I confess to experiencing a
sympathetic déjà vu vis-à-vis
Professor Francis Bowen when Mr. Tismaneanu, instead of addressing my arguments
and evidence regarding the reality of Romanian defiance and the concrete impact
of its “separate course” as reflected in the internal documents of the USSR,
East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, claims ever more
stridently that the Romanian communist leadership “never ever tried to go
beyond the limits permitted by the Kremlin.” (Tismaneanu 12/5/13,
contributors.ro) Although Soviet Central Committee documents regularly
described Romania’s “special course” as inflicting “serious damage” upon
Kremlin policy within the alliance, within the socialist community, and
globally, Mr. Tismaneanu continues to insist adamantly that Moscow only
considered Romania “a sometimes annoying mosquito” and that the Kremlin never
perceived any “major geopolitical risk or an alternate model of socialism” in
Romania’s independent policy. Let me address these claims in reverse order.
Moscow did
in fact express repeated concern that Romania, together with China, would set
up a alternate socialist model that would compete with the USSR, at least from
1965 and throughout the 1970s, and the translated Soviet documents that discuss
this obsession can be found in Cold War International History Project Working
Paper #65 on the website of the Woodrow Wilson Center. (CWIHP Working Paper
#65, www.wilsoncenter.org, 12/2012) In
May 1968 Soviet Defense Minister Marshal Grechko stated unequivocally that the
Soviet alliance could not survive Romania’s departure. (Matthew J. Ouimet, The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine
in Soviet Foreign Policy (2003)) My source for this, by the way, is today
senior analyst for Russia and Eurasia in the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence
and Research.
The USSR suffered a major
geopolitical loss because of Romanian mediation of US-Chinese relations – which
in turn shifted the balance of global forces. As President Nixon stated to his
National Security Council in August 1969, “We have always assumed that the
Chinese are hard liners and the Soviets are more reasonable. [But] Ceauşescu
says that the Soviets are tougher and more aggressive than the Chinese. We must
look at China on a long term basis.” (US State Department 14/8/69, history.state.gov)
Romanian mediation between Egypt
and Israel was also instrumental in the Soviet “loss” of Egypt, which both the
CIA and KGB concluded was the strategically most important state in the Middle
East at the time. (KGB report cited in CIA, 12/1/86, foia.cia.gov) Moscow was
not able to recover from either loss for the rest of the Cold War. So much for
the Romanian “mosquito” and its inconsequence for European and global politics.
In light of
the above, there would seem to be little evidentiary basis for Mr. Tismaneanu’s
claim that Communist Romania “never ever tried to go beyond the limits
permitted by the Kremlin.” However, let’s suspend credulity and entertain the
possibility a moment longer. The most plausible argument for such a claim is
the fact that Romania never left the Warsaw Pact alliance before the collapse
of communism. But was this because of lack of Soviet permission? Romania was
never offered an alternative military alliance. And the one it did have, as
objectionable as it was to Romanian leaders and policy, did in fact also
constrain its partners, and did grant it access to some of their inner
councils.
Would complete security isolation,
surrounded by an alliance that was clearly antagonistic to it, have served
Romanian interests better? I do not think so. Neither did any of the
responsible Romanian leaders. But then, reasonable people may differ. In any
case, as I try to show in Extorting Peace: Romania and the End of the Cold War, 1978-1989, and especially in its last five chapters, by remaining
within the Warsaw Pact and exercising its influence upon alliance and Soviet
military policy, Romania was able to accomplish much for which Europe and the
US should be grateful.
After 1963 the notion that the
Kremlin could control Romanian behavior was discredited within both
intelligence and academic circles in the United States and Europe. The notion
reemerged sporadically but with no effect on US policy during the 1970s, and
became a serious proposition only with Romania’s international isolation during
the latter 1980s. In other words, the claim of Kremlin control over Romania
behavior was made credible only because no one bothered to examine it seriously
any longer; just as a closer look today readily reveals the flimsiness of new
raiment on that old emperor.
I find the arrogance of those who
insist that the US was gullible and naïvely manipulated by communist leaders in
Bucharest into perceiving a Romanian independence that did not exist
stupefying. Do not misunderstand me. I have my own catalog of what I consider
to be egregious policy choices that the United States is making or has made in
the recent and more distant past. But that is not our subject here. And,
frankly, I am much more comfortable critiquing the policy choices of states
other than my own (so sue me.)
