing Stalin’s demands for territorial and political concessions in eastern Europe, Roosevelt used the tactics of delay However, by the close of the conflict, Churchill had recognized Stalin’s tenacity over those issues and negotiated a separate agreement that benefited both Soviet and British interests, much to Roosevelt’s dismay. As talks commenced between the three powers at Yalta, the issue of Poland immediately created tensions and led to bitter exchanges between Roosevelt and Stalin.

Stalin demanded recognition of Polish interests sympathetic to the Soviet Union, while Roosevelt and Churchill bargained for the inclusion of pro-western Poles, and suggested the establishment of an interim government as an immediate resolution to the problem.

The Declaration of Liberated Europe, the document that issued from these talks, represented an effort on the part of the U.S. and their British ally to reiterate the policy of self-determination. However, the joint statement also recognized the need for the cooperation of the three powers in governing the areas liberated from the Axis powers, and in assisting those areas to recover economically and to establish peace.

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Declaration of Liberated Europe Yalta Conference, February 10, 1945

The Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the United States of America have consulted with each other in the common interests of the people of their countries and those of liberated Europe. They jointly declare their mutual agreement to concert during the temporary period of instability in liberated Europe the policies of their three Governments in assisting the peoples liberated from the domination of Nazi Germany and the peoples of the former Axis satellite states of Europe to solve by democratic means their pressing political and economic problems.

The establishment of order in Europe and the rebuilding of national economic life must be achieved by processes which will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of Nazism and Fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice. This is a principle of the Atlantic Charter - the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live - the restoration of sovereign rights and self-government to those peoples who have been forcibly deprived to them by the aggressor nations.

To foster the conditions in which the liberated people may exercise these rights, the three governments will jointly assist the people in any European liberated state or former Axis state in Europe where, in their judgment conditions require, (a) to establish conditions of internal peace; (b) to carry out emergency relief measures for the relief of distressed peoples; (c) to form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of Governments responsive to the will of the people; and (d) to facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections.

The three Governments will consult the other United Nations and provisional authorities or other Governments in Europe when matters of direct interest to them are under consideration. When, in the opinion of the three Governments, conditions in any European liberated state or former Axis satellite in Europe make such action necessary, they will immediately consult together on the measure necessary to discharge the joint responsibilities set forth in this declaration.

By this declaration we reaffirm our faith in the principles of the Atlantic Charter, our pledge in the Declaration by the United Nations and our determination to build in cooperation with other peace-loving nations world order, under law, dedicated to peace, security, freedom and general well-being of all mankind.

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Telegram, George Kennan to George Marshall Ambassador George Kennan [“Long Telegram”] 861.00/2 - 2246: Telegram The Charge in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State SECRET Moscow, February 22, 1946--9 p.m. [Received February 22--3: 52 p.m.]

511. Answer to Dept’s 284, Feb 3 [13] involves questions so intricate, so delicate, so strange to our form of thought, and so important to analysis of our international environment that I cannot compress answers into single brief message without yielding to what I feel would be dangerous degree of over-simplification. I hope, therefore, Dept will bear with me if I submit in answer to this question five parts, subjects of which will be roughly as follows: (1) Basic features of post-war Soviet outlook.

(2) Background of this outlook (3) Its projection in practical policy on official level.

(4) Its projection on unofficial level.

(5) Practical deductions from standpoint of US policy.

I apologize in advance for this burdening of telegraphic channel; but questions involved are of such urgent importance, particularly in view of recent events, that our answers to them, if they deserve attention at all, seem to me to deserve it at once. There follows Part 1: Basic Features of Post War Soviet Outlook, as Put Forward by Official Propaganda Machine Are as Follows: (a) USSR still lives in antagonistic “capitalist encirclement” with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence. As stated by Stalin in 1927 to a delegation of American workers: “In course of further development of international revolution there will emerge two centers of world significance: a socialist center, drawing to itself the countries which tend toward socialism, and a capitalist center, drawing to itself the countries that incline toward capitalism. Battle between these two centers for command of world economy will decide fate of capitalism and of communism in entire world.” (b) Capitalist world is beset with internal conflicts, inherent in nature of capitalist society.

These conflicts are insoluble by means of peaceful compromise. Greatest of them is that between England and US. (c) Internal conflicts of capitalism inevitably generate wars. Wars thus generated may be of two kinds: intra-capitalist wars between two capitalist states, and wars of intervention

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against socialist world. Smart capitalists, vainly seeking escape from inner conflicts of capitalism, incline toward latter. (d) Intervention against USSR, while it would be disastrous to those who undertook it, would cause renewed delay in progress of Soviet socialism and must therefore be forestalled at all costs. (e) Conflicts between capitalist states, though likewise fraught with danger for USSR, nevertheless hold out great possibilities for advancement of socialist cause, particularly if USSR remains militarily powerful, ideologically monolithic and faithful to its present brilliant leadership. (f) It must be borne in mind that capitalist world is not all bad. In addition to hopelessly reactionary and bourgeois elements, it includes (1) certain wholly enlightened and positive elements united in acceptable communistic parties and (2) certain other elements (now described for tactical reasons as progressive or democratic) whose reactions, aspirations and activities happen to be “objectively” favorable to interests of USSR These last must be encouraged and utilized for Soviet purposes. (g) Among negative elements of bourgeois-capitalist society, most dangerous of all are those whom Lenin called false friends of the people, namely moderate-socialist or social-democratic leaders (in other words, non-Communist left-wing). These are more dangerous than out-and-out reactionaries, for latter at least march under their true colors, whereas moderate left-wing leaders confuse people by employing devices of socialism to seine interests of reactionary capital.

So much for premises. To what deductions do they lead from standpoint of Soviet policy? To following: (a) Everything must be done to advance relative strength of USSR as factor in international society. Conversely, no opportunity most be missed to reduce strength and influence, collectively as well as individually, of capitalist powers. (b) Soviet efforts, and those of Russia’s friends abroad, must be directed toward deepening and exploiting of differences and conflicts between capitalist powers. If these eventually deepen into an “imperialist” war, this war must be turned into revolutionary upheavals within the various capitalist countries. (c) “Democratic-progressive” elements abroad are to be utilized to maximum to bring pressure to bear on capitalist governments along lines agreeable to Soviet interests. (d) Relentless battle must be waged against socialist and social-democratic leaders abroad.

Part 2: Background of Outlook Before examining ramifications of this party line in practice there are certain aspects of it to which I wish to draw attention.

First, it does not represent natural outlook of Russian people. Latter are, by and large, friendly to outside world, eager for experience of it, eager to measure against it talents they are conscious of possessing, eager above all to live in peace and enjoy fruits of their own labor. Party line only represents thesis which official propaganda machine puts forward with great skill and persistence to a public often remarkably resistant in the stronghold of its innermost thoughts. But party line is binding for outlook and conduct of people who make up apparatus of power--party, secret police and Government--and it is exclusively with these that we have to deal.

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Second, please note that premises on which this party line is based are for most part simply not true. Experience has shown that peaceful and mutually profitable coexistence of capitalist and socialist states is entirely possible. Basic internal conflicts in advanced countries are no longer primarily those arising out of capitalist ownership of means of production, but are ones arising from advanced urbanism and industrialism as such, which Russia has thus far been spared not by socialism but only by her own backwardness. Internal rivalries of capitalism do not always generate wars; and not all wars are attributable to this cause. To speak of possibility of intervention against USSR today, after elimination of Germany and Japan and after example of recent war, is sheerest nonsense. If not provoked by forces of intolerance and subversion “capitalist” world of today is quite capable of living at peace with itself and with Russia. Finally, no sane person has reason to doubt sincerity of moderate socialist leaders in Western countries. Nor is it fair to deny success of their efforts to improve conditions for working population whenever, as in Scandinavia, they have been given chance to show what they could do.

Falseness of those premises, every one of which predates recent war, was amply demonstrated by that conflict itself Anglo-American differences did not turn out to be major differences of Western World. Capitalist countries, other than those of Axis, showed no disposition to solve their differences by joining in crusade against USSR. Instead of imperialist war turning into civil wars and revolution, USSR found itself obliged to fight side by side with capitalist powers for an avowed community of aim.

Nevertheless, all these theses, however baseless and disproven, are being boldly put forward again today. What does this indicate? It indicates that Soviet party line is not based on any objective analysis of situation beyond Russia’s borders; that it has, indeed, little to do with conditions outside of Russia; that it arises mainly from basic inner-Russian necessities which existed before recent war and exist today.

At bottom of Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted rather Russian rulers than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within.

And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it.

It was no coincidence that Marxism, which had smoldered ineffectively for half a century in Western Europe, caught hold and blazed for first time in Russia. Only in this land which had never known a friendly neighbor or indeed any tolerant equilibrium of separate powers, either internal or international, could a doctrine thrive which viewed economic conflicts of society as insoluble by peaceful means. After establishment of Bolshevist regime, Marxist dogma, rendered even more truculent and intolerant by Lenin’s interpretation, became a perfect vehicle for sense of insecurity with which Bolsheviks, even more than previous Russian rulers, were afflicted. In this dogma, with its basic altruism of purpose, they found justification for their instinctive fear of outside world, for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for sacrifice they felt bound to demand. In the name of Marxism they sacrificed every single ethical value in their methods and tactics. Today they cannot dispense with it. It is fig leaf

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of their moral and intellectual respectability. Without it they would stand before history, at best, as only the last of that long succession of cruel and wasteful Russian rulers who have relentlessly forced country on to ever new heights of military power in order to guarantee external security of their internally weak regimes. This is why Soviet purposes most always be solemnly clothed in trappings of Marxism, and why no one should underrate importance of dogma in Soviet affairs. Thus Soviet leaders are driven [by?] necessities of their own past and present position to put forward which [apparent omission] outside world as evil, hostile and menacing, but as bearing within itself germs of creeping disease and destined to be wracked with growing internal convulsions until it is given final Coup de grace by rising power of socialism and yields to new and better world. This thesis provides justification for that increase of military and police power of Russian state, for that isolation of Russian population from outside world, and for that fluid and constant pressure to extend limits of Russian police power which are together the natural and instinctive urges of Russian rulers. Basically this is only the steady advance of uneasy Russian nationalism, a centuries old movement in which conceptions of offense and defense are inextricably confused. But in new guise of international Marxism, with its honeyed promises to a desperate and war torn outside world, it is more dangerous and insidious than ever before.

It should not be thought from above that Soviet party line is necessarily disingenuous and insincere on part of all those who put it forward. Many of them are too ignorant of outside world and mentally too dependent to question [apparent omission] self-hypnotism, and who have no difficulty making themselves believe what they find it comforting and convenient to believe. Finally we have the unsolved mystery as to who, if anyone, in this great land actually receives accurate and unbiased information about outside world. In atmosphere of oriental secretiveness and conspiracy which pervades this Government, possibilities for distorting or poisoning sources and currents of information are infinite. The very disrespect of Russians for objective truth-indeed, their disbelief in its existence--leads them to view all stated facts as instruments for furtherance of one ulterior purpose or another. There is good reason to suspect that this Government is actually a conspiracy within a conspiracy; and I for one am reluctant to believe that Stalin himself receives anything like an objective picture of outside world. Here there is ample scope for the type of subtle intrigue at which Russians are past masters. Inability of foreign governments to place their case squarely before Russian policy makers--extent to which they are delivered up in their relations with Russia to good graces of obscure and unknown advisors whom they never see and cannot influence--this to my mind is most disquieting feature of diplomacy in Moscow, and one which Western statesmen would do well to keep in mind if they would understand nature of difficulties encountered here.

