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The Soviets, The Sinatra Doctrine and the Beginning of the Cold War’s End

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Twenty years ago on November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall fell.  Just 16 days before, Mikhail Gorbachev’s press spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov referred in passing to the “Sinatra Doctrine” in a press conference during Gorbachev’s state visit to Finland.  Whether or not this was the very first time Frank Sinatra had metamorphosed from an aging pop singer with a raspy voice and a raft of questionable Mafiosi friends into a Soviet national security doctrine, it was certainly the first time the “Sinatra Doctrine” ever came to my attention.

 In any event, the term coined by Gerasimov was not a throw-away.  In essence, it meant that the Soviet leadership had decided to let all countries including its Warsaw Pact allies determine their own form of government.  The reference to the Sinatra Doctrine came from the words in the song (written for Sinatra by Paul Anka) “I did it my way” which had hit American pop charts in early 1969 – twenty years before.  But when we, in Helsinki, first heard Gerasimov use it, it was not at all clear what he meant or its impending ramifications.  

 As it turned out, this nearing-the-end-of-life song was prescient in more ways than Gerasimov or others ever conceived at the time.  As I understand it the Soviet leadership then never dreamed that their former allies would abandon all forms of Communism – Russian style or the softer Euro version – en masse almost immediately after the threat of a Soviet military crackdown evaporated. 

Crooning the Soviet death knell without even knowing it

In fact, the Sinatra Doctrine signaled the death knoll of the Soviet Union at the relatively tender age of 74 - seven years before crooner Frank Sinatra died of a heart attack at 82 in 1998. But even before the Soviet Union expired, Moscow’s decision to stop propping up flailing Communist governments from Warsaw to Sofia altered the national security playing field in Eastern Europe. Whether or not the Sinatra Doctrine’s ripple effect alone caused the downfall of the Soviet Union less than two years later is questionable but the rhetoric certainly took on a catalytic role.

As the haze surrounding the Sinatra Doctrine cleared, it became obvious that the Soviet leaders did not expect its East European dominoes to forgo Communism immediately or in such dramatic fashion as they did over the next few months.   But that’s what happened.  Most just crumbled – like the Berlin Wall.  The bloodiest, however, occurred Christmas time in Bucharest when and where the Ceaucescus did not go quietly. 

A country unraveling

The Sinatra Doctrine was likely fashioned from economic necessity.  The Soviet economy was in tatters from over-militarization, a clumsy and incompetent economic system and the bottoming of the market price for oil and gas – its chief exports.  Then there were the continuing wars in Afghanistan and the Caucasus. Growing labor problems and spiraling inflation were also part of the picture. Simply put the social contract and the country unraveled.

But growing unrest among minorities coupled with the rise of independent, non-Communist nationalist political “fronts” begun by the tiny Baltic Republics also made a major difference.  From the Baltic perspective, the incorporation of the previously independent Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the Soviet Union had always been illegal. The US and many other western countries agreed.  The Baltic independence leaders thought that the Sinatra Doctrine should, therefore, apply to them as well. 

OK for the Poles but not the Lithuanians

Moscow did not see that the Sinatra Doctrine should likewise apply to the Baltics whether because the Russians did not understand the intensity and longevity of Baltic sentiment or whether they were afraid that if the Baltic Republics were allowed to “do it their way” their way would lead out the door followed by a stampede of other republics.  I don’t know.  My guess is probably both.  I never thought the Russians – including Gorbachev - understood the Baltic Republics, the peoples or their aspirations well. But its clear the Kremlin feared the break up of the Soviet Union if the Baltics succeeded in their secession bids.

In any event, the fact that the Sinatra Doctrine applied to neighboring Poland as well as to East Germany but not Lithuania did not sit well there.  On March 11, 1990, the Lithuanian parliament declared outright independence.  January 12-13, 1991 Soviet Ministry of Interior troops stormed the television station in Vilnius and murdered 14 young demonstrators.  They became instant martyrs.  In the short run, the use of force paid off.  It gained the Soviet Union eight more months of an increasingly creaky existence.  But that was it.  In the end, Frank Sinatra’s “I did it my way” may have helped usher in the Soviet Union’s final curtain call or even bring down the house.  It's hard to can say.        