I can readily accept the hypothesis
that this or that US administration was “fooled” by this or that foreign state
or leader on this or that policy. I can even accept the remote possibility that
two administrations of the same political coloring may have fallen into the
same trap on a particular policy. Although Americans justly pride themselves on
the degree and breadth of excellence with which chief executives have
surrounded themselves traditionally, we are, after all, only human.
But to maintain that presidential
administrations from Kennedy to Reagan (President Reagan during his first term)
– which include three democratic administrations and three republican
administrations – were all “fooled” by communist Romania would fail the minimal
plausibility requirements of the novels currently read by my nine-year-old
daughter. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln phrased the bar to credulity on this claim
best when he said: “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and you
can fool all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people
all of the time.” You just cannot. And you especially cannot when the party to
be fooled possesses the combined intelligence-gathering and analytical capabilities
of the United States.
Consider the following, more serious
assessments. In March 1968 the CIA concluded that “It is now clear that –
beyond the requirements of a simple prudence – the Romanians have never set any
particular limits, on what they plan to do; it is the Soviets who must set the
limits, or at least try.” The regime in Bucharest, “in fact, considers the USSR
in many ways to be the chief obstacle to the achievement of Romania’s national
goals and behaves accordingly,” acting “at times in ways which undercut Soviet
policies in areas only very indirectly related to the question of sovereignty.
(This seems to be the case, for example, in the Middle East.)” (CIA, 21/3/68,
foia.cia.gov)
This was not the opinion of some
lowly junior analyst that I managed to pull out of a mountain of documents
asserting the contrary. It was an assessment bearing the signature of Abbot
Smith, the chairman of the CIA’s Board of National Estimates and, arguably, the
most senior and influential analyst in the US intelligence community. His
predecessor, Sherman Kent, who is rightly considered the godfather of modern
analysis by intelligence professionals in the US, considered Romania a de facto
partner after it tore a hole in the electronic curtain that had previously
blocked Western broadcasts from reaching into the USSR. This was yet another
strategic blow delivered by Bucharest that earned it ranking as one of the
“main subversive centers” alongside the United States, the Federal Republic of
Germany, and Israel, a ranking it preserved in KGB documents as late as
November 1989. (CWIHP Working Paper #65, www.wilsoncenter.org,
12/2012)
Looking back over a lifetime of
assessing the Soviet Bloc, another senior CIA analyst noted in the 1980s that
Romania’s “particularly risky” independence had “successfully redefined the
role of a member of the Bloc, maintaining ties that are mostly formal and
confining Soviet influence almost entirely to the negative,” while “all of its
moves and positions have been swallowed by the post-Stalin Soviet leaderships,
which sometimes seem less tolerant than simply outplayed.” According to the
retiring career officer, “all the East European states have benefited from
Romania’s insistence on (and the USSR’s recognition of) the right of members to
assert independent views in Bloc councils.” (CIA, 12/1/82, foia.cia.gov)
Regardless of what political odor
the Central Intelligence Agency and its analysts may currently enjoy (or
suffer), I would trust their time-tested assessments over those of Mr.
Tismaneanu even had I not read the internal Warsaw Pact documents that fully
confirm them. Assertions that Romania defiance and opposition during the Cold
War was insignificant and had no impact on the geopolitical confrontation
between East and West are simply wrong. Such assertions were debunked at the
time by reliable intelligence assessment, and their wrongheadedness has been
confirmed beyond doubt in the documents of the other Warsaw Pact members that have
come to light since the collapse of communism. No amount of denial or negation,
and no attempt at deception or prestidigitation will change that fundamental
reality.
During the mid-19th
century, Professor Bowen was hindered in the degree to which he could directly
respond to his attackers by considerations of professional and social prestige (none
of his attackers were academic experts, specialists in the field or, for that
matter, university professors.) Joyfully, I am not encumbered by such limitations.
Should Mr. Tismaneanu choose to emerge from behind his careful insinuations and
engage me directly on the arguments I present, he will find a willing partner
in public discussion.
But fear not, dear reader. I will
not hold my breath.
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