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Journal of Low Countries Studies
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Realizing the Kennedy Vision: The John F. Kennedy Institute, Paradiplomacy, and Dutch Foreign
Relations, 1960s–1980s
Giles Scott-Smith
To cite this article: Giles Scott-Smith (2016) Realizing the Kennedy Vision: The John F. Kennedy Institute, Paradiplomacy, and Dutch Foreign Relations, 1960s–1980s, Dutch Crossing, 40:1, 24-38, DOI: 10.1080/03096564.2016.1129190
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03096564.2016.1129190
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Realizing the Kennedy Vision: The John F. Kennedy Institute, Paradiplomacy, and Dutch Foreign Relations,
1960s–1980s
Giles Scott-Smith
The University of Leiden, The Netherlands
this article examines the role of the John F. Kennedy institute as a
“paradiplomatic actor” during detente. inspired by Kennedy’s vision for a transformation of both transatlantic and West–East relations, the institute sought to contribute to a Europe-wide peace system through contacts with counterparts in Poland, hungary and Yugoslavia. relations with the dutch Foreign Ministry were close, despite the fact that the ministry’s contacts with these central European regimes were limited.
KEYWORDS: Détente, elite networks, NGOs, paradiplomacy.
Introduction
The literature on the contribution of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to trans- national relations, and how they have impacted international history, international rela- tions and diplomacy, is now well established. NGOs are recognised as significant actors for cultural and political transfer, the diffusion of ideas and the establishment of norms.1 In the cold war context, NGOs as transnational actors became significant from the late 1950s as advocates for peace, from the 1970s through their demand for human rights within the frame of East–West relations and for pushing issues such as environmental protection that moved beyond the cold war dynamic.2 The 1970s is regarded as the pivotal decade for this transnational turn, due to the early seminal research in IR and the level of interdependence across the security, political, economic, environmental and
doi 10.1080/03096564.2016.1129190
sociocultural fields.3 Looking back from the year 2000, Charles Maier could claim that twentieth century history was marked by the decline of territoriality as the framing device for our understanding of power and identity, and that this trend was particularly noticeable from the 1970s onwards.4
With this transnational turn in mind, this article picks up on Robert Brier’s call for
“broadening the cultural history of the Cold War” by illustrating the importance of a non-state actor involved in both West–West and West–East relations.5 In September 1966, the John F. Kennedy Institute/Center for Atlantic Studies (JFK) opened at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands. Seeking to contribute to a nascent transcontinental peace system, its lifespan ranged from the early years of Détente in the mid-60s to the late cold war in the mid-80s. The JFK Institute is analysed here as a micro-level focus point for var- ious trends in international relations at that time. Firstly, it represented the mobilisation of private interests to play a high-level role in the increasingly interdependent East–West international environment, engaging with counterparts who – from the perspective of Dutch foreign relations – were previously considered unworthy of dialogue. Secondly – in contrast to the transnational peace and social movements that have drawn the most research interest6 – it sought to leverage the political and social capital that it possessed through its knowledge-based elite networks, in order to claim legitimacy as an actor in the cold war theatre. Thirdly, it was a product of the Détente period, in that the conditions for East–West contacts were radically transformed through the step-by-step processes of mutual recognition. Fourthly, it was motivated by shifting power relations within the West itself, notably the threat of centrifugal forces weakening the Atlantic alliance, and the development of a European Community learning to speak with one voice as an international actor.7 Lastly, it was part of a counter-trend to Western demoralisation and fragmentation. As Jan-Werner Müller has claimed, “the mid-1970s seem like the high point of what one might call the crisis of the West – or at least the high point of an acute consciousness of crisis in the West.”8
The importance of NGOs for the creation of a (previously non-existent) space for political dialogue is crucial here. They possess the means, contacts and issues to achieve this outside of the bounds of formal diplomatic practice, relatively autonomous from governmental oversight. In this respect one can refer to a form of paradiplomacy con- ducted by “policy entrepreneurs” or “politico-intellectuals” who promulgated their own political visions and blueprints for change in support of, alongside, or separate from the inter-governmental arena.9 The JFK Institute benefitted from its status as a private institution, positioning itself outside of the realm of diplomatic officialdom in order to facilitate more open dialogue, yet also flexible (and credible) enough to assume the stature of a semi-official diplomatic player, pursuing a rolling series of discussions that sought to ease tensions and build a trans-European rapport towards peace.10
Significance of a Small NGO in a Small State
The official history of Tilburg University outlines the JFK’s purpose thus:
The John F. Kennedy Institute is an interdisciplinary institute that aims to contribute to the study of relations between the nations in the Atlantic region and the respective attitudes and
importance of these nations in relation to the development of more peaceful international relations.11
The Institute took its inspiration from the realisation that a relaxation of tensions between the West and the Soviet bloc would have profound consequences for relations within the West itself. This not only referred to the apparent general threat of a loosening of bonds between the USA and Western Europe under conditions of Detente, but also to the possibility that a greater room for manoeuvre was opening up for individual states to find their own modus operandi in East–West relations. The hoped-for benefits from reduced tensions could also weaken the Western alliance. In 1966, the same year the JFK Institute opened, the alliance had faced a serious test with the withdrawal of France from NATO’s centralised military command. It was anticipated that other changes to the configuration of the West would follow.
For these reasons, the Institute operated on two fronts. Firstly, it sought to strengthen contacts with the USA, making use of existing public diplomacy channels and initiating new ones to ensure a constant transatlantic scholarly interchange of ideas and individuals.
