From Enigma to Enemy Paul-Henri Spaak, the Belgian Diplomatic Elite, and the Soviet Union, 1944–1945

VanPaul-Henri Alstein Spaak,theBelgian Diplomatic Elite, and the Soviet Union, 1944–1945

✣ Maarten Van Alstein

The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union were united in the Grand Alliance against Nazi Germany and Japan for nearly four years. From the start, however, the effort was plagued by uncertainties about each party’s intentions and motives. All of the Big Three hoped for continued cooperation not only in winning the war but also in establishing a peaceful and stable postwar order. However, from 1943 to 1945, a series of conten- tious issues emerged, including the USSR’s recognition of Pietro Badoglio’s government in Italy, Moscow’s irritation at the long delay in opening a second front, persistent disputes over Poland’s borders, and the Soviet Union’s recognition of the Lublin government in Poland. In 1943, the leaders of the Big Three had tried to iron out some of the difªculties during summits in Mos- cow and Teheran, but problems kept coming up over the next two years. The tense state of inter-Allied relations boded ill for hopes of lasting postwar cooperation. In Western capitals, uncertainty about Soviet intentions deepened as the Red Army advanced into Central and Eastern Europe and then into Ger- many. The degree of expertise in the United States and Western Europe about the Soviet Union was remarkably low at the time, hindering efforts to interpret Moscow’s motives and goals.1 During the ªnal two years of the war, uncertainty over Iosif Stalin’s intentions weighed heavily on Western policies toward the Soviet Union and on the prospects of continued cooperation after the war. U.S. and West European policymakers and diplomats wondered

1. See, for example, David Reynolds, “Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Stalin Enigma, 1941–1945,” in David Reynolds, From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 235.

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whether they should regard Soviet leaders as their partners or instead as rivals or even future enemies. Were Soviet ofªcials to be seen as insiders, with whom the West could construct the postwar order, or as outsiders in international politics, as they had been during the interwar years? U.S. and West European efforts to answer these questions inºuenced mutual behavior and interactions among the great powers. As Ulrich Beck has argued, once policymakers start to view and interpret their foreign counterparts as potential enemies, enemy images tend to gain immense autogenerative power and, by working as self-fulªlling prophecies, easily lead to an affec- tive state of hostility.2 During the ªnal year of the war and the immediate postwar years, it became clear that the wartime allies were increasingly deªn- ing one another as enemies. This trend accelerated the dynamic of hostile bipolarization and bloc formation.3 Scholarly research on how the political, diplomatic, and military elites in the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain interpreted one another during the ªnal years of World War II has been extensive.4 But the liter- ature on the origins of the Cold War has largely neglected to consider how the elites of small West European states dealt with these questions and, more gen- erally, how they became involved in the Cold War and, ªnally, turned into Cold Warriors.5 This article explains how Belgium’s long-time minister of for-

2. Ulrich Beck, “The Sociological Anatomy of Enemy Images,” in R. Fiebig-Von Hase and U. Lehm- kuhl, eds., Enemy Images in American History (Oxford, UK: Berghahn, 1997), pp. 76–84. Beck’s argument about the autogenerative power of enemy images can be further conceptualized as an element of the hermeneutical dimension of the security dilemma in international relations. A security dilemma arises when two or more states are drawn into conºict, possibly even war, over security concerns, even though none of the states actually desires conºict. The security dilemma occurs because states feel in- secure in relation to other states and therefore start building up defensive military capabilities. Al- though none of the states involved actually wants a deterioration of relations or a war, the actions taken by each state to make itself more secure cause the other states to interpret its actions as a threat to their own security. The result is a spiral of unintended provocations, which leads to escalation of the conºict and eventually even to war. 3. Maarten Van Alstein, “The Meaning of Hostile Bipolarization: Interpreting the Origins of the Cold War,” Cold War History, Vol. 9, No. 3 (August 2009), pp. 301–319. 4. Among many others, see Melvyn P. Lefºer, “Economics, Power and National Security: Lessons of the Past,” in Klaus Larres and Ann Lane, eds., The Cold War: The Essential Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001); Melvyn P. Lefºer, “National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy,” in Melvyn P. Lefºer and David S. Painter, eds., Origins of the Cold War (London: Routledge, 2005); Frank Costigliola, “I Had Come as a Friend: Emotion, Culture, and Ambiguity in the Formation of the Cold War, 1943–45,” Cold War History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (August 2000), pp. 103–128; David Reynolds, From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006); Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); and Vladimir Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, In- side the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 5. See David Reynolds, ed., The Origins of the Cold War in Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Cees Wiebes and Bert Zeeman, “The Origins of Western Defense: Belgian and Dutch Perspec-

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eign affairs, Paul-Henri Spaak, and the Belgian diplomatic elite interpreted Soviet behavior and intentions at the end of World War II. The Belgian case is interesting because, as in France and Italy, the left-wing orientation of Bel- gium’s foreign policy in 1947 (Spaak was a leading ªgure in the Belgian So- cialist Party) diminished in the face of the rapid bipolarization of international relations. Belgian political elites aligned themselves with the United States and joined the anti-Soviet camp—not an obvious orientation for the Belgian Socialists to follow. In 1944–1945, as the war was ending, two different interpretations of Soviet behavior and intentions emerged within the Belgian diplomatic corps. The ªrst can be labeled the “cooperation paradigm,” encompassing the hope for and promotion of continued partnership between the Allies. Initially, this paradigm characterized Belgian foreign policy and was the leading view among Belgian diplomats. But many diplomats did not share its interpretive premises. At times in a blunt manner reminiscent of the prevailing anti- Communist atmosphere of the prewar era, some ofªcials expressed a more skeptical interpretation of Soviet behavior, as well as doubts about the prospects of continued cooperation. A debate ensued within the Belgian diplomatic elite about the Soviet Union as part of a wider dispute between leftist, bourgeois diplomats and conservative aristocrats. This article examines the two paradigms through which Belgian diplomats interpreted the Soviet Union. I look at the characteristics of these paradigms, as well as the speciªc discursive techniques underlying the interpretive schemes and the broader worldviews behind them. The article explains how a small state such as Belgium became involved in the Cold War. By the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, the cooperation paradigm was abandoned, and anti-Soviet views became ascendant among the Belgian political and diplomatic elite. Belgium turned into a loyal Atlanticist ally in the Cold War. This evolution was partly attributable to the disciplining force of great-power politics on small states and was effected through a series of policy adaptations after 1947, when Belgian and U.S. interests became more par- allel. But if we want a fuller understanding of how Belgium entered the Cold War, we also have to take into account the existence of the “skeptical paradigm” within the Belgian diplomatic service. The article shows that certain steps taken by Belgian diplomats were aimed at “othering” the USSR and pro- moting an anti-Communist worldview.

tives 1940–1949,” in E. Di Nolfo, ed., The Atlantic Pact Forty Years Later: A Historical Reappraisal (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1992), pp. 143–162; and Geir Lundestad, “Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 23 No. 3 (September 1986), pp. 263–277.