Part 3: Projection of Soviet Outlook in Practical Policy on Official Level We have now seen nature and background of Soviet program. What may we expect by way of its practical implementation?

Soviet policy, as Department implies in its query under reference, is conducted on two planes: (1) official plane represented by actions undertaken officially in name of Soviet Government; and (2) subterranean plane of actions undertaken by agencies for which Soviet Government does not admit responsibility.

Policy promulgated on both planes will be calculated to serve basic policies (a) to (d) outlined in part 1. Actions taken on different planes will differ considerably, but will dovetail into each other in purpose, timing and effect.

On official plane we must look for following: (a) Internal policy devoted to increasing in every way strength and prestige of Soviet state: intensive military-industrialization; maximum development of armed forces; great

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displays to impress outsiders; continued secretiveness about internal matters, designed to conceal weaknesses and to keep opponents in dark. (b) Wherever it is considered timely and promising, efforts will be made to advance official limits of Soviet power. For the moment, these efforts are restricted to certain neighboring points conceived of here as being of immediate strategic necessity, such as Northern Iran, Turkey, possibly Bornholm However, other points may at any time come into question, if and as concealed Soviet political power is extended to new areas. Thus a “friendly Persian Government might be asked to grant Russia a port on Persian Gulf. Should Spain fall under Communist control, question of Soviet base at Gibraltar Strait might be activated. But such claims will appear on official level only when unofficial preparation is complete. (c) Russians will participate officially in international organizations where they see opportunity of extending Soviet power or of inhibiting or diluting power of others. Moscow sees in UNO not the mechanism for a permanent and stable world society founded on mutual interest and aims of all nations, but an arena in which aims just mentioned can be favorably pursued. As long as UNO is considered here to serve this purpose, Soviets will remain with it. But if at any time they come to conclusion that it is serving to embarrass or frustrate their aims for power expansion and if they see better prospects for pursuit of these aims along other lines, they will not hesitate to abandon UNO. This would imply, however, that they felt themselves strong enough to split unity of other nations by their withdrawal to render UNO ineffective as a threat to their aims or security, replace it with an international weapon more effective from their viewpoint. Thus Soviet attitude toward UNO will depend largely on loyalty of other nations to it, and on degree of vigor, decisiveness and cohesion with which those nations defend in UNO the peaceful and hopeful concept of international life, which that organization represents to our way of thinking. I reiterate, Moscow has no abstract devotion to UNO ideals. Its attitude to that organization will remain essentially pragmatic and tactical. (d) Toward colonial areas and backward or dependent peoples, Soviet policy, even on official plane, will be directed toward weakening of power and influence and contacts of advanced Western nations, on theory that in so far as this policy is successful, there will be created a vacuum which will favor Communist-Soviet penetration. Soviet pressure for participation in trusteeship arrangements thus represents, in my opinion, a desire to be in a position to complicate and inhibit exertion of Western influence at such points rather than to provide major channel for exerting of Soviet power. Latter motive is not lacking, but for this Soviets prefer to rely on other channels than official trusteeship arrangements. Thus we may expect to find Soviets asking for admission everywhere to trusteeship or similar arrangements and using levers thus acquired to weaken Western influence among such peoples. (e) Russians will strive energetically to develop Soviet representation in, and official ties with, countries in which they sense Strong possibilities of opposition to Western centers of power. This applies to such widely separated points as Germany, Argentina, Middle Eastern countries, etc. (f) In international economic matters, Soviet policy will really be dominated by pursuit of autarchy for Soviet Union and Soviet-dominated adjacent areas taken together. That, however, will be underlying policy. As far as official line is concerned, position is not yet clear. Soviet Government has shown strange reticence since termination hostilities on subject foreign trade. If large scale long term credits should be forthcoming, I believe Soviet Government may eventually again do lip service, as it did in 1930’s to desirability of building up international economic exchanges in general. Otherwise I think it possible Soviet foreign trade may be restricted largely to Soviet’s own security sphere, including occupied areas in Germany, and that a cold official shoulder may be turned to principle of general economic collaboration among nations.

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(g) With respect to cultural collaboration, lip service will likewise be rendered to desirability of deepening cultural contacts between peoples, but this will not in practice be interpreted in any way which could weaken security position of Soviet peoples. Actual manifestations of Soviet policy in this respect will be restricted to arid channels of closely shepherded official visits and functions, with superabundance of vodka and speeches and dearth of permanent effects. (h) Beyond this, Soviet official relations will take what might be called “correct” course with individual foreign governments, with great stress being laid on prestige of Soviet Union and its representatives and with punctilious attention to protocol as distinct from good manners.

Part 4: Following May Be Said as to What We May Expect by Way of Implementation of Basic Soviet Policies on Unofficial, or Subterranean Plane, i.e. on Plane for Which Soviet Government Accepts no Responsibility Agencies utilized for promulgation of policies on this plane are following: 1. Inner central core of Communist Parties in other countries. While many of persons who compose this category may also appear and act in unrelated public capacities, they are in reality working closely together as an underground operating directorate of world communism, a concealed Comintern tightly coordinated and directed by Moscow. It is important to remember that this inner core is actually working on underground lines, despite legality of parties with which it is associated.

2. Rank and file of Communist Parties. Note distinction is drawn between those and persons defined in paragraph 1. This distinction has become much sharper in recent years.

Whereas formerly foreign Communist Parties represented a curious (and from Moscow’s standpoint often inconvenient) mixture of conspiracy and legitimate activity, now the conspiratorial element has been neatly concentrated in inner circle and ordered underground, while rank and file--no longer even taken into confidence about realities of movement--are thrust forward as bona fide internal partisans of certain political tendencies within their respective countries, genuinely innocent of conspiratorial connection with foreign states.

Only in certain countries where communists are numerically strong do they now regularly appear and act as a body. As a rule they are used to penetrate, and to influence or dominate, as case may be, other organizations less likely to be suspected of being tools of Soviet Government, with a view to accomplishing their purposes through [apparent omission] organizations, rather than by direct action as a separate political party.

3. A wide variety of national associations or bodies which can be dominated or influenced by such penetration. These include: labor unions, youth leagues, women’s organizations, racial societies, religious societies, social organizations, cultural groups, liberal magazines, publishing houses, etc.

4. International organizations which can be similarly penetrated through influence over various national components. Labor, youth and women’s organizations are prominent among them. Particular, almost vital importance is attached in this connection to international labor movement. In this, Moscow sees possibility of sidetracking western governments in world affairs and building up international lobby capable of compelling governments to take actions favorable to Soviet interests in various countries and of paralyzing actions disagreeable to USSR 5. Russian Orthodox Church, with its foreign branches, and through it the Eastern Orthodox Church in general.

6. Pan-Slav movement and other movements (Azerbaijan, Armenian, Turcoman, etc.) based on racial groups within Soviet Union.

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7. Governments or governing groups willing to lend themselves to Soviet purposes in one degree or another, such as present Bulgarian and Yugoslav Governments, North Persian regime, Chinese Communists, etc. Not only propaganda machines but actual policies of these regimes can be placed extensively at disposal of USSR It may be expected that component parts of this far-flung apparatus will be utilized in accordance with their individual suitability, as follows: (a) To undermine general political and strategic potential of major western powers. Efforts will be made in such countries to disrupt national self confidence, to hamstring measures of national defense, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity. All persons with grievances, whether economic or racial, will be urged to spelt redress not in mediation and compromise, but in defiant violent struggle for destruction of other elements of society. Here poor will be set against rich, black against white, young against old, newcomers against established residents, etc. (b) On unofficial plane particularly violent efforts will be made to weaken power and influence of Western Powers of [on] colonial backward, or dependent peoples. On this level, no holds will be barred. Mistakes and weaknesses of western colonial administration will be mercilessly exposed and exploited. Liberal opinion in Western countries will be mobilized to weaken colonial policies. Resentment among dependent peoples will be stimulated. And while latter are being encouraged to seek independence of Western Powers, Soviet dominated puppet political machines will be undergoing preparation to take over domestic power in respective colonial areas when independence is achieved. (c) Where individual governments stand in path of Soviet purposes pressure will be brought for their removal from office. This can happen where governments directly oppose Soviet foreign policy aims (Turkey, Iran), where they seal their territories off against Communist penetration (Switzerland, Portugal), or where they compete too strongly, like Labor Government in England, for moral domination among elements which it is important for Communists to dominate. (Sometimes, two of these elements are present in a single case. Then Communist opposition becomes particularly shrill and savage. [)] (d) In foreign countries Communists will, as a rule, work toward destruction of all forms of personal independence, economic, political or moral. Their system can handle only individuals who have been brought into complete dependence on higher power. Thus, persons who are financially independent--such as individual businessmen, estate owners, successful farmers, artisans and all those who exercise local leadership or have local prestige, such as popular local clergymen or political figures, are anathema. It is not by chance that even in USSR local officials are kept constantly on move from one job to another, to prevent their taking root. (e) Everything possible will be done to set major Western Powers against each other.

Anti-British talk will be plugged among Americans, anti-American talk among British.

Continentals, including Germans, will be taught to abhor both Anglo-Saxon powers.

Where suspicions exist, they will be fanned; where not, ignited. No effort will be spared to discredit and combat all efforts which threaten to lead to any sort of unity or cohesion among other [apparent omission] from which Russia might be excluded. Thus, all forms of international organization not amenable to Communist penetration and control, whether it be the Catholic [apparent omission] international economic concerns, or the international fraternity of royalty and aristocracy, must expect to find themselves under fire from many, and often [apparent omission]. (f) In general, all Soviet efforts on unofficial international plane will be negative and destructive in character, designed to tear down sources of strength beyond reach of Soviet control. This is only in line with basic Soviet instinct that there can be no compromise with rival power and that constructive work can start only when Communist power is doming But behind all this will be applied insistent, unceasing pressure for penetration and com-

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mand of key positions in administration and especially in police apparatus of foreign countries. The Soviet regime is a police regime par excellence, reared in the dim half world of Tsarist police intrigue, accustomed to think primarily in terms of police power. This should never be lost sight of in ganging Soviet motives.