It became the recipient of visiting Fulbright scholars, and worked closely with NATO on problem-solving projects related to difficulties within the alliance. Secondly, from 1969 onwards it became an active player in East–West relations, seeking out contacts with foreign policy think tanks and institutes across Eastern Europe, and in so doing initiating a dialogue on common security concerns. This was carried through most successfully in Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia, and it increasingly involved participants from the Dutch government as part of its “network of specialists”.12
Diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and the Soviet bloc in the cold war were stilted due to the Dutch government’s refusal to grant legitimacy to the “peoples’
democracies” in the east.13 This continued during the 1970s, when the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the subsequent Helsinki Accords were used by The Hague to push an agenda promoting human rights and civic freedoms. East–West trade relations – in contrast to West Germany or Britain – were never seen by the Dutch as holding great potential, removing another possible incentive for relaxing relations.14 Yet relations between the Institute and the foreign ministry were always close. A mem- ber of the ministry always sat on the JFK’s board, and from 1976 to 1984 JFK director Frans Alting von Geusau served as chair of the Advisory Committee on Disarmament and International Security. In the Dutch diplomatic context, therefore, the JFK was used informally as a form of non-governmental outreach for contacts with “the other side”.
This could be accepted because Alting von Geusau, a member of the Catholic upper establishment, possessed the connections to “legitimise” his activities. So whereas its official input was minimal, this should not exclude the possibility that, for NGOs of this kind, “their indirect influence was possibly greater”.15
Origins and purpose
Alting von Geusau was a graduate in law from Leiden University who was made Professor of International Law at the Catholic University Brabant (later the University of Tilburg)
in 1965. He had also studied under Henri Brugmans at the Europa College in Bruges, following which, during 1959–60, he had worked closely with Ernst B. Haass at the University of California in Berkeley. Von Geusau names Brugmans among his most impor- tant intellectual influences, along with Leiden international law professor Frederick van Asbeck.16 From these formative years he took two clear positions into his professional work: a focus on the contribution that international organisations could make to end the
“absurd artificial” division of Europe and create a viable post-Second World War peace system; and a determination that international law could establish norms of behaviour that would mollify inter-state antagonisms. There was also the influence of President Kennedy himself, an influence that went beyond the institute’s title. In a paper on East–
West relations from April 1968, for instance, Alting von Geusau drew on Kennedy’s speech at American University on 11 June 1963 for inspiration. The Dutchman called for moving beyond the simplistic communist/anti-communist division of the world through
“an acceptance of the world of diversity in the 60s”. To achieve peace meant “not the victory of one system of government but the organization of coexistence and mutual acceptance between several systems of government”.17
The initial move for the JFK was purely academic, but that would soon change in a policy-relevant direction. Alting von Geusau was convinced that there were serious defi- ciencies in the theory and practice of political studies in Western Europe, when compared to the “new experiments and adaptations in study programmes” in the USA. Coupled with this was his conviction that the Atlantic region, with its dense networks and layers of diplomatic, economic, financial, military and cultural interchange, required specific inves- tigative attention. Having completed his PhD in 1962 on “European Organisations and the Foreign Relations of States,” he criticised how the study of International Relations in Europe was focused on problems related to European integration. As a result, “a sys- tematic study of problems in their Atlantic context is therefore lacking”. Since “Atlantic problems” necessarily required an interdisciplinary approach involving “at least the fac- ulties of law, economics, the social sciences, and the arts (including political and histor- ical science)”, the best solution was to run such a set-up from an independent institute unburdened by faculty boundaries – a distinctly American-style solution.18
The impetus for the Institute fell within a wider promotion of Atlantic studies in Western Europe that had been going on since the early 1960s. The Ford Foundation in particular, prominent in funding and expanding American Studies programmes via the American Council of Learned Societies from 1960 onwards, had aimed to establish a series of institutes across the continent that could give “transatlanticism” a permanent foothold within European academia. Focusing on the main centres of power, the Ford did not back a similar institute in the Netherlands.19 Instead, local elites set about estab- lishing such a location themselves. With Dutch security policy built entirely around a functioning Atlantic alliance, there was a strong feeling that “the Netherlands … offers the best political climate in Western Europe for establishing this institute.”20
By the late 1960s, however, the motives were somewhat different than earlier in the decade. President Kennedy’s call for transatlantic interdependence and the Grand Design of ever-closer partnership between North America and Western Europe had set the tone
for initiatives in the early 1960s, but this had been followed by a series of disappoint- ments, not least the failure of the EEC to maintain momentum in the face of a resurgent nationalism and protectionism.21 By 1967, so the backers of the JFK Institute felt, there was a need to revive the Kennedy vision and once again place “the Atlantic area” at the centre of international relations. Moreover, adopting a strong supranationalist tone, it declared that “the obsolescence of the sovereign nation state, especially in Europe, is such that its continued existence increasingly endangers international peace”.22 There is no question that John F. Kennedy’s rejuvenating vision inspired the Dutch protagonists.
The very naming of the institution to pursue this Atlanticist agenda after him was a bold move to both capitalise on and resuscitate the late President’s ideals. Alting von Geusau himself became the first director of a short-lived attempt to establish a Dutch “peace corps” in honour of its American progenitor’s worldview.
