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    Solzhenitsyn’s Speech at Harvard

    by

    A Reply to James Reston’s Critique
    June 1978

    Exiled from his native Russia, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered the commencement speech at Harvard University on June 8, 1978. Solzhenitsyn spoke of the decline of courage in Western societies generally and in the United States in particular, vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. He argued that the security and contentment of Americans had made them morally soft; their freedom had decayed into self-indulgence. Meanwhile, Soviet tyranny had toughened Russians, and these two moral changes, taken together, put into question the survival of genuine freedom everywhere.

    New York Times columnist James Reston issued an indignant reply to the speech. He was especially exercised by Solzhenitsyn’s charge that America’s “capitulation” in the face of the military advance of communist North Vietnamese forces against South Vietnam three years earlier had been “hasty.” “Hasty?” he exclaimed: “After a generation of slaughter?” Solzhenitsyn probably referred to the U. S. Congress’s refusal to grant additional military funding to South Vietnam after American troops had withdrawn, rather than the whole course of the war. But in my response to Reston I addressed another aspect of his critique. 

     

    Mr. Reston sees “a fundamental contradiction” in Solzhenitsyn’s address at Harvard, a contradiction between the assertion that “only moral criteria can help the West against Communism’s strategy” and the assertion that “only American military power and willpower” could have stopped the advance of Communism in Southeast Asia.

    No contradiction: Solzhenitsyn sees that willpower and morality intersect, that there are some moralities that tend to soften human character and others that tend to toughen it. His argument that the nation, Russia, is spiritually stronger than ours doesn’t in any way endorse the Soviet government. The point is rather that the Russians have been forced to become morally tougher because their adversary, the government, is more overtly evil, whereas in the United States evil takes a more seductive, pleasing form and thus eases us into shallower lives.

    In his high-flown praise of American’s “spiritual heritage” as the cause of our withdrawal from Vietnam, Mr. Reston overlooks the fear of our supposedly exemplary anti-war protesters–what Hobbes called the fear of violent death; “belief in the sanctity of individual human life,” indeed.

    Solzhenitsyn would remind us that some things surpass individual human life in their sanctity. The fact that it is possible to hold up the individual life’s sanctity as the American summum bonum demonstrates Solzhenitsyn’s point about American moral shallowness more conclusively than anything Solzhenitsyn said.

    As for military power, it is necessary on another level, the level of practice. Only moral toughness can bring a decent country to use military power, but moral toughness without power can find itself imprisoned by tyrants. Or, in a different way, by purveyors of intellectual fashion.

     

    Unsurprisingly, the Times didn’t publish this. But James Reston replied in a letter to me dated June 20: 

    Dear Mr. Morrisey,

    Thank you for your opinion on my Solzhenitsyn column.

    There really is so much controversy on what he said that it would take more time than I have to go into all the details. On reflection, there is rather more in your interpretation of the effects of suffering than in mine.

    Sincerely,

    James Reston

    The spirit of kind magnanimity in that note touches me even today, nearly forty years after receiving it.

    Brzezinski Speaks

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    Article published June 1978

     

    In a recent interview with U. S. News and World Report, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski listed what he called the five “priorities” of the Carter Administration’s foreign policy. One comes to expect a fair amount of piffle when listening to `official spokesmen’ for any large organization, public or private. Such people find controversy at once painful and all too easy to come by, so they take care to sedate us with vagueness, irrelevance, and cant. (Those of us old enough remember President Eisenhower will recall his mastery of such techniques; once, when an aide worried about the possibility of hostile questioners at a press conference, Ike is said to have assured the fellow, “Don’t worry–I’ll just confuse them.”)

    Dr. Brzezinski is no Eisenhower, but his piffle quotient surely makes many a functionary envious. The first priority he listed was “to infuse American foreign policy again with a certain measure of moral content.” This amounted to a slap at his predecessor, Henry Kissinger, whose alleged Metternichean realism offended liberals and conservatives alike. While one may have little admiration for Kissingerian moral gravitas–the gravitas is heavy but the morality isn’t–the Carter Administration’s “human rights” campaign’s “certain measure” of morality doesn’t have nearly enough of the right kind.

    The second “priority” is to “concentrate on strengthening our ties” with allies and “with many regionally or internationally important powers that have surfaced in the last two or three decades”–this, “instead of being preoccupied with the contest with the Soviet Union”; Brzezinski quickly added, “that conflict still exists,” as indeed it does. But in view of the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union are the only genuine worldwide powers, such a redirection of emphasis obscures realty. One might well strengthen ties with old and new allies (Israel, for starters) with a view toward the underlying rivalry with America’s true opponent, but never at the expense of becoming distracted from that rivalry. The hackneyed but true observation that we live in a complex world necessitates more clarity of thought, not make-nice muddle-headedness. That isn’t the right measure of morality.