Part 5: [Practical Deductions From Standpoint of US Policy] In summary, we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure. This political force has complete power of disposition over energies of one of world’s greatest peoples and resources of world’s richest national territory, and is borne along by deep and powerful currents of Russian nationalism. In addition, it has an elaborate and far flung apparatus for exertion of its influence in other countries, an apparatus of amazing flexibility and versatility, managed by people whose experience and skill in underground methods are presumably without parallel in history. Finally, it is seemingly inaccessible to considerations of reality in its basic reactions. For it, the vast fund of objective fact about human society is not, as with us, the measure against which outlook is constantly being tested and re-formed, but a grab bag from which individual items are selected arbitrarily and tendenciously to bolster an outlook already preconceived. This is admittedly not a pleasant picture. Problem of how to cope with this force in [is] undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably greatest it will ever have to face. It should be point of departure from which our political general staff work at present juncture should proceed. It should be approached with same thoroughness and care as solution of major strategic problem in war, and if necessary, with no smaller outlay in planning effort. I cannot attempt to suggest all answers here. But I would like to record my conviction that problem is within our power to solve--and that without recourse to any general military conflict.. And in support of this conviction there are certain observations of a more encouraging nature I should like to make: (1) Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite Germany, is neither schematic nor adventunstic.

It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw--and usually does when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so. If situations are properly handled there need be no prestige-engaging showdowns.

(2) Gauged against Western World as a whole, Soviets are still by far the weaker force.

Thus, their success will really depend on degree of cohesion, firmness and vigor which Western World can muster. And this is factor which it is within our power to influence.

(3) Success of Soviet system, as form of internal power, is not yet finally proven. It has yet to be demonstrated that it can survive supreme test of successive transfer of power from one individual or group to another. Lenin’s death was first such transfer, and its effects wracked Soviet state for 15 years. After Stalin’s death or retirement will be second.

But even this will not be final test. Soviet internal system will now be subjected, by virtue of recent territorial expansions, to series of additional strains which once proved severe tax on Tsardom. We here are convinced that never since termination of civil war have mass of Russian people been emotionally farther removed from doctrines of Communist Party than they are today. In Russia, party has now become a great and--for the moment-highly successful apparatus of dictatorial administration, but it has ceased to be a source of emotional inspiration. Thus, internal soundness and permanence of movement need not yet be regarded as assured.

(4) All Soviet propaganda beyond Soviet security sphere is basically negative and destructive. It should therefore be relatively easy to combat it by any intelligent and really constructive program.

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For those reasons I think we may approach calmly and with good heart problem of how to deal with Russia. As to how this approach should be made, I only wish to advance, by way of conclusion, following comments: (1) Our first step must be to apprehend, and recognize for what it is, the nature of the movement with which we are dealing. We must study it with same courage, detachment, objectivity, and same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it, with which doctor studies unruly and unreasonable individual.

(2) We must see that our public is educated to realities of Russian situation. I cannot over-emphasize importance of this. Press cannot do this alone. It must be done mainly

by Government, which is necessarily more experienced and better informed on practical problems involved. In this we need not be deterred by [ugliness?] of picture. I am convinced that there would be far less hysterical anti-Sovietism in our country today if realities of this situation were better understood by our people. There is nothing as dangerous or as terrifying as the unknown. It may also be argued that to reveal more information on our difficulties with Russia would reflect unfavorably on Russian-American relations. I feel that if there is any real risk here involved, it is one which we should have courage to face, and sooner the better. But I cannot see what we would be risking. Our stake in this country, even coming on heels of tremendous demonstrations of our friendship for Russian people, is remarkably small. We have here no investments to guard, no actual trade to lose, virtually no citizens to protect, few cultural contacts to preserve. Our only stake lies in what we hope rather than what we have; and I am convinced we have better chance of realizing those hopes if our public is enlightened and if our dealings with Russians are placed entirely on realistic and matter-of-fact basis.

(3) Much depends on health and vigor of our own society. World communism is like malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue. This is point at which domestic and foreign policies meets Every courageous and incisive measure to solve internal problems of our own society, to improve self-confidence, discipline, morale and community spirit of our own people, is a diplomatic victory over Moscow worth a thousand diplomatic notes and joint communiqués. If we cannot abandon fatalism and indifference in face of deficiencies of our own society, Moscow will profit--Moscow cannot help profiting by them in its foreign policies.

(4) We must formulate and put forward for other nations a much more positive and constructive picture of sort of world we would like to see than we have put forward in past.

It is not enough to urge people to develop political processes similar to our own. Many foreign peoples, in Europe at least, are tired and frightened by experiences of past, and are less interested in abstract freedom than in security. They are seeking guidance rather than responsibilities. We should be better able than Russians to give them this. And unless we do, Russians certainly will.

(5) Finally we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society. After Al, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.

KENNAN 800.00B International Red Day/2 - 2546: Airgram

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President Richard Nixon

Remarks on Arrival at Warsaw, Poland May 31, 1972 Mr. Chairman of the Council of Ministers and all of our distinguished guests: We express our very deep appreciation to you for your generous words of welcome.

This, for me, is a very special moment. While I was here 13 years ago with Mrs. Nixon, I was here then in my capacity as Vice President of the United States. And now, at this very moment, for the first time in the long history and friendly history between our two countries, a President of the United States stands on Polish soil.

It is fitting that this should be so, first, because I bring greetings of friendship from all of the American people to all of the Polish people. And particularly as you, Mr. Chairman, referred to them, I bring you specially warm greetings from millions of Americans who are so proud of their Polish background.

Americans of Polish background have added enormously to the strength and the vitality and the culture of the United States.

But there is also an even more significant reason why the last stop on this journey that I have taken is here in Warsaw, and in Poland. Perhaps no people in all the world, no country in all the world, has suffered more from war than have the Polish people and the Polish nation.

President Eisenhower told me that when he visited Poland as General of the Armies in 1945, that 85 percent of Warsaw had been destroyed. I know that the strong Polish people have rebuilt your great capital city of which you are so justly proud.

But I can assure you that the major purpose of my visit here, and to the other countries that I have visited over the years that I have served in my present office, is to build a new structure of peace in the world. Poland has suffered too much from war and Poland, along with other peoples in the world, wants peace, and that is our goal: to achieve a world of peace for all nations.

I am confident that the talks that I will have with you, Mr. Chairman, and with the other representatives of the Polish Government, will contribute to our common goal of friendship between the American people and the Polish people and of peace for all the world.

Niech zyje Polska. [Long live Poland.]

Note: The President spoke at 4:50 p.m. at Okecie International Airport in response to the welcoming remarks of Piotr Jaroszewicz, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Polish People’s Republic. He spoke from a prepared text.

Richard Nixon, Remarks on Arrival at Warsaw, Poland. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ node/254891

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President Ronald Reagan Address to Members of the British Parliament June 8, 1982

My Lord Chancellor, Mr. Speaker The journey of which this visit forms a part is a long one. Already it has taken me to two great cities of the West, Rome and Paris, and to the economic summit at Versailles. And there, once again, our sister democracies have proved that even in a time of severe economic strain, free peoples can work together freely and voluntarily to address problems as serious as inflation, unemployment, trade, and economic development in a spirit of cooperation and solidarity.

Other milestones lie ahead. Later this week, in Germany, we and our NATO allies will discuss measures for our joint defense and America’s latest initiatives for a more peaceful, secure world through arms reductions.

Each stop of this trip is important, but among them all, this moment occupies a special place in my heart and in the hearts of my countrymen -- a moment of kinship and homecoming in these hallowed halls.

Speaking for all Americans, I want to say how very much at home we feel in your house.

Every American would, because this is, as we have been so eloquently told, one of democracy’s shrines. Here the rights of free people and the processes of representation have been debated and refined.

It has been said that an institution is the lengthening shadow of a man. This institution is the lengthening shadow of all the men and women who have sat here and all those who have voted to send representatives here.

This is my second visit to Great Britain as President of the United States. My first opportunity to stand on British soil occurred almost a year and a half ago when your Prime Minister graciously hosted a diplomatic dinner at the British Embassy in Washington.

Mrs. Thatcher said then that she hoped I was not distressed to find staring down at me from the grand staircase a portrait of His Royal Majesty King George III. She suggested it was best to let bygones be bygones, and in view of our two countries’ remarkable friendship in succeeding years, she added that most Englishmen today would agree with Thomas Jefferson that ``a little rebellion now and then is a very good thing.’’

[Laughter] Well, from here I will go to Bonn and then Berlin, where there stands a grim symbol of power untamed. The Berlin Wall, that dreadful gray gash across the city, is in its third decade. It is the fitting signature of the regime that built it.

And a few hundred kilometers behind the Berlin Wall, there is another symbol. In the center of Warsaw, there is a sign that notes the distances to two capitals. In one direction it points toward Moscow. In the other it points toward Brussels, headquarters of Western Europe’s tangible unity. The marker says that the distances from Warsaw to Moscow and Warsaw to Brussels are equal. The sign makes this point: Poland is

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not East or West. Poland is at the center of European civilization. It has contributed mightily to that civilization. It is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression.

Poland’s struggle to be Poland and to secure the basic rights we often take for granted demonstrates why we dare not take those rights for granted. Gladstone, defending the Reform Bill of 1866, declared, ``You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.’’

It was easier to believe in the march of democracy in Gladstone’s day -- in that high noon of Victorian optimism.

We’re approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention -- totalitarianism. Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

Yet optimism is in order, because day by day democracy is proving itself to be a notat-all-fragile flower. From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to establish their legitimacy. But none -- not one regime -- has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

The strength of the Solidarity movement in Poland demonstrates the truth told in an underground joke in the Soviet Union. It is that the Soviet Union would remain a oneparty nation even if an opposition party were permitted, because everyone would join the opposition party. [Laughter] America’s time as a player on the stage of world history has been brief. I think understanding this fact has always made you patient with your younger cousins -- well, not always patient. I do recall that on one occasion, Sir Winston Churchill said in exasperation about one of our most distinguished diplomats: ``He is the only case I know of a bull who carries his china shop with him.’’ [Laughter] But witty as Sir Winston was, he also had that special attribute of great statesmen -- the gift of vision, the willingness to see the future based on the experience of the past. It is this sense of history, this understanding of the past that I want to talk with you about today, for it is in remembering what we share of the past that our two nations can make common cause for the future.

We have not inherited an easy world. If developments like the Industrial Revolution, which began here in England, and the gifts of science and technology have made life much easier for us, they have also made it more dangerous. There are threats now to our freedom, indeed to our very existence, that other generations could never even have imagined.

There is first the threat of global war. No President, no Congress, no Prime Minister, no Parliament can spend a day entirely free of this threat. And I don’t have to tell you that in today’s world the existence of nuclear weapons could mean, if not the extinction of mankind, then surely the end of civilization as we know it. That’s why negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear forces now underway in Europe and the START talks -- Strategic Arms Reduction Talks -- which will begin later this month, are not just critical to American or Western policy; they are critical to mankind. Our commitment to early success in these negotiations is firm and unshakable, and our purpose is clear: reducing the risk of war by reducing the means of waging war on both sides.

At the same time there is a threat posed to human freedom by the enormous power of the modern state. History teaches the dangers of government that overreaches -- political

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control taking precedence over free economic growth, secret police, mindless bureaucracy, all combining to stifle individual excellence and personal freedom.

Now, I’m aware that among us here and throughout Europe there is legitimate disagreement over the extent to which the public sector should play a role in a nation’s economy and life. But on one point all of us are united -- our abhorrence of dictatorship in all its forms, but most particularly totalitarianism and the terrible inhumanities it has caused in our time -- the great purge, Auschwitz and Dachau, the Gulag, and Cambodia.

