TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041690/0416640.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.2 KB | 137 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 88

Why Lithuania Is Not Like South Carolina


By Charles Krauthammer


    As Lithuania is slowly strangled, it appeals to the world
for help. The world turns away ashamedly. Shame, because we
know that the Lithuanian cause is just.

    Why? Is it not true, as Columbia University historian Eric
Foner asserts, that "there really is a genuine parallel between
Lincoln and Gorbachev"? That "Lincoln's position, like
Gorbachev's, was that a union, no matter how it was formed,
cannot be abandoned." Why do we praise Lincoln for launching
a war to save the Union but denounce Gorbachev for much milder
actions?

    The usual answer -- the Lithuanian answer -- is an appeal
to history. The American South voluntarily joined the American
Union. Lithuania was conquered and involuntarily absorbed into
the Soviet Union. Its original incorporation being
illegitimate, it is not really seceding, it is merely
reasserting a pre-existing independence of which it was robbed
50 years ago when jointly raped by Hitler and Stalin.

    But history can be tricky. On the one hand, where exactly
does history stop? Lithuania was independent for 20 years
between 1920 and 1940, but for more than a hundred years before
that it was part of the Russian empire. Which historical period
is the norm? The Russian imperium? The brief interregnum of
Lithuanian independence? Or the Soviet reality of the past 50
years?

    And on the other hand, why was, say, South Carolina's
accession to the American Union in 1788 binding on the
generation of 1860, which was not even born at the time of
incorporation? Why exactly were South Carolinians who had
nothing to do with joining the American Union prohibited, by
democratic theory no less, from asserting their democratic
right to choose their own form of association, or
non-association, with the Union?

    We need firmer ground on which to base the justice of
Lithuania's declaration of independence. And it exists. It has
nothing to do with history. It has instead to do with
democracy, with a new principle of international relations or,
rather, an old one that has been revived: the principle of
democratic legitimacy. The Lithuanians are right to do what
they did because it was an elected government, created by
consent of the governed, that decided in the name of the people
to secede. It is the democratic origin of that decision, not
its historical antecedents, that makes it right.

    But didn't South Carolina also democratically decide to
leave the American Union? By what right did Lincoln make war
on it?

    The answer is, first, that South Carolina, unlike Lithuania,
was not fully democratic. In 1860, 58% of its population was
enslaved, denied, among other human rights, the vote. It was
a white minority government, we would say today, that voted for
secession.

    And, second, Lincoln's Union, unlike Gorbachev's, was a
democracy. Lincoln fought to preserve the Union because he
believed that secession meant the end of the great American
experiment in self-government. If a minority (the South), upon
losing an argument (the election of 1860), can just pick up and
quit the Union, then the whole idea of republican government
becomes a farce. If every disgruntled minority can take up its
marbles and secede, then the monarchist and other reactionary
critics of the (then) unique American experiment in republican
government would be vindicated: man is not fit for
self-government. As in classical Rome and Greece,
self-government inevitably breaks down into either anarchy or
tyranny.

    None of this applies to Gorbachev. He is protecting a
dictatorial empire, not a democracy. The union he is defending
is dedicated to no proposition. Gorbachev has introduced
elements of democracy into the U.S.S.R. But ironically, the
only part of the U.S.S.R. that can be said to be fully
democratic is Lithuania, which has held the U.S.S.R.'s first
free multiparty elections. For Lithuania freely to secede from
a nondemocratic union is not to undermine the idea of
democratic government but, in fact, to affirm it.

    Moreover, today even Lincoln's action would be looked on
with far more skepticism. Even if the union is democratic, it
hardly seems to us today that it has the right forcibly to
suppress the democratically expressed will of a minority for
independence. If, for example, Quebec decided tomorrow to
secede from Canada, the world would hardly countenance a
Lincolnesque invasion of Quebec in the name of the Canadian
federal union. Nor would Canada.

    So long as a nation, in making its own decisions
democratically, does not threaten its neighbors (a condition
that a unified Germany, for example, would have to meet), it
should be free to choose. Certainly Lithuania meets that test.
That is why we are all pulling for Lithuania.

    But not fully. When our governments are called upon to
support Lithuania's independence, they are mute. Why? Because
while the Lithuanian cause is just, there are other causes in
the world -- among them the continued success of Gorbachev's
attempt to democratize, demilitarize, and decolonize the empire
that he inherited. This too counts for something.

    This tug between the justice of the Lithuanian cause and the
need to preserve these other values embodied by Gorbachev is
the source of Western paralysis over Lithuania. It is no use
trying to justify that paralysis by denying, by appeal to
Lincoln, the Lithuanian case. It won't wash. Our paralysis is
justified only by admitting that the Lithuanian cause conflicts
irreconcilably with other important values.

    Some international dilemmas are insoluble. Lithuania
presents us with such a dilemma. To try to escape our anguish
by denying the just cause of the Lithuanians is to add insult
to injury. But we need not condemn ourselves for cowardice.
Appeasement is the abandonment of friends simply for one's own
safety. Our inaction on Lithuania is grounded in concern not
just for our safety but for the reform and eventual liberation
of the entire Soviet empire. What Lithuania is experiencing,
therefore, is not betrayal, nor is it appeasement. It is
tragedy.