Continued from 26 

4. Postwar Agreements Confirm Baltic Annexation.

Roosevelt was dead a few weeks later — in April 1945. But his division of the world with Uncle Joe Stalin is still alive. It was in fact confirmed — openly or tacitly, but unmistakably — by the subsequent treaties and accords of the three Allied Powers among themselves.

The Potsdam Conference of Truman-Stalin-Churchill/Atlee accepted the borders imposed by Stalin according to the Teheran and Yalta agreements and thus made them definite and permanent for postwar Europe. The Baltic States were not even discussed — they had disappeared. 27 

The policy that the United States pursued after the wartime friendship with the Soviets cooled, was properly called "Containment". The word means to keep back, restrain. The policy intended to make the postwar borders of the Soviet sphere quite permanent, it never envisaged pushing them back.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was in effect a unilateral delimitation of spheres of influence along the outer borders of the member states. The alliance did not even consider intervening in crises or conflicts beyond its sphere: neither in East Germany of Hungary in 1956; nor in Czechoslovakia in 1968 or in Poland in the later years.

The notorious "Sonnenfeldt doctrine", promulgated by US Secretary of State Kissinger in 1975/76, re-confirmed a strict hands-off policy toward the Soviet sphere in Europe.

The often praised Helsinki Accords expressly guaranteed Russian posession in perpetuity of the Baltic States by confirming the existing borders. There was no mention of autonomy or freedom.1 The solemn confirmation of Soviet rule was given in exchange for unenforceable promises by Moscow about some human rights for its subjects. The only hope was that Russian rule would become "less barbarian", not that it would end.

Let us not forget, that even neutral Sweden has for decades by its own laws forced Soviet citizenship on its Baltic residents.

None of these acts were a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact; practically all of them were a direct or indirect consequence of the treaties and agreements among the leaders of the Allied Great Powers: Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. Europe was shaped by the winners of the war, not by the losers. The division of the world plotted by them is still in effect.


1

The Accords promised Western powers would not violate the "frontiers" of the USSR. Thus Western powers could claim they did not grant de jure recognition to "borders", that is Soviet claims of sovereignty, particularly regarding the Baltic states.

Excerpts from a 1997 interview with former President Gerald Ford (available at the George Washington University web site):

INTERVIEWER: Well much more positive were the Helsinki Accords of August 75, but the first question I want to ask you was what were the interests of the US that were served by the Helsinki Accords?

GERALD FORD: Well the Helsinki Accords were pretty broad, but the one issue that was important to the United States, was the elevation of Human Rights, so that the Soviet Union and its communist allies had to recognize that human rights were of equal importance across the board. We the United States believed that if we could get the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations to respect human rights, that was worth whatever else was agreed to in the Helsinki Accords.

INTERVIEWER: Can you reflect on why there wasn't more enthusiasm for that section at the time, which is in a way like a time bomb under the Soviet Union.

GERALD FORD: Well certainly the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact nations did not recognize that the Human rights provision was a time bomb. We in the United States and our western allies I'm sure, were hopeful that that provision would bring about the kind of uprisings that did take place in the Warsaw pact nations, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and even in the Soviet Union itself. History I think is going to recognize that the Helsinki Accord was one of the great diplomatic achievements in the past, in this current century.

INTERVIEWER: Well at the time, how much was it felt that codifying a legitimate post war boundary for the Soviets was too much of a concession?

GERALD FORD: You have to recognize that the terms of that agreement said those boundaries have to be maintained peacefully. In other words, the Helsinki accords ruled out military action to change those borders. Now as long as those borders were re-defined peacefully, that was okay under the Helsinki Accords. Well what happened when you had the human rights provisions, and the dissidents rose up against their dictators, they changed those borders the Baltic nations and even Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, they took advantage of the human rights provision, to re-define what the borders meant.

INTERVIEWER: In the light of what an achievement the accord turned out to be, why do you think there was so much criticism at the time?

GERALD FORD: The people who were critical in the United States didn't understand what the impact would be with the human rights provision. They so frozen in their opposition to the Soviet Union,and the way the Soviets for example had treated, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. They didn't realize that the human rights provision would end up with the kind of freedom that they wanted in the Baltic Nations. And it took time, it took the human rights development to convince them that Helsinki was a great step forward and a time bomb for communism.

Ford's optimistic retrospective on the role of the Accords in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and restoration of Baltic freedom proposes that an act which recognized Soviet hegemony in fact and in perpetuity ("The participating States regard as inviolable all one another's frontiers...") was a positive act strengthening those peoples to free themselves in some geopolitically Nietzschian manner: was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker. It is true, for example, that the Accords ended Soviet radio jamming; however, we remain unconvinced that the relationship between the Accords and restoration of Baltic independence is much more than circumstantial. — Ed.

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