Dealing with Dictators

László Borhi, Jason Vincz

Description

Dealing with Dictators explores America's Cold War efforts to make the dictatorships of Eastern Europe less tyrannical and more responsive to the country's international interests. During this period, US policies were a mix of economic and psychological warfare, subversion, cultural and economic penetration, and coercive diplomacy. Through careful examination of American and Hungarian sources, László Borhi assesses why some policies toward Hungary achieved their goals while others were not successful. When George H. W. Bush exclaimed to Mikhail Gorbachev on the day the Soviet Union collapsed, "Together we liberated Eastern Europe and unified Germany," he was hardly doing justice to the complicated history of the era. The story of the process by which the transition from Soviet satellite to independent state occurred in Hungary sheds light on the dynamics of systemic change in international politics at the end of the Cold War.

Introduction
1. Peace Overtures, the Allies, and the Holocaust, 1942-1945
2. Cuius Regio, Eius Religio: The United States and the Soviet Seizure of Power
3. Rollback
4. 1956: Self-Liberation
5. Reprisals and Bridge-Building
6. The Dilemmas of External Transformation
7. "The Status Quo is Not So Bad": Détente
8. Nixon, Carter, and the Kádár Regime
9. "Love Towards Kádár": Reagan and the Myth of Liberation
10. 1989: "Together We Liberated Eastern Europe"
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• International Relations
• Former Soviet Union
• Holocaust
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Hungría
• Mijaíl Gorbachov
• Nixon
• Diplomacy
• Iron Curtain
• The Holocaust
• URSS
• Kádár
• Cold War
• General officer
• Allies
• Eastern Europe
• Soviet Union
• Russia
• Mikhail Gorbachev
• Hungary
• General
• Nixon (homonymie)
• Diplomatie (homonymie)
• Guerre froide
• Carter
• Soviet
• Mikhaïl Gorbatchev
• Budapest
• Balkans
• Holocauste
• 1989
• Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques
• Russie
• Hongrie

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 27 juin 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253019479
• Langue: English

