A Call for Sacrifice
The Co-Responsibility of the West
Vaclav Havel
Four years after the fall of communism, it
can be said without much exaggeration
that this momentous historical event has
caused the democratic West some major
headaches. For all we know, many a
Western politician may occasionally
wonder, in the privacy of his mind,
whether it might not have been a mistake
to support the struggles for self-liberation
within the Soviet bloc (even though
that support was mainly verbal and
moral) and whether the West should not
have done more to prolong the existence
of communism. After all, the world used
to be so simple: there was a single adversary
who was more or less understandable,
who was directed from a single
center, and whose sole aim in its final
years (not counting some predictable
exceptions) was to maintain the status
quo. At the same time, the existence of
this adversary drew the West together as
well, because faced with tbis global and
clearly defined danger, it could always
somehow agree on a common approach.
All that has vanished. The world has
suddenly become unusually complex and
far less intelligible. Tbe old order has collapsed,
but no one has yet created a new
one. Meanwhile, the "postcommunist
world" is constantly springing new surprises
on the West: nations hitherto
unheard of are awakening and want countries
of their own. Highly improbable
people from God knows where are winning
elections. It is not even clear whether
the very people who four years ago so
astonishingly roused themselves from
tbeir torpor and overthrew communism
do not actually miss tbat system today.
The unwitting nostalgia in the West
for tbe old order may be discerned even
in such superficial matters as how they
refer to our countries. From the Czech
Republic to Kazakhstan we are, and will
no doubt remain for some time, "postcommunist
countries" and "former members
of tbe former Warsaw Pact." I am
guilty of having used these expressions
myself, but I must admit an increasing
aversion to tbem. After all, we did not go
through the trouble of getting rid of
communism only to have it remain—
even Avith a prefix—forever sewn to our
VACLAV HAVEL is President ofthe Czech Republic. Tbis article was translated
from the Czech by Paul Wilson.
[2]
A Callfor
coats. Nor did we go through the trouble
of liquidating the Warsaw Pact only to
bear forever the stigma of our former
membership in it. (Not long ago I
observed, somewhat undiplomatically,
that we do not refer to the United States
as a "former British colony.")
These formulations betray both a need
to categorize us and the inability to find a
key to understanding us other than the old
familiar one. Indeed, I sometimes feel sorry
for Western statesmen when I observe
the unease and surprise with which they
listen to the widely divergent geopolitical
and historical homilies delivered by various
representatives of our part of Europe. The
Pole still goes on about the 1941 division of
Poland by Germany and Russia, almost as
though he expected it to begin again
tomorrow; the Hungarian refers to the
Treaty ofTrianon in 1920 as a historical
wrong done to his people and how, as a
consequence, an enormous number of
Hungarians no longer live in Hungary
proper, a Czech will complain about
Munich and Yalta and the other betrayals
of his poor country by the West; and a Slovak
will talk about what a historical injustice
it was that no one ever perceived the
Slovaks as a separate nation. In such
moments I realize how much easier it must
have been for Western politicians when
they were faced with a homogenous Soviet
mass and didn't have to worry about distinguishing
one nation from another.
WHOSE ORDER WILL IT BE?
I well understand the unease vAth which
the West follows what, for it, are the
strange problems of all of those "postcommunist
countries," and I well understand
all the real (though often unexpressed) rea-
Sacrifice
sons that lead the West to behave reticendy
toward them. Still, I am strongly persuaded
that this reticence is extremely shortsighted
and that over time it may even
become quite dangerous, for it is not, as it
may seem, a sign merely of sober judgment
alone but also of an inability to comprehend
the essence of the new situation, and
a lack of imagination and courage in the
search for new solutions commensurate
with the new circumstances.
If the West, along with all the other
democratic forces in the world, is incapable
of rapidly engaging in the common
creation of a new order in European and
Euro-Asian aifairs—a better order than
the old bipolar one—then someone else
might well begin to do the job, and the
order thus created could well be far worse
than the one preceding it. I am thinking
not so much of a new Stalin, but rather of
the "order" that could emerge from the
violent clash of many different and impenetrable
forces that the disorganized state
of the world today may bring to life, not
only in the East, but in the West as well.
Such an outcome would inevitably
lead to new conflicts and new suffering,
perhaps far greater than what came
before. Not only that, it could ultimately
demonstrate that the democratic West
has lost its ability realistically to foster
and cultivate the values it has always proclaimed
and undertaken to safeguard,
and to which end it has built its arsenal
of weapons. Such a state of aifairs would
be far more than just a crisis of the East;
it would also be a crisis of the West, a crisis
of democracy, a crisis of Euro-American
civilization itself. Let events in the
former Yugoslavia stand as a warning:
this is not just a Balkan predicament.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS' March/April 1994 [3]
Vaclav Havel
The inability of Europe and the United
States to intervene effectively in defense
of the basic values of civilization that are
being so drastically destroyed in the
Balkans (and, what is more, in an area
that was always an integral part of
Europe) tells us something about the
democratic world as well.