    Speaking of muddle-headedness, the third priority is “to contain U. S.-Soviet competition, particularly through a SALT agreement that would inhibit the arms race.” “This,” Dr. Brzezinski images, “would help generate broader cooperation.” Beyond détente, it seems, Dr. Brzezinski envisions entente. At the risk of disturbing the dreamer, we must ask: cooperating on the basis of what? The extraordinary qualitative differences between the United States and the Soviet Union–moral, economic, social, legal, political, spiritual–simply offer little basis for genuine détente, let alone entente. That isn’t the right measure of morality, either.

    Dr. Brzezinski claims that the Carter Administration “gives more direct attention to those crises in the world which, if left unattended, have the potential for escalating and generating a serious threat to world peace.” Insofar as this refers to the Middle East it is preposterous. One might object to the goals Kissinger wanted, and the means he used in attempting to achieve them; one cannot say he did not give as much attention to this region as Carter and Brzezinski do. Moreover, the United States government is now studiously ignoring the major Soviet-Cuban intervention in the Horn of Africa, satisfying itself with a mild protest or two, hoping that this will be “Russia’s Vietnam.” But Russia helped make America’s Vietnam by massive infusions of aid to the Hanoi government. We can only suppose that the present Administration prefers “developing closer relations” with those newly-emerged countries that the Soviets haven’t bothered to get around to, yet. What is the measure of morality in that?

    Finally, the Administration would “sensitize world public opinion as well as foreign governments to the importance of such new globally significant issues” as nuclear proliferation and arms transfers. Fine: but a pattern appears. Of these five “priorities,” four have to do with comfortable self-preservation and its twin, the fear of violent death. Only the “human rights” issue, with its “certain measure” of morality, adds the leaven of self-sacrifice–or, more modestly, concern for anything other than our bodies–to this half-baked dough. “The central issue,” according to Dr. Brzezinski is that the United States is “again perceived” as “helping to shape a more congenial and decent world.” Congeniality and decency are the sort of pleasant virtues one finds at the cocktail parties Dr. Brzezinski attended when he was an academic. What participants in such gatherings frequently lacks counts more in world politics: the tougher, sharper virtues such as courage and justice that make a statesman less popular but better respected.

    Mr. Buckley’s Critique of Begin

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    Article published July 1978

     

    Summer 1978 saw an impasse in the tripartite Mideast peace talks initiated by the Carter Administration upon taking office 18 months earlier. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt had requested an Israeli goodwill gesture–that is to say, a unilateral concession–in the Sinai Desert, which had been occupied by Israeli troops since the 1967 war. Prime Minister Menachem Begin rejected this request publicly. The Carter Administration sided with Sadat on the matter, and diplomatic pressure was exerted. Serious talks resumed in September, leading to the Camp David peace accords signed by Sadat and Begin in March 1979. One commentator who backed the Carter Administration in its campaign to pressure the Israelis was the conservative pundit, William F. Buckley, Jr.; what follows is a critique of a column he wrote that summer.

     

    Since the June War of 1967, American conservatives have generally supported Israel’s aims and the methods Israelis choose to attain them. During this period the American Left has become increasingly critical of these aims and methods. In thel ast year or so, many American liberals have condemned what they call Israeli `intransigence’ vis-à-vis the Palestine Liberation Organization and the West Bank, which Israel seized during the war. Had Palestinian Arabs produced a Mahatma Gandhi to lead them, scarcely less sentimental guff would be heard.

    But now William F. Buckley, Jr., the most famous American conservative journalist, has joined not the critics of Israel–he still admires Israelis and their country–but the critics of Prime Minister Begin. It is not, he writes, “that Israel does not want a just peace, but that Israel under Begin does not seek a just peace.” Begin is “a die-hard, defined in this case as someone who is prepared to let his country die with him.” Examples: “his stubborn settlements policy in the Sinai–inexplicable in the context of the delicately midwived conversation with Sadat”; his recent “idiosyncratic” interpretation of UN Resolution 242, which set the terms for Israeli-Arab relations following the 1967 war; and finally, the “massive retaliation against civilian residents of PLO-infested areas,” an action the avoidance of which would have been “a diplomatic finesse” assisting President Sadat’s attempt to buoy “the confidence of the other Arab states” in his peace initiative. “What [U. S. President Jimmy] Carter and the Senate need now,” Buckley concludes, is to persuade Begin “that whereas he has manifestly a problem in distinguishing between himself and his country, we Americans do not share that problem.”

    Straw men burn easily. The real Begin, as distinguished from Mr. Buckley’s artifact, is no straw man, and his alleged intransigence doesn’t ignite and go up in smoke when journalists light matches.

    Still,. in view of Mr. Buckley’s sincere admiration of Israel, if not Mr. Buckley, perhaps he can be persuaded that the Prime Minister’s `intransigence’ is really the sort of determined patriotism that he himself exhibits when confronted by threats to his own country’s existence. I shall take his three substantive criticisms in order.