Yet the circumstances for attempting such a revival were not opportune, as illustrated by the Ford Foundation-funded Committee on Atlantic Studies (CAS). Established in 1964 jointly by the Atlantic Institute in Paris and the Atlantic Council in the USA under the leadership of Eugene Rostow at Yale, its goal was “to encourage teaching and research focused on the political, economic and social relationships of the nations in the Atlantic world”. This was the high point of the Ford Foundation’s support for Atlanticist initia- tives, pushing the development of policy-relevant studies and new forms of governance for the transatlantic region, and the initial development of the CAS looked promising. In 1966 a European chapter was created and the first US-European conference was held at the Villa Serbelloni in September 1967, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Alting von Geusau joined the following year, becoming chair of the European section. A new charter was drafted that sought to strengthen inter-university cooperation and encourage the study of “our common civilization and its links and responsibilities to others”.23 A Five-Year Program was drawn up in early 1968 with a total budget of $954,000, including proposals for research projects on student unrest, regional security and free trade areas, as well as an annual report on transatlantic affairs. The potential for CAS to become a transatlantic research arm of the Atlantic Institute and clarify the “integrative trend” in the region was noted, and some projects – Nils Andren’s proposed study of the treatment of Europe and North America in their respective textbooks, and how this linked to atti- tudes, in particular – were seen to have real promise. But in 1969 the Ford Foundation, prepared to support the preparatory conferences but not the research agenda, withdrew its support on the grounds that it “continues to flounder about in search of a role”.24 It was impossible for the CAS to convince other potential funders of its relevance, the Atlantic Institute was unable to build on it and Alting von Geusau resigned due to the lack of support.
The CAS episode illustrated how by the late 1960s it was difficult to obtain finan- cial support for transatlantic-focused topics. The transformation of East-West and North–South relations were altering the context in which the transatlantic was being viewed, and new challenges (pollution, energy, environmental decline and health) were appearing. The Atlantic Institute would soon be discussing whether to change its name, and the Bilderberg meetings debated whether to admit Japanese members (they didn’t,
which partly fuelled the formation of the Trilateral Commission).25 Alting von Geusau himself admitted that there were “very limited possibilities in Europe” for funding the JFK.26 Within the Netherlands itself, deliberate moves were made to ensure a broad base of support. The appointment of Ernst van der Beugel, the European Secretary of the Bilderberg meetings, as Professor in Atlantic Cooperation at Leiden University in 1966 was a bonus. Van der Beugel, a died-in-the-wool Atlanticist (in the sense of supporting US leadership of the Atlantic alliance), joined prominent Dutch Europeanists on the JFK’s research board: Jean Monnet’s confident Max Kohnstamm (also a member of CAS), Jan Kymmell of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the former rector of the College de l’Europe, Henri Brugmans. The governance structure therefore reflected a cross-section of opinions on US–European relations, and this was further extended through contacts with Clarence Streit’s federalist Atlantic Union Committee. This indicates how the JFK Institute attempted to unite the pro-Atlanticist factions, of whatever stripe, as a solid foundation for its future endeavours.
The start-up period was wholly Atlantic in orientation. Looking to pursue a high- level research agenda, Alting von Geusau had already arranged a grant in 1965 from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the role of international organizations in the implementation of treaties. The Endowment’s office in Geneva ran a permanent study group on international institutions, which provided a perfect meeting ground for him to link up with a trans-European network of scholars which he could later tap into.
In November 1966 Kohnstamm – also a valuable conduit to possible funds from the Ford Foundation – secured a further grant of 25,000 Dutch Guilders from the Institut de la Communauté Européenne pour les Ėtudes Universitaires, created in 1957 by Jean Monnet in Lausanne to stimulate the development of university courses devoted to the construction of Europe. From this, the JFK Institute held the first in a series of “collo- quia on current Atlantic problems”: Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Sharing in NATO as a Problem for Dutch Foreign Policy.27 It was through this colloquium that Alting von Geusau came into contact with the transatlantic network he considers to be the most important for his professional activities: The Institute of Strategic Studies in London.28 Similar colloquia would follow between 1967–69 on the Kennedy Round, the future of NATO, international monetary governance, and security in the 1970s. The aim was always to provide a space for the mixing of theoretical and practical approaches and academic and policy-making circles, thereby building “a more policy-attuned environ- ment.”29 The “disarray in the Atlantic world” required exactly “more policy-oriented research at the universities on the one hand, and for more scientifically based foreign policies on the other.”30
However, the ambitions for the Institute soon departed from what it could realistically achieve. The policy-relevant topics chosen for study were too broad, beyond the capacity of a small institute lacking a financial patron of sufficient stature. A panel of experts (including van der Beugel, Kymmell, Kohnstamm, and Brugmans) wanted the JFK to look at “problems of intergovernmental and non-governmental cooperation in the Atlantic area”, and had encouraged the Institute to “be willing to undertake specific studies at the request of governments, international organizations and other non-governmental
bodies.”31 This did not provide enough guidance, and the resulting collage of projects and events showed instead that the central goals of the Institute were still unclear. The JFK was ultimately suffering from the same problems as the CAS – in which direction should Atlantic-orientated research actually go? What should be the goals? It is indicative that, despite several attempts during 1966–71, the JFK was never able to attract Ford Foundation support for its projects. Despite Kohnstamm’s close relations with the Ford and Alting von Geusau being director of “the only Institute for Atlantic Studies on the Continent”, the Foundation was never fully convinced of the coherence of the submitted proposals.32 Funding would always remain predominantly Dutch.33
Finding a mission? Turning to the East
The influence of John F. Kennedy on this Dutch Institute stretched beyond a deepening of transatlantic relations. At American University in June 1963, Kennedy had laid out three principal goals: the pursuit of peace, redefining relations with the Soviet Union, and re-examining the basis of the cold war. “Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace”, Kennedy said, “based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions”.34 Looking to contribute to this side to the Kennedy legacy, in 1967 Alting von Geusau initiated a PhD project on the con- trasting roles of NATO and the Warsaw Pact in disarmament negotiations and détente, and the Institute’s second report from April 1967 stated that it “should focus on projects concerning the interrelationship between issues dealt with in an Atlantic context and world issues and East-West contacts”. A new project covering the importance of cultural relations between NATO and Warsaw Pact member states was now being prepared by JFK research scholar Lazslo Bartalits, a refugee from Hungary in 1956, which would examine “the function of cultural policies in relations between East and West [and] their impact on general political relations.”35 In particular, the central question was “how far cultural relations, which emerge out of a specific political context, can develop separately and eventually lead to a progressive relaxation in political relations”.36 Bartalits began by assembling an inventory of cultural exchange programs between NATO and Warsaw Pact member states, plotting “their evolution, scope and intensity” to trace their role in influencing the processes of détente. His preliminary study in 1969 outlined how cultural exchanges could produce positive political effects such as a reduction in hostility, but they could also be used for propagandising, enhancing national prestige or gathering intelligence. The study pointed out how East European interest in East–West exchanges through the 1960s indicated “an increasing tension between the requirements of increased international communication and the inability to cope with it on the basis of ideological and political premises”.37 Bartalits had provided a blueprint for the JFK’s new direction.