Historians looking back at our time will note the consistent restraint and peaceful intentions of the West. They will note that it was the democracies who refused to use the threat of their nuclear monopoly in the forties and early fifties for territorial or imperial gain. Had that nuclear monopoly been in the hands of the Communist world, the map of Europe -- indeed, the world -- would look very different today. And certainly they will note it was not the democracies that invaded Afghanistan or supressed Polish Solidarity or used chemical and toxin warfare in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia.

If history teaches anything it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

We see around us today the marks of our terrible dilemma -- predictions of doomsday, antinuclear demonstrations, an arms race in which the West must, for its own protection, be an unwilling participant. At the same time we see totalitarian forces in the world who seek subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous assault on the human spirit. What, then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms?

Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?

Sir Winston Churchill refused to accept the inevitability of war or even that it was imminent. He said, ``I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines. But what we have to consider here today while time remains is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries.’’

Well, this is precisely our mission today: to preserve freedom as well as peace. It may not be easy to see; but I believe we live now at a turning point.

In an ironic sense Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxist-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then.

The dimensions of this failure are astounding: A country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people. Were it not for the private sector, the tiny private sector tolerated in Soviet agriculture, the country might be on the brink of famine. These private plots occupy a bare 3 percent of the arable land but account for nearly one-quarter of Soviet farm output and nearly one-third of meat products and vegetables. Overcentralized, with little or no incentives, year after year the Soviet system pours its best resource into the making of instruments of destruction.

The constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is putting a heavy strain on the Soviet people. What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones.

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The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we’ve seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.

The hard evidence of totalitarian rule has caused in mankind an uprising of the intellect and will. Whether it is the growth of the new schools of economics in America or England or the appearance of the so-called new philosophers in France, there is one unifying thread running through the intellectual work of these groups -- rejection of the arbitrary power of the state, the refusal to subordinate the rights of the individual to the superstate, the realization that collectivism stifles all the best human impulses.

Since the exodus from Egypt, historians have written of those who sacrificed and struggled for freedom -- the stand at Thermopylae, the revolt of Spartacus, the storming of the Bastille, the Warsaw uprising in World War II. More recently we’ve seen evidence of this same human impulse in one of the developing nations in Central America. For months and months the world news media covered the fighting in El Salvador. Day after day we were treated to stories and film slanted toward the brave freedom-fighters battling oppressive government forces in behalf of the silent, suffering people of that tortured country.

And then one day those silent, suffering people were offered a chance to vote, to choose the kind of government they wanted. Suddenly the freedom-fighters in the hills were exposed for what they really are -- Cuban-backed guerrillas who want power for themselves, and their backers, not democracy for the people. They threatened death to any who voted, and destroyed hundreds of buses and trucks to keep the people from getting to the polling places. But on election day, the people of El Salvador, an unprecedented 1.4 million of them, braved ambush and gunfire, and trudged for miles to vote for freedom.

They stood for hours in the hot sun waiting for their turn to vote. Members of our Congress who went there as observers told me of a women who was wounded by rifle fire on the way to the polls, who refused to leave the line to have her wound treated until after she had voted. A grandmother, who had been told by the guerrillas she would be killed when she returned from the polls, and she told the guerrillas, ``You can kill me, you can kill my family, kill my neighbors, but you can’t kill us all.’’ The real freedomfighters of El Salvador turned out to be the people of that country -- the young, the old, the in-between.

Strange, but in my own country there’s been little if any news coverage of that war since the election. Now, perhaps they’ll say it’s -- well, because there are newer struggles now.

On distant islands in the South Atlantic young men are fighting for Britain. And, yes, voices have been raised protesting their sacrifice for lumps of rock and earth so far away. But those young men aren’t fighting for mere real estate. They fight for a cause -- for the belief that armed aggression must not be allowed to succeed, and the people must participate in the decisions of government -- [applause] -- the decisions of government under the rule of law. If there had been firmer support for that principle some 45 years ago, perhaps our generation wouldn’t have suffered the bloodletting of World War II.

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In the Middle East now the guns sound once more, this time in Lebanon, a country that for too long has had to endure the tragedy of civil war, terrorism, and foreign intervention and occupation. The fighting in Lebanon on the part of all parties must stop, and Israel should bring its forces home. But this is not enough. We must all work to stamp out the scourge of terrorism that in the Middle East makes war an ever-present threat.

But beyond the troublespots lies a deeper, more positive pattern. Around the world today, the democratic revolution is gathering new strength. In India a critical test has been passed with the peaceful change of governing political parties. In Africa, Nigeria is moving into remarkable and unmistakable ways to build and strengthen its democratic institutions. In the Caribbean and Central America, 16 of 24 countries have freely elected governments. And in the United Nations, 8 of the 10 developing nations which have joined that body in the past 5 years are democracies.

In the Communist world as well, man’s instinctive desire for freedom and self-determination surfaces again and again. To be sure, there are grim reminders of how brutally the police state attempts to snuff out this quest for self-rule -- 1953 in East Germany, 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, 1981 in Poland. But the struggle continues in Poland. And we know that there are even those who strive and suffer for freedom within the confines of the Soviet Union itself. How we conduct ourselves here in the Western democracies will determine whether this trend continues.

No, democracy is not a fragile flower. Still it needs cultivating. If the rest of this century is to witness the gradual growth of freedom and democratic ideals, we must take actions to assist the campaign for democracy.

Some argue that we should encourage democratic change in right-wing dictatorships, but not in Communist regimes. Well, to accept this preposterous notion -- as some wellmeaning people have -- is to invite the argument that once countries achieve a nuclear capability, they should be allowed an undisturbed reign of terror over their own citizens.

We reject this course.

As for the Soviet view, Chairman Brezhnev repeatedly has stressed that the competition of ideas and systems must continue and that this is entirely consistent with relaxation of tensions and peace.

Well, we ask only that these systems begin by living up to their own constitutions, abiding by their own laws, and complying with the international obligations they have undertaken. We ask only for a process, a direction, a basic code of decency, not for an instant transformation.

We cannot ignore the fact that even without our encouragement there has been and will continue to be repeated explosions against repression and dictatorships. The Soviet Union itself is not immune to this reality. Any system is inherently unstable that has no peaceful means to legitimize its leaders. In such cases, the very repressiveness of the state ultimately drives people to resist it, if necessary, by force.

While we must be cautious about forcing the pace of change, we must not hesitate to declare our ultimate objectives and to take concrete actions to move toward them. We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings. So states the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, among other things, guarantees free elections.

The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people

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to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.

This is not cultural imperialism, it is providing the means for genuine self-determination and protection for diversity. Democracy already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people prefer dictatorship to democracy. Who would voluntarily choose not to have the right to vote, decide to purchase government propaganda handouts instead of independent newspapers, prefer government to worker-controlled unions, opt for land to be owned by the state instead of those who till it, want government repression of religious liberty, a single political party instead of a free choice, a rigid cultural orthodoxy instead of democratic tolerance and diversity?

Since 1917 the Soviet Union has given covert political training and assistance to MarxistLeninists in many countries. Of course, it also has promoted the use of violence and subversion by these same forces. Over the past several decades, West European and other Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, and leaders have offered open assistance to fraternal, political, and social institutions to bring about peaceful and democratic progress. Appropriately, for a vigorous new democracy, the Federal Republic of Germany’s political foundations have become a major force in this effort.

We in America now intend to take additional steps, as many of our allies have already done, toward realizing this same goal. The chairmen and other leaders of the national Republican and Democratic Party organizations are initiating a study with the bipartisan American political foundation to determine how the United States can best contribute as a nation to the global campaign for democracy now gathering force. They will have the cooperation of congressional leaders of both parties, along with representatives of business, labor, and other major institutions in our society. I look forward to receiving their recommendations and to working with these institutions and the Congress in the common task of strengthening democracy throughout the world.

It is time that we committed ourselves as a nation -- in both the pubic and private sectors -- to assisting democratic development.

We plan to consult with leaders of other nations as well. There is a proposal before the Council of Europe to invite parliamentarians from democratic countries to a meeting next year in Strasbourg. That prestigious gathering could consider ways to help democratic political movements.

This November in Washington there will take place an international meeting on free elections. And next spring there will be a conference of world authorities on constitutionalism and self-goverment hosted by the Chief Justice of the United States. Authorities from a number of developing and developed countries -- judges, philosophers, and politicians with practical experience -- have agreed to explore how to turn principle into practice and further the rule of law.

At the same time, we invite the Soviet Union to consider with us how the competition of ideas and values -- which it is committed to support -- can be conducted on a peaceful and reciprocal basis. For example, I am prepared to offer President Brezhnev an opportunity to speak to the American people on our television if he will allow me the same opportunity with the Soviet people. We also suggest that panels of our newsmen periodically appear on each other’s television to discuss major events.

Now, I don’t wish to sound overly optimistic, yet the Soviet Union is not immune from the reality of what is going on in the world. It has happened in the past -- a small ruling elite either mistakenly attempts to ease domestic unrest through greater repression and foreign adventure, or it chooses a wiser course. It begins to allow its

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people a voice in their own destiny. Even if this latter process is not realized soon, I believe the renewed strength of the democratic movement, complemented by a global campaign for freedom, will strengthen the prospects for arms control and a world at peace.

I have discussed on other occasions, including my address on May 9th, the elements of Western policies toward the Soviet Union to safeguard our interests and protect the peace. What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term -- the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ashheap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people. And that’s why we must continue our efforts to strengthen NATO even as we move forward with our Zero-Option initiative in the negotiations on intermediate-range forces and our proposal for a one-third reduction in strategic ballistic missile warheads.

Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that’s now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.

The British people know that, given strong leadership, time and a little bit of hope, the forces of good ultimately rally and triumph over evil. Here among you is the cradle of self-government, the Mother of Parliaments. Here is the enduring greatness of the British contribution to mankind, the great civilized ideas: individual liberty, representative government, and the rule of law under God. I’ve often wondered about the shyness of some of us in the West about standing for these ideals that have done so much to ease the plight of man and the hardships of our imperfect world. This reluctance to use those vast resources at our command reminds me of the elderly lady whose home was bombed in the Blitz. As the rescuers moved about, they found a bottle of brandy she’d stored behind the staircase, which was all that was left standing. And since she was barely conscious, one of the workers pulled the cork to give her a taste of it. She came around immediately and said, ``Here now -- there now, put it back. That’s for emergencies.’’ [Laughter] Well, the emergency is upon us. Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.

During the dark days of the Second World War, when this island was incandescent with courage, Winston Churchill exclaimed about Britain’s adversaries, ``What kind of a people do they think we are?’’ Well, Britain’s adversaries found out what extraordinary people the British are. But all the democracies paid a terrible price for allowing the dictators to underestimate us. We dare not make that mistake again. So, let us ask ourselves, “What kind of people do we think we are?’’ And let us answer, ``Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.’’

Sir Winston led his people to great victory in war and then lost an election just as the fruits of victory were about to be enjoyed. But he left office honorably, and, as it turned out, temporarily, knowing that the liberty of his people was more important than the fate of any single leader. History recalls his greatness in ways no dictator will ever know. And he left us a message of hope for the future, as timely now as when he first uttered it, as opposition leader in the Commons nearly 27 years ago, when he said, ``When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have,’’ he said, ``come safely through the worst.’’

