Page 494 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

494 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Concerning the difference in the military potential between the possible aggressor and Ro-
mania, general Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US army, esti-
mated that “if previously alerted, in two or three days 19 soviet divisions can enter Romania;
10
these forces can quickly defeat any Romanian opposition” .
Taking into account the eventuality of military hostilities against Romania, a party del-
egation led by N. Ceaučescu immediately met Marshall Tito at Vârčeč in order to ask his
support and to assess whether the party leadership, the government and the Romanian army
11
might retreat to Yugoslavia if the country was occupied . Tito’s conditions – that the Ro-
manian army should be previously disarmed and then interned on Yugoslav territory, as well
as his suggestion to negotiate with the Kremlin – equaled with a refusal of granting real sup-
port. In the face of this situation and taking into account other factors as well, especially his
isolation in the soviet bloc, the leader from Bucharest moderated his position and tried during
the following days to manage the crisis with Moscow .
12
The Western reaction to the events of August 1968 in Czechoslovakia was one of expecta-
tive, which could be explained by the configuration and geopolitical arrangements in Europe
13
after the end of Second World War. In the spirit of the later Sonnenfeldt doctrine , some
American decision makers considered the Czechoslovak issue a “family affair” within the
Warsaw Pact, affirming that “the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia must not be seen as
14
something tragic, being nothing more but a flat tire in the East-West path of cooperation” .
Nevertheless, the president of United States himself, Lyndon B. Johnson, asked Leonid I. Br-
ezhnev “not to unleash the dogs of war” against Romania, while the Chinese prime-minister,
Zhou-En-Lai, went as far as saying that “an attack against Romania will be considered an at-
15
tack against China” . Immediately after the forced acceptance of the Kremlin’s conditions
by the captive Czechoslovak leaders in Moscow and after the reappointment of some of them
in Prague by the soviets, Nicolae Ceaučescu moderated the tone of the anti-soviet declarations
and sought a compromise. The meeting of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee
of the Romanian Communist Party of August 29, 1958, marks this moment. While the inva-
sion was still condemned and the Czechoslovak state and party leadership were assured of the
entire support of Bucharest, the emphasis this time felt on “the harsh situation in the relations
among the socialist countries, which makes of utmost importance not to take any measures
that can deepen the rift and generate new sources of tension – but to direct all the efforts to a
sole constructive direction and to the major goal of reestablishing the climate of friendship, of
rebuilding and consolidating the unity among the brotherly communist parties from the social-
ist countries, all for the sake of the socialist cause and peace”. Therefore, the terms used only

10 Jaromir Navratil, The Prague Spring ’68, Central European University Press, 1998, p. 494.
11 Stenograma întâlnirii dintre Nicolae Ceaučescu, Secretarul General al PCR, či Iosip Broz Tito, Secretarul
general al Uniunii Comuničtilor din Iugoslavia, desfččuratč la Vârčeč în ziua de 24 august 1968 , în „Dosarele
Istoriei”, nr. 8/1998, ff. 50-58.
12 Ion Pčtroiu (coord.), Alexandru Očca, Vasile Popa, Îngheό în plinό varό. Praga – august 1968, editura Paid-
eia, 1998, p. 103-111.
13 Henry Kissinger, Diplomaόia, Editura All, Bucurečti, 1998, p. 636.
14 Nicolae Chilie, “O panό de automobile pe drumul cooperόrii Est-Vest”, în “Dosarele Istoriei”, nr. 1(6)/1997,
p. 45-48.
15 Mihai Retegan, op. cit., p. 222.