'No one's liberty is expendable': Bush remembers WWII in his distinctive way.

London--Prague--Budapest

CENTRAL and Eastern Europe is a good vantage point from which to judge President Bush's recent visit to Moscow for the anniversary of VE Day--and the resulting debate over Yalta and the value of his democracy project. After all, Prague and Warsaw were the flashpoints that prepared and ignited World War II. Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939 because the German army had crossed the Polish borders the Allies had guaranteed six months earlier (in response to Hitler's seizure of the rump of Czechoslovakia). Poland was one of the four nations that fought in World War II from start to finish (the others were Britain, Germany, and the USSR)--first in the invasion of Poland, then in the RAF, later in the Polish army recruited from Stalin's gulag and sent via Persia and South Africa to southern England to prepare for D-Day, and throughout the war in an astonishingly brave and resilient Polish Home Army. When in 1946 "Chips" Channon, the Chicago meat-packing socialite heir and British Tory MP, gestured around the room at a smart London society wedding and said with fatuous snobbery, "This is what we have been fighting for," Emerald Cunard replied, "Oh, are they all Poles?"

For, by then, the Poles had been, well, not forgotten exactly, but pushed very firmly down the memory hole, along with the other faraway nations passing behind the Iron Curtain. Only a handful of MPs (among them, to his credit, the future prime minister Alec Douglas-Home) voted against the Yalta treaty in the House of Commons. Poland had been occupied by the Red Army, and Stalin's Communist quislings were imposed on the stricken nation. Hungary enjoyed a brief illusion of democracy--and elected conservative smallholder parties rather than the socialists allegedly favored by history--before the minority Communists seized full power under the gaze of the Red Army. And the Czechs fell to a classic Communist coup. That completed the Cold War division of Europe which would last 40 years. It is a history that makes it hard to celebrate the anniversary of VE Day with unqualified rapture in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest-or Moscow.

That is why President Bush was right to begin his visit not there but in Riga, Latvia--and even more right to mark the event with a speech conceding that the Baltic and East European states had not been liberated in 1945 but had merely passed from one despotism to another. In choosing to visit one of the Baltic republics, moreover, he reminded people of the reality not only of 1945 but also of 1939-40. For World War II began when Hitler and Stalin agreed to divide up Europe between them in the Nazi-Soviet Pact one week before the invasion of Poland. In accord with its provisions, Stalin invaded Poland just 17 days after Hitler, took over the Baltic republics, and invaded Finland. To be sure, the USSR was in World War II from start to finish--but on both sides.

Of course, once Bush arrived in Moscow, he praised the courage, endurance, and sacrifice of the Russian people in defeating Hitler. That was both necessary and true: The Red Army did more than any other allied force to destroy the German war machine. By placing this heroism in the historical context of Soviet aggressive imperialism, however, Bush effectively neutralized the attempts by Russian president Vladimir Putin to exploit VE Day in the service of nostalgia for the USSR and his own creeping authoritarianism. As far as U.S.-Russia relations went, Bush's visit was well judged. He refused to allow himself to be used for Putin's somewhat shabby purposes. And his diplomatic tributes to Soviet achievements were clearly within the context of defending historical truth.

Did Bush go too far, however, in his comments on Yalta, and his implicit criticism of FDR and Churchill for signing away the independence of half of Europe? He said: "The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable." He went on to contrast Yalta with his own policy of spreading democracy: "We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations--appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability ... No one's liberty is expendable. In the long run, our security, and true stability, depend on the freedom of others."

Bush's argument was seemingly endorsed a few days later by the rapturous reception he received from Georgians when he visited Tbilisi. With its own "Rose Revolution," which replaced a post-Soviet autocrat with a pro-American democrat, Georgia looked like the latest success of the Bush democracy project. The BBC admitted as much through gritted teeth.

Even before Bush left Washington, some European critics of his policy were conceding that his attempts to democratize the Middle East were working better than they had expected. Writing in the Guardian, Max Hastings, a conservative "realist" on foreign policy, reported as follows on Iraq: "My own contacts say that the situation is improving, but remains precarious. They suggest that criminal anarchy is gradually being stemmed. The recruitment and training of Iraqi security forces is going a little better." Though Hastings concluded that the jury was still out and failure owing to neocon arrogance still a possibility, he also pointed out that any reasonable person should want the project of Islamic democracy to succeed. And he was speaking for a growing number of Europeans who see that there is obviously popular support for greater democracy in the Middle East and central Asia, but who remain nervous of the project's ambitious and (they fear) hubristic scope.

Which brings us back to Bush's remarks on Yalta: Were they fair and accurate? And was he justified in suggesting that his own policy is an improvement on it, as Georgia would seem to suggest?

Surely it is quite false to compare Yalta with the Nazi-Soviet pact. The latter was designed to advance the aggressive ambitions of both Hitler and Stalin--but neither FDR nor Churchill wanted to rule Eastern Europe. They simply accepted the fait accompli that the Red Army had occupied it and that any postwar settlement would therefore require Stalin's consent. A policy of forcing Stalin back within the Soviet borders was utopian: Western opinion was pro-Soviet and war-weary; there was still a war to win against Japan in which we wanted Stalin's help; Europe was devastated and needed vast economic relief; and the Red Army was a formidable fighting machine. Neither Bush nor any other Western statesman would have launched such a war in those circumstances. The practical betrayal of Eastern Europe at Yalta had most of the negative consequences he criticized--a divided Europe, etc. But it was more or less inevitable. Bush's criticism is therefore exaggerated and unfair.

What can be reasonably alleged against Yalta is that it was needlessly deceitful. Instead of simply acknowledging that we could not fulfill our war aim of liberating Poland and its neighbors, we pretended that Soviet occupation was a form of liberation. That was a moral betrayal that intensified the natural bitterness of Poles and others. They saw the West not as yielding to Soviet aggression so much as collaborating with it. Honesty would have been the better policy.

If Bush's conduct in Riga and Moscow is any guide, he would not have sacrificed truth to realpolitik--even if he had had to acquiesce in the fact of Soviet conquest. And that is an important distinction.

No sooner had Bush left Tbilisi, however, than a crisis erupted in Uzbekistan that presented him with a dilemma similar to that presented at Yalta. Security forces loyal to Islam Karimov, the post-Soviet Uzbek dictator, massacred hundreds of demonstrators. Even friendly critics of the Bush democracy project are now demanding that he take action against Karimov or face the charge of "hypocrisy."

There is no doubt that Karimov is a thoroughgoing despot. But he has helped the U.S. in the War on Terror by allowing American bases in Uzbekistan. Some of his political opponents--probably the best-organized ones--are extreme Islamists who would happily shoot down demonstrators too, albeit different demonstrators. And though it is doubtless true, as the president argues, that "in the long run, our security, and true stability, depend on the freedom of others," the key phrase is "in the long run." In the short run, our security may depend on having dubious allies in vital strategic regions. Simply abandoning Karimov and hoping that his successors will be an improvement is not a sensible policy; even if it were to succeed in removing him, it might produce another Taliban.

Given the president's elevated rhetoric, the U.S. has to criticize Karimov, nudge him in the direction of reform, and--as in Riga--tell the truth about him. But the truth is that the U.S., as a world power with many interests, cannot impose democratic virtue in every case and so should not encourage democratic rebellion in every context. Our rhetoric should be scaled down to reflect that fact.

Bush is winning the argument; he can ease up on the adjectives.