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The “Cooperation Paradigm”

In 1944–1945, the leading interpretive paradigm within the Belgian diplomatic elite regarding Soviet behavior and intentions stressed the importance and possibility of continued cooperation between the great powers. This view of the Soviet Union was actively promoted by senior ªgures such as Foreign Minister Spaak and his chef de cabinet, Edouard Le Ghait, who from July 1944 was Belgium’s ambassador to the Soviet Union.6 Advocates of this paradigm argued that Soviet behavior should be interpreted in realist terms. Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe was presumed either to be defensive and motivated by fear of renewed aggression from Ger- many, or to be a mere continuation of the expansionist policies of Tsarist Rus- sia. This realist interpretation implied that Soviet behavior, although brutal, relentless, and cynical, was explicable and predictable because it was based on the pursuit of traditional great-power interests. Moreover, Soviet behavior could be regarded as legitimate because it was the behavior of a “normal” great power. Le Ghait was the key proponent of this realist reading of Soviet behavior. In the reports he sent from Moscow, he repeatedly emphasized not only the “habitual realism” of Soviet leaders but also the fears he believed were at the root of their actions.7 According to Le Ghait, these fears could be better understood if Soviet historical memories were taken into account:

It is useful to recall the history of the years 1917–1920 if one wants to under- stand the state of mind of the Soviets at this time and notably the fear that, according to many observers, they harbor that the Anglo-Saxon powers could be amenable to sparing Germany. It should not be forgotten that if in Western Europe the events of 1917–1918 were viewed as a Russian defection in the battle against the common enemy, here [in Moscow] one has a different view: it was the hostility of the Allies that obliged the Bolsheviks to conclude the Brest-Litovsk Peace, and the victorious Allies did not hesitate to collaborate with the Germans against their old partner to conduct their policy of intervention.8

6. In the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Le Ghait was known as a left-leaning diplomat, and therefore Spaak’s decision to appoint him ambassador in Moscow was highly meaningful, reºecting Spaak’s pro-Soviet tendencies and signifying a desire for amicable relations with the Soviet Union. See Maarten Van Alstein, “Belgian Diplomats and Hostile Bipolarization: Edouard Le Ghait en Baron Hervé de Gruben,” Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent, Vol. 13, No. 20 (2008), pp. 103–143. 7. Le Ghait to Spaak, 15 August 1945, in Archives of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (ABMFA), 10973bis, No. 870/192. The quotations in this article, originally in French, are my trans- lations. 8. Le Ghait to Spaak, 25 August 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 383/164.

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In his reports, Le Ghait kept referring to Moscow’s defensive motives and fears.9 Other Belgian diplomats also interpreted Soviet fears in a historical vein. Referring to Soviet policy in Eastern Europe, Edouard Felten, the chargé d’affaires at the embassy in Moscow, wrote that Soviet leaders were opposed to a federation of Central European and Balkan countries because it reminded them too much of the “infamous cordon sanitaire” imposed by France and other Western countries against Soviet Russia in 1919. Like Le Ghait, Felten emphasized that Stalin had not forgotten the Western intervention in Russia after the revolution or the stationing of foreign troops in Odessa, the Cauca- sus, Archangelsk, and Siberia. Felten added that the Soviet Union’s wish to en- tertain good relations with its neighbors should appear legitimate to any “man of good faith.”10 Although Felten acknowledged that this view largely ignored the imperialist aims often ascribed to Moscow, he insisted that the counter- argument was not based on the available facts and that Soviet leaders were “re- alists” who did not aspire to conquer the rest of Europe. In his view, Stalin was a “realistic man who dealt with possibilities and not with adventures.”11 Marcel-Henri Jaspar, the Belgian envoy to the Czechoslovak government in London, reported that several of his sources had conªrmed that Soviet leaders were indeed still haunted by the fear of an anti-Soviet coalition. Ac- cording to Jaspar, Soviet policy was predominantly motivated by hatred of the Germans after the ravages of the war. Stalin wanted chieºy to hit the Germans as hard as possible. The Soviet leader, Jaspar claimed, feared that the Western great powers would be too lenient with Germany after the war.12 The “cooperation paradigm” thus portrayed Soviet motives in benign terms. Le Ghait and other diplomats stressed that Stalin always approached international negotiations “in a sense of moderation and conciliation.”13 In their view, “the fundamental idea of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy was the organization of security based on an alliance as close as possible with the United States and Great Britain.”14 The “cooperation paradigm” viewed Soviet leaders as “normal” and legitimate actors, as partners, even friends, in international politics. This amounted

9. See Le Ghait to Spaak, 10 October 1945, in ABMFA, 10973bis, No. 1100/267. See also Le Ghait to Spaak, 17 November 1945, in ABMFA, 10973bis, No. 1265/311. 10. Felten to Spaak, 6 April 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 162/73. For Felten’s view that fear of renewed German aggression was a paramount feature of Soviet thinking, see also Felten to Spaak, Mos- cow, 14 June 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 248/115. 11. Felten to Spaak, 6 April 1944. 12. Jaspar to Spaak, 6 January 1945, in ABMFA, 10973 bis, No. 6. 13. Le Ghait to Spaak, 26 September 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 480/184. 14. Le Ghait to Spaak, 28 February 1945, in ABMFA, 10973bis, No. 188/52.

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to a reversal of Western attitudes and postures toward the Soviet Union during the interwar period. Spaak realized this and made it explicit:

In the interwar period, the world’s policy toward the Soviet Union, as the Soviet Union’s policy toward the world, was made up of incomprehension and mistrust. It is not useful to come back to yesterday’s past, unless it is for the hope that this past is dead forever. 22 June 1941 marks, in this regard, the beginning of a new era. The Soviet Union, its admirable army, and its heroic people appear to us at this moment in a new and impressive light. We all bow before the sac- riªces they made and realize the immense part Soviet victories played in the joint victory. Everyone wishes that tomorrow the Soviet Union will play in world politics the part to which it has a right on the basis of its sacriªces and its position in the world. No lasting peace is possible, no solid guarantee against the German danger can be established, without the effective help of the Soviet Union. The partnership between the great allies that have won the war must be maintained in peace. This is the wish of the small states that in such friendship will ªnd the essential element of their security.15

Spaak thus considered the Soviet Union to be a full partner whose “friendship” was indispensable for Belgium’s security.16 He also made this clear sym- bolically by instructing Le Ghait to give the Belgian embassy in Moscow the same luster as those in other great capitals. “It is necessary to make the utmost effort to give our embassy the grandeur it needs and not to hesitate to make the necessary expenses. There is nothing excessive in spending at least as much in Moscow as we do in London, Washington, and Paris.”17 Spaak, unlike some others, was upbeat about the possibilities of continued partnership and friendship with the Soviet Union. He did not believe that relations between Great Britain and the USSR “were as difªcult as certain press reports and comments make them appear to be at ªrst sight.” Soviet leaders, in his view, were “self-assured by their victories as well as very suspi- cious toward the outside world,” and he sought to give them conªdence to preserve continued partnership.18 Even though the Soviet Union remained a Communist dictatorship, the cooperation paradigm did not invoke ideology as an explanatory factor to un- derstand Soviet actions in the international sphere. Marxist-Leninist ideology either was not mentioned or was judged to be a strictly domestic feature of the

15. “Communication du gouvernement sur sa politique étrangère,” 6 December 1944, in Paul-Henri Spaak Foundation (PHSF), 118/2704. See also P. F. Smets, ed., La pensée Européenne et Atlantique de Paul-Henri Spaak (Brussels: Goemaere, 1980), Vol. 1, pp. 52–63. 16. See Spaak to de Romrée, 13 March 1944, in PHSF, 63/1388. 17. Spaak to Le Ghait, 30 August 1944, in PHSF, 475/7272. 18. Spaak to Theunis, 7 April 1944, in PHSF, 552/7637–7638.