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Well, the task I’ve set forth will long outlive our own generation. But together, we too have come through the worst. Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best -- a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation. For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:14 p.m. in the Royal Gallery at the Palace of Westminster in London.

On the previous evening, the President was greeted by Queen Elizabeth II in an arrival ceremony at Windsor Castle, near Windsor, England. Later, the Queen hosted a private dinner for the President.

On the morning of June 8, the President and the Queen spent part of the morning horseback riding on the Windsor Castle grounds.

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President Ronald Reagan Remarks on Soviet-United States Relations at the Town Hall of California Meeting in Los Angeles August 26, 1987

Before we begin, I hope you’ll forgive me for saying that it’s good to be back in California. Actually, I didn’t realize how completely I made the transition from Washington until I got on a helicopter yesterday and told the pilot, Giddyup! [Laughter] But here I am—delighted to be here. And I’m grateful for this opportunity to address the Town Hall of California meeting and for the chance to be heard at the Chautauqua conference in New York, where citizens of the United States and the Soviet Union are meeting together. East coast or west coast, our purpose is the same: to promote freer and more open communications between the peoples of all nations and to advance together the cause of peace and world freedom.

In February of 1945, as he first began meeting with Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, much the same purpose preoccupied Winston Churchill. He felt a great sense of urgency and said to his daughter, “I do not suppose that at any moment in history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the Sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the world.” It was not just the misery of World War II that appalled him. Churchill said he also harbored a great fear that “new struggles may arise out of those that we are successfully ending.” About the great powers meeting in Yalta, he added: “If we quarrel, our children are undone.”

But we know now the great powers did agree at Yalta. Difficult issues were raised and resolved; agreements were reached. In a narrow sense, the summit conference was successful; the meeting produced tangible diplomatic results. And among these was an endorsement of the rights upheld in the Atlantic Charter, rights that would “afford assurance that all men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.” And so, too, the right of self-determination of Eastern European nations like Poland were—at least on paper—guaranteed. But in a matter of months, Churchill’s worst fears were realized: The Yalta guarantees of freedom and human rights in Eastern Europe became undone. And as democracy died in Poland, the era of allied cooperation ended. What followed is known to us now as the postwar era, a time of tense exchanges and often dangerous confrontations between East and West, our “long twilight struggle,” as President Kennedy called it.

And so, 40 years ago, far from ending the world strife and human suffering that so haunted Churchill, the great powers embarked on an era of cold war conflict.

Perceiving a grave threat to our own security and the freedom of our allies in Western Europe, the people of the United States put in place the major elements of America’s bipartisan foreign policy for the next four decades. In 1947 the Marshall plan began the reconstruction of Europe. In 1947 the Truman doctrine supported the independence of Greece and Turkey and established the principle of assistance to nations struggling for democracy and against the imposition of totalitarian rule.

In the 40 years since for 8 American administrations and 20 Congresses—the basis of America’s foreign policy principles held firm: opposition to totalitarianism, the advocacy

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of democratic reform and human rights, and the promotion of worldwide prosperity and freedom, all on the foundation of a strong defense and resolute commitment to allies and friends. When this administration took office, our own sense of these longstanding goals was keen, but we were also aware that much needed to be done to restore their vigor and vibrancy. The structure and purpose of American foreign policy had decayed in the 1970’s. But as we worked to restore the traditionally upright and forceful posture of the United States in the world and reinvigorate a foreign policy that had maintained allied security for 40 years, we also sought to break out of the stalemate of the cold war, to push forward with new initiatives that might help the world evolve beyond the postwar era.

We sought more than a shaky world peace atop the volcano of potential nuclear destruction; we sought something beyond accepted spheres of influence and tense standoffs between the totalitarian and the democratic worlds. In short, we sought ways to dispel rather than to live with the two great darkening clouds of the postwar era: the danger of nuclear holocaust and the expansion of totalitarian rule. In dealing with the nuclear threat, the United States said it would no longer pursue merely arms control—the management, limitation, or controlled growth of existing arsenals. The United States, together with our NATO allies, would seek instead deep verifiable reductions in these arsenals— arms reduction, not just arms control. We sought to do it by moving beyond the status quo, a mere modus vivendi, in the arms race.

In addition to opening negotiations to reduce arms in several categories, we did something even more revolutionary in order to end nuclear fear. We launched a new program of research into defensive means of preventing ballistic missile attack. And by doing so, we attempted to maintain deterrence while seeking to move away from the concept of mutual assured destruction-to render it obsolete, to take the advantage out of building more and more offensive missiles and more and more warheads, at last to remove from the world the specter of military powers holding each other hostage to nuclear retaliation. In short, we sought to establish the feasibility of a defensive shield that would render the use of ballistic missiles fruitless.

This was the meaning of our decision to move forward with SDI, and I believe it was the right decision at the right time. But while we sought arms reduction and defensive deterrence, we never lost sight of the fact that nations do not disagree because they are armed; they are armed because they disagree on very important matters of human life and liberty. The fundamental differences between totalitarian and democratic rule remained. We could not gloss over them, nor could we be content anymore with accepted spheres of influence, a world only half free. And that is why we sought to advance the cause of personal freedom wherever opportunities existed to do so. Sometimes this meant support for liberalization; sometimes, support for liberation.

In regional conflicts, for example, we elaborated a new policy of helping democratic insurgents in their battle to bring self-determination and human rights to their own countries.

This doctrine was first spelled out in our decision to assist the people of Afghanistan in their fight against Soviet invasion and occupation. It was also part of our decision to assist the people of Nicaragua in their battle to restore the integrity of their 1979 revolution and make that government keep its promise of democratic rule. Our current efforts in Angola in support of freedom fighters constitute the most recent extension of this policy.

In the area of human rights, our challenges to the Soviet Union became direct. We observed with Andrei Sakharov that true peace in the world could come only when governments observed and recognized the human rights of their citizens. Similarly, in our bilateral relationships—cultural and political exchanges, for example-we sought from the Soviets a new willingness to open this process up to larger and more diverse groups.

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And finally, undergirding all of this was our commitment to public candor about the nature of totalitarian rule and about the ultimate objective of United States foreign policy: peace, yes; but world freedom, as well. We refused to believe that it was somehow an act of belligerence to proclaim publicly the crucial moral distinctions between democracy and totalitarianism.

And in my address to the British Parliament in 1982, when I noted the peaceful extension of human liberty was the ultimate goal of American foreign policy, I also pointed out that history’s momentum resided instead with the cause of democracy and world freedom. And I offered hope that the increasing failure of statist economies would lead to demands for political change. I asked, in short, for a “crusade for freedom” that would spread democracy and promote democratic institutions throughout the world.

As I’ve said before, we believe that such public affirmations were not only necessary for the protection and extension of freedom but, far from adding to world tensions, crucial to reducing them and helping the pursuit of peace. Public candor and realism about and with the Soviets have helped the peace process. They were a signal to our Soviet counterparts that any compulsion to exploit Western illusions must be resisted, because such illusions no longer exist.

Our foreign policy, then, has been an attempt both to reassert the traditional elements of America’s postwar strategy while at the same time moving beyond the doctrines of mutual assured destruction or containment. Our goal has been to break the deadlock of the past, to seek a forward strategy—a forward strategy for world peace, a forward strategy for world freedom. We have not forsaken deterrence or containment, but working with our allies, we’ve sought something even beyond these doctrines. We have sought the elimination of the threat of nuclear weapons and an end to the threat of totalitarianism. Today we see this strategy—a strategy of hope—at work. We’re moving toward reductions in nuclear arms. SDI is now underway. Our offer to share the benefits of strategic defense remains open to all, including the Soviet Union.

In regional conflicts like Afghanistan and Central America, the Soviet Union and its clients have, thus far, shown all too little real willingness to move toward peace with real self-determination for the people. But the forces of freedom grow steadily in strength, and they put ever greater pressure on the forces of totalitarianism. The paths to peace with freedom are open if Moscow decides to stop imposing its self-styled revolutions.

In another area, we found a parallel interest with the Soviet Union in a political end to the Iran-Iraq war. We hope we can build together on this despite our differences. And finally, in the Soviet Union itself, we see movement toward more openness, possibly even progress towards respect for human rights and economic reform.

And all of these developments weigh on our minds. We ponder their meaning; we ask ourselves: Are we entering a truly new phase in East-West relations? Is far-reaching, enduring change in the postwar standoff now possible? Do we have at last the chance envisioned by Churchill to end the agony of the 20th century?

Surely, these are our hopes, but let honesty compel us to acknowledge we have fears and deep concerns, as well. And while we acknowledge the interesting changes in the Soviet Union, we know, too, that any Western standard for democracy is still a very distant one for the Soviets.

We know what real democracy constitutes; we understand its implications. It means the rule of law for the leaders as well as the people. It involves limitations on the power of the state over the people. It means orderly debate and meaningful votes. It means liberation of the captive people from the thralls of a ruling elite that presumes to know the people’s good better than the people. So, while there’s hope today, there’s also un-

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certainty. And that’s why we know we must deal with the Soviet Union as it has been and as it is, and not as we would hope it to be. And yet we cannot rest with this. The opportunity before us is too great to let pass by. And that’s why in the past year we’ve challenged the Soviets with our own expectations—ways of showing us and the world their seriousness about fundamental improvements. It’s why we have set down guideposts and pointers towards a better relationship with the Soviet Union.

For 2 years we’ve been asking the Soviets to join in discussing a cooperative approach toward a transition to defensive deterrence that threatens no one. In April of 1987, we asked that a date be set this year for rapid and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan; in June, that the Soviets join us in alleviating the divisions of Berlin and begin with the dismantling of the Berlin wall; in July, that the Soviets move toward self-determination in East Europe and rescind the Brezhnev doctrine. Of course, these are significant democratic steps, but steps such as these are required for a fundamental improvement in relations between East and West.

Well, today, I want to propose another step that Soviet leaders could take, a realistic step that would greatly help our efforts to reduce arms. We’re near an historic agreement that could eliminate a whole class of missiles. If it is signed, we shall rely not on trust but on the evidence of our own eyes that it is being implemented. As the Russians themselves say, dovorey no provorey—trust but verify. And that we shall do. But effective verification requires more than unilateral technical means. Even on-site inspection is not a panacea, especially as we address the ambitious agenda of arms reduction ahead. We need to seek compliance with existing agreements, all too often violated by the U.S.S.R. We also need to see more openness, a departure from the habits of secrecy that have so long applied to Soviet military affairs.

I say to the Soviet leadership: It’s time to show some glasnost in your military affairs.

First, publish a valid budget of your military expenditures, just as we do. Second, reveal to the Soviet people and the world the size and composition of the Soviet Armed Forces. Third, open for debate in your Supreme Soviet the big issues of military policy and weapons, just as we do. These steps would contribute to greater understanding between us and also to the good sense of your own decisions on the grave matter of armaments and military posture.

The immediate agenda of arms reduction is clear. We can wrap up an agreement on intermediate-range nuclear missiles promptly. There are still issues to be worked out.

