Britain and the other Europe

Timothy Garton Ash

At the end of the second world war, Winston Churchill spoke of his vision of a united Europe: a community of free peoples in sovereign nation states, a 'Europe of peoples' from Scandinavia to the Balkans and Portugal to Poland. Mrs Thatcher recalled this vision in her party political broadcast for last week's 'Euro- elections'. Yet Churchill's vision was con- founded, long before the first debates on the EEC or de Gaulle's 'Non', by the effec- tive imposition of the Soviet system on cen- tral and eastern Europe in the immediate post-war years. The coincidence of 'Euro- elections' and the anniversary of D-Day gives us cause to look again at Britain's relations with that other Europe.

Evidently, Britain does not have as close geographical or historical ties with central and eastern Europe as do West Germany and France. Nonetheless, the three leading states of the West European community share their broad approach to relations with the other Europe — and increasingly coordinate their specific policies. As ex- plained by senior officials, our common premise is that the natural tendency of East European states is away from Soviet socialism and towards the West. It is in our Western, West European and national in- terests to encourage this tendency. In the short term, we may gain foreign policy points (for example, Romania was helpful in the original Helsinki negotiations), not to mention a little trade. On the larger issues of war and peace, it may be important that East and West European states can still talk to each other at a time when the super- powers apparently cannot. ('We ... want to talk to Eastern Europe,' Mrs Thatcher said in her five-year manifesto.) In the longer run, our policy of national 'differen- tiation' (rewarding countries for signs of in- dependence from Moscow) should further reduce the cohesion of the Soviet bloc, and Russian domination of it. Finally, any movement towards 'Western values' is good in itself.

It is easy to overlook the achievements of this approach, so gradual have been the changes wrought by two decades of patient, low-key, incremental diplomacy, so obvi- ous and dramatic the setbacks. Yet, com- pared with 20 years ago, there has been a qualitative change in the ties between Eastern and Western Europe, which even icy relations between the superpowers can- not wholly reverse. Moreover, if we think the EEC is disunited, we should cast a glance at last week's Comecon summit — the first for 15 years. From the few reports so far available it appears that most East European states fought doughtily against Soviet pressure for increased economic

integration of the bloc. Comecon still has no supranational institutions. Of course, Western policy is not responsible for Hungary or Poland's will to economic autonomy; but it can be vital to their ability to maintain it. Western governments and banks have directly contributed to the economic disunification of Eastern Europe, indeed, one might say, to its economic disintegration.

The darling of Western diplomats in this field, the Golden Boy of 'differentiation', is, of course, Hungary. With its crypto- Thatcherite economic reforms, its relatively tolerant domestic politics, its IMF member- ship and half its trade with the West, Hungary is constantly held up as an exam- ple of the kind of 'evolution by stealth' which we aim to encourage in the other Europe. At this point I must register some doubts.

First: if all Eastern European was like Hungary would this be better for the West or for the Soviet Union? Hungary is pro- sperous, stable and obedient to Moscow on all important foreign and security ques- tions. What more could Soviet leaders want? Arguably, if all Eastern Europe was like Hungary, the region would become a great (instead of a very dubious) asset to Moscow, a jewel in the crown of the Soviet empire; and Russian leaders could happily turn their attention elsewhere.

Second: Hungary is praised as a model of gradual, evolutionary change, 'carefully controlled from above' and therefore not 'Chernenko insists that we include the flying squad!'

destabilising. But all competent historians agree that the essential precondition for this 'change controlled from above' was the bloody repression of the 1956 uprising, and the subsequent three years' terror in whick the Kadar regime effectively broke the bac" of any democratic opposition to communis,t, rule, and, indeed, of any autonomous 'dr" society'. It was on this tabula rasa that Kadar then began his cautious reforrns, which, 25 years later, mean that some of 1,tie, people are sometimes consulted about matters which most nearly affect them. Thed communist regimes in Czechoslovakia an Poland are incapable of following Kaclar:ds example just because they have not en.loY,`, such a bloodbath (or 'catharsis', as a seolcil', Hungarian party official nicely put II) because they have not broken the back ...A 'civil society' and adequately terrorisedu their populations. So do we want Poi° and Czechoslovakia to have that 'cathat" sis'? Mr George Walden MP, late of Foreign Office, came very close to saying S' when earlier this year he proposed the 0: tion 'that the enforced stability of Poland Is essential for the peace of Europe' at the °Iv ford Union. Stability must be enforced bdY General Jaruzelski's government in PolarIrd he argued, in order for it to move f°rwa.is to democratic freedoms. Dictators'

essential for democracy! '

