Futile servility

Being a defector myself (from Czechoslovakia, 1964), I am particularly incensed about the rejection of a Ukrainian defector from a Soviet freighter in New Orleans, and I hope readers will forgive me if I digress from the usual subject of energy.

Miroslav Medvid swam ashore, asked for asylum "to live in a decent country," was returned to his ship by the Immigration Service, jumped off the boat returning him, was captured a second time, and was dragged, handcuffed and struggling, back onto the Soviet ship. Here he attempted to cut his wrists, was threatened by reprisals against his parents, and very probably drugged. By the time State Department bureaucrats were allowed to examine him (in the presence of Soviet officers), he claimed he had fallen into the water while carrying out repairs and wished to return to the USSR. This greatly relieved the US authorities: federal judge Martin Feldman invoked "the public interest," fearing a "US-Soviet confrontation ... [that] this court will not trigger" and ruling that "foreign affairs are not the business of the federal court;" and the White House kept assuring everybody in sight that "the case is now closed." To President Reagan's lasting shame, it persisted in this attitude even when Sen. Helms (more power to him!) succeeded in subpoenaing Medvid for a congressional hearing.

It is an attitude that is contemptible for both its immorality and its incompetence.

What is incompetent is the belief that such acts of servility will favorably impress the Soviets. The case of Simas Kudirka, the Soviet defector who was beaten on board a US vessel by Soviet goons while a US Coast Guard captain looked on as they dragged him kicking and screaming back to his ship, was a particularly hideous example of rejecting a defector, but it sent the same message to the Soviets as all others: that America is a weakling which stands up for human rights only when they are violated by smaller powers. Like all cases of appeasement, this last episode will lend weight to the Soviet conclusion that with or without treaties, America will bend to their will.

For the Soviets do not think like Americans. They do not condemn the reluctance to use force: they simply do not understand it. Whenever they do refrain from using force, it is not because they regard its use as unnecessary or immoral, but because they fear it might be unsuccessful or counterproductive. If President Reagan and the State Department Chamberlains who advise him had not outrageously undercut Sen. Helm's subpoena, if the Coast Guard had blocked the Soviet vessel's exit instead of enforcing the Brezhnev Doctrine on the Mississippi River, then America would not just have saved a human life, but it would have gained the Soviet's grudging admiration.

They would not have "retaliated" against US ships in Soviet ports for long: US ships do not carry defectors who are forced to return by threats of persecuting their families. This is not only clear to all who know the Soviet mentality, but it is also amply confirmed by experience in US-Soviet relations.

For "negotiation, not confrontation" is a slogan based on ignorance and self-delusion. On two, and only two, occasions did the US confront the Soviets in the post-war era: over the Berlin blockade and over missiles in Cuba, and in both cases the Soviets backed down. In everything else, the US "negotiated" nothing but concessions, humiliation and dishonor, each time more firmly establishing its status of a paper tiger.

There are other precedents of how to deal with tyrants. Hitler took sadistic pleasure in humiliating the fawning and obsequious British ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson, whom he treated as the worm that he was. But he backed down before King Christian of Denmark who threatened to be the first to wear the Star of David if any of his Jewish subjects were made to wear it.

And there are more examples from the Appeasing Thirties. German anti-Nazis hunted by the Gestapo would often make it across the border into Czechoslovakia; and in many cases Czech officials of Judge Feldman's type would give in to Nazi demands of extradition.

But in those cases, as often as not, the Czech guard taking the anti-Nazi to the border would discretely point out where the train slows down and the forest is dense, and at that point he would take a trip to the toilet. These lowly policemen risked their jobs (doubly precious in the depression), for they could not be sure that their superiors would cover up what technically was a breach of law.

What made them do it was simple human decency: the kind that is sadly lacking in Washington's posturing orators.