Claim:
The United States did not provide support to the forces of change in Hungary. As always in Hungarian history, the United States let down the Hungarian people, just as it let down the other peoples of Central and Eastern Europe!
Rebuttal:
If there was ever a time when the overseas superpower actively helped (or could have helped) the democratic forces in the region and in Hungary, it was during the last decade and a half of the Cold War! In the spirit of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, the United States stood up for the enforcement of human rights in Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, and encouraged both the Hungarian government’s independence from Moscow and the organization of the opposition within Hungary with its policy of détente.
In detail:
The history of the United States has rarely been intertwined with that of Hungary, partly due to geographical distance and partly due to American policy’s traditional distance from European affairs and its policy of isolationism. Kossuth made a tour of the United States in 1851-52, during which he was greeted by huge enthusiastic crowds everywhere, but he was unable to gain any real support for the Hungarian cause. President Millard Fillmore intervened to have Kossuth released from Turkey, but later insisted on strict neutrality and non-intervention.
In 1918-1919, Mihály Károlyi and his government expected a just and fair peace from President Woodrow Wilson, but in vain, as Wilson’s 14 points were not a basis for negotiation for the victors. Hungarian disappointment in the foreign policy mission of American democracy multiplied. During World War II, the fate of an American-British landing in the Balkans was sealed from the outset by the fact that American foreign policy considered the region of Hungary to be far down the list of priorities, behind Latin America, the Pacific, the Atlantic, and Western Europe. Even after 1945, it seemed that this region would remain of little interest to Washington.
A slow turnaround began during Richard Nixon’s presidency. American foreign policy, marked by the name of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, clearly recognized that communist ideology had become multi-centered and that, based on imperial logic, Moscow and Beijing could be played off against each other. American policy sought to separate Chinese and Romanian “special case” communism from Moscow. Accordingly, American-Romanian relations improved (1969: Nixon’s visit to Bucharest, 1970 and 1973: General Secretary Ceaușescu’s visit to Washington, 1972: Romania’s admission to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, 1975: granting Romania the largest trade concession). At that time, Romania was the “good boy” country for the United States. In addition, there was a certain degree of interest in Poland, obviously due to the millions of Polish emigrants in the US. However, the other countries did not play a role in Nixon’s policy. At the height of the détente process (1962-1976), in 1976, President Gerald Ford made the surprising statement that “there is no Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe.”[1]
The next change in official US policy toward Eastern Europe came with Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1976. What caused the change in US policy? Primarily, it was the perception that American policy had lost ground in the Third World. Although the anti-US guerrilla movements in Latin America and, in the case of Nicaragua, the successful Sandinista revolution (1979) could be explained by internal social causes rather than Soviet support, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s Polish-born national security adviser, nevertheless believed that if the Soviet Union did not keep its distance from Latin America, the US’s “near abroad,” the US should not, in the spirit of reciprocity, show indifference to the affairs of the Soviet empire’s Eastern European periphery.
It played into the Americans’ hands that the socialist countries also signed the 1975 Helsinki Accords and its third basket, respect for human rights. This was the opening through which it was possible to penetrate the Iron Curtain: American embassies were tasked with monitoring the human rights situation in the countries concerned and reporting back to Washington. Carter’s human rights policy encouraged the formation of human rights opposition in every country. This policy was fair because it did not apply exclusively to socialist countries: from then on, Washington began to “write off” authoritarian and military regimes in the Third World, which may have been anti-communist but were also anti-democratic. In the mid-1970s, a human rights movement even emerged in the Soviet Union, the Moscow Helsinki Group. The same period saw the formation of the Czechoslovak Charter 77 group and the Hungarian democratic opposition, as well as the re-organization of the popular-national opposition. In terms of social support, none of these could compare to the Polish Solidarity movement, which was formed in 1980. Human rights policy had an impact!
Ronald Reagan continued Carter’s policy. In September 1982, a document entitled The United States Policy Toward Eastern Europe outlined the new policy toward the region. Its goal was to ease the “Soviet stranglehold.” It stated that the United States would differentiate between the states of the Soviet bloc and, in the spirit of a “policy of détente,” reward those that showed a desire for independence from Moscow: “In implementing this policy, the US will calibrate its political tools to carefully discriminate in favor of those governments […] that show relative independence in the implementation of their foreign policy. [emphasis added – P.Á]”[2] Three countries in the Warsaw Pact military bloc showed signs of independence: Romania (based on a separate brand of communism), Poland (where the opposition alone showed signs of life on a million-strong scale in the form of the Solidarity trade union), and Hungary.
The Ceaușescu regime intensified its dictatorial pressure on society from the second half of the 1970s onwards, causing the Romanian general secretary to lose his previous “good guy” status. János Kádár’s Hungary, on the other hand, gained in importance. The US administration prescribed rewards for countries that showed “a greater degree of internal liberalization.”[3] From the 1970s onwards, Hungary took cautious steps to win the sympathy of Western heads of state and governments. Kádár’s maneuvering foreign policy also caught the attention of the United States. During this period, visits by Western politicians such as West German Chancellors Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt and Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky contributed to the consolidation of the regime’s foreign policy. Christian Democratic heads of government also paid visits, such as Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss and Belgian Prime Minister Wilfred Martens. Relations with the Vatican improved after the death of József Mindszenty: this was signaled by visits to Pope John Paul II by Prime Minister György Lázár in 1975 and Kádár in 1977. The return to the country of Hungary’s ’Holy Crown’ in 1978 and the granting of the largest trade concession in the same year already indicated that US-Hungarian relations had reached a level of trust. However, the Americans were cautious in their wording: officially, they did not return the crown, symbolizing historical legal continuity, to the Hungarian government, but to the Hungarian people. This was a clear signal to János Kádár to continue his friendly foreign policy towards the West and, at the same time, a reward for not violating human rights to a flagrant degree (at least in comparison with the GDR and Czechoslovakia at the time), according to Washington’s assessment. In 1982, Hungary joined the International Monetary Fund. From 1986 onwards, János Kádár received several official invitations to visit the United States. This did not happen, but Károly Grósz, then general secretary, traveled to the United States in 1988, and a meeting took place between Reagan and Grósz. In the person of US Ambassador Mark Palmer (1986-1990), the democratic opposition found a committed supporter. On July 11-13, 1989, President George Bush Sr’s visit to Hungary put the finishing touches on US-Hungarian relations. The Soviet Union still existed, but Bush was welcomed as a friend by the government led by Miklós Németh.
American foreign policy provided encouragement and support to the Hungarian opposition. In this sense, the path leading to the Hungarian regime change cannot be understood without considering American foreign policy processes.
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