The first contacts between Tilburg and the Eastern bloc occurred in 1967 when a group of faculty and students from the Economics department went to Moscow, followed by a trip to Prague in April the following year. Alting von Geusau visited the Institute for International Political and Economic Relations in the Sociological Institute of Prague in July 1968 to discuss the possibility of a conference on International Organisation
and the Changing European System. The proposal, radical in outlook, was to link up with partners such as the Pugwash Committee on European Security and the Council of Europe’s East–West Study Group for a discussion on alternative orders for Europe, effectively looking beyond NATO and the Warsaw Pact. However, it was the Warsaw Pact itself that put an end to this proposal with the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, and contacts were never renewed.38
More structural contacts began in 1970, when Alting von Geusau was approached by the Polish embassy in The Hague with an offer to bring him into contact with the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) in Warsaw. An agreement was signed in September 1970, and the first “round table conference” was held in Warsaw in January 1971. Alting von Geusau led a mixed Dutch delegation consisting of journalist Jerome Heldring, Catholic Party MP Jozef Mommersteeg, Labour Party MP Max van der Stoel, Director of the Peace Research Institute Hendrik Neuman and Leo Kraland, a member of the East–West Trade Commission of the Netherlands Wholesale Association. This was soon followed, thanks to contacts via Bartalits, by a round table conference in Budapest in June 1971, with van der Stoel, Neuman, Kraland, and Heldring joined this time by Rudolph Jurrjens of the Foundation for the Promotion of East–West Contacts, L. Jaquet of the Netherlands Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) and Professor Bosman from the Dutch Social and Economic Council. Yugoslavia followed a year later, via contacts at the University of Zagreb made by Jaquet at an International Institute for Strategic Studies conference in Stresa.39 These colloquia would continue with all three nations through the 1970s, ending in 1980 (Poland), 1985 (Hungary) and 1987 (Yugoslavia), respectively.
Heldring (who also represented the NIIA) and Neuman were Alting von Geusau’s main institutional partners in these ventures. Similar contacts had been established by British and French institutions, but these were the first organised contacts at think-tank level run by a Dutch non-governmental organisation. Alting von Geusau’s status in the Dutch social elite enabled him to occupy this “diplomatic space” without opposition from the institutions of the state. Van der Stoel, Dutch Foreign Minister from 1973 to 77, was the most important politician taking part, and he went on to become a major voice in the cause for human rights in Europe. The JFK seminars were a useful briefing for the ministerial post.40
The East–West colloquia: Novel terrain
The attitude of the Dutch government towards a European Security Conference, a goal of the Soviet Union since the mid-1950s, was highly sceptical. There was no accept- ance of the USSR as a trustworthy partner in international diplomacy, and certainly no desire to grant the communist regime in Moscow any greater legitimacy by means of a large-scale meeting between heads of state, the only substance of which would be its propaganda value. If the Soviet Union wanted such a conference so badly then it had to be prepared to offer concessions to the West, and these focused mainly on the issues of human rights and freedom of movement.41 The Dutch view was therefore that any such conference should only be used to loosen Soviet control over Eastern Europe – an
approach that put The Hague at odds with Washington, since presidents Nixon and Ford were more interested in establishing stable relations with Moscow.42 What is more, it was exactly the smaller European nations, unable to indulge in power politics, which were keen to push this agenda more than the larger powers.43 In these circumstances the JFK, in pursuing the Kennedy vision of moving beyond the cold war, was “out of line”
with Dutch foreign policy.
An interesting factor here is to what extent these colloquia were meetings of equals, operating on the same terrain. Different versions of “civil society” were here in contact, and the JFK’s counterparts were careful to express the agreed-upon line of the respective regime. Alting von Geusau has spoken of how in Poland “you could see clearly that in order to survive you needed to be two persons – you have the official opinion, and you have your own”. Reaching the private behind the public obviously required some careful manoeuvring. The Dutchman’s speeches (the content of which he insisted on keeping the same for any audience, be it Western or Eastern) invariably elicited criticisms from
“secret service types”, but after the event “people were lining up to ask me questions, people wanted ‘to go for a walk’”. He reported at the time that “even among the so-called
‘new class’ [younger technocrats] there were evident political tensions under the surface.
