Günter Bischof - The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968

That the crisis had no serious implications for the United Kingdom had, of course, to do with the low priority accorded to Eastern Europe in its global policy, and this was also generally true for most NATO countries (with a possible exception of the Federal Republic of Germany). President Johnson, anxious to outmaneuver Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon’s informal overtures to Moscow, was keen to persuade the Kremlin to agree to start arms negotiations talks before he ended his term as president in January 1969. This almost blinded him to what was going on in Czechoslovakia on 20 August. On that early Sunday evening in Washington, DC, the Soviet ambassador read to the president a message from Moscow. Johnson did not seem to react in any adverse way to the invasion. On the contrary, and to the surprise of Anatolii Dobrynin, the president was anxious to move on to a different subject, that is, a possible beginning of the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) with Moscow as though seven thousand Soviet tanks rolling into Czechoslovakia had nothing to do with the United States. 58Similarly, the British prime minister concentrated his attention on the next summit talks with Moscow. Within NATO, the main task in 1968 was a series of studies developing the Harmel Report into practical policies. 59This lack of attention to the Czech liberation movement in the West was facilitated by the fact that, unlike the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the Dubček government did not try to break away from the Kremlin’s tutelage or from the Warsaw Pact. This situation saved the West from the moral dilemma about what action to take in the face of the unfolding tragedy in Czechoslovakia.

The first major postinvasion analysis of Britain’s relations with the Soviet Union in late September was subdued, but not wholly pessimistic. The invasion was considered to be a setback (but not a serious one) for the West in pursuing détente with the East. Whether Moscow’s use of force in Czechoslovakia marked any change of approach by the Soviet Union to NATO and the West generally remained to be seen, but the JIC did not expect that it would lead to any danger of Moscow’s going to war with the West because of the Czech crisis. 60In terms of the East-West military balance, and especially in relation to the long border with West Germany, the JIC recognized that Soviet armed forces deployed in Czechoslovakia meant that the Eastern Bloc had increased its military capabilities (although the eleven existing Czech divisions would not now be regarded as trustworthy by the Kremlin), which would enable it to mount a surprise attack on the NATO forward areas. But again, the Cabinet Defense and Overseas Committee was not convinced that the Czech crisis increased Soviet readiness to use force against the West, and the paper concluded that NATO still expected “substantial political warning of a change in this direction.” 61

Outside the NATO area, the committee examined the Far East and the Middle East, where the British government had recently announced its decision to retreat from East of Suez. Their findings concluded that there would be no change in Soviet strategies in these theaters which would require any urgent revision of UK global policy. 62Despite the crisis, there was no evidence that the Soviet Union would pose a more serious threat to NATO than before. The committee, however, believed that the Czech crisis revealed that the Soviet Union was “willing to act violently and to use massive force in complete disregard of world opinion where she considers that her fundamental interests are at stake.” 63Later in November, these sentiments were codified in a public statement by Brezhnev in Poland, known in the West as the Brezhnev Doctrine.

For the West, the crisis provided NATO with an opportunity to renew its purposes and commitments. The secretary of defense reminded the cabinet in late September that prior to the crisis, there had been some worrying signs in NATO: following France’s withdrawal from the command structure, the United States was also demanding some U.S. troop reductions in Europe. But the crisis demonstrated that de Gaulle’s independent move toward détente outside the North Atlantic Alliance carried little weight. From the British point of view, the crisis could be seen as a blessing in disguise. Whitehall could now turn this into an opportunity to strengthen Britain’s links with Europe and NATO. The idea was well received in Washington, which had long insisted that the European powers should do more to assist in the defense of Western Europe. The Ministry of Defense was already considering a number of measures (but not at the cost of increasing defense expenditures) to reinforce NATO’s defensive power. 64

While ministerial visits to the Eastern Bloc were put on hold as part of the West’s protest against the Soviet use of force in Czechoslovakia, normality slowly returned by the summer of 1969 when official contacts with the Soviet Union were resumed. In the United States, as a result of the invasion, SALT had been postponed, but only for a short period. Nixon invited the Soviet Union to the opening of arms limitations talks in June 1969, and in November, the talks began in Helsinki between officials of the two superpowers. The election of Willy Brandt as the next chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1969 removed the remaining obstacle to détente. The United Kingdom fully supported Brandt’s Ostpolitik , which was to accept the existence of Eastern Germany, and from then on, détente demonstrated genuine possibilities for increasing contacts between both sides. In other words, despite the setback caused by the Czechoslovakian crisis, UK policy toward the Soviet Bloc did not change significantly and would continue to be based on “defense and détente.”

While the Soviet Union may have won a tactical victory over the West with its surprise invasion of Czechoslovakia, the death of the Prague Spring marked the decline of the legitimacy of Communist rule throughout Eastern Europe. The Soviet Communist Party had lost its appeal to its fellow Communists in Western Europe. The younger generation of Eastern European intellectuals began to search for a “European” identity as an alternative to subordination to Moscow, although many of their rulers had no choice but to return to conservatism (or “normalization”) by closing the doors to the modernization of the Communist socioeconomic systems, a situation which persisted into the middle of the 1970s. 65The Kremlin, having found that there had been no violent reactions from the West to its crushing of the “Prague Spring,” became more confident about the ability of the Soviet Union to defend its own interests. This sense of confidence was reinforced by growing Soviet military and nuclear strength, which had been built up in the latter half of the 1960s. The Soviet Union was now ready to enter into more peaceful international relations, despite the remaining ideological differences with the Western Bloc. Détente was simply for Moscow the West’s recognition of the Soviet Union’s equality with the United States in terms of power and influence in the world. 66

For Britain, détente meant more contacts with the Eastern Bloc through trade and scientific and cultural exchanges, rather than a break from the Cold War. However, because of the UK’s long history of interactions with Russia and the USSR, the United Kingdom was a tad more suspicious about Soviet intentions than was any other NATO power. Thus the right balance between defense and détente needed to be struck if the West was ultimately to win the Cold War by changing the Soviet system. The Czech crisis provided the opportunity to strengthen NATO and helped the UK to reinvigorate its efforts to maintain NATO’s political cohesion.