Our delegation in Geneva has already pointed the way to simplifying verification requirements now that we’ve agreed to the total elimination of U.S. and Soviet INF missiles. We have also repeatedly pointed out that the last-minute demand by the Soviets concerning West German Pershing 1-A missiles was without foundation. Well, earlier today Chancellor Kohl removed even this artificial obstacle from consideration. We are therefore hopeful that the Soviet Union will demonstrate that there is substance behind the rhetoric they have repeated so often of late: that they genuinely want a stabilizing INF agreement. And if so, they’ll move to meet our proposals constructively rather than elect [erect] additional barriers to agreement. We also need to move ahead rapidly on the goal Mr. Gorbachev and I agreed to at Reykjavik last fall, a 50-percent reduction in strategic nuclear forces. These would be great achievements.

Let me pause and make note of something that will advance the cause of all these negotiations. I think it is vital that Western reporters and editors keep the real record of these negotiations in mind. I note, for example, that the other day the Economist ran a kind of believe-it-or-not type item in which it reminded its readership that it had been the United States that first proposed the zero option in the INF negotiations and first proposed the 50-percent reductions in strategic weapons. I would simply say

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that as soon as the Soviets realize that attempts to manipulate the media of [on] these negotiations will not work, the better the chances are of treaty documents eventually getting signed.

So, too, as most of you know, we have pursued our four-part agenda with the Soviets of human rights, arms reductions, resolution of regional conflicts, and bilateral issues.

All parts must advance if the relationship as a whole is to advance. Let me stress the serious concern about Soviet actions in one of these areas: regional conflicts. The fact remains that in Afghanistan Soviet occupation forces are still waging a war of indiscriminate bombing and civilian massacre against a Moslem people whose only crime is to love their country and their faith. In Central America, Soviet-bloc arms deliveries have been speeding up during the past year, increasing by more than 100 percent. So, while talking about reforms at home, the Soviet Union has stepped up its efforts to impose a failed system on others. I stress that speaking up about such actions is a matter of conscience to the West and that Soviet actions in these areas are being viewed with the utmost concern. And I cannot overemphasize this point.

But let me again note that the progress we’ve seen in East-West relations flows from the new strength and resolution that we have brought to American foreign policy and from the boldness of our initiatives for peace. We are also seeing a Soviet leadership that appears more willing to address the problems that have divided East and West so long and to seek agreements based on mutual benefit.

Perhaps the final measure of this new resolve can be found in the growth of democracy throughout the world. Only a decade ago, democracy was under attack throughout Latin America. Today more than 90 percent of Latin Americans live in nations that are now democratic or headed decisively in that direction. A recent U.N. General Assembly session on Africa called for more personal freedom and a reduction of government power in order to spur economic progress. We have also seen dramatic democratic gains in the past few years in nations like the Philippines and South Korea. Even places like China have shown an openness toward economic reform. And above all, the old solutions of the 20th century for the world’s woes—solutions calling for more and more state power concentrated in the hands of smaller and smaller elites—have come under fire everywhere, especially among the intellectuals. The new idea of a nexus between economic and political freedom as the principal vehicle of social progress is catching on.

In looking back over these 6 1/2 years, then, I cannot help but reflect on the most dramatic change to my own eyes: the exciting new prospects for the democratic cause. A feeling of energy and hope prevails. Statism has lost the intellectuals, and everywhere one turns, nations and people are seeking the fulfillment of their age-old aspirations for self-government and self-determination. Perhaps, then, we may finally progress beyond the postwar standoff and fulfill the promises made at Yalta but never acted upon.

Perhaps it’s not too much to ask for initial steps toward democratic rule and free elections. And I hope to address this matter more fully before the United Nations General Assembly.

Yes, we may, then, live at the moment Churchill once anticipated: a moment when the world would have a chance to redeem the opportunity it missed four decades agora chance for the “broad sunlit uplands” of freedom, a chance to end the terrible agony of the 20th century and the twin threats of nuclear war and totalitarian ideology, a chance, above all, to see humanity live and prosper under that form of government that Churchill called the worst form of government except, as he said, for all the others: democracy.

This is the opportunity before us. It’s one we must seize now for ourselves and future generations.

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I’ve been greatly honored to be invited to be here today and to address you. I have been a member of Town Hall for 20 years-started when I was just a kid. [Laughter] But I’m also aware that this is the 50th anniversary of Town Hall. So, happy birthday to Town Hall!

And thank all of you, and God bless you all.

[At this point, Stender Sweeney, chairman of the Town Hall of California board of governors, gave the President a plaque and scroll designating him as the honorary founder of the Town Hall American Heritage Endowment. ] Well, I am most grateful and most honored. And I thank you, Mr. Sweeney. As I told you, I’ve been a member of Town Hall for many years, and I know that your impartial programs set a fine example for our youth. I’m thrilled that you are involving young people in this important Town Hall tradition. And if I could say something to you about it—talk about being deserving-the thing I’m the most proud of and all that goes with this job I have is when I have an opportunity to visit those young men and women of ours in military uniform. You’ve heard their music. But let me also tell you that we have the highest percentage of high school graduates in our military today that we have ever had in our history, and it is entirely voluntary.

You know that in World War II when General George Marshall was asked what was our secret weapon, he said the best blankety-blank kids in the world. Well, I won’t use his language. [Laughter] Generals can say it, but Presidents can’t. [Laughter] But I’ve come to the conclusion that these young people are deserving of what you’ve proposed, because they are the best blankety-blank kids in the world.

So, I heartily endorse what has been presented here. I’m grateful for the honors that have been done me. But they tell me that a number of you aren’t members of Town Hall.

[Laughter] And if you’d like to join- [laughter] —you can put down my name as sponsor.

[Laughter] Thank you all. They told me that I came on from the left and I can exit from the right. That’s been the story of my life. [Laughter] Note: The President spoke at 1:02 p.m. at a luncheon in the Los Angeles Ballroom at the Century Plaza Hotel. His remarks were broadcast via satellite to a conference on SovietU.S. relations in Chautauqua, NY. Ronald Reagan, Remarks on Soviet-United States Relations at the Town Hall of California Meeting in Los Angeles Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/253295

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President Bush’s Remarks Polish National Assembly

to the

Description President George H. W. Bush visited Poland and Hungary in July 1989 after June elections in which Solidarity candidates won 160 of the 161 seats in the Sejm that were available to them and 92 of the 100 seats of the Polish Senate. In addition, many leaders of the Communist Party failed to secure enough votes to be elected to the parliament they had controlled for four decades. Pursuing a new US policy he referred to as “beyond containment,” Bush wished to show US support for a movement toward the integration of Eastern Europe into the “community of nations” without provoking a backlash among Soviet and Eastern European leaders. In the following speech to Poland’s newly elected National Assembly, Bush invoked the potential dangers of change by making reference to the massacre in Tiananmen Square that had occurred a month earlier, but also quoted Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sanctioning the right of national self-determination. According to press reports, Bush’s speech received a mixed response, due to the meager amount of aid he proposed—$100 million, even though Lech Walesa had announced that Poland needed $10 billion—and his repeated reminders of further sacrifices required by Poles before progress in reconstruction could occur. Comments by Bush’s chief of staff, John Sununu, that giving “too much” aid would place Poland in the position of “a young person in the candy store” without “the self-discipline to take the right steps” were considered patronizing by many Poles.

Source George H. W. Bush, “Remarks to the Polish National Assembly,” speech, Warsaw, Poland, July 10, 1989, Bush Presidential Library, Documents and Papers, Bush Library (accessed May 14, 2008).

Primary Source—Excerpt ... [O]n behalf of the people of the United States, I am honored to greet the newly elected representatives of the Polish Parliament. To be here with you on this occasion is proof that we live in extraordinary, indeed, thrilling times....

A profound cycle of turmoil and great change is sweeping the world from Poland to the Pacific. It is sometimes inspiring, as here in Warsaw, and sometimes it’s agonizing, as in China today. But the magnitude of change we sense around the world compels us to look within ourselves and to God to forge a rare alloy of courage and restraint....

Poland is where the cold war began, and now the people of Poland can help bring the division of Europe to an end. The time has come to move beyond containment to a world too long deferred, a better world....

And now, in part because of what you are doing here, the genuine opportunity exists for all of us to build a Europe which many thought was destroyed forever in the 1940’s.

That Europe, the Europe of our children, will be open, whole, and free....

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Mikhail Gorbachev has written: “Universal security rests on the recognition of the right of every nation to choose its own path of social development and on the renunciation of interference in the domestic affairs of other states. A nation may choose either capitalism or socialism. This is its sovereign right.” ... And so, the West works not to disrupt, not to interfere, not to threaten any nation’s security but to help forge closer and enduring ties between Poland and the rest of Europe....

We understand in my country the enormous economic problems you face. Economic privation is a danger that can threaten any great democratic experiment. And I must speak honestly: Economic reform and recovery cannot occur without sacrifices....

The reform of the Polish economy presents an historic challenge. There can be no substitute for Poland’s own efforts, but I want to stress to you today that Poland is not alone.

Given the enormity of this moment, the United States stands ready to help as you help yourselves....

How to Cite this Source President George H. W. Bush, “President Bush’s Remarks to the Polish National Assembly,” Making the History of 1989, Item #45, http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/items/show/45 (accessed November 13 2018, 9:02 am).

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National Security Archive, Suite 701, Gelman Library, The George Washington University, 2130 H Street, NW, Washington, D.C., 20037, Phone: 202/994‐7000, Fax: 202/994‐7005, nsarchiv@gwu.edu

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Mikhail Gorbachev: I am against all walls

The first and last president of the Soviet Union spoke with RBTH about the past and how it should inform the present.

As the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approached, Maxim Korshunov of RBTH sat down with Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and last president of the Soviet Union, to discuss the historic rapprochement between East and West and the prospects for a new Cold War. Russia Beyond the Headlines: 1989 is the year that the Berlin Wall fell. But that only happened in November. In the summer of that same year, at a press conference following your negotiations in Bonn with Chancellor [Helmut] Kohl, you were asked, “And what about the wall?” You answered, “Nothing under the sun is eternal. […] The wall can disappear as soon as the conditions that gave birth to it no longer exist. I don’t see a big problem here.” How did you assume events would unfold back then?

Mikhail Gorbachev: In the summer of 1989, neither Helmut Kohl nor I anticipated, of course, that everything would happen so fast. We didn’t expect the wall to come down in November. And by the way, we both admitted that later. I don’t claim to be a prophet.

This happens in history: it accelerates its progress. It punishes those who are late. But it has an even harsher punishment for those who try to stand in its way. It would have been a big mistake to hold onto the Iron Curtain. That is why we didn’t put any pressure on the government of the GDR [German Democratic Republic – East Germany].

When events started to develop at a speed that no one expected, the Soviet leadership unanimously – and I want to stress “unanimously” – decided not to interfere in the internal processes that were under way in the GDR, not to let our troops leave their garrisons under any circumstances. I am confident to this day that it was the right decision.

RBTH: What made it possible to finally overcome the division of Germany? In your opinion, who played a decisive role in its peaceful reunification?

