Russians tighten hold on Eastern Europe

Press, 19 October 1976, Page 20

Russians tighten hold on Eastern Europe

By

VICTOR ZORZA

in Washington

The election farce touched off in the United States by Mr Ford’s remark about Eastern Europe comes slap in the middle of a major Kremlin effort to restructure the Soviet Union’s relationship with its neighbours. The Secretary of the Communist Party, Mr Leonid Brezhnev let it be understood at the Party Congress in February that the time had come to reimpose the Soviet controls on EasternEurope which had been relaxed in recent years. “The growing rapprochement” between them, he said, had become a “lawgoverned process” — which means, in the Marxist jargon, that nothing would be allowed to stand in its way. The Soviet press has since described how that “rapprochement” is taking place, through the integration of economic as well as foreign policies, of military organisation as well as cultural development and ideology. Mr Ford said that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” but he has explained that what he really meant was that the United States “does not concede” such domination. What interests the Kremlin is not whether he made a slip of the tongue, but whether the United States will seek to interfere with the Soviet Union’s attempt to tighten its ties with Eastern Europe. The outcry which greeted Mr Ford’s gaffe, as well as the earlier protests in the United States against the “Sonnenfeldt doctrine,” must be a cause of serious concern in Moscow. When Mr Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Dr Kissinger’s principal assistant, was understood to say that the United States ought to acquiesce in the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the White House insisted that the official summary of the remarks he had made at a meeting of United States diplomats last December was inaccurate. But Mr Sonnenfeldt also said that the inorganic, unnatural relationship under which the Soviet Union held down Eastern Europe by sheer military force was a far greater danger to world peace than the conflict be-

tween East and. West, and that, if it is not changed, it could sooner or later explode, causing World War Three. No one made any great effort to deny this part of his remarks, which explained, in effect, why the United States did nothing about the Soviet invasion of Hungary under a Republican President, Eisenhower, and of Czechoslovakia under a Democratic President, Johnson. The Sonnenfeldt Doctrine merely re-stated the tacit understanding about spheres of influence w-hich had long existed between Washington and Moscow. In the fullness of time, the Moscow monthly “U.S.A.” produced the Kremlin’s considered response to “the fuss about the Sonnenfeldt Doctrine,” and it strongly attacked the assertion made in this column about the existence of tacit understandings. This was because Moscow was concerned that any such tacit understanding might be regarded as conceding spheres of influence not only to the Soviet Union but also to the United States — in Italy, for instance, or in some parts of Asia and Africa. The Sonnenfeldt Doctrine has now been overtaken by President Ford’s remark, and by Mr Carter’s response to it, which rejects the Soviet claim to a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, much as the Soviet journal rejected any implied United States claim. Speaking to a Polish-American audience in Chicago, Mr Carter recalled a statement he made several months ago, when little attention was paid to it. "Eastern Europe,” he now repeated, “can never be a stable region until those countries regain their independence.” Was he saying that a Carter administration would help them to do so? This country, Carter told another audience on the same day, “ought to do everything to encourage freedom in the presently dominated East European countries.” But he also explained that this should be done by promoting trade and tourist exchanges, and by offering them friendship and “support.” A Kremlin analyst would promptly ask

what Mr Carter means by “support.” But he would find no answer in Mr Carter’s own speeches, and would therefore turn to the writings of his foreign policy adviser, Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has often been accused by Moscow of plotting to detach Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union.

Mr Brzezinski was the originator, in the Johnson administration, of the policy of building “bridges” to Eastern Europe. To the Kremlin, this is almost as objectionable as the policy of “rolling back” Soviet power in Eastern Europe which was advocated by Mr John Foster Dulles. Both policies looked forward to the ultimate independent of Eastern Europe, as Mr Carter now does. What may therefore appear, in the United States,

as an argument about Mr Ford’s slip of the tongue must have revived, in the Kremlin, some of its worst fears of United States intentions. The reason why Soviet tanks invaded both Hungary and Czechoslovakia was that the Kremlin feared the infection of freedom which might spread from those countries to the Soviet Union itself. For Mr Ford and Mr Carter, the issue may be the “ethnic” vote in Chicago and Cleveland. For the Kremlin, the issue is whether the ethnic vote might influence future policy decisions. When the United States is overcome by election fever, the fears and concerns of other countries matter little to the politicians on the hustings. But wounds inflicted on other countries during United States election campaigns leave their scars.

and they can even open up again in times of crisis. I find much that is attractive in the foreign policies advocated by both Mr Carter and Mr Brzezinski — to the extent that I understand what they are — but I cannot say that I understand what a Carter administration’s policy on Eastern Europe would be. The more heat the controversy about Mr Ford’s remark generates, the less light it throws on the matter.

Now that he has extracted the greatest possible electoral advantage from the issue, Mr Carter ought to tell the voters what, if anything, he would do to help the countries of Eastern Europe “regain their independence,” and what risks this might entail — if any. The Kremlin’s policy, as developed by the Brezhnev administration, is to tie up

Eastern Europe in a new net of political interdependence, primarily through economic integration — and, if this fails, to use tanks, as it did in Czechoslovakia. The next administration’s policy on Eastern Europe has become a major issue in the election. If Mr Carter is made to spell out his policy, both the electorate and the Kremlin might come to know what to expect — and, just conceivably, the ethnic voters might receive some worthwhile promises in return for all those votes they are supposed to be switching to Mr Carter. United States policy on Eastern Europe can be more productive than the Ford administration’s has been, without being necessarily more provocative. But it has to be defined first. (Copyright 1976, Victor Zorza)