HAVEL, NATO, AND RUSSIA
by
Michael Stenton
President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic has given another very bad speech. Addressing a meeting of the prime ministers of nine former communist countries seeking NATO membership and Croatia in Bratislava on May 11, he presented his justifications for expanding American military power and excluding Russia from Europe.
New NATO has a certain logic that should be plain to everyone. America cannot remain the world's unrivalled superpower unless she leads in Europe. As the European Union hardens this will be increasingly difficult, and it would already have become impossible without a NATO policy in Eastern Europe that could legitimate and conciliate German aspirations without providing motive or opportunity for Russo-German rapprochement. Hence the expansion of NATO. But the costs--ideological overdrive, Balkan adventures and the acquisition and rearmament of a club of anti-Russian states--may have consequences that go far beyond the original motive. American policy-making does not generate long and complex plans, but it has an almost horticultural vigor. It starts with a series of ideological suggestions that, unless weeded out early, congeal as imperatives into a rigid structure which can then function on automatic pilot as a political engine. Vietnam showed how hard it can be to stop. On the Russian front we are well into stage two--with a confrontational political engine in sight as stage three. Furthermore, American policy is not the sum of White House intentions: NATO leaders, media corporations and favored NGOs can all push or, less often, resist. Havel is not just a minor NATO leader, he is still a sort of one-man NGO. As a politician he has lost his sparkle and is no longer inspirational, but a hard-earned reputation such as his is always useful to the very powerful and he is aware of it.
Havel evidently knows the obvious objections to New NATO. But he does not give clarifying answers, he offers myths and pretence. He claims, for example, that NATO is a "truly regional" alliance that will eventually fit into a "future multipolar world order." But he does not say what or where the other pole (or poles!) will be, which is shrewd of him since the signs of this multipolarity are lacking and the present reality is that we have just one military superpower, which Havel wants to strengthen. NATO is about to ungrade Czech airfields to take large U.S. troop transporters. These, Mr. Havel, are transit facilities. Transit to where? Havel does not say. But the moral destination is identity:
The European post-communist countries truly belong to the West--geographically, historically, culturally as well as in terms of their values. Thus they have every right to stress that they were torn out of the Western community by force and that their natural place is within that community.
This seems fair enough for the Czechs, if we can overlook the little local difficulty they were having with their "Western" neighbors 1938-45 when so rudely interrupted by the Asiastic horde. But should we overlook it? The Soviet bloc states were not cut out of the West by the Soviet Union: They were all under Nazi control when the Red Army arrived. Was Nazi Europe "the West"? Was the Soviet tyranny after 1948 more damaging than Nazi occupation or even, to go three centuries further back, the Habsburg clerical tyranny after the battle of the White Mountain in 1620? Or is there some special dispensation for damage inflicted by Germans which does not apply to Stalin's henchmen? Few thought so in 1945. Besides, it would be merely silly to say that Bulgarians and Romanians--even Ukrainians could qualify providing they turn against Moscow and embrace NATO--were "torn out" of the West in 1945. They were never considered "western" before Communism: they were torn out of the Christian West--the Christendom to the west of Asia--long ago. The Mongols destroyed Kiev in 1240, and the Balkan peoples had their national potential shattered by the Ottoman victories at Kosovo in 1389 and Nikopolis in 1392. This laceration was far worse than Soviet control of Czechoslovakia after 1948. (But the heartland Europe is invariably sniffy about the Christian "reconquistas" whether in Spain, Muscovy or the Balkans.) Let us put aside the term "West" for a moment. The 20th-century story is that Russia itself was removed from the community of European nations by the Bolsheviks; Germany by the Nazis in 1933; the Czechs by Nazi occupation in March 1939; and Spain by Franco at the same period. Havel wants them all in NATO, except Russia.
Is Havel again an underground writer using one name as code for another? He offers this on Russia:
Those who lack order in themselves, or at home, try to impose some kind of a substitute concept of order on everybody else. Distrust of oneself and uncertainty about one's own identity necessarily generate a distrust of others, imputation of evil intentions to the rest of the world and, eventually, an aggressiveness that may result in the invasion of other people's territories, or at the least in forcing one's own domination upon those who do not desire it.
