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

In other aspects, the crisis also exposed how Britain’s détente policy was not always consistent, and sometimes not even coherent. Post-1945, prime ministers often sought summit meetings with Kremlin leaders, which they believed might lead, almost magically, to the end of the Cold War. Wilson was no exception, but the Foreign Office regarded the prime minister’s dealings with the Soviet leaders as too soft and even pedantic. This was particularly so, given the unvarying hostility expressed by the Soviet Union toward Britain (London was often singled out by the Soviet Union as a hard-line country anxious to exploit Moscow’s weaknesses). The more enthusiastic the West became about détente (which might provide the West with an opportunity to penetrate the Eastern Bloc), the more suspicious the Kremlin became. As Geraint Hughes argues, this vicious circle may have tipped the balance in Moscow in favor of the use of force against Czechoslovakia. 67On the other hand, British ambassadors in Eastern Europe felt that UK policy for Eastern Europe lacked initiative and inspiration. They believed that pursuing détente with a heavy focus on the Soviet Union, while neglecting British relations with Eastern Europe, was a foreign policy weakness, but this too, could now be reexamined thanks to the Czechoslovak crisis and the subsequent slow progress of détente. 68

In the final analysis, the following three points are important in understanding the UK’s attitude toward the crisis. First, the UK government regarded the crisis as a misfortune for the Soviet system. At a Defense and Oversea Policy Committee (OPD) meeting in late September, Denis Healey stated that he found the Soviet’s action significant because force was used “to maintain the status quo, not to change it.” 69Thus, instead of exploiting this misfortune to the full, the United Kingdom chose to keep a low profile (in line with the rest of the NATO powers) in order not to make things more difficult for the Kremlin. The other side of the coin was not to give Moscow any propaganda opportunity to accuse the West of provoking Moscow into resorting to force over the Prague Spring. Second, London thought that it was right for NATO to stick to the noninterference policy. The Ministry of Defense explained this in cut and dried terms just a few days after the invasion: NATO was “never designed to protect any Warsaw Pact country from Soviet intervention” because it was “an essentially integrated organisation with a single military purpose, namely to protect its members from outside attack by positing an effective deterrent.” Thus, while the crisis was unfolding in Eastern Europe, Britain’s main task was to observe that there was no threat to Western Europe. When British postinvasion analyses showed that this really was the case, as far as the United Kingdom and NATO were concerned, the crisis was over.

The final point was about the importance of Western Europe for the United Kingdom, which has been explained fully in the earlier part of this essay. This remained unchanged throughout the Cold War years. Because of this importance, the United Kingdom wanted to make sure that the United States and European NATO powers were working closely together and was conscious of the fact that Moscow was aware that the United Kingdom had significant influence, especially in Washington. 70This role could only be played effectively so long as the United Kingdom worked as part of the multilateral organization in dealing with the Soviet threat in the primary theatre of Europe. Thus, what the foreign and commonwealth secretary minuted in February 1969 is worth citing here, “An independent power acting alone, we cannot achieve much vis-à-vis the Soviet Union: as an influential member of the Alliance and in due course of a united Western Europe, we have a very considerable part to play.” 71Thus, the assumption that the Czechoslovakian crisis had huge implications for the future fate of the Soviet Eastern European empire, the conviction about what NATO was for, and the belief in multilateralism, these three factors defined, shaped, and characterized Britain’s policy toward the Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion in August 1968.

1. The Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office were amalgamated and became the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) from 17 October 1968.

2. Michael Stewart to certain missions and dependent territories, guidance telegram, no. 264, 29 October 1968, Documents on British Policy Overseas Series III , vol.1, Britain and the Soviet Union, 1968–1972 (London: The Stationery Office, 1997), 85–86 (hereafter cited as DBPO).

3. John G. McGinn, “The Politics of Collective Inaction: NATO’s Response to the Prague Spring,” Journal of Cold War Studies 1, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 127.

4. Cabinet Defense Committee Meeting, DO (50) 20, 20 March 1950, Cabinet 131/9, the National Archives, England (hereafter cited as TNA).

5. Saki Ruth Dockrill, Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez: The Choice between Europe and the World? (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 11–12.

6. Cabinet Defense Committee Meeting, DO (49) 45, 17 June 1949, Cabinet, CAB131/17, TNA; see also John Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the Formation of NATO, 1942–1949 (London: Macmillan, 1993), 76–91.

7. For Anglo-American relations and Britain’s decision to withdraw from Singapore, see Dockrill, Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez .

8. Cabinet Defense and Overseas Policy Committee memoranda, DO [O][S][64] 29, 2 October 1964, Cabinet, 148/9, TNA.

9. “Future Policy toward Soviet Russia,” PUSC (51) 16 (final), 17 January 1952, Foreign Office, FO 371/125002/4, TNA.

10. “Future Policy toward Soviet Russia,” PUSC (51) 16 (final), 17 January 1952.

11. Annex B. Liberation of the Satellites to PUSC (51) 16 (final), 17 January 1952.

12. MacArthur II to Hoover (minute), 13 November 1956, Foreign Relations of United States 1955–1957 , vol. 25, Eastern Europe (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1990), 435 (hereafter cited as FRUS).

13. Paul Gore-Booth, With Great Truth and Respect (London: Constable, 1974), 386.

14. Enclosure, “The Longer Term Prospects for East-West Relations after the Czechoslovak Crisis,” in Mr. Stewart to HG ambassador to Moscow (Sir D. Wilson), RS 3/2, 15 May 1969, DBPO, 151.

15. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), created in 1936, is composed of the representatives of numerous intelligence agencies as well as the major departments, including the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defense, the Home Office, and the Treasury. For the history of the JIC, see Percy Cradock, Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World (London: John Murray, 2002), 7–49ff.

16. JIC (63) 85, 3 March 1964, CAB148/4, TNA.

17. R. Gerald Hughes, Britain, Germany and the Cold War: The Search for a European Détente, 1949–1967 (London: Routledge, 2007), 155.

18. For Harold Wilson’s personalities and his government, see Dockrill, Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez , 46–49.

19. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Allen Lane, 1999), 528–29. See also, John Young, The Labour Governments, 1964–1970: International Policy (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003), 14–16.

20. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive , 129.

21. Geraint Hughes, “Giving the Russians a Bloody Nose: Operation Foot and Soviet Espionage in the United Kingdom, 1964–1971,” Cold War History 6, no. 3 (May 2006): 233.

22. The January 1968 announcement was based on the decision in July 1967 to withdraw from East of Suez by the middle of 1970s. See Dockrill, Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez , 193–208ff.