If we in these "postcommunist" countries
call for a new order, if we appeal to
the West not to close itsell off to us, and
if we demand a radical reevaluation of the
new situation, then this is not because we
are concerned about our own security and
stability, and not only because we feel
that the security of the West itself is at
stake. The reason is far deeper than that.
We are concerned about the destiny of
the values and principles that communism
denied, and in whose name we
resisted communism and ultimately
brought it down.
I recognize that this rather bold claim
calls for an explanation.
THAT WORTH SACRIFICING FOR
Well then; many years of living under
communism gave us certain experiences
that the noncommunist West (fortunately)
did not have to go through. We came
to understand (or to be precise some of us
did) that the only genuine values are
those for which one is capable, if necessary,
of sacrificing something. (The
Czech philosopher Jan Patocka, at the
end of his life, devoted considerable
thought to this question.) The traditional
values of Western civilization—such as
democracy, respect for human rights and
for the order of nature, the freedom of
the mdividual and the inviolability of his
property, the feeling of co-responsibility
for the world, which means the awareness
that if freedom is threatened anywhere,
it is threatened everywhere—all of
these things become values with moral,
and therefore metaphysical, underpinnings.
Without intending to, the communists
taught us to understand the truth
of the world not as mere information
about it, but as an attitude, a commitment,
a moral imperative.
I have the impression that precisely
this awareness is sadly lacking in the
present-day West, the "non-postcommunist"
West (but with increasing obviousness,
in the "postcommunist" West as
well). Naturally, all of us continue to pay
lip service to democracy, human rights,
the order of nature and responsibility for
the world, but apparently only insofar as
it does not require any sacrifice. By that, I
do not mean, of course, merely sacrifice
in the form of fallen soldiers. The West
has made, and continues to make, such
sacrifices (though some instances of it
may be more meaningfiil than others). I
have in mind, rather, sacrifice in a less
conspicuous but infinitely broader sense,
that is, a willingness to sacrifice for the
common interest something of one s own
particular interests, including even the
quest for larger and larger domestic production
and consumption. The pragmatism
of politicians who want to win the
next election, for whom the highest
authority is therefore the will and the
mood of a rather spoiled consumer society,
makes it impossible for them to be
aware of the moral, metaphysical and
tragic dimensions of their own program.
Why has the West lost its ability to
sacrifice? There are probably many reasons,
some completely random political
[4] FOREIGN Volume73^.
A Callfor
ones, others that might be called philosophical.
One example of a random
political reason would be a deceptive
impression that has apparently gained
wide currency in the United States. Since
the fall of communism is considered by
many an American victory, now that the
Cold War is over, the impression is that
the headaches it caused are over too. But
the headaches are never over. If the West
has indeed won the Cold War, then
today it faces perhaps an even more
difficult task: winning the peace as well.
But there are also reasons, as I have said,
that run considerably deeper. The economic
advances of Euro-American civilization,
based as they are on advances in
scientific and technical knowledge, have
gradually altered man's very value systems.
Respect for the metaphysical horizons
of his being is, to an increasing
extent, pushed aside to make room for a
new deity: the ideal of the perpetual
growth of production and consumption.
This is the source of that protectionism,
that fear in the West of cheap Eastern
goods, that fear of getting more
deeply involved anywhere where there are
no immediate gains, of that caution, that
lack of imagination and courage, that
love of the status quo that ultimately
leads many to call the part of Europe that
has freed itself from communism in the
name of democracy—if not "current,"
then at least "former members of the
Warsaw Pact," "former members of
COMECON," "immature and unstable
democracies" and, as far as possible, to
lock them up in the world to which they
have become accustomed.
A liberal market economy? Yes, but
only for us. Security? Yes, but only for us.
Sacrifice
National interests? Yes, but only our own.
No, I am not speaking out of a sense of
injury or unrequited love: if you will pardon
me for saying so, I know more about
the immaturity of Czech democracy than
anyone in the West. I am simply making
some general observations. The Western
way of affirming Western values, in short,
seems to me to have seriously cooled off.
Is it any wonder that in more than
one "postcommunist" country, "postcommunists"
have done well in elections?
This circumstance might even be
attributable to the "non-postcommunist
West," which is doing so much to make
the "postcommunist West" or the
"East" itself disappointed in the atmosphere
of the world in which it placed so
much hope during the time of resistance
to communism.
Let me make myself clear: I do not
think at all that the main role of the
democratic West is to solve all the problems
of the "postcommunist world." Our
countries (whether those who declare
themselves to be, and evidently are, a part
of the Western European sphere of civilization,
or others who belong to the
"Central Asian" sphere of civilization, or
to any other) must deal with their own
immense problems themselves. The
"non-postcommunist West," however,
should not look on as though it were a
mere visitor at a zoo or the audience at a
horror movie, on edge to know how it
will turn out. It should perceive these
processes at the very least as something
that intrinsically concerns it, and that
somehow decides its own fate, that
demands its own active involvement and
challenges it to make sacrifices in the
interests of a bearable future for us all.
