A SAVAGE CHALLENGE TO DETENTE

A FEW hours after it happened, the Czechoslovaks staged a haunting protest. They froze. Wherever they were, at work or in the streets, they stood still for a minute, in a silent outcry against the invaders. When news spread of what the Russians had done, the world, too, froze for an instant.

It was an instant of fear and incredulity. The event, though discussed and weighed as a possibility, had seemed unlikely. After all, it was 15 years after Stalin's death, twelve years after Hungary. The West had come to accept the "new maturity" of Russia's leaders. The relative liberalization of Soviet society and the increasing autonomy of Moscow's erstwhile satellites in Eastern Europe had also been taken for granted as an irreversible reaction to the harsh rigidities of the Stalinist past. The softening of Communism ("They are getting more like us, and we are getting more like them") had become one of the dubiously hopeful cliches of the day. In one brutal night's work, Moscow undercut, if it did not erase, all such assumptions. For all the changes, the Soviet Union still could not bear the contagion of freedom from Czechoslovakia spreading into other Eastern European countries and into Russia itself (see THE WORLD).

From the international point of view, perhaps the chief fact about the invasion is that, far from strengthening Soviet-style Communism, Moscow has further crippled it. Acting on the flimsiest and most cynical of pretexts, Warsaw Pact troops throttled the infant independence of a state that had reiterated its fidelity to Moscow and Communism. To retain its grip on Eastern Europe--perhaps only for a few years more--the Soviet Union had sacrificed much of its influence among Communist parties elsewhere. Not since the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 had the Kremlin acted so palpably from fear and weakness. Under present-day conditions, Moscow's treatment of Prague makes for a very poor prognosis for the future of Communism. The thrust that made the Dubcek regime possible will not die with that government.

Predawn Assault. For the U.S., the chief immediate question was: Have the Russians renewed the cold war? A pri-ma-facie case can be made to the ef fect that they have; that Moscow has once again substituted force for reason, and that a seemingly businesslike regime is in fact dangerously unstable.

The answer will not be clear until it is known whether the invasion was caused by or will be followed by a power shift inside the Kremlin. But the chances are that Moscow's blow was aimed entirely at restoring order inside Russia's Eastern European domain--as the Soviets were careful to point out--and is not necessarily a sign of all-round aggressiveness against the rest of the world. On the contrary, it is possible that the move has so weakened Russia's prestige and so strained its relations with other Communist parties that adventures elsewhere are the last thing that Moscow can now afford.

That is the assumption on which the U.S. has operated. Washington's reaction had about it an almost dreamlike unreality in its restraint. The U.S. knows, of course, that in a nuclear age it has no way whatsoever of aiding Czechoslovakia. But the relative lack of polemics was remarkable.

Lyndon Johnson's statement ("The tragic news from Czechoslovakia shocks the conscience of the world") was comparatively mild. The Administration went through the motions of appealing to the United Nations to condemn Mos cow, and the Soviets cast their 105th Security Council veto. U.N. Ambassador George Ball injected some drama with an eloquent predawn assault on Soviet Ambassador Yakov Malik's veto.

"What your government has done," Ball declared, "is self-destructive. Their repressive action will some day be repudiated by their successors with the same violence, with the same vehemence that the cruel and repressive acts of Stalin were repudiated by his successor."

Inhibition. The U.S. reacted as it did in part because the Czechoslovak tragedy occurred during an upward swing in Soviet-American relations. This year the two nations agreed to rescue each other's astronauts, extended the cultural exchange pact, ratified a consular convention, and opened a direct civilian air link. The most important opening of all was the signing of a nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the agreement to open negotiations to restrict the production and deployment of offensive and defensive nuclear missiles.

For Johnson, this detente was to be the historic foreign policy achievement of his Administration. It was known at week's end that Washington and Moscow had agreed to talks some time next month, probably in Geneva. The White House was apparently ready to announce the agreement, and perhaps much more, last Wednesday. That was another victim of aggression.

It was widely believed that the announcement that never came was also to have disclosed details of a meeting between Johnson and Aleksei Kosygin --perhaps with Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon present for continuity's sake. Johnson had been hinting privately about the possibility of a sequel to Glassboro. Such a meeting would doubtless cover far more ground than missile deployment. For one thing, it might represent Johnson's final big attempt to obtain Soviet assistance in settling the Viet Nam war. Obviously, last week's aggression inhibits any immediate followup. Nonetheless, the White House has refused to rule out the possibility of a Johnson-Kosygin meeting. The President himself still wants to go through with it.

History suggests that the Soviets have an instinct for pulling back from crisis before it becomes catastrophe. Besides, past Soviet transgressions have not prevented Moscow and Washington from reaching limited, specific agreements when it was to their mutual advantage. Less than a year after the 1962 Cuban-missile showdown, the partial ban on nuclear tests was signed and ratified.

