Pitfalls of 'recognition'

National Review, June 1, 1984 by Brian Crozier

PITFALLS OF 'RECOGNITION'

RIGHT NOW, London is a good place to be if the day's good resolution is to write a column on the perils, hypocrisies, and absurdities of diplomatic recognition. The subject is of universal interest, and some choice examples of what I mean have been happening in places not far from where I sit, such as the Palace of Westminster and St. James's Square.

To take the latter first, we have been having some pretty good television stuff with the weird happenings at the Libyan "People's Bureau' at 5 St. James's Square, not far from such civilized and unexciting institutions as Chatham House (the Royal equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations) and the incomparable London Library. To recall the events: When some anti-Qaddafi demonstrators paraded outside the People's Bureau, a man armed with a submachine gun appeared at a window and started spraying the crowd, killing a young policewoman and wounding ten demonstrators.

Realism v. Moralism

Now this is not the way diplomatic missions are supposed to behave, and the Libyan People's Bureau (which used to be called an embassy just like everybody else's) does fulfill some diplomatic functions, apart from gun- and bomb-running and serving as a protected headquarters for Qaddafi's hit teams. In retrospect, nice respectable diplomatic centers such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or the Department of State may sometimes reflect that there isn't much point in extending diplomatic recognition to regimes which by their own revolutionary criteria have no interest in respecting diplomatic niceties. American diplomats who were in Teheran when the Ayatollah's regime took over will know exactly what I mean.

Traditionally, the British and the American views of the criteria for recognition have differed. The British have regarded it as a case for realistic assessment "to secure and advantage' (as Churchill once put it); whereas in the United States (with the puritanical traditions of the Mayflower to live up to) recognition has traditionally carried the seal of moral approval.

Of course "realists' sometimes fall flat on their faces, which is what happened to the British when they rushed to recognize the government of Mao Tse-tung's Chinese People's Republic in the expectation of saving British assets in Shanghai and elsewhere, and Mao grabbed the assets anyway. The "puritanical' Americans, on the whole, did better by sticking to their principles and continuing to recognize Chiang Kai-shek's exiled government on Taiwan. By the mere fact of having a humble consul on the island, anyway, Britain had to content itself with a charge d'affaires in Peking instead of an ambassador.

Nor do I think that the United States lost anything much by declining to recognize the regime of the Bolsheviks for some years.

But to get back to the British, two other current cases call for comment. One of the stock arguments of British left-wing enemies of America, duly deployed in opposition to the mining of Nicaraguan waters (reportedly by the CIA) and indeed U.S. policy in the area as a whole, is that Britain recognizes the Sandinista government in Managua and therefore cannot possibly condone U.S. efforts to oust it. (True, Britain does recognize the Sandinistas, but did not see the need, until the other day, actually to have an ambassador in Managua.)

The other case has its ironical side. In the course of his largely successful war against the "Marxist' government in Angola, the UNITA resistance leader, Jonas Savimbi, seized 16 British civilians and held them as hostages in an attempt to force the British government to "recognize' his movement, at least de facto, by negotiating for their release. This situation presented the Foreign Office with a truly agonizing dilemma. You see, Britain recognizes the Communist (dropping the euphemism of "Marxist') government of Angola, and it simply wasn't done to have talks with a "rebel' group. Thus the discomfort and apprehension of the 16 Britons were unnecessarily prolonged, until the government in London had second thoughts.

Power and Expediency

The most absurd case of all is one I cannot resist coming back to from time to time: that of Kampuchea (Cambodia). The United Nations, along with most Western governments, continues to recognize the genocidal regime of Pol Pot because it was deposed by a Vietnamese invading force with Soviet support, and we are not supposed to condone invasions.

The Soviets, of course, recognize a government strictly on the criteria of power and expediency. A classic example is that of Afghanistan. If you don't like a regime, you have it over-thrown, then recognize the usurping regime; if the new regime still doesn't come up to expectations, then you have that one overthrown as well; then arrange an assassination, and all is well at last. The processes I have just described apply, of course, to Afghanistan, where Taraki was succeeded by Amin, who made way, owing to his unfortunate demise, for Babrak Karmal. But in strategic terms, the important bit was the coup of April 1973, yielding a government Moscow could happily recognize, which, in turn, could "invite' the Soviet forces in to help when it faced little local difficulties.