Interview: Helmut Sonnenfeldt with Philip Geyelin

INTERVIEW: HELMUT SONNENFELDT WITH PHILIP GEYELIN Helmut Sonnenfeldt, now a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institute, was born in Berlin and became a U.S. citizen in 1944. A graduate of SAIS, he was thL· review's first editor. Later he served as a Soviet scholar and director of intelligence and research in the State Department, moved to the White House to become senior member of the National Security Council staff, and then returned to the State Department as counselor under Secretary KL·singer. In 1976 he was "traduced," in ^singer's words, by a series of newspaper columns that elevated a confidential account of an informal policy dmussion to the level of a "Sonnenfeldt Doctrine." The incident was shortly caught up in the presidential campaign of that year as evidence of a supposed "softness" toward the Soviet's role in Eastern Europe—"an absurd accusation," according to Kttsinger, "reflecting a woeful ignorance of the convictions and contributions of an outstanding public servant" whose "superb analyses" have been confirmed "with the passage of time to be penetrating, shrewd, and wL·^" In the following interview with Philip Geyelin, syndicated columntit and editor-in-residence at The Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, SAIS, Mr. Sonnenfeldtdxcusses the circumstances surroundingthe matterofthe "Sonnenfeldt Doctrine" and updates hL· views on current issues having to do with Poland in particuhr, and East-West refations in general. GEYELIN: You have become unjustlyfamous as a consequence ofhavingyour name attached to a doctrine having to do with Eastern Europe and our policy toward the Soviets. How did that all come about? SONNENFELDT: It came about because there was a discussion of American policy toward the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in a meeting in London of the American Chiefs of Mission in Europe in December 1975. It was a 161 162 SAIS REVIEW rather freewheeling discussion which, after a lapse of several weeks, the State Department decided to paraphrase in a very condensed form in order to give the participants a summary of what had been said. The particular telegram that contained this nonverbatim account was given to a number of journalists by somebody in the government, and two of them [Evans and Novak] chose to give it some play by picking some of the phrases out of the discussion relating to Eastern Europe, changing the phrases, and making it appear as though I had advocated essentially the incorporation of Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union as a way of keeping Eastern Europe quiet. It's hard to say why precisely this newspaper story received as much attention and currency as it did. One reason, no doubt, was that it came against the background ofa critique, misplaced in my opinion, ofthe Helsinki Final Act, and the widespread allegations made in late 1975 and early 1976 in connection with the presidential campaign that the U.S. administration had sold out Eastern Europe permanently to the Soviet Union. As events have shown, both the critique of the Helsinki Final Act, and the version of American policy toward Eastern Europe attributed to me, were quite erroneous . Therefore, the debate that resulted, if it can be dignified by that term, was quite unnecessary, and in any event wholly distorted. It did not address the genuine issues and dilemmas we have always faced when making policy toward Eastern Europe, but especially since Eastern Europe has been in flux since the early 1970s. GEYELIN: What was the policy you meant to convey ? SONNENFELDT: The policy discussed at the meeting, and on which I commented, was the policy of differentiating between the countries of Eastern Europe, encouraging internal change, and urging more active and normal relations with the Western world to the extent that it was in the United States' power to do so. At the same time this policy recognized that in terms of power the Soviet Union was nearby and had demonstrated a capability and a readiness to employ its raw power whenever it felt that developments in the East European countries were getting out of control. In other words, the discussion did not come to any firm conclusions about this set of problems. It highlighted the complexity of conducting a policy of fostering change...