Embargo. Congress was out of session, but a meeting of legislative leaders supported the President. More varied reaction may come next month when the Senate considers ratification of the nuclear-nonproliferation treaty. Approval of the pact may well be delayed, but it is unlikely that the Senate will kill the agreement. One clue to Congress' attitude came from Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, who had been pressing for additional reductions in the U.S. Seventh Army in Europe. Further cutbacks "at this time" are not feasible, he said last week. His Republican counterpart, Everett Dirksen, suggested an embargo on trade with the Soviets. In the nation, there was a notable lack of hysteria. The mood was one of disappointment and resignation rather than rage.

Despite the relative calm of both the Administration and the public, Senator Eugene McCarthy insisted that the Government had overreacted. He carped at Johnson's decision to call a late-night meeting of his National Security Council to review the Czechoslovak situ ation. Arguing that the invasion did not amount to a "major world crisis," the Senator said that in Johnson's place, he would have "listened to the news and checked it out with one or two people to see whether it was accurate. And then I would have said, 'Let's keep informed, and we'll meet in the morning.'" It was at best ill-timed frivolity to needle the Administration, at worst an instance of absurd misjudgment. At the suggestion of more realistic advisers, McCarthy subsequently "amended" his statement to criticize Russia and make clear that he did con sider the invasion a serious matter.

Moral Myopia. Reaction from the near to the far left, and antiwar groups in general, was intriguing. The left provided some of the most outspoken criticism of the Russians (exception: the American Communist Party, which sid ed with Moscow against the "creeping counterrevolution" in Prague). The Socialist Party leadership joined with prominent liberals to urge, along with Washington, that the U.N. demand an end to Soviet intervention. But con demnation of Russia scarcely reached the pitch that generally goes with condemnation of the U.S. in Viet Nam.

Leading war critics like Dr. Benjamin Spock lumped Soviet aggression with the U.S. role in Viet Nam. Senators McCarthy and George McGovern joined in this view, arguing that American interventions, whether in the Dominican Republic or Southeast Asia, encouraged the Russians to act and also robbed the U.S. of moral authority.

Dean Rusk dismissed parallels between Viet Nam and Czechoslovakia as "moral myopia." Yet the question deserved to be considered. Here and there in Washington, amid genuine indignation, there was also an occasional flicker of professional sympathy for Russia, as between one world power and another ("There are, after all, not many in the club," said one official). In both the Dominican Republic and Viet Nam, the U.S. intervened in what it con sidered a legitimate sphere of influence. But in the Dominican Republic, the government had been ousted and civil war threatened anarchy and, quite possibly, a new dictatorship. The U.S. intervention restored peace, saved lives, and resulted finally in re-establishment of elective government. Thus it can hardly be equated with Soviet aggression against Czechoslovakia.

In Viet Nam, a legitimate--though dependent--government in Saigon requested U.S. assistance and continues to do so. The U.S. originally entered on a very small scale and only after fighting had already started. South Viet Nam was under very real attack from within and without. These circum stances hardly duplicate those in Czechoslovakia, quite apart from the fact that U.S. and Russian aims in the world are fundamentally and philosophically different. To establish a real parallel with Soviet behavior, one would have to imagine France's being taken over through a Communist coup and renouncing all its military and economic alliances, prompting a concerted move by NATO forces against Paris.

Nor is there much basis for argument that the Soviets felt free to act because the U.S. is tied down in Asia. The U.S. had no such preoccupation in 1956 when the Russians moved with far greater savagery to suppress the Hungarian uprising. And the involvement in Viet Nam was insignificant in 1962, when the Russians sanctioned erection of the Berlin Wall. In all three cases, the only kind of effective U.S. response would have involved the threat of large-scale military action--and the probability of World War III. Few would argue that the stakes were worth it.

Still, the feeling persists that the U.S. might have done more to protect Prague. Before the invasion, the Administration had made clear to the So viets that the use of force might seriously jeopardize Soviet-American relations. Missile rattling would have been meaningless because there was no willingness to back it up. The Soviets knew that; Washington knew that they knew it. Almost any overt U.S. involvement could well have given the Russians a further excuse to crack down on Prague.

Washington could not help being impressed--and concerned--at the speed and efficiency with which the Soviet army had moved. No one could be sure of what would now happen in Eastern Europe. Would Rumania be next on Moscow's list? Nor was it clear how, if at all, Moscow's new preoccupation with events in Eastern Europe would affect the Viet Nam negotiations. What the invasion and the U.S. re sponse (or nonresponse) to it proved once again was one hard fact: the U.S. and Russia still live, as they have with some modifications since World War II, at the center of their own spheres of influence. There are certain lines beyond which neither side dares to go without the serious risk of nuclear war.

The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are the sole members of the superpowers' club in which the chief rule is survival.

If the two giants can continue to reach specific accommodations, it will not prove that either is turning soft. Each respects the other's power. Each knows the price and the risks of an endless arms race and repeated confrontations. Thus each concedes to the other, however bitterly, a degree of latitude within its own sphere. The system is not ideal, and it is certainly not moral, but it has one unassailable virtue: so far, it has worked. Also, it can buy time for men like Alexander Dubcek, and others inside and outside the Communist domain, to continue striving, in some form, for freedom.

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