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Soviet regime that would not inºuence Soviet foreign policy. This downplay- ing of Soviet ideology facilitated efforts to portray the USSR as a legitimate partner and an insider in the international political game. In this interpretation, the expansion of the Soviet sphere of inºuence in Central and Eastern Europe was not an ideologically driven campaign of conquest but simply a defensive move. Le Ghait stressed this theme in his reports on the establishment of a provisional government in Hungary. He reported that diplomatic circles in Moscow were unanimous in their judgment that the Soviet-backed government was representative of the Hungarian nation. “The establishment of the Debreczen government in the zone occupied by the Red Army,” he wrote, “conªrms the opinion of those who think that the Soviets by no means are trying to provoke the installation of Soviet-type regimes in the countries they occupy militarily.”19 In support of this assertion, Le Ghait added that “the formation of a vast class of small landholders makes collectivization at a later stage much more difªcult.”20 The cooperation paradigm did not apply only to international politics; it also had a domestic Belgian component. Spaak framed cooperation with the Soviet Union in a larger worldview, in which he aimed at a new political order in Belgium. He believed that relations between the Belgian Socialists and the Belgian Communist Party would have to be reconsidered. Although Spaak was not wholly oblivious to the difªculties arising from practical cooperation with the Communists, who had joined the ªrst Belgian government established after the liberation in September 1944, and although he kept viewing the Communists as competitors (as social democrats had done during the interwar period), he wanted to deªne the Belgian Communist Party as a normal, legitimate actor in the postwar democratic political system.21 Therefore, the entry of the Communists into the Belgian government did not cause any worry. “The Left seems strong, we must rely on it. Of course, this is new and, consequently, it seems difªcult. We will have Communists in the govern-

19. Le Ghait to Spaak, 17 January 1945, in ABMFA, 10973bis, No. 44/18. 20. Ibid. 21. Because of their role in the anti-Nazi resistance, the Belgian Communists were popular at the end of the war, reaching an all-time peak in membership numbers. The Belgian Communist Party was determined to consolidate its position after the war, but (unlike some other West European Communist parties) decided to do this within the existing political and social order. The party emphasized national independence and reconstruction. That is why José Gotovitch has argued that during and immediately after the war the Belgian Communists shifted from their red ºag to the Belgian tricolor. See José Gotovitch, Du rouge au tricolore: Les communistes Belges de 1939 à 1944: Un aspect de l’histoire de la Résistance en Belgique (Brussels: Labor, 1992). See also Pascal Delwit, “L’anticommunisme comme in- strument de mobilisation du Parti Socialiste Belge de 1945 à 1954,” in Pascal Delwit and José Gotovitch, eds., La peur du rouge (Brussels: Editions de l’université, 1996), p. 127; and Stephen P. Kramer, “Belgian Socialism at the Liberation 1944–1950,” Res Publica, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1978), pp. 131–133.

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ment. But that is an evolution which I do not fear too much.”22 Spaak went even further than merely pleading for cooperation with the Communist Party in the government; he also advocated sweeping reforms in the Belgian party political system—reforms implying that a new, large progressive party would have to be established, of which social democrats, Communists, left-leaning Christian democrats, and liberals could be constitutive elements:

I refuse to treat relations with the Communists as I did before the war. If they [the Communists] tell us they want an independent Belgium, a healthy democracy, social justice through legality—, then labels are not important and we are ready to come to an understanding with them. This agreement can also be con- ditioned by the new position of Russia and its desire to play a legitimate role in international politics....Ifwecanbring together willing Christian democrats, socialists, Communists, and liberal intellectuals on the basis of a shared platform, then the upcoming elections could very well bring the solution to the problem of democracy. If we can bring them together on a shared platform, why couldn’t we all ªght, on one list, for a program that would meet with the ap- proval of 80 percent of all Belgians? The democratic union would, at last, be established. A stable government would be constituted; all the errors of the prewar years would be eliminated. No more ministerial crises every ten months!23

Le Ghait supported Spaak in his views on cooperation with the Communists. In his reports, he called for international cooperation between trade unions and suggested that Belgian unions should invite a Soviet delegation because “this kind of gesture would not fail to have favorable effects on Soviet-Belgian relations.”24 Le Ghait also informed Spaak that cooperation with the Com- munists within the Belgian political context did not necessarily entail Soviet interference in Belgian internal affairs any more than it had in the interwar period. He claimed that Moscow did not aspire to give new life to the Com- munist International. The Soviet Union, Le Ghait insisted, was operating on the basis of interstate relations, not through the channels of Communist parties.25 Thus, the cooperation paradigm not only answered the question of how to interpret Soviet actions and intentions; it was also the expression of a progressive worldview in which Belgium’s foreign policy was linked with plans for sweeping domestic political reform. However, even before the end of the war,

22. Spaak to Simonne Dear, 23 September 1944, in PHSF, Correspondence with S. Dear. 23. Speech by Spaak, n.d. [probably October 1944], in PHSF, 157/3327. See also Spaak to Theunis, London, 26 July 1944, in PHSF, 552/7656, for the following argument by Spaak: “It is necessary to reorganize political balances in Belgium in new parties. That, of course, will not be easy, but it is, I believe, indispensable.” 24. Le Ghait to Spaak, 11 November 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 610/223. 25. Le Ghait to Spaak, 10 November 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 604/217.

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this paradigm was encountering problems. For one thing, relations and interactions with the Soviet Union were proving to be more troublesome than anticipated. It soon became clear that Soviet leaders were not willing to accom- modate the Belgians. In late 1944, for example, the Soviet press was extremely critical of Spaak’s plan for a West European regional entente under British leadership. In Belgian-Soviet diplomatic contacts about the issue, Soviet of- ªcials adopted a stiff, distrustful posture.26 Moreover, the assumptions of the cooperation paradigm were disputed from within the Belgian diplomatic elite. A group of conservative, aristocratic diplomats took a much more critical and skeptical stand with regard to Soviet politics and the possibility of continued cooperation with the leaders in Moscow.

