The Politics of Collective Inaction Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/1/3/111/695152/152039799316976823.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 NATO’s Response to the Prague Spring ✣ John G. McGinn Introduction The successful outcome of a high-level meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in December 1967 augured well for the alliance in the coming year. NATO had adopted a new strategic concept, known as “flex- ible response,” to replace the outdated strategy of massive retaliation. NATO also had approved the Harmel Report, a landmark document on “The Future Tasks of the Alliance,” which proposed to move away from Cold War con- frontation and toward peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.1 Auspicious though these developments may have seemed, the Harmel Report’s two-track approach of “defense and détente” was soon overshad- owed by events in Eastern Europe. In early January 1968, a new leader, Alexander Dubãek, ascended to power in Czechoslovakia and promptly embarked on a series of far-reaching reforms that came to be known as the Prague Spring. Although memories of the bloody fate that befell Hungarian reformers in 1956 spurred Dubãek to offer constant reassurances to the So- viet Union and other members of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) of 1. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “The Future Tasks of the Alliance,” 14 December 1967. The Harmel Report was attached as a separate document to the December 1967 North Atlantic Coun- cil Communiqué, because the report was not approved by all of the allies. France, which had withdrawn from the integrated military command of the alliance in 1966, would not agree to all of the Harmel findings, but acquiesced in its release as an attachment because the other allies had approved the report in toto. For a detailed discussion of the 1967 Harmel Exercise and the subse- quent report, see Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO and the United States: The Enduring Alliance, up- dated edition (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), especially chapter 6; see also Helga Haftendorn’s recent work, NATO and the Nuclear Revolution: A Crisis in Credibility, 1966–1967 (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1996). Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 1, No. 3, Fall 1999, pp. 111–138 © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 111 McGinn Czechoslovakia’s loyalty to the Communist bloc, his pledges ultimately were Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/1/3/111/695152/152039799316976823.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 insufficient. Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops moved en masse into Czechoslovakia on the night of 20–21 August, abruptly ending the political and economic reforms of the Prague Spring. Although NATO members closely watched developments in Czechoslo- vakia throughout 1968, the alliance did not pursue a coherent policy. A close examination of NATO actions from January 1968 until the invasion on 20–21 August helps explain why a coordinated approach never materialized. NATO members were extremely cautious in their actions toward Czechoslovakia primarily because they were eager to strengthen the budding process of détente with the Soviet bloc. Substantive arms-control negotiations with the Soviet Union appeared to be a real possibility by the summer of 1968, and most of the allied governments feared that any public pronouncements or other actions by the North Atlantic Council (NAC) would jeopardize the chances for meaningful agreements.2 In addition, most Western leaders be- lieved that any supportive rhetoric from NATO would merely undermine the position of the reformist government in Prague vis-a÷-vis its Warsaw Pact al- lies. As a result, NATO members worked individually rather than collectively to avert military action in Eastern Europe through the use of quiet diplomacy. Western diplomats secretly conveyed messages to the Soviet Union warning that aggressive actions against Czechoslovakia would have adverse effects on East-West relations. This quiet diplomacy signaled that the allies wanted to avoid increasing tensions with the East but, at the same time, were eager to take steps on their own that would help forestall Soviet military interven- tion in Czechoslovakia. Earlier studies have not fully resolved important questions about West- ern policy during the crisis. This gap in the literature is quite surprising, be- cause the historiography on Czechoslovakia and 1968 is immense. During the Cold War, many journalists, historians, and political scientists attempted to discern the meanings and lessons of the Prague Spring. In the 1970s and 1980s, scholars such as H. Gordon Skilling, Karen Dawisha, Galia Golan, and Jifií Valenta wrote excellent accounts of these momentous events.3 Since the end of the Cold War, scholars have been able to reexamine the Prague Spring in light of the new evidence that emerged from the Soviet and East European 2. The North Atlantic Council (NAC) was the highest decision-making body in the alliance. For- eign ministers, or more often, designated permanent representatives, spoke for member coun- tries in weekly NAC discussions. 3. Karen Dawisha, The Kremlin and the Prague Spring (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984); H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); and Jifií Valenta, Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968: Anatomy of a Decision (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979). 112 The Politics of Collective Inaction archives. Mark Kramer and Kieran Williams have done some excellent work Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/1/3/111/695152/152039799316976823.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 exploiting this new information.4 Furthermore, many pertinent documents have been translated into English from the original Czech, Slovak, or Rus- sian.5 The Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Security Archive, an inde- pendent nongovernmental research institute and library that collects and publishes declassified American documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, have been at the forefront of this work.6 Although the new evidence has furthered historical understanding in important ways, the main focus of the latest research has been on materials from the Soviet and East European archives. As a result, recent examinations of the Prague Spring have looked primarily at policy making in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and other Warsaw Pact countries, with much less attention devoted to the role of NATO during this pivotal East-West crisis.7 Kieran Williams, for instance, does not discuss NATO, the United States, or the West to any significant degree in his recent book. Even the literature that does exist about NATO and the events of 1968, written mostly in the 1970s, concentrates primarily on the impact of the Soviet intervention on the alli- ance.8 Although this issue is extremely important, it is equally vital to exam- ine NATO’s actions prior to the invasion to get a more complete view of the 4. Mark Kramer, “The Czechoslovak Crisis and the Brezhnev Doctrine,” in Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker, eds., 1968: The World Transformed (New York: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1998), pp. 111–173; and Mark Kramer, “The Prague Spring and the Soviet Invasion: New Interpretations,” parts 1 and 2, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Nos. 2 and 3 (Fall 1992 and Fall 1993), pp. 1, 4–15, and 2–13, 53–55, respectively. Also see Kramer’s lengthy forth- coming book, Crisis in Czechoslovakia, 1968: The Prague Spring and the Soviet Invasion. Kieran Williams similarly mines the archives of Eastern Europe and Russia in his book, The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Jifií Valenta has also updated his 1979 book (cited in the previous footnote), based on new evidence. A revised edition came out in 1991 from the Johns Hopkins University Press. 5. In particular, see relevant issues of the Cold War International History Project Bulletin; the anthology Prague Spring ’68: A National Security Archive Documents Reader, translation and headnotes by Mark Kramer (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998); and Miklós Kun, Prague Spring—Prague Fall: Blank Spots of 1968 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1999). 6. Detailed information about these resources and selected documents are available from their respective web sites: http://cwihp.si.edu/ and http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/. See also the web site of the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws), which features images of some of the original Soviet and Czech documents. 7. The main exception is Mark Kramer’s forthcoming book (cited in footnote 5 above), which does provide a reassessment of NATO policy, based in part on newly declassified Western docu- ments. Even Kramer, however, focuses more on Soviet and Czechoslovak perceptions of NATO policy than on the policy itself. 8. See, for example, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, NATO after Czechoslova- kia, Special Report Series, No. 9 (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1969); Isaac Don Levine, Intervention (New York: Donald McKay Company, Inc., 1969); and I. William Zartman, Czechoslovakia: Intervention and Impact (New York: New York University Press, 1970). 113 McGinn 1968 crisis. This article will evaluate how well NATO functioned during the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/1/3/111/695152/152039799316976823.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 crisis and what factors precluded a more effective response. The timing of this reexamination of the motivations behind Western action is propitious. American, British, and other allied records have recently become available under the 30-year declassification rule. Furthermore, NATO documents are now available for the first time ever. The NATO archive in Brussels, Belgium formally opened in May 1999.