Extrait

DEALING WITH DICTATORS
DEALING WITH DICTATORS
THE UNITED STATES, HUNGARY, AND EAST CENTRAL EUROPE, 1942-1989

L SZL BORHI
TRANSLATED BY JASON VINCZ
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Translation funded by the L szl Tetm jer Fund of the Hungarian Studies Program, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University-Bloomington.
2016 by L szl Borhi All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-253-01939-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01947-9 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
For my boys, D niel and Marcell and for my wife, Csilla
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Peace Overtures, the Allies, and the Holocaust, 1942-1945
2 Cuius Regio, Eius Religio : The United States and the Soviet Seizure of Power
3 Rollback
4 1956: Self-Liberation
5 Reprisals and Bridge Building
6 The Dilemmas of External Transformation
7 The Status Quo Is Not So Bad : D tente
8 Nixon, Carter, and the K d r Regime
9 Love Toward K d r : Reagan and the Myth of Liberation
10 1989: Together We Liberated Eastern Europe
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to express my appreciation to the Institute of History of the Center for Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University for providing a stable support and a stable background while I was writing and researching this book. My research in the National Archives and Records Administration was generously funded by the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Hungarian-American Scholarship and Enterprise Fund. I wish to take the opportunity to express my gratitude. I also wish to thank the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs for funding my research in the George Bush Presidential Library. Last but not least I am grateful to the L szl Tetm jer Fund at Indiana University for funding the translation of this volume.
I owe an intellectual debt to a long list of peers and professors. They share in everything that is positive about this volume. I take full blame for its faults.
I wish to thank the following who generously shared their experience and expertise with me in interviews: Robert Hutchings, J nos Nagy, the late Mark Palmer, General Brent Scowcroft, Thomas Simons, Ferenc Somogyi, and John Whitehead.
DEALING WITH DICTATORS
Introduction
This is a book on the impact of one country on the other. At first sight the selection of this topic may seem a bit odd in light of the fact that it describes the relationship of two geographically distant countries: the United States, the most powerful state of the times, and Hungary, a weak client state in the middle of Europe. It is the history of how the framers of American policy sought to exploit this small but strategically well-located state to further America s strategic interests and how Hungarians, caught in the net of aggressors, first Germany, then the Soviet Union, tried to use the United States as a counterbalancing force. Even though American influence in East Central Europe was not decisive, at certain junctures U.S. policies impacted Hungary profoundly. Although Hungary was rarely the focus of American foreign policy, developments there influenced the overall U.S. strategy toward Eastern Europe.
Only a few historians have dealt with the bilateral relations between the United States and a small state under foreign domination. Dealing with Dictators provides an in-depth case study of Cold War history that more general accounts of the Cold War cannot address. The case-study approach makes possible an exploration of the bilateral relations between the United States and Hungary from two sides. The book addresses a number of important questions. What works better, isolating enemy states or building contacts with them? Did communist states speak with one voice on foreign policy matters? How did Soviet hegemony affect the foreign policy of its client states in various periods of the Cold War? How did the U.S. attempt to influence the weak states of East Central Europe for its strategic objectives? How did American objectives and strategy toward the region change over time? Was the relationship between the United States, Hungary, and the other client states strictly one way, or did the weak states affect America s strategy in the Cold War? How profound was, after all, the impact of American foreign policy on the countries behind the Iron Curtain?
Perhaps the main argument of this book is that engagement through economic, cultural, and humanitarian contacts can be more successful in transforming the political system and foreign policy of hostile dictatorships than can policies of embargo and isolation. In addition, it will be argued, the weak states of East Central Europe were by and large unable to influence their position in the international arena after the start of World War II. This does not mean that they were always entirely powerless. Although they were unable to rid themselves of the consequences of Soviet hegemony until 1989, some Soviet satellites such as Romania were able to manipulate Cold War rivalries in their favor. In 1989, however, the Soviet satellite states launched the avalanche that ended communism and reunited Europe. 1
For this study, I analyze - from the perspective of both states - the relationship between the United States and a small state in East Central Europe, from the start of World War II to the end of the Cold War. Focusing on the policies of the two states as they interacted allows us to see how the initiatives of one state shaped and affected the responses of the other. Policymakers in Washington may have devised strategies toward Eastern Europe, but these strategies had to be implemented on the ground. Political strategies can be disconnected from reality, and this is especially the case when policymakers at the highest echelons of power are poorly informed of the conditions in the countries they are trying to engage. In general, a state is able to attain its objectives in foreign policy only if the intentions of the other state are properly appraised and understood. This level of understanding can be achieved only by a well-trained diplomatic corps that is well-versed in the historical and cultural heritage and political customs of the host country and therefore is able to properly interpret its intentions. Initiatives failed in the Cold War when the intentions of the target state were misinterpreted.
The proper interpretation of scarce intelligence was particularly hard in the highly secretive communist political settings, where even official data were rendered unreliable by politically and ideologically motivated manipulation and where credible information on the functioning and aims of the opaque political system was almost impossible to come by. American diplomats stationed in Budapest found it particularly hard to gauge the true intentions of their interlocutors. Oftentimes, functionaries posing as party liberals claiming to be constrained only by intransigent Soviet masters were in reality members of the state security apparatus with a mission to curry unreciprocated favors from the United States.
Paradoxically, the United States was able to exert strong influence on Hungarian politics in World War II, when there were no official contacts between the two states. In order to improve the chances for the planned invasion of Europe, the Joint Chiefs and the State Department sought to exploit Hungarian (and Romanian) efforts to quit the war. The idea was that if Germany found out about its allies intrigues and moved to occupy Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, it would be forced to redeploy troops that could otherwise be used to repel the Normandy invasion. In Hungary s case the ploy worked. Hitler did order its occupation, citing the country s impending treason. This occupation, in turn, had catastrophic consequences for the last intact Jewish community in Europe.

In the early phase of the Cold War, American foreign policy had little influence on the actions of the Soviet Union in its sphere of occupation in Eastern Europe. American property was confiscated; U.S. citizens were arrested and incarcerated with impunity. Moscow pursued two simultaneous policies: gradual Stalinization and imperial penetration. These policies were interrelated. Soviet military and economic penetration helped the process of political and economic Sovietization; the installation of pro-Moscow communist regimes ensured the almost unconditional satisfaction of Soviet imperial needs. 2 In Hungary, the introduction of the dictatorship of the proletariat was announced in May 1946. Hungarian democratic political elements sought American support against the onslaught of the Soviet-backed Communist Party. While the U.S. diplomatic mission in Budapest was well aware of the scope and depth of Sovieti