The “Skeptical Paradigm”

For the group of aristocratic diplomats who took an explicitly skeptical stand toward the Soviet Union, more was at stake in challenging the cooperation paradigm than merely a debate about how to interpret the Soviet Union. They pitted themselves against the progressive, left-wing worldview of bourgeois diplomats such as Spaak and Le Ghait and viewed the Bolsheviks as a

26. It was not entirely clear to the Belgians why the Soviet Union took this position. Le Ghait suggested that the explanation could perhaps be found in Moscow’s dislike, out of fear of a new cordon sanitaire, of defense organizations in which the USSR was not involved. Rik Coolsaet has suggested that Belgium’s contribution to the Manhattan Project lay behind the Soviet hostility. Starting in 1942 the Belgian mining company Union Minière du Haut Katanga supplied uranium to the United States. General Leslie Groves, the head of the U.S. project to build the nuclear bomb, had sought a complete U.S. monopoly of uranium and therefore had taken up contact with Edgar Sengier, the Belgian ad- ministrator of the Union Minière. They agreed that the United States would get an option on all uranium possessed by the Union Minière in Katanga. The Belgian government-in-exile in London was informed of this agreement only in March 1944. After laborious negotiations, Belgian ofªcials decided to formalize the Groves-Sengier arrangement in an ofªcial but secret agreement. Belgium would deliver its uranium exclusively to the United States in exchange for Belgian participation in the exploi- tation of uranium for civilian goals. This signiªed that the Belgian government ofªcially endorsed Groves’s plan for a U.S. monopoly of uranium. Soviet leaders, thanks to their network of spies, knew about Belgium’s key role in the Manhattan Project. Coolsaet argues that the Soviet authorities must have concluded that the Belgians were conducting a dual-faced policy: On the one hand they claimed to strive for amicable relations with the Soviet Union; on the other hand they supplied the United States with ores for a nuclear arms race that, in Moscow’s view, would be directed against the USSR. Coolsaet further states that it was perhaps naïve to expect Soviet leaders to believe that on such a sensi- tive question a private Belgian company had engaged itself so extensively without the knowledge of the government and, furthermore, that this government to a large extent was actually being ignored both by the company and by its U.S. ally, in spite of the 1944 agreement. This might well explain Moscow’s criticism of Spaak and the Belgian government. Repeated efforts by Spaak in 1945–1947 to persuade the Soviet Union to conclude a Belgian-Soviet Friendship Treaty received no answer from the USSR, despite Spaak’s conciliatory attitude and language. See Coolsaet, Belgium and Its International Policy 1830–2000, pp. 341–342; and Jonathan Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores: The Diplomacy of Uranium Acquisition, 1943–1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).

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threat to Western civilization. Conservative discourse about the Soviet Union was not yet explicitly hostile in tone, but the implied message was clear: Soviet ofªcials were not “insiders” in traditional diplomacy or full-ºedged partners of the West. Instead, they were “enigmatic.”27 An enigmatic state can easily become an “enemy” if its intentions seem malign. These skeptical character- izations had the effect of “othering” the Soviet Union, of deªning leaders in Moscow as outsiders in the international political game. As such, the “skeptical paradigm” was a revival of the interwar discourse about the Soviet Union.28 The skeptical paradigm was characterized by three sorts of narratives about the USSR: ideological, cultural, and historical. First, and in clear con- trast to the “cooperation paradigm,” skeptical discourse about the Soviet Union emphasized the ideological features of Soviet behavior and intentions. By continually alluding to the inºuence of the Soviet Union’s “Bolshevik” regime on its foreign policy and by suggesting that Soviet leaders still pursued ideological goals in the international sphere, this discourse implied that the Soviets were still “outsiders” in international politics. One of the most outspo- ken advocates of this ideological discourse was Robert van de Kerchove d’Hallebast, Le Ghait’s predecessor as ambassador in Moscow. In his unvar- nished reports, van de Kerchove highlighted the pernicious aspects of Com- munist ideology and the Soviet regime’s totalitarian character. With his dour views, he deviated from the prevailing optimism within Spaak’s ministry. In several reports, van de Kerchove highlighted the ideological thrust of Soviet foreign policy. He warned that in judging Stalin, one must “not succumb to an irrevocable optimism based on the conviction that the Soviet leader irre- versibly had turned his back on Leninism.” Van de Kerchove stressed that Sta- lin’s thinking and actions, and in general the whole of Soviet society, were driven by ideology. “If there is one factor of life in the Soviet Union that dom- inates everything, it is the law of the Revolution.” Van de Kerchove compared ideology in the Soviet Union with rivers that, “after temporarily having gone underground as a consequence of geological coincidence, suddenly reap- pear.”29 In a report dated 18 January 1944, van de Kerchove elaborated his views on the totalitarian character of the Soviet Union and the implications for international affairs.30 In rejecting the notion often heard in the United States

27. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 3 February 1944, in ABMFA, 11575/574. 28. See Delwit and Gotovitch, eds., La peur du rouge; and Jean Stengers, “Belgique et Russie,” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, Vol. 66, No. 2 (1988), pp. 302–307. 29. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 10 February 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 52/30. 30. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 18 January 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 26/16.

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and Western Europe that the Soviet Union would gradually democratize, he drew a comparison between the British and the Soviet press. The British press, he pointed out, published endless articles about the shortcomings in the British political and economic system, whereas the Soviet press focused only on the supposed glories of the Stalinist system. According to van de Kerchove, the Soviet propaganda had far-reaching consequences.

One has to recognize the effectiveness of this technique in the long run, because it results in creating, even with intelligent and well-intentioned people, the conviction that the Soviets in the past indeed were always been right and that, if Eu- rope’s fate today was compromised, this surely must be England’s, Poland’s, and most certainly Germany’s fault, but undoubtedly not that of the government in Moscow.31

Van de Kerchove argued that the divergence in style between the Western and Soviet press would eventually and irremediably lead to “a divorce between both opinions” and that this “opposition between two ways of thinking” would ªnally result in “an ever growing misunderstanding, until it can not be appeased anymore.” He did not believe that the USSR could undergo democratization (or growing “European-mindedness”) or show any “eagerness for postwar cooperation with the Allies,” themes that were widely accepted at the time in the Belgian Foreign Ministry. According to van der Kerchove, the democratization hypothesis ignored three facts: “1) the tyrannical and universal survival of an ancient psychical and moral attitude: autocratic atavism; 2) totalitarianism and terror which are functions of this autocratic atavism...3)theunrelenting demands of the Communist system, irreconcilable with freedom and individual initiative, which are the sole creator of true democracy, is distinct from that in the West, where “people have a sense of liberty and individual dignity embedded in their soul.” Van de Kerchove understood that the Grand Alliance demanded that politicians and journalists embrace a positive attitude toward the Soviet Union. However, in his conªdential reports he did not feel “restricted by these demands.” His reports “had no other concern than being objective.” He understood, nevertheless, that his observations were controversial. “If my reports were destined to be published,” he said, “I would not have written them, because they would not receive authorization to be printed...Ihope. If I were a censor, I would throw them in the bin.”32 Baron Emile de Cartier de Marchienne, the Belgian ambassador in Lon- don and doyen of the Belgian diplomatic corps, also took a skeptical stand to-

31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. On the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime, see also van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 16 March 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 98/54.

