Galia Golan Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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I have two questions about the Soviet Union. I know that your career has changed into other issues and has focused on peace and conflict resolution, but were you surprised when the Soviet Union collapsed?
Absolutely. I make no claim to having seen it ahead of time or even believed that it was possible. I went back to Czechoslovakia together with Shimon Peres, who was then finance minister in Israel, and it was a few months after the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. I heard on the radio that he was going, so I called him and said, "I'm coming with you," and I did. I had not been in Czechoslovakia since 1961 and I simply couldn't believe it. I would never -- and I said to myself at the time, I would never have believed that I would see Czechoslovakia without the Communist regime. No, I didn't foresee it.
I did raise the issue academically, even tried to get an article published in the New York Times about the similarity between Gorbachev and Dubcek, in their policies, and how what was inevitable for Dubcek is that if these policies had been put into effect the Party would lose power. He didn't think it would lose power but it would have, pluralism would have defeated it. I pointed out the similarity, and did Gorbachev know this? If I sitting out here saw it, surely he knew. It turned out later when I met him that he had, in fact, been a roommate of Isdenek Menoj who was one of the fathers of the political reform in the Czech reform movement. They were in touch with each other, which meant that Gorbachev knew where these reforms would lead, that they would lead to pluralism. But I certainly don't think he thought it would lead to collapse.
Dubcek was a Czechoslovakian reformer whose reform effort was clamped down by the Soviets.
By the Soviets. By bringing in the reform (as I said, it's a reform that ultimately was clearly going to lead to a pluralistic system), he believed that communism could survive in a free election. It was the Soviets who saw the threat to the leading role of the Party if this kind of thing came in. I assume that Gorbachev saw that but assumed that he could weather it and that the Party would weather it.
Looking back during this Cold War period in retrospect, was the superpower conflict in the Middle East more stable than we realized?
Yes, I think so. One of the things that I tried to point out when I moved into this Soviets in the Middle East area -- what I was struck by was that contrary to popular opinion, the Soviets were not egging on the Arabs to go to war. They were, in fact, a restraining factor, mainly because they were afraid, given the American commitment and their own commitment, that this could lead to World War III. Therefore, while they armed the Arabs (as the United States armed Israel), they tried to restrain them. It's not only looking back, but at the time I felt it was important that we understand that, while you could say the supply of arms is not a positive thing (but as I said, America supplied Israel), the Soviets did not want the Arabs to go to war. In fact, that's one of the reasons that Sadat threw out the Soviet advisors in the military in 1972 and let them back in only in a very limited way.
So in that sense, yes, the Cold War was a relatively stabilizing factor, the fact that both superpowers were involved. On the other hand, it did make it into a powder keg, because you had the arms race and you had jockeying for position. Ultimately I think that the Soviets and the Americans were interested in a peace agreement and something coming out of it, so long as both of them played a role. But of course, Kissinger squeezed the Soviets out and went on his own, which ultimately worked, so I can't complain about it, but I do not think that the Soviets were necessarily an obstacle to reaching agreement.
During this period, what was Israel's role vis-à-vis U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War?
Certainly Israel was dependent upon it. In that sense, the Cold War was very helpful, because it drew these very, very clear lines. I would say until President Kennedy and perhaps Johnson, the Americans had what could be called an even-handed attitude, certainly under Eisenhower and to some degree under Kennedy. It was basically the Cold War, when the Soviets came in strongly after 1955 on the side of the Arabs. Gradually -- it was only gradually -- the Americans shifted in a very serious way to providing arms, finally under Johnson, to Israel. The real commitment comes to some degree with Kennedy and then with Johnson. I can't be sure it would've come if there had not been a Cold War. It might have, because you have the Jewish lobby in the United States, of course. That initial support came because of that, mainly. But the Cold War was a very major factor at that time.
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