Anti-Russian and Anti-East German sentiments strongly present.”44 Religion provided another bridge, particularly in Poland:
They insisted on showing me beautiful churches. In the church they were Catholic [as was Alting von Geusau himself], and in the institute they were communist. It was very much the system, they were two persons. The only way to encounter the second person was to be very straightforward in public and very open for private discussions thereafter.45
Yet plenty of care had to be taken, since Poland in the 1970s was not an easy environment to operate in. Aside from genuine efforts to make contact and establish dialogue, regular attempts at blackmail were also part of the game, and all rooms were clearly bugged.
Alting von Geusau always ensured that he reported in with the Dutch Embassy when he arrived so as to provide some diplomatic protection, and made sure to play all of his visits out in the open. Yet surveillance was not confined to the East, since he was also convinced that his activities were being monitored (by being followed and by telephone taps) by the Dutch security service (BVD) in the Netherlands. A meeting with the BVD brought this out into the open, but it also brought a request that he might propose certain questions and act as a channel of information on the state of thinking within the Eastern bloc. Alting von Geusau refused – he would not compromise himself (or the non-state identity of the JFK) by getting involved with “specific requests” for intelligence purposes.
Nevertheless, the image this gives of “politico-intellectual” free enterprise being kept under surveillance and – potentially – undermined by sections of the state in both West and East is revealing. For state authorities, transnational civil contacts represented both opportunity and threat in 1970s Europe.
Alting von Geusau described these colloquia as “very much part of the détente approach – try to establish as many contacts as possible, to understand each other, but also to exercise some informal influence”.46 He has also referred to these meetings as
being used “in later years as a cover for less official contacts with dissidents”, although that remains unsubstantiated.47 Fixed arrangements were agreed with the Poles, allowing exchanges of three or four postgraduate students for a month of study. Alting von Geusau insisted on complete freedom for the research topics, and each person was limited to one visit only. As might be expected, there were more candidates wanting to go West than go East, but some of those who did go East made good use of the opportunity, such as Arie Bloed.48 There was an awareness that these exchanges could in a small way add to the centrifugal forces pulling Eastern Europe away from the Soviet Union over the longer term.49 However, following the Helsinki Accords in August 1975 NATO agreed on the “margin of tolerance” approach, which looked to expose differences of opinion between the Eastern European regimes and Moscow.50 Ironically, this repoliticisation of East–West relations along the lines of human rights meant the JFK’s activities became more difficult following Helsinki.
There were clear differences in how the Eastern bloc nations responded to these con- tacts. The Yugoslavs, represented by the Institute of International Politics and Economics in Belgrade, were the most open, as was to be expected considering the determina- tion of that nation to chart its own course between East and West. In contrast to the semi-non-governmental nature of the Yugoslav partners, the Poles and the Hungarians organised their participation via their foreign ministries, and while the Hungarians made use of the contacts as a means to give experience to younger officials, the Poles remained the “hardliners”, determined to control the whole process. From the Polish perspective, the autonomous status of the JFK was awkward because they wanted an “official del- egation”. George Embree, an American journalist who worked on the colloquia at the JFK during the mid-70s, compared this approach with the “nonchalant” Yugoslavs.51 Yet what is more evident, as the report on the first meeting with the Yugoslavs demonstrates, was a clash in perspectives between the well-meaning West and the sober East.
During the conference the difference between the delegations in how international relations are evaluated was clearly visible. Dutch idealism was confronted with Yugoslav pragmatism, for which Mr. Mates [member of the Yugoslav Institute] was the principal spokesperson.
He proposed that the Soviet Union needed to be spoken to from a position of strength, and the West needed to adjust to what was practically achievable in the proposed Conference on European Security.52
This comment was illustrated more in the report on the discussion, where Mates empha- sised that “‘freer movement’ … should be handled more as a tactical negotiation point.
He recommended that the Netherlands aim for the maximum possible, ‘but not to push too hard’”. Overall, the Dutch position that “following a European détente there would be an osmosis of East and West” was received with scepticism by their discussion part- ners.53 Significantly, at the second roundtable in The Hague in March 1976, following the signing of the Helsinki Accords, the realism of the Yugoslavs was in the ascendant.
For the Dutch, hopes for more pressure being put on Moscow had not been realised, and the event had instead been used to strengthen the blocs and heighten the ideological contest between them. For the Yugoslavs the only way forward was to view Helsinki as a
step towards further relaxation of tensions and increased cooperation between East and West, and not – as the Soviet Union wanted – as a confirmation of superpower hegem- ony. Against the sober Dutch, the Yugoslavs were now the optimists, claiming that the space was now opening up for nations such as the Netherlands and Yugoslavia to take a leading role in making the Helsinki process work towards a less divided Europe, taking it away from superpower control.54
What were the motives of the Eastern European nations? Here a distinction needs to be made between the Yugoslavs on one side and the Poles on the other, with the Hungarians somewhere in between. For the Yugoslavs these kinds of civil contacts were a further confirmation of their independent role in Europe in particular and in the world in general. Non-alignment required that they enter into dialogue with all parties, avoiding being incorporated into any system that would restrict political manoeuverability. For the Poles the set-up was very different. Contacts had already existed between the PIIA and Jaquet at the Dutch Institute, but these were cut off in 1969 due to Jaquet’s objection to the Polish regime’s anti-Semitism at that time. Concerned that the link would be lost, Jaquet put forward Alting von Geusau as an alternative partner, and Alting von Geusau, looking at Poland, felt that maintaining the relation “could only do them some good”.55
Yet the Polish participants were not passive subjects of a Western initiative – instead they saw it as an opportunity to convey their own message to the West. Alting von Geusau did not realise it at the time, but he later understood that the official Polish stake in the affair was “to build up contacts to defend themselves”.56 Cooperation with the JFK was therefore another small contributing factor to legitimising the regime during a difficult period. That this trade-off was not immediately apparent to the Dutch gives an interesting insight into the idealism that lay behind this entire venture into paradi- plomacy. Of the three participating countries in the East, it was the Poles who pushed the socialist world view most strongly. At the Round table conference in The Hague in 1977, a strong message was delivered by the Polish delegation that human rights meant as much “social justice” as it did “individual freedom”, and that the Western emphasis on human rights was nothing more than “an organised campaign against détente”.57 It was the West, in other words, that was disrupting the chance for peace offered by the Helsinki agreements, a stance that was completely in line with similar Soviet positions propagated since the late 1940s.
