Democratic Palestine : 11 (ص 29)
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- Democratic Palestine : 11 (ص 29)
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The final Helsinki document
approved a set of principles as the basis
for international relations: solving inter-
national disputes by peaceful means
rather than by force or threats; respect
for all states’ sovereignty and territorial
integrity; non-interference in internal
affairs of sovereign states; respect for
human rights; equal rights and the
peoples’ right to self-determination; the
duty of the peoples to cooperate;
observing international law.
The US goes back on detente
As mentioned earlier, the US only
reluctantly adopted detente. This, how-
ever, did not last long. Soon after signing
the Helsinki accords, Washington and
its media launched a fierce campaign
against detente. The US came up with
its own special interpretations of the
accords. The US daily Washington Post
described detente as a vague concept,
more obscure than any other. To this
newspaper, the only reality which mer-
ed Concern was a policy of forceful pos-
itions and the Pentagon's huge budgets.
All else was illusions. Some US theorists
put forth distorted concepts of detente. It
was presented to the developing coun-
tries and national liberation movements
as synonymous with international har-
mony, striking deals and mutual conces-
sions between the two __ blocks.
Imperialist propaganda tried to give the
impression that the Soviet Union had
been lured to the bargaining table; that
the conflict between capitalism and
socialism had abated; that the hands of
the Soviet Union were bound and it
could not help the liberation movements
under detente.
Some US ideologists view detente
as a Soviet-invented strategem, and
claim that only the Soviets benefited.
Others condemned the West's ill-timed
termination of the cold war. They
criticized the Helsinki accords as devoid
of realism. Later, Reagan, using the
same line of argument, described
detente as a one-way street from which
only the Soviet Union benefited. He cal-
led for a crusade against communism
and spoke openly of «retaliation», «in-
timidation», «deterrence» and_ first-
strike nuclear capacity.
After 1977, during the Carter
Administration, the US veered towards
restoration of the cold war. At the same
time, it took one of the Helsinki princi-
ples, human rights, as a pretext for
meddling in the internal affairs of the
socialist countries. This was designed to
blackmail these countries into changing
their policies, and as such, meant US
disavowal of the Helsinki accords. When
Reagan took office in 1981, this trend
was escalated; US foreign policy was
overtly oriented to fanning international
tension. The US escalated its aggres-
sion and interference in other countries’
internal affairs; it launched military inter-
ventions and encouraged civil and reg-
ional wars.
Reagan raised the banner of con-
fronting the Soviet «danger», the neces-
sity of gaining strategic superiority, pro-
tecting «democracy» and fighting «state
terror». These slogans were raised to
justify a more blatantly aggressive,
militaristic US strategy. In practice, this
meant a denial of detente and a return to
the cold war, the escalation of arma-
ment, new nuclear missiles, etc., to
upset the international military balance.
The Rapid Deployment Force, created
under Carter, was institutionalized as
the US Central Command with a scope
of operations covering ninteen countries
and a vast area from the Atlantic Ocean
to the Gulf. The US declared its readi-
ness to send troops to any spot of the
globe to protect US vital interests if these
faced imminent danger. To further the
Strategy of swift, direct military interven-
tion. the US has acquired new bases
and facilities, established strategic
cooperation with pro-imperialist
regimes, and initiated new military coop-
eration treaties. This policy led to the
1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and
the invasion of Grenada. These aggres-
sive acts combined to poison the inter-
national atmosphere, bringing the world
to the verge of a nuclear holocaust.
Blackmail as a means of
foreign policy
The orientation of the Helsinki
accords showed that economic cooper-
ation should be the basis of detente. Fol-
lowing the conference, a number of
agreements were signed between the
socialist European countries and the
Capitalist ones, for long-term technical,
scientific and economic cooperation.
The Soviet Union signed agreements
with virtually all European countries. As
a consequence, its trade doubled over
the last ten years. It is worth mentioning
that the socialist community's orders for
goods produced in capitalist countries,
provide jobs for more than two million
workers in the countries that were party
to the Helsinki accords.
When the US reasserted its con-
frontation policy, it resorted to the use of
economic blackmail in order to wrest
concessions from the socialist commun-
ity; otherwise the US would not lend cre-
dibility to the socialist countries’ peace-
ful policies or observe detente. When
the US failed to wrest concessions from
the socialist community, it resorted to
imposing economic sanctions and trade
embargos against the Eastern Euro-
pean countries, and even on occasion
against the western ones. This is a blat-
ant violation of the Helsinki accords
which forbids the use of trade as a
means of achieving political ends. The
US did this even though these measures
had adverse effects on US economic
interests. For instance, the US grain
embargo against the Soviet Union cost
US businessmen 22 million dollars. The
US imposed sanctions on the Soviet
Union and the western European coun-
tries that had joined it in a project to
transport gas from Siberia to western
Europe. Five months later, these were
lifted after failing to make the cooperat-
ing countries halt the project.
Along the same lines, the US Con-
gress failed to ratify the SALT Il agree-
ment, and trade agreements were sus-
pended with the Soviet Union. When all
these measures proved futile as a
means of pressure, the US abandoned
detente and the spirit of the Helsinki
accords altogether and escalated its
hostile campaign against the socialist
countries. At the same time, the US con-
tinued its military build-up, culminating in
the declaration of the Strategic Defense
Initiative for the militarization of space.
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