This cuts two ways. It sounds like the USA, as the author must know. Even if Havel means to analyze "eternal" Russia, let us apply his formula to the present. Cechnya is Russian territory. It is plain that the Russians were extremely reluctant to fight for it, and did so for the sake of the principle of federation sovereignty. Alexander Lebed's peace policy was surely more intelligent and certainly more humane, and Russia may pay dearly for abandoning it, but the Chechen war was pragmatic. Havel's psychological profile fits NATO-land much better. The United States broke the agreement with Moscow not to expand NATO eastwards. After the seizure of Kosovo, U.S. intentions and justifications are acutely disturbing. Russia went out her way not to impute evil to NATO until events forced a change of judgment. An America ready to conciliate Russia in her time of weakness could have kept her word and achieved a truly civilizing detente. That chance was fully understood in Washington and deliberately thrown away.
Havel's idea of NATO territory--"the one that we call the West extends from Alaska in the west to Tallinn in the east." He is mistaken. NATO command and control does not operate in the United States. This is an important technicality. Europe would not be consulted if the U.S. wanted a nuclear exchange with China. In any case, Havel's 'Euro-Atlantic' alliance is a misnomer. Turkey is not an Atlantic power and is only marginally European. America is most certainly a Pacific power. American power stretches from the Philippines, Taiwan, Okinawa and Korea through the Americas, across Europe, through the Mediterranean and the Middle East and into the Indian Ocean. This is an area of land and sea that is vast beyond all comparison. It is in no sense regional. Like the British Empire it is commercial and strategic: it is not a geographical translation of spiritual sources. Today it stretches not just to Estonia but towards candidate countries that we don't talk about very much but which do receive whispered promises: Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan for example. Havel knows perfectly well that his list of Western values--reader, you know them--are these days widely asserted outside Europe. So he reverts to geography after all. Having boasted that values are even more defining for NATO than geography, he dances back to geography to defend the conclusion he wants: Russians out. For Havel, there must be a river in Eastern Europe--preferably, I suspect, the river Dnieper, but in principle, whichever river the U.S. State Department may care to name--which is wider than the Atlantic Ocean. Pan-Slavism was no doubt unhistorical, but a vast NATO billowing forth on a wave of cliches called values is no improvement.
Havel's Eurokitsch is considerable, but he says nothing to suggest why the European territory of the former Ottoman Empire is the West and Russia is not. Perhaps some Viennese scribbler in 1914 might have dared to called Turkey "Europa" and Russia "Asien," but are we to be reduced to such gibberish? Did we really survive the Cold war to receive new ambitions and geopolitical missions from voices mimicking the Mitteleuropa of yesteryear?
To be fair, Havel does not use this voice. He is as silent about Turkey as an unprovoked German. He admits that European Russia played an important part in European history. (And what a sense of history! Even at the start, Ivan III could warn a Viennese advocate of a papal crown for Russia: "My ancestors were friendly with the Emperors who gave Rome to the popes.") But it seems that Russia with Siberia and the Pacific territories is just too much for him. The vastness of Siberia, however, is not the real Russia. Russia is a European state with a lot of Asian real estate attached. Havel excludes Russia from the NATO "not because it [was] in any way inferior," but simply because we must have "clearly delimited regions" and "historically determined entities" without which "anything could extend anywhere" and "any balance would be disrupted" and all organizations become "absolutely toothless."
This is ludicrous. Can the man not hear his own arguments? The "West" is not a region; it is an intercontinental novelty; and Europe is simply not clearly delimited. USA/NATO is the object that can extend anywhere, and it is NATO that has shattered all semblance of balance. But Havel's crucial term is "toothless." He must have something that can bite Russia. All the rest is flim-flam:
The West has had, in essence, a common political and economic history emanating from the same set of spiritual sources. For many centuries the character of its civilization and its inner ethos equipped it to exert a major influence on all the other regions and to eventually predetermine the shape of the entire planetary civilization of today.
Perhaps. But which spiritual sources? The 12th-century renaissance, or the trained alacrity with which British sailors scampered around their naval guns? Havel knows well enough that the modern easy-approval values were simply not there "for many centuries." He would love to trace membership of a club for today to ancient spiritual sources but he knows he cannot be specific.