Similar standpoints were laid out at the Dutch-Polish Seminar on Arms Control held in Warsaw in March 1980. The discussions were “extraordinarily honest” and the posi- tions of the two delegations “directly opposed each other”. For the Dutch, the causes of worsening East–West relations were Soviet rearmament (the deployment of the SS-20) and the invasion of Afghanistan; for the Poles, it was the NATO drive for superiority (the Dual-Track decision of December 1979) and the US reactions to Afghanistan. The Poles used the opportunity to try and gain Dutch support for a European Disarmament Conference focused on conventional weapons and not involving the United States. The background to this seminar illustrates the hardening of the Polish position through 1979–80. Originally planned through PISM, the regular partner, the seminar was first blocked by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then effectively controlled by ministry
officials.58 The Polish authorities always saw these meetings as something they should do to avoid isolation, and as an opportunity to bring the Dutch round to their standpoint.
These were not one-way affairs. Alting von Geusau’s ‘two Polands’ notwithstanding, the colloquia indicated that ‘peaceful coexistence’ for the Polish participants did involve a genuine contest of ideologies.
Conclusion
Alting von Geusau is most notorious in the Netherlands not for his work with the JFK, but for a speech he gave in September 1981 at the instigation of the Atlantic Commission that questioned the links between Moscow and the peace movement.59 This (often mis- quoted) speech cemented his reputation as a Cold Warrior, and it is true that during the 1980s he did engage with right-wing anti-communist networks such as Le Cercle. Yet it would be a mistake to typecast him purely in those terms. His networks were extensive, resting in particular on the Carnegie Endowment in Geneva, the ISS in London, and the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Top-level contacts in the USA led him to several visiting professorships at Harvard and being called to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs to discuss the CSCE in 1972. The JFK Institute – which closed its doors in 1987 – sought to implement the Kennedy vision with an expansive East–West approach to transatlantic relations unique in Dutch foreign affairs. In doing so the Institute was not simply tolerated by but served a purpose for Dutch diplomacy, however diffuse and unrecorded that may have been. The JFK attempted to move with the times of détente in a different way than the ministry. In a recent study on cultural diplomacy (which includes essays written mainly in the late 1980s and early 1990s), Alting von Geusau concluded:
Cultural contacts with the West did not produce political change in the East, nor did they cause the revolution from below in the East. But they certainly helped revolutionize the closed societies by exposing the abnormality of isolation.60
Some have pointed to the impact of transnational alliances of experts on the transforma- tion of security policy thinking from the 1950s onwards, reaching its culmination under Gorbachev in the 1980s.61 Yet as the example of the JFK shows, there is no need to insist that NGOs were present at the top table in order to claim their historical relevance. To place the Institute requires a broader understanding of cross-border interactions and the international policy-making environment itself, one that “flattens out” the distinction between government and non-government and addresses the relative fluidity of inter- national affairs and international identities. In doing so, a more complex, multi-layered picture of Benelux “diplomacy” in the cold war can emerge.
Notes
1 See Jackie Smith, Charles Chatfield, and Ron Pagnucco, Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity beyond the State (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1997); Sanjeev Kaghram, James Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink, Restructuring
World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
2 On peace movements see Holger Nehring, Politics of Security: The British and West German Protests
against Nuclear Weapons and the Early Cold War, 1945–1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
On human rights see Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Sarah B. Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). On the environment see Ralph B. Levering and Miriam L. Levering, Citizen Action for Global Change: The Neptune Group and the Law of the Sea (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1999).
3 See Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye Jr. (eds.), Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972);
Keohane and Nye, ‘Transgovernmental Relations and International Organizations’, World Politics 27/1 (October 1974), pp. 39–62; Niall Ferguson, Charles Maier, Erez Manela, and Daniel Sargeant (eds.), The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
4 Charles Maier, ‘Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era’, American Historical Review 105 (2000), pp. 807–831.
5 See Robert Brier, ‘Broadening the Cultural History of the Cold War: The Emergence of the Polish Workers Defence Committee and the Rise of Human Rights’, Journal of Cold War Studies 15 (2013), pp. 104–127 (quote p. 105).