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ward the Soviet Union, although his writing was less explicit than van de Kerchove’s. Repeatedly, he referred to Soviet policy in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans as “enigmatic.” In a cable dated 30 April 1945 he wrote about “the enigmatic attitude of Russia which pulled down a sort of curtain over all information once a territory is occupied by Russian troops.”33 De Cartier, a professed monarchist, was not convinced that ideology no longer played a part in Soviet foreign policy. Although he believed that Soviet leaders had decided “to restrain their Communist aims, which up to now have consumed all their attention,” he emphasized that in several countries the Soviet Union clearly supported anti-monarchist movements: Josip Broz Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia—who fought not only against the Nazis but also against the Yugo- slav monarchy—and the Communist movement in Greece.34 Furthermore, when the British Communist newspaper The Daily Worker launched an attack against Belgian King Leopold III, de Cartier judged that “the general Com- munist protests in monarchist countries are synchronized so much that one can detect in them an instruction to wipe out national institutions currently established in Greece, Yugoslavia, Belgium, and other countries.”35 Unlike Spaak and Le Ghait, Emile de Cartier did not believe in cooperation with the Communists and instead situated them outside the national political system. For instance, in a report on a debate in the House of Commons about British policy with regard to Count Carlo Sforza, de Cartier wrote: “This discussion is to be reºected upon by those who defend the principles of a healthy democracy, as opposed to Communist and anarchistic theories.”36 Still, in 1944–1945, de Cartier’s discourse on the Soviet Union was not yet unequivocal. In some reports he interpreted Soviet behavior not in ideological terms but in a classic realist way. In these texts he explained Stalin’s policies in terms of Soviet national interest or described Stalin and his associates as “real- ists ªrst and foremost.”37 Another diplomat who continued to interpret Soviet actions in ideological terms was Viscount Charles de Romrée de Vichenet, the Belgian representative to the provisional French government in Algiers. De Romrée also proved to be skeptical about the dissolution of the Comintern. In his judgment, the Soviet authorities remained ideologically active:

33. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 30 April 1945, in ABMFA, 10958bis. 34. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 27 January 1944, in ABMFA, 11575/574. 35. Ibid. See also de Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 15 October 1945, in ABMFA, 10958bis, No. 5153. 36. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 2 December 1944, in ABMFA, 11575/574. 37. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 3 April 1945, in ABMFA, 10958bis, 2923/1030; and De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 9 August 1945, in ABMFA, 10958bis.

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What I retain, in any case, is that, whatever is said or written, Russia will not dis- interest itself—a euphemism—from the communist movement in Europe. The Comintern is dead, the idea which was at its basis is not. Tomorrow, maybe, the word “Communist” will not be used as frequently anymore. It will be replaced by the “People,” by “democracy,” but in the Moscow sense of the words.38

De Romrée also wrote:

Soviet behavior expresses a policy. Not everyone has accepted this fact. This is as serious as it is telling. Between those who conduct a precise, active, and self- assured policy, and those who act hesitantly...,thebalance is increasingly up- set. Western Europe must prepare itself for rough times. Is it then that democra- cies are congenitally incapable?39

The second dimension in the “skeptical paradigm” was constituted by cultural narratives. In these narratives, two discursive moves can be distin- guished. The ªrst implied that the Soviet Union was not a Western or a Euro- pean power; rather, it was an Asian one. In the second, skeptical diplomats emphasized that the Soviet leaders did not conduct their diplomacy according to the “traditional” rules of diplomacy; that is, they were outsiders to the classic diplomatic game. Both moves had the effect of “othering” the Soviet regime. The reactions of Count Robert van der Straten-Ponthoz and Baron Hervé de Gruben of the Belgian embassy in Washington, illustrate how the skeptical diplomats deªned the Soviet Union as alien to Western customs. When Stalin recognized the Italian government of Marshal Badoglio without consulting the Americans or the British, van der Straten-Ponthoz and de Gruben described this démarche as follows: “in terms of Western logic, Stalin’s gesture is completely inexplicable. . . . This disrespect of logic and manners gives cause for certain apprehension regarding the Soviet attitude toward Ger- many.”40 This discursive move placed the Soviet Union outside the ªeld of Western logic and manners. Within a Western frame of reference, Soviet actions were not explicable. De Cartier, in his turn, deªned the Soviet Union as the other by writing that “Russian mentality is unfathomable” and that “the English...haveunderstood that their mentality is not like the Russian mentality.”41

38. De Romrée de Vichenet to Spaak, 8 January 1944, in ABMFA, 11.573, No. 94/31. 39. De Romrée de Vichenet to Spaak, 14 April 1944, in ABMFA, 11.573, No. 1380/416. 40. Van der Straten-Ponthoz to Spaak, 20 March 1944, in the Centre for Historical Research and Documentation on War and Contemporary Society (CEGES-SOMA), Brussels, AA699, Hervé de Gruben Papers, File 31; emphasis added. 41. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 21 January 1944, in ABMFA, 11575/574; and De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 15 August 1945, in ABMFA, 17951-2. The latter is also in PHSF, 142/3184.

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To underscore that Soviet leaders were different from Westerners, the skeptical Belgian diplomats would refer to the “Asian” character of the Rus- sian soul. This type of discourse had already manifested itself in the interwar period. Socialist leader Louis de Brouckère, for instance, had written: “Bol- shevism is not socialism....Someone has described Bolshevism as ‘Socialis- mus Asiaticus.’ It seems hard to ªnd a more accurate characterization. It is indeed the Asian and barbarian deformation of a European and civilized con- ception.”42 In conservative Catholic discourse about the Soviet Union of the interwar period, similar cultural typologies could also be found. Baron Hervé de Gruben, for example, pointed to the cultural continuity between “old Tsar- ist” and “new Communist” Russia:

When we talk about Russia, we have to set aside our own mental customs. In Russia, one ªnds vaster but less precise measures. Time and human life have less value. Extremes, contrasts, and even contradictions touch each other without objection. And everywhere reigns this immense passivity, this submissiveness to transcending and unknown forces, this indifference to individual destiny, which we call Slavonic, and which may already be Asian.43

References to the “Asianness” of Russia/the USSR turned up occasionally in diplomats’ reports even during the war. In 1943, for example, van de Kerchove described the Soviet leaders as “sly tacticians” because they “incar- nate European as well as Asian methods.” He immediately minimized the partly European character of the Russian people, however, by adding that “Russia was the European nation which was least capable of governing itself on the basis of free institutions. Its almighty leaders, Tsars or people’s com- missars, constantly used the most brutal methods: this is ‘the Russia made of arbitrariness and violence.’”44 In 1946, Baron Robert Silvercruys, the Belgian ambassador in Washington, also referred to the Asian character of Soviet leaders, describing the Russian mind as “essentially an Asian mind.” Referring to the Russian people’s legendary patience, he argued that “time does not count for Asians.”45 The second cultural narrative deªned the Soviet Union as the “other” by placing it outside the game of traditional diplomacy. Van de Kerchove accused Soviet leaders of lacking a sound grasp of traditional diplomacy. Although he judged that, in many respects, Stalin “ªlled the boots of the Tsar”—for in-

42. Stengers, “Belgique et Russie,” pp. 302–307; emphasis added. 43. Louis Raymond [Hervé de Gruben], “Impression de Russie: Ce que l’on peut voir en Russie,” La revue générale (Brussels), 15 September 1935, p. 329; emphasis added. 44. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 2 August 1943, in ABMFA, 11775, No. 380/102. 45. Silvercruys to Spaak, 24 July 1946, in ABMFA, 10.984bis, No. 6451/1134; and Silvercruys to Spaak, 27 September 1946, in ABMFA, 10.984bis, No. 8237/1593.