Behind this weird sophistry is a dilet°11 which the most dedicated officials anal') diplomats in the field are often most Ion e to acknowledge. Are we trying to encoinaga the aspirations of East European govero; ments (possibly 'away from Moscow) 4 those of their peoples? In the case buiv Hungary or East Germany, we arc proba justified in assuming that the two sets , aspirations largely coincide, in the arern directly affected by Western policy. But is

the case of Poland that assumPtic° tsfli , obviously false. However,

business is with governments, dfioPir°111til,a,egs 'success' generally means good relat''.„. with those governments. When our a'''a bassador left Tripoli, he said he felt likeats captain abandoning his ship. piploruest therefore have a professional vested interra, in improving relations with all the goveAlv ments of Eastern Europe — however ba those governments treat their own people.

There is, moreover, a hard-nosed argu, ....

ment from national interest for this cours"d The interests of the peoples of central 9",.1 eastern Europe, it can be argued, are oaua Britain's interests. 'Human rights' are is, obstacle to the pursuit of our intetesas Thus concretely: if only the Atnericaed would not keep on about these imprisonthe Solidarity leaders, we could get on with rve• business of helping Jaruzelski to Preg; Poland's limited freedom of manoeu against Soviet pressure. A government's ,c_a ternal conduct is, then, the prime criterlYc for 'differentiation'. Ceausescu's maveri,er foreign policy stance (newly displayed °a. the Olympics) should be richly rewardep, The fact that he runs a brutal and corrnie" Stalinist regime at home is strictly irre.toi vant. And anyway, the West has a vl security interest in the stability of Eastern Europe. Democracy is destabilising. Unsurprisingly, even Mr Walden is not Prepared to make this argument publicly explicit — hence his weird sophistry. But the hard-nosed argument is also short- ,s1ghted. For if recent European history Leaches anything, it is that there is a connec- tion

between the way governments treat their own their people and the way they treat , neighbours. In the last 60 years there has been no war between European demo- cracies. Dictatorships not democracies have been the initiators of wars. So arguably

i Political change in the Soviet bloc s a Precondition for a stable and lasting peace In Europe. There is, moreover, an ethical Consideration. If West European govern- ents say and do nothing about the human rights and frustrated civic aspirations of Other Europeans, they put at risk their own floral authority, and, ultimately, their own legitimacy.

Which bring me back to D-Day. In one of his best polemics, Mr E. P. Thompson Protests at the wholesale appropriation of the honours of the second world war by the likes

Bof Mr Chapman Pincher. Those ritish armies contained many leftist anti- fascists like himself, writes Mr Thompson, and they voted overwhelmingly for Labour 111 1945. By the same token we may justly Object to the wholesale appropriation of the nslon of 'the healing of Europe', the Europe of peoples' from Portugal to l'oland, by the likes of Mr E. P. Thomp- st?o. Didn't conservatives and liberals also dl. e for that ideal? Colin Welch has moving- ly recalled in these pages (Centrepiece, 2 Jtune 1984) the impact on him of the 'spec- dre. of Europe prostrate, degraded, • ininished, morally and materially ruined' In Normandy 40 years ago. 'It hurts us per- s°riallY and deeply, as if our own mother were lying there in pain and woe.' t In Normandy today she has been restored .0 health and prosperity: the fields are lush, rine shops overflowing, the people free. But the Parts of Europe I know better, in

d and Mazovia, in Krakow and

bPlragt!e, she is still hungry, naked and t„eed.1118. You would have to be extraord- tg.arllY insensitive to travel and work in cen- ,' al and eastern Europe and not be moved ht he myriad examples of individual siurnan suffering which the enforced

_On divi- of Europe has caused, and is causing

4vl.111. If You have talked to a man who sur- ,1,ve.d .Auschwitz only to be shut up in a c")atalinist prison, to an old woman who still st1111.°.I sleep at night for remembering the r...callnIst times, to a mother whose son was

You murdered by the secret police; if

On have seen philosophers forced to work abefroa dsweepers, and priests dying from the „ra ects wtrithes °f 1°118 imprisonment; if you know divided by the Berlin Wall; if your years n s" may not meet his godfather for wfeell, thbecause the Iron Curtain hangs bet- oem; then you can feel that the idea b. Europe , not the Europe of Brussels vreauerats but the Europe of Churchill's mon, is still a thing worth fighting for.