6 See for instance Beatrice de Graaff, Over de Muur: De DDR, de Nederlandse kerken en de vredesbeweging (Amsterdam: Boom, 2004); Christine Miedema, ‘The Transnationality of Dutch Solidarity with the Polish Opposition, 1980–1989’, Revue belge de philologie et de l’histoire 89 (2011), pp. 1307–1330; Knud Andresen and Bart van der Steen (eds.), A European Youth Revolt: European Perspectives on Youth Protest and Social Movements in the 1980s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
7 See Piers Ludlow, European Integration in the Cold War: Ostpolitik-Westpolitik, 1965–73 (London:
Routledge, 2009); Piers Ludlow, ‘The Real Years of Europe? US-West European Relations during the Ford Administration’, Journal of Cold War Studies 15 (2013), pp. 136–161.
8 Jan-Werner Müller, ‘The Cold War and the intellectual history of the late twentieth century’, in Melvyn Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), Cambridge History of the Cold War Vol. 3: Endings 1975–1991 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 1.
9 On paradiplomacy see Rohan Butler, ‘Paradiplomacy’, in A. Sarkassian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in Honor of G.P. Gooch (London:
Longman, 1961), pp. 12–25; on policy entrepreneurs, Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 7; on politico- intellectuals, Nancy Jachec, Europe’s Intellectuals and the Cold War: The European Society of Culture, Post- War Politics and International Relations (London: I.B.
Taurus, 2015), p. 12.
10 See Richard Langhorne, ‘Current Developments in Diplomacy: Who are the Diplomats Now?’ Diplomacy
& Statecraft 8 (1997), pp. 1–15; Richard Langhorne,
‘The Diplomacy of Non-State Actors’, Diplomacy &
Statecraft 16 (2005), pp. 331–339.
11 Johan de Vries, Katholieke Hogeschool Tilburg deel II 1955–1977: Onderweg van Hogeschool naar Universiteit (Baarn: Amboboeken, 1981), p. 272.
12 Inderjeet Parmar, ‘Conceptualising the State-Private Network in American Foreign Policy’, in Helen Laville and Hugh Wilford (eds.), The US Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War: The State-Private Network (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 17–18.
13 Els Munter, B. Naarden, and Toby Witte, Voorzichtig en met mate: De betrekkingen van Nederland met de Sovjet-Unie, 1942–1991 (Amsterdam: Oost Europa Instituut, 1992); Floribert Baudet, ‘Het heeft onze aandacht’: Nederland en de rechten van de mens in Oost-Europa en Joegoslavië, 1972–1989 (Amsterdam:
Boom, 2001).
14 Bert Bomert, Nederland en Oost Europa (Amsterdam:
Jan Mets, 1990), p. 56.
15 Baudet, pp. 268–269. See also Giles Scott-Smith,
‘Opening Up Political Space: Informal Diplomacy, East-West Exchanges, and the Helsinki Process’, in Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen (eds.), Beyond the Divide: Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe (New York: Berghahn, 2015).
16 Interview with Frans Alting von Geusau, Leiden, 11 March 2009.
17 Frans Alting von Geusau, ‘Detente or Deterioration:
Projections on future East–West relations’, File:
Circulaires 01-09-1967 tot 01-09-1968, Archive of the JFK Institute, University of Tilburg (hereafter JFK).
18 Frans Alting von Geusau, ‘Eerste Notitie betreffende studie in de Politieke Wetenschappen’, June 1966, File:
Correspondentie 1-4-1967 tot 1-7-1967, JFK.
19 Ford Foundation funding lay behind the creation of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Free University in West Berlin in 1965, and the Institute for United States Studies at the University of London in 1966. See G. Scott-Smith, ‘Laying the Foundations: US Public Diplomacy and the Promotion of American Studies in Europe’, C. van Minnen and S. Hilton (eds.), Teaching and Studying US History in Europe: Past, Present and Future (Amsterdam: VU University press, 2007), pp. 47–61.
20 ‘Second Report’, p. 8, File: JFK Circulaires 1966 tot 1-9-1967, JFK.
21 See Thomas Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe:
In the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
22 ‘Second Report’, p. 8, File: JFK Circulaires 1966 tot 1-9-1967, JFK, p. 2.
23 ‘Support for European-American conference organized by the Committee on Atlantic Studies’, 31 July 1968, Committee on Atlantic Studies, PA 68-843, Reel 1984, archive of the Ford Foundation (hereaftrer FF).
24 Uwe Kitzinger and Leslie Lipson, ‘A Five Year Program for the Committee on Atlantic Studies’, 24 January 1968, ibid; ‘Some Thoughts on CAS Research’, 23 June 1969, ibid; Wilfred Kohl, ‘Evaluation of grant to the Committee on Atlantic Studies’, 22 August 1969, ibid.
25 See Ingeborg Philipsen, Diplomacy with Ambiguity:
The History of the Bilderberg Organisation 1952–
1977, PhD dissertation, Copenhagen University, 2009.
26 Kitzinger and Lipson, ‘Five Year Program’.
27 Alting von Geusau, ‘First Report on Activities’, August 1966, File: Correspondentie 1-4-1967 tot 1-7-1967, JFK.
28 It was the ISS that brought Alting von Geusau into contact with Henry Kissinger, Samuel Huntington, and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
29 Alting von Geusau, March 1968, File: JFK Circulaires 1-9-1967 tot 1-9-1968, JFK.
30 Alting von Geusau, ‘Second Report’, April 1967, File:
JFK Circulaires 1966 tot 1-9-1967, JFK.
31 ‘First Report’, File: Correspondentie 1-4-1967 tot 1-7- 1967, JFK.
32 A final assessment by Alessandro Silj of the Ford’s European and International Affairs office from January 1971 found that the JFK’s projects “lack originality”
and their methodology was “fuzzy”. Nevertheless, it is interesting that Alting von Geusau’s contacts with Max Kohnstamm (a long-running conduit for Ford funding) and the Brookings Institution did generate enough doubt as to whether his institute was after all worth supporting. See correspondence in File: Kennedy, John F. Institute/Center for Atlantic Studies (Netherlands), L68-411, Reel L-272, FF.