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stance, in his expansionist foreign policy—the Soviet leader clearly distin- guished himself from his Tsarist predecessors because he disregarded traditional diplomatic manners.46 Van de Kerchove took offense at this supposed shortcoming:

The Soviet government did not have a god bending over its cradle. It keeps maintaining the marks of its difªcult beginnings, and bears the traces of a deplorable ªrst education. Even to this day, it has not abandoned its old habits of addressing peoples instead of governments, and of insulting the latter, even when these governments turn toward the Soviet government in a conciliatory manner. Thus [Vladimir] Lenin, [Leon] Trotsky and [Georgii] Chicherin acted with regard to the “entente”; thus, today, Stalin and Molotov behave with regard to Poland.47

Van de Kerchove also wrote that Stalin “could not adapt himself to the laws of decency and to the principle of pertinence in discussion in general and in international discussion in particular.”48 Ultimately, Soviet leaders not only remained Marxist ideologues; they were no gentlemen-diplomats either: “It is quite adventurous to be seated at the same table, even more so to treat delicate affairs where honor and interest are at stake, with companions who are so clearly unversed in the rules of discussion and so accustomed to substituting a gentleman’s good faith with the injuries of the ill-mannered.”49 According to De Cartier, traditional moderate diplomacy was outside the Soviet mindset. After a diplomatic incident between Soviet authorities and Western diplomats (the latter were prevented from disembarking in the Port of Constanºa, Romania), de Cartier wrote to his minister: “This gesture of the Russian government, even if it is commanded by the necessities of the politics it pursues, truly lacks this courtoisie which, of late, determined international relations and which are so perfectly deªned by the ‘comitas inter gentes.”50 In other reports, de Cartier repeated his argument, alluding to “the impertinent manners of the Russian government.”51 He also stated that Soviet actions re- vealed a dearth of “the moderation that, in the eyes of the English, is the hall- mark of good politics.”52 Van de Kerchove’s and de Cartier’s arguments implied that despite the diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union in the

46. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 8 January 1944, in ABMFA, 11591. 47. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 15 January 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 23/14. 48. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 2 August 1943. 49. Ibid. 50. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 5 April 1945, in ABMFA, 10958bis. 51. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 16 May 1945, in ABMFA, 10958bis. 52. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 15 August 1945, in ABMFA, 17951-2; also in PHSF, 142/ 3184.

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1930s, the USSR was an international pariah that did not comply with the rules of courtesy and savoir faire of the diplomatic game. The third characteristic of the “skeptical paradigm” was the repeated historical reference to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August 1939. Whereas the cooperation paradigm had bemoaned Western interventions in Soviet Russia in 1919–1920 and highlighted these to explain Soviet leaders’ fear of a renewed, ideologically inspired cordon sanitaire against the USSR, conservative diplomats took another approach. Their constant allusions to the Nazi-Soviet Pact were meant to cast doubt on the prospect of continued cooperation and partnership with Stalin, implying that he was inherently per- ªdious and not to be trusted. Furthermore, once Stalin had stubbornly shown his intention to impose Soviet-style Communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, another historical narrative surfaced in the diplomats’ reports. In- creasingly, they compared Stalin’s behavior with that of Adolf Hitler before the war. The continual references to the 1939 Soviet-Nazi pact, as well as the analogy linking Stalin to Hitler, implied that conservative diplomats saw the Soviet Union increasingly as an enemy, not an ally. De Gruben, for example, wrote that “there was no natural obstacle to German expansion but the Russian inºuence on the Slavonic world. Apart from a Western European intervention, Eastern Europe is predestined to be conquered or contested, or, even worse, to be amicably divided by the two co- lossuses.”53 De Cartier also reminded Spaak and the department in Brussels about the 1939 pact and the Soviet-Nazi collusion in occupying Eastern Eu- rope. In response to an address by Winston Churchill to the House of Com- mons, defending the compromise the British had reached with Moscow about the Polish question, de Cartier wrote,:

The tribute paid by Mr. Churchill to the high moral value of Marshal Stalin and his government, whose words are supposed to be worth any written document, had to be interpreted as exaggerated by a nation that had been pillaged by the Russians at the time it was defending itself against the German attack.54 De Cartier, who had a hard time accepting the arrangements concerning postwar Poland, could not bring himself to write about this question without referring to the events of August and September 1939.55 Van de Kerchove also repeatedly brought up the 1939 pact. In response to the discussions on the eastern Polish borders, he wrote: “I would only say that the acts of 23 August and of September 1939, which linked the Soviets to

53. “L’avenir de l’Europe,” June 1943, in CEGES-SOMA, AA 699, Hervé de Gruben Papers, File 44. 54. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, Telegram No. 73, 27 February 1945, in ABMFA, 10957ter/ 10958bis. 55. Ibid.

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Germany in an alliance of which the shame—whatever one does or says— persists to this day, according to the Soviets, signiªed the end of Poland’s existence. Today, they want to pretend these acts constitute the basis of real friendship between Poles and Soviets!!”56 Van de Kerchove made many more references to 1939 in his reports, and on one occasion this sparked a debate between the ambassador in Moscow and Le Ghait, then Spaak’s chef de cabinet in charge of instructing diplomats abroad. The sparring between van de Kerchove and Le Ghait, the leading advocates of the skeptical and the cooperation paradigms, offers insight into how the discursive battle about the Soviet Union was fought within the Bel- gian diplomatic elite. The debate shows, furthermore, the sharp limits of the critical space that was available for skeptical diplomats to voice their criticism of the Soviet Union. In a report dated 8 January 1944, van de Kerchove described the line that had separated German and Soviet troops from 1939 to 1941 (and that during that period had been the western border of the Soviet Union), as “the line of 23 August 1939.”57 Le Ghait reacted to this assertion. He let van de Kerchove know that, to his knowledge, this demarcation line between the German and Soviet armies had not been negotiated on 23 Au- gust 1939, when the Nazi-Soviet Pact was ªrst signed, but had been established later, sometime between 23 and 28 September 1939, after the Red Army had invaded Poland on 17 September 1939 in response to the German attack on Polish territory. This made Le Ghait believe that “on 23 August 1939, no agreement was negotiated on a demarcation line”; however, if van de Kerchove possessed information that would prove the contrary, Le Ghait would gladly receive it.58 Van de Kerchove reacted to Le Ghait, who was undoubtedly aiming to downplay the Soviet collusion with Nazi Germany and prevent it from becoming a potential wedge against the Soviet Union, by an- swering that he had contacted a colleague about this matter. Van de Kerchove reported that this colleague

had been categorical and had shared your [Le Ghait’s] view. What had been agreed upon on 23 August was merely a benevolent neutrality on the Soviets’ part with regard to Germany in the European conºict that was on the verge of commencing. Stalin was convinced that the French Army would attack Ger- many as soon as war was declared and that they would thus make rapid German successes in Poland difªcult. When events turned out otherwise, Stalin, in a couple of days’ time, decided to attack the perishing Poland. The Germans, who at the time had a crucial interest in the Soviet Union’s neutrality, opened negotia-

56. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 15 January 1944. 57. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 8 January 1944. 58. Le Ghait to van de Kerchove d’Hallebast, 27 January 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 411/10.

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tions with the Soviets that led by the end of September to an agreement on a deªnitive line of occupation between both countries.59

Van de Kerchove wrote that he adhered to this account of the events, although he still tested the limits of the critical space afforded by Le Ghait. The Belgian ambassador remarked that his French colleague Maurice Garreau, who at the beginning of the war resided in Germany, took another view of the events of 1939. According to Garreau, the complete agreement between Ger- many and the Soviet Union, including the deal on the demarcation line, had in all its details been negotiated and signed on 23 August. He had reported this to the Quai d’Orsay in 1939, but the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not been certain of his account. Somewhat contradictorily, van de Kerchove concluded his report by remarking:

I transmit this interesting piece of information, which surely must contain a large element of truth with regard to the date, if not the scope of the Soviet agreement. In using the term “line of 23 August,” I did not want to take a position in this debate. I merely believed I was using a commonplace expression.”60

Another common use of historical references to deªne the Soviet Union as a permanent outsider was to invoke an analogy between Hitler’s behavior and Stalin’s behavior. This was to become a classic theme in anti-Soviet discourse during the Cold War. In cables sent by Belgian diplomats it had already surfaced by early 1945. In April 1945, de Cartier implied in one of his reports that he interpreted Stalin as a potential new Hitler. As a consequence of the methods Stalin was applying in Poland, and in Central and Eastern Eu- rope in general, methods that were unacceptable to the British, de Cartier ob- served a shift in British public opinion. De Cartier argued that Stalin ran a high risk of losing all British sympathy. He wrote that although British public opinion was traditionally characterized by a strong sense of justice, the public conscience usually developed slowly. This phenomenon had manifested itself in the 1930s with regard to Germany. De Cartier wrote that only in late 1938, after Munich, did British public opinion turn against the Germans. He concluded: “British opinion, after the enthusiasm it has felt with regard to the So- viet Union, now undoubtedly has entered a phase of doubt and malaise, but I am convinced that if the Soviets keep applying the methods they are currently employing, a similar evolution will come about.”61 That is, the West ran the risk of a new Munich, with Stalin as a new Hitler. Again, van de Kerchove was more explicit in his use of this analogy than

59. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 16 March 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 96/53. 60. Ibid. 61. De Cartier de Marchienne to Spaak, 1 March 1944, in ABMFA, 11575/574.

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his colleagues were, even though he did not believe that the Grand Alliance would break up immediately. If the Western powers would deal with Stalin in a determined, resolved, and not-too-conciliatory manner, the Soviet leader would probably concede in order to continue cooperation with the West. Nevertheless, van de Kerchove was unequivocal in his opinion about what would happen if the West did not follow this strategy and instead acted out of fear and discouragement. In that case, a repetition of “Munich” would occur:

Between Hitler’s tactics before the war and Stalin’s now, there is no fundamental difference....Both men have more than one point in common: they play with weak adversaries—Czech or Polish—like a cat with mice. Both accuse these adversaries of intransigence when they remain silent and of insolence when they speak. Both speculate on England’s conciliatory attitude in order to push it to re- nounce its promise of protection with regard to a smaller ally and to abandon the cardinal principles of its policy....Both promise and vow that every conces- sion will be the last, that after that they will be satisªed, sensible, and willing to cooperate with the international public order, and then claim: this will be my last revendication in Europe.62

Soon thereafter, on 15 February 1945, van de Kerchove wrote in the same vein that “a dictator, whether Hitler, [Benito] Mussolini, or Stalin, cannot be appeased by concessions made out of fear or weariness.” He anticipated the response: “one will say that conditions are completely different now, and that is correct. Nevertheless, one must admit that it is easier to curse Neville Chamberlain than to refrain from following in his footsteps.”63 This phrasing reºected one of the most powerful elements in the discourse supporting hostile bipolarity. Stalin was the new Hitler, and the West was not to make the same mistakes it had made with Hitler. With these ideological, cultural, and historical narratives, conservative diplomats challenged the assumptions of the cooperation paradigm. By mak- ing use of the uncertainties caused by Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe, they tried to portray Soviet leaders as outsiders in international relations whose different ideology sanctiªed methods no longer used in the West. Occasionally, leading advocates of the cooperation paradigm tried to de- lineate the limits of the critical space available for skeptical diplomats to ex- press their criticism. Le Ghait, for example, got involved in a debate with van de Kerchove about the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Van de Kerchove, however, was not to be discouraged. In the end, his explicit skepticism made his position as ambassador in Moscow impossible. He became persona non grata in the Soviet Union. Soviet ofªcials refused to meet him any longer, prompting van de

62. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 21 January 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 30/18. 63. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 15 February 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 57/33.

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Kerchove to remark that “frequenting heretics has always been forbidden to loyal servants of the true faith.”64 Nevertheless, when the Soviet government asked Spaak to recall van de Kerchove because of his “anti Soviet activities,” the foreign minister did not hesitate for long.65 Hardly 48 hours after the So- viet request came in, van de Kerchove was called back to London.66 The ambassador in Moscow had deviated too much from the pro-Soviet line set by Spaak and Le Ghait. Spaak appointed Le Ghait as van de Kerchove’s successor. Given Le Ghait’s well-known leftist sympathies, this was a meaningful appointment. On his way to Moscow, Le Ghait met van de Kerchove in Cairo. In a personal letter to Spaak, Le Ghait wrote:

In Cairo, I had a couple of very amicable meetings with my predecessor. I found him to be moderate in his words, but (in my view) erroneous in his judgments. I learned that for three months, he has stirred our legations in Tehran and Cairo with his violent language, up to the point that [the diplomat Louis] Scheyven, as he has told me, even started to shun him.67 Spaak answered: “I read with great sadness what you wrote about your predecessor. Of course, you had to write it, for the department has to be informed, but what a deplorable adventure! Here you have a diplomat who has lost all chances to occupy an important post in the future.”68 Had these events tran- spired four years later, in 1948, van de Kerchove’s language and views would not have cost him much if anything. In 1944, however, his explicit anti-Soviet posture was diplomatically improper and did not square with the views that prevailed at the top of the Belgian Foreign Ministry.

