1999 (25 page)

It is those popular uprisings, not the champagne toasts at Warsaw Pact conferences, that represent the fundamental political reality of Eastern Europe. Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, East Germans, Romanians, and Bulgarians are strong peoples, and they are our allies in the U.S.–Soviet competition. Our strategy for peaceful competition must capitalize on their strength.

East European communist leaders are pulled in opposite directions by two factors, their desire for legitimacy in the eyes of their peoples and their dependence on the Soviet Union to stay in power. These governments are not legitimate. They were imposed by Soviet arms, and they are maintained by Soviet arms. No one in these countries—not even the members of their governments—would dispute these facts. As a result, East European communist leaders have a desperate desire to be seen as legitimate rulers. It is the central preoccupation of every East European communist leader I have ever met.

This acute insecurity came through with eloquent clarity in the narrative of the climactic events of the Hungarian uprising in the memoirs of András Hegedüs, the Stalinist Prime Minister of the country at the time. He wrote: “I . . . got to my feet and looked out of the window: I could see that the head of the demonstration
had reached the middle of the Margaret Bridge [on the way to the government's building]. It was a terrifying sight. Even if I had not seen it coming, I should then have realized that here was national resistance developing against the central leadership and against the policies of the old leaders, including myself. I saw quite clearly—this is it, the people are coming.”

East European communist leaders face a difficult dilemma. Legitimacy can come only from greater national independence or better economic performance. Independence requires policies that distance the country from the Soviet Union. Economic growth requires reforms that depart from the Soviet model. Either would clearly displease the Soviet leaders—and it is at their pleasure that the rulers of Eastern Europe hold office. This basic tension produces different kinds of communist leaders in Eastern Europe. Some, like Hegedüs, tie themselves inextricably to Moscow. Most seek to create a margin of independence without severing their lifeline to Moscow or prompting a Soviet invasion. And like Dubček, a few genuinely want to change the system from within.

Eastern Europe today is ripe for positive peaceful change. In 1983, I traveled throughout Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia and met with several Eastern-bloc leaders and hundreds of private citizens. One message came through loud and clear: doctrinaire communism was dead as a motivating force. That was clear in the sullen manner in which common people pursued their lives. It was even clearer in the conversations I had with East European leaders. They recognized the fact that a fundamental incompatibility existed between the interests of their countries and those of the Soviet Union and that the Soviet model of economic development was irrelevant in Eastern Europe.

Soviet-style economic planning has failed to provide the peoples of Eastern Europe even with the basic necessities of life. In stark contrast to their neighbors in Western Europe, these countries have literally entered a period of economic decline. In the 1980s, their economies have grown less than one percent per year. Since their populations have been growing at a more rapid pace, the standard of living has been dropping. The countries of Eastern Europe have run up against a hard but inalterable fact: Rigid bureaucratic planning cannot create a dynamic economy. East European
countries must undertake fundamental economic reforms. Without them, they will sink into the quicksand of economic stagnation. To try to muddle through will only mire them more deeply.

There has been a total loss of faith among East European communists. Most today are careerists and bureaucrats. The will and confidence of the communist parties have been broken. Many of their leaders want to deviate from the Soviet economic model and to improve their own relations with the West in order to open up possibilities for internal reform. The rising generation of East Europeans are not ideologues but pragmatists—and pragmatism creates openings for peaceful change.

This is particularly true with Gorbachev in power. He has alienated East European leaders by calling for greater coordination among Eastern-bloc economies and by ending the Soviet subsidies on some exports, like oil. But his policy of Glasnost will reduce, not increase, his control over Eastern Europe. His call for greater openness in public criticism will lead inevitably to pressure within East European countries and communist parties to put more distance between themselves and Moscow. Gorbachev might intend his Glasnost campaign to serve as a safety valve for popular dissatisfaction and as a weapon against his political foes. He might not mean his rhetoric to be taken literally, but it will be so understood in Eastern Europe.

If the Soviet Union and its clients respond to the challenges before them with half measures, they might make marginal progress for a time, but they will not be able to energize the peoples in Eastern Europe to support their governments. That failure will generate still more pressure for greater changes. Since World War II, the tectonic plate of Soviet imperialism has been pushing against that of Eastern European nationalism. These forces have produced tremors in the past, but unprecedented pressures will build up along the fault line in the 1990s. Without genuine reform, a political earthquake in Eastern Europe is inevitable in the years before 1999.

Gorbachev has announced a willingness to allow his East European satellites to pursue independent approaches to internal reform. But he has also made clear that two limits must be observed. The communist system must remain intact, and ultimate control
by the Soviet Union must remain unquestioned. What he fails to realize is that stagnation in Eastern Europe stems not just from the idiocies of communist economic systems; it also results from the heavy hand of Soviet imperialism. Before the American Civil War, freemen in the North produced far more per capita than slaves in the South. Oppression, not only of individuals but also of nations, breeds social and economic stagnation. East European peoples will not break out of this inertia until they achieve a real degree of control over their national destinies.

Our challenge is to formulate a strategy to increase the chances that from these inherent pressures will emerge positive peaceful change. We must first clarify what our policy should
not
be. We must not make it our goal to create states in Eastern Europe which are aligned against and openly hostile to the Soviet Union. Nor should it be our policy to destabilize these countries by supporting freedom fighters within their borders. Given the Soviet Union's overwhelming military superiority in the region, that would be nothing more than offering freedom fighters up for slaughter.