FOREIGN AVVAIK'S-March/Apri [5]
Vaclav Havel
'PARTNERS' TAKE RESPONSIBILITY ually outgrow its present role to become a
The creation of a new order can have genuinely pan-European security strucdozens
of variations. It is a matter of evo- ture. But this expansion of NATO should
lution and assumes great judgment and a take place against the background of a
profound capacity to understand. No one clearly defined and genuinely cooperative
will get anywhere these days with the relationship with Russia (or the Comdesignation
"former memhers of the for- monwealth of Independent States) as a
mer Warsaw Pact"; in fact, insisting on great Euro-Asian nuclear power that is,
this formulation may only cause further in all respects, in a radically different
damage. For instance: on the matter of position than the small Central European
security arrangements, the nature and countries. The "Partnership for Peace"
suhstance of the "Partnership for Peace" proposal could also provide a starting
project will be one thing if we are talking point for this specific relationship,
about the Central Asian republics that At this moment, however, my concern
are today members of the Common- is not with concrete proposals for a new
wealth of Independent States, and some- architecture of Atlantic-European-Asian
thing entirely different in the case of relations, even though I have my own
countries such as Hungary, the Czech specific opinions about them, but with
Republic, Slovakia or Slovenia. By virtue something different: the very unwillingof
their entire history, spiritual and intel- ness of the "non-postcommunist West"
lectual traditions, culture, atmosphere even to join in the creation of such proand
geopolitical position, the latter coun- posals, its unwillingness to hear the
tries belong to the classical European warning voices coming from our part of
West, and any separation of them from the world. My concern is that the West
that West would he suicidal for the whole come to understand that the great task of
of Europe (something anyone with even self-defense against the communist menrudimentary
knowledge of European his- ace has been supplanted today by an even
tory should understand). more difficult task: to assume couraI
am not criticizing the "Partnership geously, in its own interests and in the
for Peace" proposal. On the contrary, I general interest, its share of the responsiconsider
it a very reasonable starting bility for the new organization of things
point. (If I can fault it for anything, it in the entire northern hemisphere,
would only be for not having come into To make my point briefiy and simply:
existence two or three years ago.) I am it seems to me that the fate of the somerely
saying that everything now will called West is today being decided in the
depend on how it is carried out. This so-c:alled East. If the West does not find
alone will he the proper test of the West's a key to us, who were once violently separesolve.
Specifically, I imagine that in the rated from the West (with no great resiscase
of the central European countries tance on its part), or to those who
(and later other European countries) full somewhere far away have likewise extrimembership
should clearly and quickly cated themselves from communist domibecome
the goal, NATO would thus grad- nation, it will ultimately lose the key to
[6] FOREIGN AFFAIRS
A Callfor
itself. If, for instance, it looks passively
on at "Eastern" or Balkan nationalism, it
will give the green light to its own potential
nationalism, which it was able to deal
with so magnanimously in the era of the
communist threat. If it closes its eyes to
the postcommunist ecological catastrophe,
it will sooner or later bring on its
own ecological catastrophe, and ultimately
a glohal one. If it does not learn
from our experience about where human
pride can lead, the hubris of people who
invent a rational Utopia for themselves
and try to create a paradise on earth, if it
persists in its anthropocentric understanding
of the earth, it wiU bear the
consequences itself, and so will the whole
world. If its own consumer affluence
remains more important for it than all
the foundations of that affluence, it will
soon forfeit that affluence.
Today, more than ever before in the
history of mankind, everything is interrelated.
Therefore the values and the
prospects of contemporary civilization
are everywhere subjected to great tests.
Because of this, the fiiture of the United
States or the European Union is being
decided in suffering Sarajevo or Mostar,
in the plundered Brazilian rain forests, in
the wretched poverty of Bangladesh or
Somalia. Theoretically, almost everyone
now knows this. But how does this
knowledge find expression in practical
policies? In the practical politics of each
one of us?
People today know that they can
only he saved by a new type of global
responsibility. Only one small detail is
missing: that responsibility must genuinely
be assumed.*^
Sacrifice
THE NEW SPAIN
From Isolation to Influence
KENNETH MAXWELL AND STEVEN SPIEGEL
"The best study I have yet seen on the
profound changes that have takenplace in
Spain during the lastfifteenyears and on
the important role that Spain is nowplaying
in world affairs.''
—Richard N. Gardner, U.S. Ambassador
to Spain
The New Spain presents an overview of
the dramatic changes that have occurred
in Spain since Franco's death in 1975.
Over the past two decades Spain has
transformed itself from an authoritarian
regime to a self-confident and consolidated
democracy and emerged as an
influential participant in international political,
economic, and security issues. The
authors examine the manifold challenges
with which Spain continues to grapple,
and conclude with an analysis of the
country's agenda for the 1990s, including
the ciilemmas facing Felipe Gonzalez
in his fourth term as prime minister.
February 1994/0-87609-163 -X/120 pp. /
Paperback / $14.95
FOREIGN AVYAl'S.S-March/April i(}94 [7]