M.G.: The Germans themselves played the decisive role in uniting Germany. I am referring not only to their massive demonstrations in support of unity, but also to the fact that the Germans in both the East and the West proved in the post-war decades that they had learned the lessons of the past and that they could be trusted.

I think that the Soviet Union played a crucial role in ensuring that the reunification was peaceful, that the process did not lead to a dangerous international crisis. In the Soviet leadership, we knew that the Russians – that all the peoples of the Soviet Union – understood the Germans’ desire to live in unity and to have a democratic government. I want to note that besides the Soviet Union, the other participants in the process of definitively solving the German issue also demonstrated balance and responsibility. I am referring to the countries in the anti-Hitler coalition – the United States, the United Kingdom and France. It is no longer a secret that Francois Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher had major doubts regarding the speed of reunification. The war still left a deep scar. But when all the aspects of this process had been settled, they signed documents that spelled the end of the Cold War.

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RBTH: It fell to you to decide the fateful problem of global development. The international settlement of the German question, which involved major world powers and other nations, served as an example of the great responsibility and high quality of the politicians of that generation. You demonstrated that this is possible if one is guided – as you defined it – by “a new way of thinking.” How capable are modern world leaders of solving modern problems in a peaceful manner, and how have approaches to finding answers to geopolitical challenges changed in the past 25 years?

M.G.: German reunification was not an isolated event, but a part of the process of ending the Cold War. Perestroika and democratization in our country paved the way for it.

Without these processes, Europe would have been split and in a “frozen” state for decades longer. And I’m sure that it would have been a degree of magnitude more difficult to get out of that state of affairs.

What is the new way of thinking? It is recognizing that there are global threats – and at the time, it was primarily the threat of a nuclear conflict, which can only be removed by joint efforts. That means we need to build relations anew, conduct dialogue, seek paths to terminating the arms race. It means recognizing the freedom of choice for all peoples, while at the same time taking each others’ interests into account, building cooperation, and establishing ties, to make conflict and war impossible in Europe.

These principles lie at the foundation of the Paris Charter (1990) for a new Europe – a vital political document signed by all the European countries, the U.S., and Canada. As a result, its provisions needed to be developed and solidified, structures needed to be created, preventive mechanisms needed to be established, as did cooperation mechanisms.

For example, there was a proposal to create a Security Council for Europe.

I don’t want to contrast that generation of leaders with the subsequent generation. But a fact remains a fact: it wasn’t done. And European development has been lopsided, which, it should be said, was facilitated by the weakening of Russia in the 1990s.

Today we need to admit that there is a crisis in European (and global) politics. One of the reasons, albeit not the only reason, is a lack of desire on the part of our Western partners to take Russia’s point of view and legal interests in security into consideration. They paid lip service to applauding Russia, especially during the Yeltsin years, but in deeds they didn’t consider it. I am referring primarily to NATO expansion, missile defense plans, the West’s actions in regions of importance to Russia (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine). They literally said “This is none of your business.” As a result, an abscess formed and it burst.

I would advise Western leaders to thoroughly analyze all of this, instead of accusing Russia of everything. They should remember the Europe we managed to create at the beginning of the 1990s and what it has unfortunately turned into in recent years.

RBTH: One of the key issues that has arisen in connection with the events in Ukraine is NATO expansion into the East. Do you get the feeling that your Western partners lied to you when they were developing their future plans in Eastern Europe? Why didn’t you insist that the promises made to you – particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East – be legally encoded? I will quote Baker: “NATO will not move one inch further east.”

M.G.: The topic of “NATO expansion” was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a singe Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either. Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces from the

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alliance would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement, mentioned in your question, was made in that context. Kohl and [German Vice Chancellor Hans-Dietrich] Genscher talked about it.

Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled. The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been observed all these years. So don’t portray Gorbachev and the thenSoviet authorities as naïve people who were wrapped around the West’s finger. If there was naïveté, it was later, when the issue arose. Russia at first did not object.

The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regards to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are being observed.

RBTH: Ukraine and relations with Ukraine are a painful subject for every Russian. As someone who is half Russian and half Ukrainian, you wrote in the afterword of your book After the Kremlin that you are deeply pained by what is going on in Ukraine. What do you consider the way out of the Ukraine crisis to be? How will Russia’s relations with Ukraine, Europe, and the U.S. develop in the coming years in light of recent events?

M.G.: Everything is more or less clear for the immediate future – we need to fulfill everything prescribed in the Minsk agreements from Sept. 5 and 19 in their entirety. At the point, the situation is very fragile. The ceasefire is constantly being violated. But in recent days there is an impression that the process has begun. A zone of disengagement is being created, heavy weaponry is being removed. Observers from the OSCE, including Russians, are arriving. If we can fix this all, it will be a huge achievement, but only a first step.

We need to recognize that relations between Russia and Ukraine have taken an enormous hit. We should not allow this to turn into the mutual alienation of our peoples. An enormous responsibility lies on the leaders – Presidents [Vladimir] Putin and [Petro] Poroshenko. They need to show an example. We need to reduce the intensity of emotions.

We can figure out who is right and who is guilty later. Right now, the most important task is to establish a dialogue on specific issues. Life in the regions that have suffered most needs to normalize, and problems such as territorial status need to be set aside for now. Ukraine, Russia, and the West could help with this, both separately and together.

Ukraine has a lot to do to ensure reconciliation in the country, to ensure that each person feels like a citizen whose rights and interests are safely guaranteed. This isn’t so much an issue of constitutional and legal guarantees as of the reality of everyday life. So in addition to elections, I would recommend setting to work in a roundtable format as soon as possible, where all of the regions and all layers of the population would be represented, and where any issues could be raised and discussed.

With respect to Russia’s relations with Western Europe and the U.S., the first step is to abandon the logic of tit-for-tat accusations and sanctions. In my opinion, Russia has already taken that first step by refraining from tit-for-tat measures after the latest round of Western sanctions. The rest is up to our partners.

First and foremost, I think they need to cancel these so-called personal sanctions. How can we conduct a dialogue if you are punishing the people who make the decisions and influence policy? We need to talk to each other. This is an axiom that has been forgotten, quite unfortunately.

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I am confident that points of contact will emerge as soon as dialogue resumes. Just look around – the world is tense, there are common challenges and a mass of problems that can only be solved with joint efforts. The disconnect between Russia and the European Union harms everyone and weakens Europe at a time when global competition is growing, when other “centers of gravity” in global politics are gaining strength.

We can’t give up. We can’t be drawn into a new Cold War. The common threats to our security have not disappeared. New, highly dangerous extremist movements, particularly the so-called Islamic State, have emerged in recent times. Problems such as the environment, poverty, migration, and epidemics are getting worse. We can again find common ground in the face of common challenges. It won’t be easy, but there’s no other way.

RBTH: Ukraine is planning to build a wall on the border with Russia. Why do you think it happened that the Russian and Ukrainian peoples suddenly fell out and now might be divided not only by a political, but also a physical wall?

M.G.: The answer to that question is very simple: I am against all walls. Let’s hope that those who are planning such a “construction” come to their senses. I don’t think our peoples will fall out. We are too close in all respects. There aren’t any insurmountable problems or differences between us. But a lot will depend on the intelligentsia and the media. If they work to separate us, contrive to exacerbate our conflicts and quarrels, there will be trouble. The examples are well known. And so I urge the intelligentsia to act responsibly.

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President George W. Busch speech: University of Warsaw Library, June 15, 2001, Poland Mr. President, thank you very much for your gracious hospitality that you and your wife have shown Laura and me.

Mr. Prime Minister, members of the government, distinguished members of the clergy, distinguished citizens from this important friend of America, students, Mr. Rector, thank you very much for your warm greeting.

It’s a great honor for me to visit this great city, a city that breathes with confidence, creativity and success of modern Poland. Like all nations, Poland still faces challenges, but I am confident you’ll meet them with the same optimistic spirit a visitor feels on Warsaw streets and sees in the city’s fast-changing skyline.

We find evidence of this energy and enterprise surrounding us right now in this magnificent building and, you can hear it in the air.

Today’s own -- Poland’s orchestra called Goilats (ph)...

(LAUGHTER) ... is telling the world, “On that wheat field, I’m going to build my San Francisco. Over that molehill, I’m going to build my bank.”

(APPLAUSE) Americans recognize that kind of optimism and ambition because we share it. We are linked to Poland by culture and heritage, kinship and common values. Polish glassmakers built and operated the new world’s first factory in Jamestown, Virginia in 1608.

Seeking the right to vote, those same Poles also staged the new world’s first labor strike.

They succeeded. It seems the Poles have been keeping the world honest for a long period of time. Some of the most courageous moments of the 20th century took place in this nation. Here in 1943, the world saw the heroic effort and revolt of the Warsaw Ghetto; a year later, the 63 days of the Warsaw uprising and then the reduction of this city to rubble because it chose to resist evil.

Here communism was humbled by the largest citizens’ movement in history, and by the iron purpose and moral vision of a single man, Pope John Paul II. Here Polish workers led by an electrician from Gdansk made the sparks that would electrify half a continent. Poland revealed to the world that its Soviet rulers, however brutal and powerful, were ultimately defenseless against determined men and women armed only with their conscience and their faith.

Here you have proven that communism need not be followed by chaos, that great oppression can end in true reconciliation, and that the promise of freedom is stronger than the habit of fear.

In all these events, we have seen the character of the Polish people and the hand of God in your history. Modern Poland is just beginning to contribute to the wealth of Europe, yet for decades you have contributed to Europe’s soul and spiritual strength. And all who believe in the power of conscience and culture are in your debt.

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Today, I have come to the center of Europe to speak of the future of Europe. Some still call this the East, but Warsaw is closer to Ireland than it is to the Urals. And it is time to put talk of East and West behind us.

Yalta did not ratify a natural divide; it divided a living civilization. The partition of Europe was not a fact of geography; it was an act of violence.

And wise leaders for decades have found the hope of European peace in the hope of greater unity.

In the same speech that described an iron curtain, Winston Churchill called for a new unity in Europe from which no nation should be permanently outcast.

Consider how far we have come since that speech. Through trenches and shell fire, through death camps and bombed-out cities, through gulags and food lines, men and women have dreamed of what my father called a Europe whole and free.

This free Europe is no longer a dream; it is the Europe that is rising around us. It is the work that you and I are called on to complete. We can build an open Europe, a Europe without Hitler and Stalin, without Brezhnev and Honecker and Ceausescu and, yes, without Milosevic.

Our goal is to erase the false lines. Our goal is to replace the false lines that have divided Europe for too long. The future of every European nation must be determined by the progress of internal reform, not the interests of outside powers.

Every European nation that struggles toward democracy and free markets and a strong civic culture must be welcomed into Europe’s home. All of Europe’s new democracies, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and all that lie between, should have the same chance for security and freedom and the same chance to join the institutions of Europe as Europe’s old democracies have.

I believe in NATO membership for all of Europe’s democracies that seek it and are ready to share the responsibility that NATO brings.

(APPLAUSE) The question of when may be still up for debate within NATO. The question of whether should not be. As we plan to enlarge NATO, no nation should be used as a pawn in the agendas of others. We will not trade away the faith of free European peoples -- no more Munichs, no more Yaltas. .