Our long-term goal should be to create independent states that have open societies domestically and that pose no threat to the Soviet Union. In a sense, our goal is to “Finlandize” the countries of Eastern Europe. Our policy should be to encourage the people of Eastern Europe to push for incremental increases in their freedom and to create incentives for their governments to grant those freedoms and to push for incremental increases in their independence from the Soviet Union. Moscow cannot invade an East European country every time its people increase the scope of free communications or every time its government allows market forces to exert more influence in determining economic prices. We need to help foster a process of accumulating small, marginal gains. It might seem frustrating, even futile. Yet, it is the only way that these countries will ever achieve a measure of national freedom.

How can the United States encourage this process? A precondition for peaceful change is military deterrence. It is essential that the Soviet Union not be perceived as the supreme military power. As soon as the West demonstrates that it cannot be cowed into submission, the peoples of the East will seek to assert themselves
more actively. If the West cannot muster an adequate military deterrent to Soviet intimidation, we cannot expect East European peoples to defy the Kremlin.

Beyond deterrence, our strategy for peaceful change in Eastern Europe must have four elements. First, we must seek a relaxation of American–Soviet tensions. While many anticommunists in the West have reviled the policy of détente which I adopted as President in the early 1970s, the anticommunists in the East supported this approach wholeheartedly. International tension strengthens a dictatorship, and a relaxation of those tensions weakens a dictatorship. No one would deny that our policy of détente in the 1970s contributed greatly to the events which led to the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland.

Even one of the fiercest, though most responsible, critics of détente, Richard Pipes, conceded this point in writing about its effects on the Soviet system. He wrote that détente “undoubtedly accelerated the process by which society in the USSR began to resist controls.” He added that, for the Soviets, “To proclaim the Cold War over—even while repeating ad nauseam that the struggle between the two systems must go on to the bitter end—is to put in question the need in Russia for a repressive regime.” If détente had this effect in the Soviet Union, its impact in Eastern Europe was tenfold greater.

A relaxation of tensions undermines the rationale for communist governments. As it is, the communists of Eastern Europe have a lot of explaining to do. They have to explain why they have subordinated themselves to Moscow, why they repress political and intellectual freedom, why they cannot overcome economic backwardness, and why they permit social privilege based on political position. They justify all of this in terms of the supposed military threat from the West. Better American–Soviet relations make this argument unsustainable. Communist rule is exposed as the rule of naked force. This inexorably pushes the communists to seek legitimacy through reform or greater national independence.

Second, we must seek to maximize Western contact with the peoples of Eastern Europe. A relaxation of superpower tensions facilitates greater contact. But we must vigorously pursue it. We should increase our trade and our cultural-exchange programs with
Eastern Europe. We should devote more resources to foreign radio broadcasting into the area. The more contact we have with the East, the more we open it to the force of the example of the West. That is a force which even the communist elites will have difficulty resisting.

Moreover, these countries face great problems for which the Soviet Union has no solutions to offer. In the years before 1999, for example, Eastern Europe will confront a major ecological crisis. While the West has grappled with the problem of industrial pollution for twenty years, Soviet-bloc countries have totally ignored it. The nightmare forecasts of American environmentalists in the 1960s could very well come about in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Beset with its own ecological problem, Moscow has nothing to offer Eastern Europe in this area. We in the West do—and we should take the initiative because through our actions we can significantly improve the quality of life of the peoples of Eastern Europe.

Third, we must seek a reduction in American and Soviet conventional forces in Europe. The less military force the Soviet Union has in Eastern Europe, the less control it has over Eastern Europe. Moscow has no troops in Romania, and Romania will not give Moscow the right to station any there in peacetime. That has given Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu the ability to diverge from Soviet positions on international issues. While no one would claim that his domestic policies are anything but severely repressive, no one can deny that he has carved out a real measure of national independence in foreign policy. We must therefore make conventional arms reductions a major focus of arms control.

Fourth, we must seek to work with East European communist leaders who want to implement genuine reforms. There are those who argue that a communist is a communist and that all East European leaders are beyond the pale. In this view, the United States should break all contacts with these regimes. That is the worst mistake we could make. It is essential that we always keep in mind that some of the greatest challenges to Soviet control over Eastern Europe have arisen
within
the satellite communist parties. Marshal Tito sprang Yugoslavia from the Soviet bloc in 1948. Imre Nagy led the Hungarian rebellion in 1956. Wladyslav Gomulka
faced Khrushchev down on the key issue of agricultural collectivization in Poland in 1956. Enver Hoxha split Albania away from the Soviet Union in 1961. Ceausescu distanced Romania from the Soviet line on some international issues in the 1960s. Dub
ek brought about the Prague Spring in 1968. Edward Gierek's regime agreed to negotiate an agreement with the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1979. Janos Kadar has instituted a gradual liberalization of the Hungarian economy during the 1980s.

This does not mean that East European communist leaders are closet Jeffersonian democrats who can hardly wait to hold town meetings. But it does mean that we should not ignore the possibilities inherent in the conflicts between Soviet communists and East European communists. The key is to differentiate between those leaders who are interested in genuine reform and those who are not. We should calibrate our policies to their behavior. If an East European regime adopts more liberal policies or distances itself from Moscow, we should encourage its leaders with better economic relations with the West, which their countries need so desperately.