The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2008

the events of August was not a shining moment in the annals of Ameri- can diplomacy. Well aware by the summer of 1968 that the United States could not use military force to help Czechoslovakia, the Johnson administration was anxious to deflect any charge that we were involved in developments there. Only with reluc- tance, and to be able to respond to Republican criticism, did Secretary of State Dean Rusk summon Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin on a single occasion to say that public opin- ion in the United States was “begin- ning” to view the situation with alarm. In reality, our use of force was pre- cluded. In addition, a compelling rea- son for this exaggerated restraint was the hope of Lyndon Johnson and Rusk to conclude an ill-starred admin- istration with a trip to Leningrad, where Johnson and Soviet Premier Kosygin would promote détente and arms control. This would have per- mitted Johnson to leave office as a peacemaker. The Soviets milked this desire with their customary craft. On the night of Aug. 19, with the invasion about to commence, Dobry- nin, Washington’s favorite Russian, conveyed Kosygin’s invitation to a happy LBJ while quaffing champagne on the presidential yacht Sequoia . When Dobrynin called at the White House the next evening to inform Johnson and Rusk that Soviet forces were entering Czechoslovakia, the president thanked Dobrynin for his courtesy, promised to study the diplo- matic note with great attention and to be back in touch. After that there was good will and even some shared laughter. The first telegrams the department sent warned our allies not to overreact. Supposedly excitable West Germans were especially advised to keep away from the frontier. Our representatives in international meetings, especially those concerning disarmament or arms control, were not to raise this allegedly extraneous matter unless the Soviets did so first, in which case our representatives were to keep their responses brief. Speaking to Dobrynin, Rusk referred to Czechoslovakia as a “dead fish” with which we had been slapped in the face. More than once, he in- formed third-country officials that we had raised the issue in the United Nations only because a small country had been attacked. We had not en- joyed good relations, he was careful to point out. While Rusk’s caution was perhaps understandable, it was regrettable that he was unable to recognize that the Prague Spring, now crushed by an invader’s heels, had reflected the ardent aspirations of an entire nation. We had no way to help the Czechs, who had no useful friends and only disaffected “brothers,” but we still should have sought a more appropri- ate way to express our dissatisfaction. The Legacy In New York, our representative in the United Nations, George Ball, did take note that the Soviet forces seemed to have come to Czechoslo- vakia searching for someone who had invited them. He commented that their brotherly help recalled the assis- tance Cain had given Abel. Even this mild sarcasm brought a pained lament from Dobrynin to Rusk. What did the Prague Spring achi- eve, aside from arousing false hopes in a country doomed to 20 more years of dictatorship? In November 1969, Embassy Moscow reported that the USSR had achieved all of its objectives in Czechoslovakia at an acceptably low cost. Most scholars thereafter agreed. But the Russians paid a price for their shock tactics. In China, especial- ly after the battle on the Ussuri River in the spring of 1969 and a Soviet hint that Chinese nuclear facilities at Lop Nor might be surgically removed, the Czechoslovak experience must have contributed to Beijing’s growing awareness that the Soviet threat was not merely theoretical. This facilitated Richard Nixon’s strategic break- through to China. Moreover, the memory of the spring was not lost to human rights watchers in Helsinki after the Soviets achieved their wish for a conference on security and cooperation in Europe. Although the Brezhnev Doctrine was alive and well, memories of the Czechoslovak resistance made it more difficult for Moscow to contem- plate the use of force against Poland. (The same cast of characters in Moscow should have remembered that lesson in 1979 before plunging into Afghanistan, where resistance would prove to be anything but pas- sive.) Obviously, Moscow was still the decider in that part of Europe. Only when a new generation was in office there, and when the Soviet Union was beset with other problems, could there be a Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Jack Matlock, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, has written that Gorbachev was hoping the process would resemble the Prague Spring. If so, he was self- deceived, but we are all better off for the deception. n J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 57 Dobrynin conveyed Kosygin’s invitation to a happy LBJ while quaffing champagne on the presidential yacht Sequoia .