The US, the P+5 and the Iranians: From Prelude to First Movement

By Patricia H. Kushlis

As I watched the ever higher leaps and increasingly complex pirouettes taking place over the past few weeks leading up to the P5+1 (The Five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council and Germany) talks with the Iranians that began October 1 in Geneva, Switzerland it seemed to me that much of the rhetoric, the last minute “revelations” over a previously secret/not-so secret nuclear site near Qom and the bombast – ending with an Iranian pyrotechnic display of mid-range missile prowess – were, in fact, part of a complex prelude, or overture leading up to the real event: the opening of serious negotiations between the US and Iran for this first time since 1979.

These actions were scene-setters, as it were, with the US and Iran jockeying for position before the serious stuff of which negotiations are made began.

Whether or not September’s 2009 overture was a 21^st century sequel to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 is another question – but in any event – everyone played his or her part to the hilt. This included Iranian “canon volleys” in the finale.

Now, would the US right and left wings and the Israeli "bomb-Iran-now" lobby please sit down, open ears and stuff cotton in mouths – because the Obama administration orchestrated this introduction to what portends to be difficult and complex negotiations - likely complete with starts, stops, sputters and carpet trading - masterfully. The Iranians clearly took note.

PD Tomorrow: How to Make It Work, if We Want It to Work

PD Today

Part 5

By Patricia H. Kushlis and Patricia Lee Sharpe

 For twenty years America’s leaders neglected public diplomacy.  After the U.S. had won the Cold War and the USSR fell apart, people who should have known better crowed about the “end of history,” the Secretary of State spoke of the U.S. as the “indispensable nation” in a unipolar world, and USIA was absorbed and dismembered by the State Department. 

 Then history restarted.  Russia got uppity, “cheese-eating Old Europe” rebelled, China and India reinvented themselves, and the Muslim World bestirred itself.  But the George W. Bush administration had already decided, well before 9/11, that the U.S. didn’t need diplomacy, alliances or negotiation to work its will on the world. Raw unilateral power would do. By the end of 2008, America was hated, its wars weren’t going well and its economy had crashed.  The days of go-it-alone were over.  Even the Bush administration knew that diplomacy needed another chance.

Opportunity Still Beckons

 Unfortunately, while the State Department puzzled over what to do with its public diplomacy step-child, the Pentagon began to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on PD simulacra.  The resulting series of highly visible fiascos will undermine the credibility of the real thing for years to come, assuming that the State Department can regain control over communications with foreign publics—or seriously cares to. Unfortunately, nine months into the Obama administration, there is no sign that the State Department’s budget will be proportionate to the need for savvy communications on a global scale.  If State goes hungry, public diplomacy will continue to subsist at starvation level.  Budgets speak.  It looks as if America’s foreign policy will remain over-militarized.

 Discouraging as this is, it’s important to remember that moving money from one department to another isn’t as easy as it should be.  Here’s the conundrum: the president proposes a budget and Congress signs the checks, but the State and Defense Department budgets are processed through separate Congressional committees, each subject to outside influence.  When it comes to lobbying Congress, the Pentagon and its generous contractors are far more adept than Foggy Bottom, especially since State’s limp goody bag attracts very few well-heeled lobbyists. 

Yet, even if the merest fraction of Pentagon funds could be transferred to the State Department’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy to beef up PD staffing and enhance PD programming, that pittance (from the Pentagon point of view) could make a vast difference—providing, of course, the money is protected from the departmental raiders who have made a habit of siphoning PD-intended funds and staff slots into other State Department offices.  Ever since consolidation in 1999, funds intended for educational exchanges and certain cultural programs have been firewalled by law, which is to say, they can be put to no other use.  Yet, as we have explained elsewhere, a well-balanced public diplomacy program is not limited to those highly visible educational exchanges and cultural events.  All public diplomacy funding, including desperately needed budget increases for beefed up information programs and the reestablishment of American centers abroad, should be equally non-fungible.  Otherwise, even if the Pentagon lets more than a few dollars slip through its fingers, public diplomacy’s ability to influence events will continue to be compromised. 