It is true the Latin West had more violent disagreement in its Christianity than did Greek Orthodoxy. The product was wild diversity. Free Bohemia, for example, was squashed by the Counter-Reformation. The free-speech liberalism of the English-speaking world was very different from the imperial conformism of the Habsburg Empire. Did this somehow amount to the same thing? There is no common political and economic history of the Latin West. Its unity was fractured centuries ago. The invocation of common "spiritual sources" is cultural kitsch; it is not meant to illuminate serious modern problems. We can concede Prague's claim to have long been at the center of Europe. But to what effect? Was the liberalism of 1848 in central Europe so much superior to the same trends in Russia before 1914? And if both failed, must only the failure in Russia be unforgivable when it comes to modern political maps? The Russians, it may be said, never voted for communism to anything like the extent that the Czechs did.
Havel knows that the imperialist crimes of the West constitute an historic objection to a Western military alliance that is no longer defensive. So he disapproves of imperialism in a phrase, and his disclaimer is hollow. He walks as if hypnotized towards the current reincarnation of imperial arrogance. He has become the leading "Soviet bloc" proponent of this arrogance, as if having embraced NATO he must make its worst actions the best proof of his wisdom. It may be that his natural anti-Soviet bitterness is growing more acute at the end of his life, and it is likely that the Germans, who are helping to satisfy Czech hunger for the fruits of capitalism, told him in no uncertain terms and at an early stage what they wanted; but it is likely that he has another strategic motive. Havel wants to ensure that no future line of political or economic division shall ever separates his people again from German central Europe, but he does not want to be alone with the Germans. Hence the showman's assiduity: his concern to be as conspicuous as possible to Washington. What other motive could he have for suggesting that Mrs. Albright should be his successor? The more America picks up the new Drang nach Osten, the more happy he is about it. Havel says that he abandoned his dream that NATO could fade away at the end of the Cold War in the late 80's, that is just before the "Velvet Revolution." Was there a quid pro quo, a bargain struck when he was identified by Western powers as a figurehead? He says that an alternative "structure" to NATO would have been costly, dangerous and would have created a power vacuum. But was there the least need for a "structure"? The Czechs are in NATO because they were wanted by specific powers and because they wanted to be patronized by the rich again. It had nothing to do, at least when it happened, with "defense." As for the power vacuum: NATO was the only thing generating the pressure to get itself sucked in. There were no other candidates. On this argument the Czechs joined NATO to prevent NATO getting sucked in. One can forgive the Czechs, Hungarians and Poles for wanting security from a Soviet Union that is no longer there. It is perfectly natural. But they should ask in whose interest it is to go on expanding.
Havel is a recognizable figure: a brave man who does not want a brave policy for his people. Edward Benes, the Czechoslovak leader in 1938 and 1948, had even more to be afraid of and he was just as determined to avoid a brave policy. In 1938, Benes surrendered at just the point he knew a British cabinet majority had challenged Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. In 1945, he groveled to the Soviets to give his people long-term protection against Germany. By the first decision he scuppered the chances of German military opposition to Hitler and achieved a disastrous postponement of the war in Europe, by the second decision he threw away what chance there was of Czechoslovakia keeping out of the Soviet zone. Benes was a very clever man solving the wrong problem. An educated blunderer. We must hope President Havel is more fortunate in his foolishness.
Russia is not, as Havel pretends, a vast Eurasian power that will "always" play a major role in the world balance of power. It once seemed so and perhaps Russia will recover the role, but today her future is entirely unclear. It may even become possible to destroy Russia as a major power. Her population is in demographic collapse and her mineral resources will almost certainly attract predators. Russia needs a European economic anchor, and some strategic reassurance, not a rerun of the Cold War in which former satellites exorcize their ghosts by arming themselves for the humanitarian interventions which become attractive as Russia decays. Does Havel want America, Germany or Turkey to feel the temptation? Provided the Czechs are safe, perhaps he does not mind. But his NATO cheerleading might have alarming consequences.
Dr. Stenton, an occasional contributor to Chronicles, is Director of Studies of The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies. He writes from London.
Copyright 2001, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org
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