Soviets Confess Their Misbehavior; Will We? : Law: America has lots of interventionist offenses to recant, but that requires a measure of humility.

Humility is a rare virtue in international politics. Voluntary admissions of illegal conduct in the global arena are practically unknown. Yet in recent weeks the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact have acted with extraordinary humility to acknowledge some of their unlawful behavior during the Cold War. Such actions test America’s own commitment to the rule of international law.

On his return from the Malta summit, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev gathered the embattled leadership of the Warsaw Pact in Moscow. The Soviet government issued a unilateral declaration that called the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet Bloc troops in 1968 both “unfounded” and “erroneous.” Then Gorbachev joined with leaders from Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland (which participated in the invasion) to admit that their actions were “an interference in (the) internal affairs of Czechoslovakia and should be condemned.”

The Brezhnev doctrine, which originated as Moscow’s legal justification for the invasion, is dead. For two decades, this notorious doctrine sought to justify Soviet intervention in socialist countries to preserve Communist rule. The declarations in Moscow were not merely words of contrition that bury the Brezhnev doctrine; the deeds of the Warsaw Pact also reflect a new era of nonintervention. In late October, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze appeared before the Supreme Soviet and owned up to two other illegal acts. He cited United Nations condemnations of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and asked, “what other evidence did we need to realize that we had set ourselves against all humanity, violated norms of behavior, ignored universal human values?” (Unfortunately, the continued flow of Soviet and U.S. arms to warring parties in Afghanistan long after Soviet troops have withdrawn leaves this particular example of aggression unresolved.) And he conceded that the Krasnoyarsk radar installation “the size of an Egyptian pyramid” was “a clear violation” of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the United States. This statement contradicted years of official Soviet denials of the illegality of the radar. At a time when differing interpretations of the ABM Treaty continue to threaten the success of strategic arms control talks, the Soviet admission takes one issue off the table.

Such testimony reminds us that the law of nations is no fiction; it is a driving force behind the revolutionary changes occurring in the old socialist bloc. The standards erected by international law increasingly help define the credibility of both old and new political leaders there. That some officials are courageous enough to expose and admit illegal behavior fortunately defies historical precedent.

The U.S. government frequently condemns the illegal conduct of other nations. But humility is not Washington’s strong suit. Neither the Bush Administration nor Congress is likely to acknowledge any illegal conduct by the United States during or after the Cold War. Nonetheless, there are some examples worth considering.

During the Vietnam War, the United States carpet-bombed parts of Cambodia, a country against which it was not at war. The devastating bombing campaign, kept secret from Congress and the American public for years by the Nixon Administration, remains obscured by a public record of hopelessly flawed legalistic excuses.

Some of the covert actions undertaken with U.S. help in Latin America challenged international norms. These acts included assistance in overthrowing governments in Guatemala and Chile, mining harbors and bombing economic targets in Nicaragua and trying to assassinate political leaders. After the aborted Oct. 3 coup in Panama, the Bush Administration resurrected such follies with its reported plans to topple Manuel Noriega and with a loosened interpretation of the ban on assassinations.

The right to counter-intervene against Soviet Bloc interventions in the Third World dominated the political rhetoric of the 1980s. But the Bush Administration eventually will have to scrap the Reagan doctrine in favor of a more enlightened policy on the use of military force. As the post-Cold War world transforms the threats confronting the United States, Washington must conceive a much different doctrine on both the use and non-use of force in the 1990s. That task requires that unqualified allegiance for “freedom fighters” yield to more humble considerations about the legality of intervening in regional disputes.

The Soviet Union has not yet eclipsed the United States as the traditional guardian of international law. But restoring credibility to the rule of law in a new world order may require an occasional act of humility even by our leaders.