Why Lithuania Is Not Like South Carolina

By Charles Krauthammer

As Lithuania is slowly strangled, it appeals to the world for help. The world turns away ashamedly. Shame, because we know that the Lithuanian cause is just.

Why? Is it not true, as Columbia University historian Eric Foner asserts, that "there really is a genuine parallel between Lincoln and Gorbachev" ? That "Lincoln's position, like Gorbachev's, was that a union, no matter how it was formed, cannot be abandoned." Why do we praise Lincoln for launching a war to save the Union but denounce Gorbachev for much milder actions?

The usual answer -- the Lithuanian answer -- is an appeal to history. The American South voluntarily joined the American Union. Lithuania was conquered and involuntarily absorbed into the Soviet Union. Its original incorporation being illegitimate, it is not really seceding, it is merely reasserting a pre- existing independence of which it was robbed 50 years ago when jointly raped by Hitler and Stalin.

But history can be tricky. On the one hand, where exactly does history stop? Lithuania was independent for 20 years between 1920 and 1940, but for more than a hundred years before that it was part of the Russian empire. Which historical period is the norm? The Russian imperium? The brief interregnum of Lithuanian independence? Or the Soviet reality of the past 50 years?

And on the other hand, why was, say, South Carolina's accession to the American Union in 1788 binding on the generation of 1860, which was not even born at the time of incorporation? Why exactly were South Carolinians who had nothing to do with joining the American Union prohibited, by democratic theory no less, from asserting their democratic right to choose their own form of association, or nonassociation, with the Union?

We need firmer ground on which to base the justice of Lithuania's declaration of independence. And it exists. It has nothing to do with history. | It has instead to do with democracy, with a new principle of international relations or, rather, an old one that has been revived: the principle of democratic legitimacy. The Lithuanians are right to do what they did because it was an elected government, created by consent of the governed, that decided in the name of the people to secede. It is the democratic origin of that decision, not its historical antecedents, that makes it right.

But didn't South Carolina also democratically decide to leave the American Union? By what right did Lincoln make war on it?

The answer is, first, that South Carolina, unlike Lithuania, was not fully democratic. In 1860, 58% of its population was enslaved, denied, among other human rights, the vote. It was a white minority government, we would say today, that voted for secession.

And, second, Lincoln's Union, unlike Gorbachev's, was a democracy. Lincoln fought to preserve the Union because he believed that secession meant the end of the great American experiment in self-government. If a minority (the South), upon losing an argument (the election of 1860), can just pick up and quit the Union, then the whole idea of republican government becomes a farce. If every disgruntled minority can take up its marbles and secede, then the monarchist and other reactionary critics of the (then) unique American experiment in republican government would be vindicated: man is not fit for self-government. As in classical Rome and Greece, self-government inevitably breaks down into either anarchy or tyranny.

None of this applies to Gorbachev. He is protecting a dictatorial empire, not a democracy. The union he is defending is dedicated to no proposition. Gorbachev has introduced elements of democracy into the U.S.S.R. But ironically, the only part of the U.S.S.R. that can be said to be fully democratic is Lithuania, which has held the U.S.S.R.'s first free multiparty elections. For Lithuania freely to secede from a nondemocratic union is not to undermine the idea of democratic government but, in fact, to affirm it.

Moreover, today even Lincoln's action would be looked on with far more skepticism. Even if the union is democratic, it hardly seems to us today that it has the right forcibly to suppress the democratically expressed will of a minority for independence. If, for example, Quebec decided tomorrow to secede from Canada, the world would hardly countenance a Lincolnesque invasion of Quebec in the name of the Canadian federal union. Nor would Canada.

So long as a nation, in making its own decisions democratically, does not threaten its neighbors (a condition that a unified Germany, for example, would have to meet), it should be free to choose. Certainly Lithuania meets that test. That is why we are all pulling for Lithuania.

But not fully. When our governments are called upon to support Lithuania's independence, they are mute. Why? Because while the Lithuanian cause is just, there are other causes in the world -- among them the continued success of Gorbachev's attempt to democratize, demilitarize, and decolonize the empire that he inherited. This too counts for something.

This tug between the justice of the Lithuanian cause and the need to preserve these other values embodied by Gorbachev is the source of Western paralysis over Lithuania. It is no use trying to justify that paralysis by denying, by appeal to Lincoln, the Lithuanian case. It won't wash. Our paralysis is justified only by admitting that the Lithuanian cause conflicts irreconcilably with other important values.

Some international dilemmas are insoluble. Lithuania presents us with such a dilemma. To try to escape our anguish by denying the just cause of the Lithuanians is to add insult to injury. But we need not condemn ourselves for cowardice. Appeasement is the abandonment of friends simply for one's own safety. Our inaction on Lithuania is grounded in concern not just for our safety but for the reform and eventual liberation of the entire Soviet empire. What Lithuania is experiencing, therefore, is not betrayal, nor is it appeasement. It is tragedy.