    Mr. Buckley finds the Sinai settlements policy inexplicable. I don’t. Leaving aside Mr. Begin’s campaign promises as well as legal and military arguments, one notices one important diplomatic fact: the settlements controversy arose just when the major issue at the peace talks had been reduced very nearly to the question of the West Bank. Mr. Begin had offered major territorial concessions to Sadat. His peace plan went so far as to concede Egyptian sovereignty over the Sinai, including strategic Sharm-el-Sheikh. Of course there were sticking points: demilitarization zones, the status of Israeli air bases, the timing of phased withdrawals among them. Instead of negotiating on these points, Sadat decided to shit ground and focus world attention on the issue of a `Palestinian’ homeland on the West Bank–not a word about which is mentioned in UN Resolution 242. Here he merely followed established Arab strategy, which is to con the United States into believing that the entire Middle East problem could be solved if Israel would only recognize the `Palestinians’ right to self-determination . Nothing could be further from the truth.

    By reducing the larger strategic and geopolitical problems of the Middle East to the `Palestinian’ issue and by couching that issue in the democratic language of self-determination, Sadat provided the Western democracies with convenient moral cover for taking the side of Arab autocracies over against democratic Israel. Now the pressure could be applied in good conscience. And, indeed, Sadat’s tactics produced the intended results. Pressure on Israel did begin to increase. `Why not make one more concession?’ `Israel must take risks for peace.’

    By reopening the Sinai controversy, Mr. Begin reminded Sadat and the rest of the world that Israel could also make demands, that Israel would not allow itself to be put on the defensive–especially by Sadat, who, we are frequently told, lacks the military and economic if not rhetorical means to demand anything of anyone. Here is something Mr. Buckley should be among the first to admire: a democratic statesman standing up against the world when, for more than a democratic leaders have been shamelessly appeasing one or another form of tyranny.

    Turning to the “idiosyncrasy” of Mr. Begin’s interpretation of UN Resolution 242, this isn’t the piece of comedy Mr. Buckley believes it to be. Resolution 242 requires “the application of both of the following principles: (1) withdrawal of Israeli forces (and only armed forces) from territories occupied in the 1967 war, and (2) the right of every sovereign state in the area to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries.” Mr. Begin’s “interpretation” of Resolution 242 is not so much an interpretation as a statement of a basic security dilemma: what Israel may regard as secure boundaries will not be recognized as such by its adversaries. Conversely, the boundaries which her adversaries would supposedly recognize–they say the pre=1967 ones–can hardly be regarded as secure by Israel (or indeed by any impartial observer), which means that Resolution 242 is an attempt to square the circle.

    Regarding the recent Israeli military action in Lebanon, Mr. Buckley knows that it was aimed at PLO terrorists, not civilians. What he may not know is that the terrorists, with Soviet and Syrian support, were developing a fourth Arab front against Israel; that even a year ago Israel had wanted to attack PLO bases in southern Lebanon but refrained from doing so on request by the United States. Israel’s military action in Lebanon was not a mere act of retaliation for the bloody massacre of Israel civilians on the Jewish Sabbath; it was an act of national self-defense. Most of the casualties were in fact terrorists, not civilians. It would be absurd to deny that civilians did not sustain casualties, although it should be noted that Lebanese Christians welcomed the Israelis as liberators. But the unsentimental preventative for the recurrence of such casualties is to eliminate their cause: the PLO.

    As for the Arab states’ confidence in Sadat’s peace initiative, are such realistic men as Syria’s Assad and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein really quite so hypersensitive? Hardened by many years of wars of their own making, they may use the Israeli action in Lebanon as a pretext for continuing hostility, but pretexts are never hard to find. If they want peace, they can have it; if they want land, they can negotiate for it. Which is not to suggest that this would sole the strategic problems of the Middle East.

    It is trite to say that if only the Arabs would lie in peace there would be peace in the Middle East. One might as well say that if the Russian would lie in peace there would be peace in the world. But feeding land to Arabs and Russians seems not to quell their appetites. If the words of Mr. Sadat himself, “We should get all that we can get until we can get all that we want.”

    Anyone familiar with the long history of intra-Arab rivalry knows that there would be more conflict in the Middle East, and therefore greater Soviet influence in the area, were it not for Israel. The truth is that Israel has been in the forefront of the global battle for freedom against servitude. So is Israel’s Prime Minister. Mr. Begin’s recent actions and statements are rather more realistic than Mr. Buckley contends. Far from being an egoist prepared to let his country die with him, Begin has shown that he is a man prepared to die that his country may live. Questioning Begin’s policies is one thing, questioning his character another. Israelis have known him for a long time and saw fit to entrust their safety to him. They are likely better judges of his character than Americans like Buckley or Morrisey.

     

    As things happened, talks resumed without any of the concessions Americans and Egyptians demanded–demonstrating once again the inutility of unilateral concessions during diplomatic negotiations.  One point I missed: UN Resolution 242, which still forms part of the framework for any future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, calls for Israeli withdrawal from “territories” won in the 1967 war; contrary to popular belief, and Arab propaganda, this does not mean that the Israelis are obligated to withdraw from all of those territories. During the negotiations, Begin stipulated that this language be used. The exact amount of land that may be relinquished by Israel remains subject to negotiations to this day.