Out of Soviet Metamorphosis, Hope for a World of Law : Nations: Some utopian ideas are dangerous, but some ideas that seem utopian can make the world a better place. Perhaps their time is coming.

Nicaragua’s first free election in more than half a century offers a blessed deliverance for that long-suffering land. It also heralds profound changes in world politics wrought by the Soviet Union’s “new thinking.”

The Sandinistas’ decision to conduct a relatively clean election and then to swallow the bitter pill of defeat surely results in part from Soviet pressure.

In the last months of 1989, Soviet divestiture of its East European empire seemed to write finis to the Cold War, but a vexing doubt remained. By continuing arms shipments to Cuba and Afghanistan, the Kremlin seemed to be hanging on to the fringes of the empire even while giving up its center. Now, by throwing its weight behind a genuine electoral process in Nicaragua, even at the cost of losing what once seemed such a strategically placed pawn on the Cold War chessboard, the Kremlin has passed an important test. Like the civilized state it says it wants to become, it has shown itself willing to put conflict resolution ahead of raw aggrandizement.

The Nicaraguan election came on the heels of the successful election and constitution-writing in Namibia. That, too, entailed Soviet cooperation, although less self-sacrifice. The achievement of Namibia’s independence led predictably to the triumph of SWAPO (South-West African People’s Organization) which is closely allied with Moscow. But, far from maneuvering to create a communist-style dictatorship, SWAPO, presumably with Soviet encouragement, has acted like a genuinely democratic party, both in the manner in which it has behaved toward opposition parties and in the substance of the constitution that it helped to fashion.

The harmonious developments in Namibia constituted a crucial prelude to the recent dramatic progress toward compromise in South Africa. There, Communist Party chief Joe Slovo, long the Kremlin’s point man in the region, has begun to speak of the virtues of multi-party democracy and the vices of nationalized industry. With their strong influence within the African National Congress and their unyielding determination to create a Leninist state, the South African Communists have long added a further element of intractability to a conflict that had many other such elements. But if Slovo and his comrades continue to follow Mikhail Gorbachev down the path of democracy and markets, they could go from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.

The Namibian and Nicaraguan events strengthen the principle of free elections as a means of resolving various international conflicts. The idea is not new, but until now it was rarely effective. Where Communist forces agreed to elections, as Stalin did at Yalta with respect to Eastern Europe, or as the Sandinistas did before taking power, they could not be trusted to keep their pledge. This was because “the revolution,” by their values, was a higher good than honesty or fair play, and because rule by the people’s “vanguard,” in their terms, was somehow even more “democratic” than “bourgeois” electoral formalities. But Soviet leaders now concede that competitive elections, as we know them in the West, are the essence of democracy. This creates a basis for agreeing to free elections, with the kind of international supervision that worked so well in Namibia and Nicaragua, as the means of resolving other internecine conflicts, notably in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and El Salvador.

A little further over the horizon, it is possible that international law could become a more powerful force in guiding the actions of states. As long as the world was riven between a democratic bloc and a Communist bloc, international law was at best a delusion and at worst a snare. The Communists in principle disbelieved in the rule of law (preferring the rule of party). For the West to subject itself to constraints that did not bind its adversaries was to trifle with its own safety.

Now, however, the Soviet Union emphasizes its wish to become a “rule-of-law state” internally. A natural concomitant would be to respect the law that applies between states as well.

If the Soviet Union and its former colonies complete their transitions to democracy, and if the other major Communist power, China, follows suit, as last spring’s events make likely, then we will live in a world dominated by democracies. That will be a world in which the rule of law may no longer be a utopian idea. Even the United Nations, long the most pathetic monument to America’s naivete, could, in such a world, become a useful institution.

Given our sorry history of concocting idealistic peace schemes remote from the harsh realities of world politics (the United Nations, the League of Nations, the treaty to “outlaw” war) we Americans ought to hear inner alarms when-ever we begin to wax enthusiastic about the prospects for a new, happier world order. Nonetheless, we should also recall that at the same breathless moment that America conceived of the League of Nations, it also foisted on a reluctant world the principles of decolonization and self-determination of nations. Utopian principles, so it seemed, but now, 70 years later, they are achieving their vindication.

Some utopian ideas are dangerous, but some ideas that seem utopian can make the world a better place. The metamorphosis of the Soviet Union opens up vast new possibilities for human betterment, not only in the lives of those who have lived under communism, but in relations among nations, as well. This is a time for visionary thinking.