Conclusion

After the war, hostile bipolarization rapidly shaped international relations. The cooperation paradigm, which in 1944–1945 had been the leading view of the Soviet Union within the Belgian diplomatic elite, proved to be untena- ble. Even though policymakers in both East and West displayed a consider- able willingness to continue their partnership after the war, the prospects of continued cooperation were plagued not only by Soviet actions in Eastern Eu- rope but also by uncertainty, ambiguity, and mistrust, which were further ag-

64. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, 10 February 1944, in ABMFA, 11591, No. 56/32. 65. Van de Kerchove d’Hallebast to Spaak, Telegram No. 14, 19 March 1944, in ABMFA, 11591. 66. Jean van den Bosch to Silvercruys, 7 April 1944, in ABMFA, 18434/3. 67. Le Ghait to Spaak, 19 July 1944, in PHSF, 475/7271. 68. Spaak to Le Ghait, 30 August 1944.

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gravated by the difªcult and problematic communications and interactions between the Soviet Union and its Western wartime allies. For many in the West, the Soviet Union remained a mystery. French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault complained about Soviet ofªcials’ failure to answer his questions: “It is as if I dropped a stone in an abyss almost without a bottom. After a couple of seconds, I hear a quiet sound, and then nothing.”69 Spaak and Le Ghait had similar experiences in late 1944 when the Soviet press ªercely assailed Spaak’s policy of a West European regional entente. Le Ghait was unable to establish trustful relations with his counterparts in Moscow and to ascertain what the exact motives were behind these attacks. His analyses of Soviet actions always remained conjectural and speculative. As long as some degree of good will persisted on both sides, difªcult communications and interactions between the Soviet Union and its Western partners were a tiresome but surmountable hindrance. Hence, in 1944 and 1945 Spaak did not believe that hostility would become deeply entrenched. To his dismay, however, mutual enmity grew rapidly after the war. Tiresome communications and interactions led much faster than expected to explicit doubt and, later, to a complete lack of comprehension. Hostile interpretations of the other side rapidly gained prominence. Gradually, Spaak adapted Belgian foreign policy to the changing international political context of hostile bipolarity. He did not do this in a straight- forward way, however. First he tried to promote a system of peaceful coexis- tence. Then he talked about Europe as a “Third Force.”70 Finally, in 1948– 1949 he accepted the Cold War as a fact of international politics and steered Belgium into the U.S. camp.71 This evolution can be explained as the result of the disciplining impact of great-power politics on small states’ policies. The evolution of international events meant that the Belgian government had to adapt its policies to the emerging Cold War system of hostile blocs. However, the disciplining force of the international system was not the only important factor shaping Belgium’s foreign policy. Belgium’s diplomats helped to forge the new Cold War orientation. In 1944 and 1945, fertile soil

69. Account of a conversation of Spaak with de Gaulle and Bidault, 23 February 1945, in PHSF, 162/ 3398. 70. See also Anne Deighton, “Entente Neo-Coloniale? Ernest Bevin and the Proposals for an Anglo- French Third World Power, 1945–1949,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 17 No.4 (October 2006), pp. 835–852; and Sean Greenwood, “The Third Force Policy of Ernest Bevin,” in Michel Dumoulin, ed., Plans des temps de guerre pour l’Europe d’après-guerre, 1940–1947 (Brussels: Bruylant, 1995), pp. 419–436. 71. Maarten Van Alstein, “The Belgian Diplomatic Elite, Spaak, and the Emergence of the Hege- monic Cold War Consensus: Interpretations of Hostile Bipolarization 1944–1949,” Ph.D. Diss., Uni- versity of Antwerp, 2009 (in Dutch).

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existed within the Belgian diplomatic elite for the reception of the views and rhetoric that later constituted the basis of “Cold War thinking.” This soil was fertilized by the conservative worldview of many aristocratic diplomats who were never able to perceive the Soviet Union as a partner or an insider in international politics and diplomacy. By expressing their skepticism and criticism of Soviet designs, these diplomats contested the dominant interpretation advocated by the top of the Belgian Foreign Ministry. Furthermore, the skeptical discourse about the USSR not only gave lee- way to anti-Soviet Cold War sentiment within the Belgian diplomatic elite but also meant that Belgian diplomats played their part in forging a hostile re- lationship with Moscow. By interpreting the Soviet Union not as a partner but as a rival or even an enemy, they facilitated the reorientation of Belgian policy in keeping with the deepening bipolarity of international relations. En- emy images tend to have an autogenerative character: If all sides act on distrustful or even hostile interpretations of the other, these interpretations can function as self-fulªlling prophecies and create a state of hostility. Belgian diplomats played a part, albeit a small one, in the origins of the Cold War. In part functioning as a self-fulªlling prophecy, the skeptical interpretation of the Soviet Union in the end was proven right by events: The Soviet Union established Communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe and became the foremost enemy for the West.72 However, the turn of events did not entirely validate the skeptics’ conservative worldview. Although the outbreak of the Cold War endorsed the anti-Communist and anti-Soviet views of conservative, aristocratic (and often Catholic) diplomats, they, like Spaak, also had some adapting to do. Speciªcally, they had to accept one of the most important consequences of the emergence of the new world order: the leadership of the United States, the (Protestant) herald of modern liberalism and capitalism.73

72. With regard to the Soviet Union, Geoffrey Roberts has similarly analyzed how in 1947 the realist discourse of Soviet diplomats such as Ivan Maiskii and Maksim Litvinov was sidelined and replaced by an ideologically driven discourse that reºected a much less sanguine view of postwar prospects for the Grand Alliance because of the inherent contradictions of capitalism and socialism. Roberts argues that the pessimists turned out to be more accurate in their forecasts than Litvinov was, in part because their discourse became a self-fulªlling prophecy by inspiring actions and attitudes that in turn resulted in the very thing that was feared—capitalist hostility. See Geoffrey Roberts, “Litvinov’s Lost Peace, 1941–1946,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 4 No. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 52–53. 73. See Wolfram Kaiser, “Trigger-Happy Protestant Materialists? The European Christian Democrats and the United States,” in Marc Trachtenberg, ed., Between Empire and Alliance: America and Europe during the Cold War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleªeld Publishers, 2003), pp. 67–72. For case studies, see Maarten Van Alstein, “Belgian Diplomats and Hostile Bipolarization: Edouard Le Ghait en Baron Hervé de Gruben,” in Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent, Vol. 13, No. 20 (2008), pp. 103– 143; and Dirk Martin, “Belgian Diplomats in the Cold War: The Case of Jacques Delvaux de Fenffe,” Historiens de l’Europe contemporaine, Vol. 8, No. 3–4 (December 1993), pp. 207–213.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Michael Auwers, Rik Coolsaet, Jorg Kustermans, and David Reynolds for their critical comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this text, and Megan Marie Milota for proofreading the manuscript.

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