 But we can dream.  Barack Obama’s popularity remains high abroad, his speech in Cairo had resonance in the Islamic world, and his decision to work with the Europeans while also engaging the Russians and Chinese shows signs of paying off.  He may yet wake up to the power of and need for a more securely institutionalized public diplomacy capacity.  However, as time goes on and hard choices are made, his popularity could slip, and his ability to massage budgets would lessen accordingly.  Meanwhile, Secretary of State Clinton’s travels to India, the Far East, Africa and Latin America have been well-planned and well-received.  Hopefully, as the U.S. withdraws from Iraq and finds a sensible and sustainable equilibrium in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Obama administration will realize that fluid situations create great opportunities for public diplomacy, assuming the tool kit is kept well-stocked and at the ready.  To the extent that Obama strenuously reaffirms the values of the rule of law, due process, the separation of powers, open government, the unacceptability of torture, and the inalienable civil rights of every citizen, public diplomacy can help America to regain its dangerously diminished moral and intellectual preeminence.  But the tool kit isn’t ready, because public diplomacy has been systematically neglected for twenty years.  At minimum, the State Department’s organizational chart must be revamped, the PD mission must be explicitly reaffirmed, the budget must be enhanced and protected and leadership recruitment must be based on more rigorous qualifications.

Hilary in India

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

It was a master stroke: arranging for Hillary Clinton to stay at the Taj Mahal Hotel during her visit to Mumbai.  Think of it!  The U.S. Secretary of State dares to sleep on the spot where terrorists murdered so many people toward the end of last year. And the arrangements held, despite the hotel bombings in Jakarta a couple of days ago.  The Taj gesture sends a message to terrorists that U.S envoys aren’t going to skulk around in dreary safe havens.  It also signals to the government of India: we trust you to take care of our Secretary of State.

Kudos to Organizers

So let me pause here to compliment whomever it was in the State Department (or in our mission in India) who dreamed up the Taj idea.  And let me also compliment the State security people (whom I often found to be stultifyingly obstructive when I was working abroad) for a stroke of imaginative support for diplomacy.  Naturally, I'm aware that security, American and India, was thick on the ground, but the gesture still counts, as does the length of the visit.  On such intangibles important international relationships are built.

Finally I compliment those who nixed any visit to Pakistan during this trip which takes Clinton next to the ASEAN meeting in Bangkok.  Lately we've been treated to the hypenenated expression Af-Pak.  In referring to a very hot war that seesaws across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, that combo makes sense.  But India has long seethed over the Indo-Pak reflex in U.S. foreign policy.  There are many hard-nosed reasons why India deserves to be a singular locus of attention, and Hillary made those points clearlly, though she also rightly introduced the realities arising from border sharing: what happens in Pakistan affects India; an unstable Pakistan is not good for India.  Happily avoided was mindless equivalence, as if India and Pakistan were a South Asian Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Rafsanjani on Radio!

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Iranian state radio broadcast Friday’s Rafsanjani sermon.  It’s very significant that authorities (including, no doubt, the Supreme Leader) allowed this very carefully constructed, even wily discourse to be heard throughout the country, even though presidential candidates opposing Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had limited access to the public during the elections whose validity is now under fire.  No doubt the text of the sermon has been recorded so that it can be replayed, minutely analyzed—and used.

Putting the US-Russian relationship back together again

By Patricia H. Kushlis

The good news is that the long derailed US-Russian relationship is beginning to be put back on track as old treaties and experienced American negotiators are being hauled out of the closet, revived, resuscitated, revamped and recalled from retirement after the go-it-alone, devil-may-care zaniness of the Bush years.

Whether updating START, a twenty year old nuclear weapons reduction treaty first proposed by President Reagan, negotiated between the US and the Soviets and signed by Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush in 1991 that is about to expire at the end of the year is a one-off or whether successful negotiations will lead to further reductions in both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons and discussions of other high and low wire differences and thus help break the ice that has formed between the Eagle and the Bear since Putin took office is an open question.

Differing perceptions: this is why negotiations are essential

That answer may lie as much in the differing perceptions of the Russians and the US as to how to improve the overall relationship and deal with a host of thorny issues that include US plans to install pieces of a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic not to mention continuing US-Russian differences over Georgia.