The Brezhnev Doctrine: Alive and Well
<http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=712>
*by Srdja Trifkovic*
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=712#more-712
On August 21, 1968—40 years ago today—the Soviet army entered
Czechoslovakia, followed by smaller contingents from four other Warsaw
Pact countries. The occupation ("Operation Danube") marked the end of
the Prague Spring <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/155500.stm>,
a doomed attempt by Alexander Dubcek
<http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780198781646/01student/biographies/alexander_dubcek>'s
reformist faction of the Czechoslovak Communist Party to build
"socialism with a human face."
Ideological justification for the intervention was provided by the
Brezhnev Doctrine
<http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1968brezhnev.html>, which was
defined by its author <http://www.historyguide.org/europe/brezhnev.html>
as the obligation of the socialist countries to ensure that their
"freedom for determining the ways of advance of their respective
countries" should not "damage either socialism in their country or the
fundamental interests of other socialist countries":
The sovereignty of a socialist country cannot be opposed to the
interests of the world of socialism … [T]he norms of law cannot be
interpreted narrowly, formally, in isolation from the general
context of class struggle in the modern world… Czechoslovakia's
detachment from the socialist community would have clashed with its
own vital interests and would have been detrimental to the other
socialist states… Discharging their internationalist duty toward the
fraternal peoples of Czechoslovakia and defending their own
socialist gains, the USSR and the other socialist states had to act
decisively.
This doctrine was applied de facto by the Soviets in Berlin in 1953 and
in Hungary in 1956, but only over Czechoslovakia in 1968 was it clearly
defined: by entering the "socialist community of nations," its members
implicitly accepted that the USSR—the leader of the "socialist camp"—
was not only the enforcer of the rules but also the judge of whether and
when an intervention was warranted. No country would be allowed to leave
the Warsaw Pact <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact>, or challenge
its communist party's monopoly on power.
Thirty years after Prague 1968 the USSR was gone and the Warsaw Pact
dismantled, with NATO expanding into its former heartland. The
principles of the Brezhnev Doctrine were not defunct, however. They were
given a new life in the liberal guise. In 1991 the Maastricht Treaty
accelerated the erosion of EU member countriess' sovereignty by the
Brussels regime of unelected bureaucrats. On this side of the ocean the
passage of NAFTA was followed in 1995 the Uruguay round of GATT that
gave us the WTO. The nineties laid the foundation for the new
international order. By early 1999 the process was sufficiently far
advanced for President Bill Clinton to claim
<http://www.freeserbia.net/Documents/Kosovo/Clinton8.html> that, had it
not bombed Serbia, "NATO itself would have been discredited for failing
to defend the very values that give it meaning." This was but oner way
of restating Brezhnev's dictum that "the norms of law cannot be
interpreted narrowly, formally, in isolation from the general context of
the modern world." The international system in existence ever since the
Peace of Westphalia <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/westphal.htm> was
signed in 1648 was dead as far as the United States was concerned.
The old system based on state sovereignty
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sovereignty> was imperfect and often
violated, but nevertheless it provided the basis for international
discourse from which but few powers had openly deviated. The key
difference between Brezhnev and Clinton was in the limited scope of the
Soviet leader's self-awarded outreach. His doctrine applied only to the
"socialist community," as opposed to the unlimited, potentially
world-wide scope of "defending the values that give NATO meaning." Like
his Soviet predecessor, Clinton used an abstract and ideologically
loaded notion as the pretext to act as he deemed fit, but no "interests
of world socialism" could beat "universal human rights" when it came to
determining where and when to intervene. The "socialist community" led
by Moscow stopped on the Elbe. It was replaced by the "International
Community <http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entires/q_georgia>" led by
Washington, which stops nowhere. The credentials of a "democracy" are
easy to establish in this scheme: democratic governments act in
accordance with the will of the international community—like the late
Franjo Tudjman, say. When they don't, they are /ipso facto/ undemocratic
and liable to punishment. The less logic and predictability, the
stronger the position of the Hegemon.
Today, forty years after Prague 1968, we have the Bush Doctrine
<http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.15845/pub_detail.asp>, a mature
synthesis of Brezhnev's and Clinton's legacy. Initially, when
Afghanistan was invaded in 2001, Bush merely asserted the right of the
U.S. to treat countries that harbor or help terrorist groups as
terrorists themselves. Within a year his emerging doctrine included
additional elements: preventive war asserted the right of the United
States to depose foreign regimes deemed detrimental to its security even
if that threat was not immediate (Iraq); while "promoting democracy," by
force if need be, came to be treated as a legitimate strategy for
combating the spread of terrorism.
The formal codification came in The National Security Strategy
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2002/index.html> unveiled in
September 2002, which presented the specter of open-ended political,
military, and economic domination of the world by the United States
acting unilaterally. The strategy defined two main categories of
enemies: "rogue states" and "potentially hostile powers." Both warranted
preemptive strikes "by direct and continuous action using all the
elements of national and international power… We will not hesitate to
act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting
pre-emptively." The United States would not only will confront "evil and
lawless regimes" but will put an end to "destructive national
rivalries." To that end, the administration pledged "to keep military
strength beyond challenge, thereby making the destabilizing arms races
of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other
pursuits of peace." As AEI's Thomas Donnelly triumphantly asserted
<http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.15845/pub_detail.asp> in early
2003, "Any comprehensive U.S. 'threat assessment' would conclude that
the normal constraints of international politics—counterbalancing
powers—no longer immediately inhibit the exercise of American might."
This doctrine still stands as the ideological basis and fully developed
self-referential framework for the policy of permanent global
interventionism. Unlike Brezhnev and Clinton, however, Bush has added
divine sanction to his doctrine: "History has called America and our
allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to
fight freedom's fight," he announced in his 2002 State of the Union
address; "We've come to know truths that we will never question: Evil is
real, and it must be opposed. Rarely has the world faced a choice more
clear or consequential." By postulating America as "the good," and those
who resist her will as the incarnation of evil, and by telling the rest
of the world that the choice is clear and had to be be made, the
President precluded any meaningful debate about the correlation between
ends and means of American power: we are not only wise but virtuous; our
policies are shaped by values, not by prejudices.
The two "American" doctrines suffer from the same problem, however, as
the Brezhnev Doctrine that we are remembering today. Each act of
resistance, however costly for the defender, undermines the hegemon's
credibility and self-confidence. After 1968, just beneath the drab
surface of "Real Socialism," anti-Sovietism was rampant. Back then, and
for almost two decades thereafter, members of the Politburo were old,
sluggish, devoid of fresh ideas, and oblivious to the long-term
challenges to their hegemony. The neoconservative strategists who run
the show under Bush and who will continue running it under McCain are,
by contrast, hyperactive and still convinced that hegemony can be
maintained as the divinely-ordained, morally mandated, open-ended and
self-justifying mission for decades to come.
The Soviets were dull and dumb. Their heirs in Washington are insane;
and /quos deus vult perdere, dementat prius/. There is hope.