33 Attempts were made to secure funds from both the ministries of foreign affairs and education, and the international networks were ‘tapped’: van der Beugel approached Giovanni Agnelli, and Karl Kaiser (a contact via the CAS) went to the Volkswagen Foundation. However, funding always largely came from the University of Tilburg and the Foundation for Pure Research.
34 President John F. Kennedy, speech at American University, 10 June 1963, online, available at <
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/
features/primary-resources/jfk-university/>(accessed 9 October 2015).
35 ‘Second Report’, p. 5, File: JFK Circulaires 1966 tot 1-9-1967, JFK.
36 ‘Aanvraag subsidie voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek’, appendix to ibid.
37 Lazslo Bartalits, ‘Cultural Exchanges and East- West Detente: A preliminary assessment of data
derived from bilateral arrangements’, p. 25, File: JFK Circulaires 01-09-1968 tot 01-05-1970, JFK.
38 File: JFK Circulaires 1-9-1967 tot 1-9-1968, JFK.
39 Jaquet to Alting von Geusau, 14 September 1971, File 127: Roundtables Yugoslavia, JFK.
40 Alting von Geusau later claimed that “he started with us”, which does go too far. Interview with F.A.M.
Alting von Geusau, Leiden, 11 March 2009.
41 In October 1973 the Dutch, in the early stages of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe negotiations in Geneva, filed a proposal for guaranteeing the right to self-determination for the peoples of Eastern Europe. See Igor Kavass et al.
(eds.), Human Rights, European Politics, and the Helsinki Accord. The Documentary Evolution of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein & Co, 1981), Vol. 3, pp. 121–122.
42 See Floribert Baudet, ‘The Netherlands, the United States, and the Helsinki Process, 1972–1989’, in Hans Krabbendam, Kees van Minnen, and Giles Scott-Smith (eds.), 1609–2009: 400 Years of Dutch-American Relations (Amsterdam: Boom and New York: SUNY Press, 2009).
43 ‘Dutch Working Paper’, Netherlands Institute for Peace Questions, n.d., File 127: Roundtables Yugoslavia, JFK.
44 Alting von Geusau, ‘Enkele Notities n.a.v. Kort Bezoek aan Polen’, 2 May 1977, File 64: Roundtables Poland, JFK.
45 Interview with F.A.M. Alting von Geusau, Leiden, 11 March 2009.
46 Ibid.
47 Interview with F.A.M. Alting von Geusau, Oisterwijk, 5 June 2002.
48 Arie Bloed started out on the JFK programme and went on to become one of the main experts on the Helsinki process and its aftermath the OSCE during the 1980s and 1990s, and is currently Director of the Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute (part of the George Soros/Open Society Institute network) in Budapest.
49 Alting von Geusau, ‘Polen en de Europese Toenadering’, 28 January 1971, File 132: Roundtables Poland, JFK.
50 Baudet, pp. 145–146.
51 Interview with George Embree, The Hague, 15 March 2004; Interview with Frans Alting von Geusau, Oisterwijk, 31 October 2002.
52 ‘Resumé Ronde Tafel Conferentie gehouden te belgrado 21 en 22 November 1972’, File 127: Roundtables Yugoslavia, JFK.
53 Ibid.
54 ‘Nederlands-Joegoslavische Ronde tafel conferentie (11–12 maart 1976)’, ibid.
55 Interview with F.A.M. Alting von Geusau, Oisterwijk, 5 June 2002.
56 Interview with F.A.M. Alting von Geusau, Leiden, 11 March 2009.
57 ‘Vierde Pools-Nederlandse Rondetafel Conferentie, Den Haag, 17–18 maart 1977’, File 132: Roundtables Poland, JFK.
58 ‘Pools-Nederlands Seminar over Wapenbeheersing in Europa, 13–16 maart 1980’, 18 March 1980, File: 64:
Roundtables Poland, JFK.
59 Frans Alting von Geusau, ‘Kernwapendebat Nederland:
het word is aan de regering’, Atlantisch Nieuws 8–9 (1981). According to Alting von Geusau, “the core of my argument was that we did not have a government making clear what the situation was” because they wanted to avoid a political crisis. He therefore gave the speech as a favour for minister-president van Agt.
Frans Alting von Geusau, interview with the author, Oisterwijk, 15 June 2010.
60 Frans Alting von Geusau, Cultural Diplomacy: Waging War by other Means? (Nijmegen: Wolf, 2009), p. 38.
61 See Jeffrey Checkel, Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999); James Voorhees, Dialogue Sustained: The Multilevel Peace Process and the Dartmouth Conference (Washington, DC:
United States Institute of Peace Press, 2002); William Wohlforth and Nina Tannenwald (eds.), ‘Ideas, International Relations, and the End of the Cold War’, Special Issue, Journal of Cold War Studies, 7/2 (Spring, 2005).
Notes on contributor
Giles Scott-Smith holds the Ernst van der Beugel Chair in the Diplomatic History of Transatlantic Relations since WW II, Leiden University. He became the chair of the Transatlantic Studies Association in 2013. His most recent monograph is Western Anti- Communism and the Interdoc Network: Cold War Internationale (Palgrave, 2012).
Correspondence to: Giles Scott-Smith, Email: g.scott-smith@hum.leidenuniv.nl