(APPLAUSE) Let us tell all those who have struggled to build democracy and free markets what we have told the Poles: From now on, what you build, you keep. No one can take away your freedom or your country.

(APPLAUSE) Next year, NATO’s leaders will meet in Prague. The United States will be prepared to make concrete historic decisions with its allies to advance NATO enlargement. Poland and America share a vision. As we plan the Prague summit, we should not calculate how little we can get away with, but how much we can do to advance the cause of freedom.

(APPLAUSE) The expansion of NATO has fulfilled NATO’s promise, and that promise now leads eastward and southward, northward and onward.

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I want to thank Poland for acting as a bridge to the new democracies of Europe and a champion of the interests and security of your neighbors, such as the Baltic states, Ukraine, Slovakia. You’re making real the words “for your freedom and ours.”

All nations should understand there is no conflict between membership in NATO and membership in the European Union. My nation welcomes the consolidation of European unity and the stability it brings. We welcome a greater role for the EU in European security, properly integrated with NATO. We welcome the incentive for reform that the hope of EU membership creates.

We welcome a Europe that is truly united, truly democratic and truly diverse, a collection of peoples and nations bound together in purpose and respect, and faithful to their own roots.

The most basic commitments of NATO and a European Union are similar: democracy, free markets and common security.

And all in Europe and America understand the central lesson of the century past. When Europe and America are divided, history tends to tragedy. When Europe and America are partners, no trouble or tyranny can stand against us.

Our vision of Europe must also include the Balkans. Unlike the people of Poland, many people and leaders in Southeast Europe made the wrong choices in the last decade.

There communism fell, but dictators exploited a murderous nationalism to cling to power and to conquer new land. Twice NATO had to intervene militarily to stop the killing and defend the values that define a new Europe. Today, instability remains and there are still those who seek to undermine the fragile peace that holds. We condemn those, like the sponsors of violence in Macedonia who seek to subvert democracy.

But we’ve made progress. We see democratic changes Zagreb and Belgrade, moderate governments in Bosnia, multi-ethnic police in Kosovo, the end of violence in southern Serbia.

For the first time in history, all governments in the region are democratic, committed to cooperating with one another and predisposed to join Europe. Across the region, nations are yearning to be a part of Europe. The burdens and benefits of satisfying that yearning will naturally fall most heavily on Europe itself.

That is why I welcome Europe’s commitment to play a leading role in the stabilization of Southeastern Europe. Countries other than the United States already provide over 80 percent of the NATO-led forces in the region.

But I know that America’s role is important and we will meet our obligations. We went into the Balkans together and we will come out together. And our goal must be to hasten the arrival of that day.

(APPLAUSE) The Europe we are building must include Ukraine, a national struggling with the trauma of transition.

Some in Kiev speak of their country’s European destiny. If this is their aspiration, we should reward it. We must extend our hand to Ukraine, as Poland has already done with such determination.

The Europe we are building must also be open to Russia. We have a stake in Russia’s success. And we look forward to the day when Russia is fully reformed, fully democratic and closely bound to the rest of Europe.

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Europe’s great institutions, NATO and the European Union, can and should build partnerships with Russia and with all the countries that have emerged from the wreckage of the former Soviet Union. Tomorrow I will see President Putin and express my hopes for a Russia that is truly great; a greatness measured by the strength of its democracy, the good treatment of minorities and the achievement of its people.

I will express to President Putin that Russia is a part of Europe and, therefore, does not need a buffer zone of insecure states separating it from Europe. NATO, even as it grows, is no enemy of Russia. Poland is no enemy of Russia. America is no enemy of Russia.

(APPLAUSE) We will seek a constructive relationship with Russia for the benefit of all our peoples.

I will make the case, as I have to all the European leaders I have met on this trip, that the basis for our mutual security must move beyond Cold War-doctrines. Today, we face growing threat from weapons of mass destruction and missiles in the hands of states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life. So we must have a broad strategy of active nonproliferation, counterproliferation and a new concept of deterrence that includes defenses sufficient to protect our people, our forces and our allies, as well reduced reliance on nuclear weapons.

And finally I’ll make clear to President Putin that the path to greater prosperity and greater security lies in greater freedom.

The 20th century has told us that only freedom gets the highest service from every citizen: citizens who can publish, citizens who can worship, citizens who can organize for themselves without fear of intimidation and with the full protection of the law.

This, after all, is the true source of European unity. Ultimately, it’s more than the unity of markets, it is more than the unity of interests. It is the unity of values.

Through a hard history with all its precedents of pain, Europe has come to believe in the dignity of every individual, in social freedom tempered by moral restraint, in economic liberty balanced with humane values.

“The revolutions of 1989,” said Pope John Paul II, “were made possible by the commitment of brave men and women inspired by a different and ultimately more profound and powerful vision: the vision of man as a creature of intelligence and free will, immersed in a mystery which transcends his own being and endowed with the ability to reflect and the ability to choose, and thus capable of wisdom and virtue.”

This belief successfully challenged communism. It challenges materialism in all its forms.

Just as man cannot be reduced to a means of production, he must find goals greater than mere consumption.

The European ideal is inconsistent with the life defined by gain and greed and the lonely pursuit of self. It calls for consideration and respect, compassion and forgiveness, the habits of character on which the exercise of freedom depends. And all these duties and all these rights are ultimately traced to a source of law and justice above our wills and beyond our politics.

An author of dignity who calls us to act worthy of our dignity. This belief is more than a memory; it is a living faith.

And it is the main reason Europe and America will never be separated. We are products of the same history, reaching from Jerusalem and Athens to Warsaw and Washington. We share more than an alliance. We share a civilization. Its values are universal, and they pervade our history and our partnership in a unique way.

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These trans-Atlantic ties could not be severed by U-boats. They could not be cut by checkpoints and barbed wire. They were not ended by SS-20s and nuclear blackmail.

And they certainly will not be broken by commercial quarrels and political debates.

America will not permit it. Poland will not allow it.

(APPLAUSE) This unity of values and aspirations calls us to new tasks. Those who have benefited and prospered most from the commitment to freedom and openness have an obligation to help others that are seeking their way along that path.

That is why our trans-Atlantic community must have priorities beyond the consolidation of European peace. We must bring peace and health to Africa -- a neighbor to Europe, a heritage to many Americans, a continent in crisis and a place of enormous potential.

We must work together to shut down the arms trafficking that fuels Africa’s wars, fight the spread of AIDS that may make 40 million children into orphans and help all of Africa share in the trade and promise of the modern world.

We must work toward a world that trades in freedom, a world where prosperity is available to all through the power of markets, a world where open trade spurs the process of economic and legal reform, a world of cooperation to enhance prosperity, protect the environment and lift the quality of life for all.

We must confront the shared security threats of regimes that thrive by creating instability, that are ambitious for weapons of mass destruction and are dangerously unpredictable.

In Europe, you are closer to these challenges than the United States.

You see the lightening well before we hear the thunder. Only together, however, can we confront the emerging threats of a changing world.

Fifty years ago, all Europe looked to the United States for help. Ten years ago, Poland did as well. Now we and others can only go forward together.

The question no longer is what others can do for Poland, but what America and Poland and all of Europe can do for the rest of the world.

(APPLAUSE) In the early 1940s, Winston Churchill saw a world war and a cold war to a greater project. “Let the great cities of Warsaw and Prague and Vienna banish despair even in the midst of their agony,” he said. “Their liberation is sure. The day will come when the joy bells will ring again throughout Europe and when victorious nations, masters not only of their foes, but of themselves, will plan and build in justice, in tradition and in freedom a house of many mansions where there will be room for all.”

To his contemporaries who lived in Europe of division and violence, this vision must have seemed unimaginable. Yet, our fathers, yours and mine, struggled and sacrificed to make this vision real.

Now it is in our grasp. Today, a new generation makes a new commitment: a Europe and an America bound in a great alliance of liberty, history’s greatest united force for peace and progress and human dignity.

The bells of victory have rung. The Iron Curtain is no more. Now we plan and build the house of freedom, whose doors are open to all of Europe’s peoples and whose windows look out to global challenges beyond.

Our progress is great, our goals are large, and our differences, in comparison, are small.

(APPLAUSE)

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And America, in calm and in crisis, will honor this vision and the values we share.

Poland in so many ways is a symbol of renewal and common purpose. More than a half a century ago, from this spot, all one could see was a desert of ruins; hardly did a single unbroken brick touch another. The city has been razed by the Nazis and betrayed by the Soviets. Its people were mostly displaced.

Not far from here is the only monument which survived. It is the figure of Christ falling under the cross and struggling to rise. Under him are written the words, “circum corda (ph)” -- lift up your hearts. From the determination in Polish hearts, Warsaw did rise again, brick by brick. Poland has regained its rightful place at the heart of a new Europe, and is helping other nations to find their own.

Lift up your hearts is the story of Poland. Lift up your hearts is the story of a new Europe.

And together let us raise this hope of freedom for all who seek it in our world.

God bless.

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Ambassador Daniel Fried (Ret.)

In his forty-year Foreign Service career, Ambassador Fried played a key role in designing and implementing American policy in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. As Special Assistant and NSC Senior Director for Presidents Clinton and Bush, Ambassador to Poland, and Assistant Secretary of State for Europe (2005-09), Ambassador Fried crafted the policy of NATO enlargement to Central European nations and, in parallel, NATO-Russia relations, thus advancing the goal of Europe whole, free, and at peace. During those years, the West’s community of democracy and security grew in Europe. Ambassador Fried helped lead the West’s response to Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine starting in 2014: as State Department Coordinator for Sanctions Policy, he crafted U.S. sanctions against Russia, the largest U.S. sanctions program to date, and negotiated the imposition of similar sanctions by Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia. Having retired from the Foreign Service in April, 2017, Ambassador Fried is currently a Distinguished Fellow with the Atlantic Council and a visiting professor at Warsaw University.

Ambassador Fried became one of the U.S. government’s foremost experts on Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. While a student, he lived in Moscow, majored in Soviet Studies and History at Cornell University (BA magna cum laude 1975) and received an MA from Columbia’s Russian Institute and School of International Affairs in 1977. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service later that year, serving overseas in Leningrad (Human Rights, Baltic affairs, and Consular Officer), and Belgrade (Political Officer); and in the Office of Soviet Affairs in the State Department.

As Polish Desk Officer in the late 1980s, Fried was one of the first in Washington to recognize the impending collapse of Communism in Poland, and helped develop the immediate response of the George H.W. Bush Administration to these developments. As Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw (1990-93), Fried witnessed Poland’s difficult but ultimately successful free market, democratic transformation, working with successive Polish governments.

Ambassador Fried also served as the State Department’s first Special Envoy for the Closure of the Guantanamo (GTMO) Detainee Facility. He established procedures for the transfer of individual detainees and negotiated the transfers of 70 detainees to 20 countries, with improved security outcomes.

Dan Fried has been married to Olga Karpiw since 1979; they have two children (Hannah and Sophie), and are the besotted grandparents of Ava Helen Fried Hanley.

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