還記得「緩和政策」（détente）嗎？芬蘭人想再試一次

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還記得「緩和政策」（détente）嗎？芬蘭人想再試一次

基辛格五十年前嘲笑赫爾辛基協議，但這份文件幫助結束了冷戰
奧利佛・穆迪（Oliver Moody）
2025年7月22日 星期二，英國夏令時間晚間9點，《泰晤士報》

「歐洲安全會議，」亨利・基辛格說，「無聊得要命。我根本沒讀那些資料……就算他們用史瓦希里語寫我也無所謂：他們永遠寫不出什麼有意義的文件。」

這位美國國務卿對赫爾辛基進程的厭煩並非孤例。1975年的《赫爾辛基最後協議》（Helsinki Final Act）——下週將迎來其50週年——原本被許多人視為外交場上的雞肋，卻出乎意料地成為20世紀最成功的外交成果之一。當年，美國、蘇聯與其他33個歐洲國家簽署了這份文件，它最終構成了冷戰結束的基礎。沒有這份協議，我們今日所見的歐洲也許將截然不同。

然而，對許多參與者而言，當年的峰會外交過程只是一場空洞無趣、充斥官話的漫長折磨。儘管赫爾辛基會議深刻影響了現代世界，其1970年代初的會議如今看來卻如同公元449年的「以弗所第二次大公會議」那般遙遠與晦澀——只不過，後者還至少有主教們的打鬥與私刑可供記憶。

下週四，芬蘭將在赫爾辛基的「芬蘭大廳」（Finlandia Hall）——當年《最後協議》的簽署地——舉行一場高層次會議，再度回顧這段奇異的歷史過程，並邀請烏克蘭總統弗拉基米爾・澤連斯基（Volodymyr Zelensky）發表主旨演說。這場會議的目標，是讓歐洲「共有規則與原則核心」的構想重獲新生。芬蘭外交部長暨會議主辦人艾琳娜・瓦爾托寧（Elina Valtonen）對我說：「重振赫爾辛基精神，不只是更好，而是絕對必要的。我們必須找到和平解決衝突的方法。」

這一切乍看之下可能像是一種懷舊的逃避行為，甚至是地緣政治上的癡人說夢：一群活在多邊秩序黃粱美夢中的政治食蓮者。但眼下的現實卻截然不同。普丁徹底摧毀了為守護赫爾辛基原則而設立的歐洲安全與合作組織（OSCE），他對一個鄰國發動全面傳統戰爭，並對許多其他國家進行「準軍事戰爭」（sub-military warfare）。在這樣的時代，「緩和」與「歐洲安全架構」這些詞不僅空洞，甚至可能反過來被用作攻擊我們的武器。

但我們若重新審視半世紀前的事實，仍可從中汲取啟示。芬蘭導演亞瑟・法蘭克（Arthur Franck）所拍攝的機智又深思的紀錄片《赫爾辛基效應》（The Helsinki Effect），正是在做這件事。他的歷史檔案研究揭示：當時幾乎沒有人真正明白自己參與的是什麼樣的歷史轉捩點。

蘇聯領導人勃列日涅夫（Leonid Brezhnev）當時渴望西方正式承認二戰結束後蘇聯控制的東歐邊界。對冷戰派來說，這是一個陷阱，將會為莫斯科送上一場無謂的宣傳勝利，讓蘇聯的勢力範圍披上合法與永久的外衣。然而，現實派則認為，這是一個可以利用勃列日涅夫急於求成的機會，向克里姆林宮換取對人權、資訊流通與人員自由流動的讓步。

最終結果是一份極其繁瑣談判但沒有約束力的妥協文件。勃列日涅夫得到了他要的邊界承認，而他誤以為自己只做出了一些空頭承諾。起初看來，似乎是他贏了。蘇聯知識界雖然獲得了一些精選的歐洲社會主義報紙，但異議人士的鎮壓反而更加嚴重，緩和政策破裂，美國國會為監督赫爾辛基協議而設立的委員會也被拒絕訪問蘇聯。共產主義史學家羅伯特・康奎斯特（Robert Conquest）曾在詩中寫道：「通往赫爾辛基的路是由善意鋪成的。」

真正的「赫爾辛基效應」直到1980年代才開始發酵。波蘭、捷克斯洛伐克、烏克蘭、東德與波羅的海三國的反對運動將《最後協議》當作抗爭的燈塔，引用克里姆林宮自己的語言來對抗它，爭取西方支持，並最終奪回從莫斯科那裡失去的主權。回顧這段歷史，基辛格在1994年自己也承認，赫爾辛基進程是「西方一項重要的外交成就」，並且「加速了蘇聯帝國的崩潰」。

瓦爾托寧出生於《赫爾辛基最後協議》簽署六年後，她的父親是當年採訪該事件的記者。她在冷戰結束前後的德國波昂成長，那是一個深信制度化對話能取代衝突的理想主義時代。正如當時德國外長根舍（Hans-Dietrich Genscher）所說：「只要你在對話，你就不會開火。」

但瓦爾托寧並非天真之輩。下週的會議並不是為了復活「緩和時代」本身，而是要傳遞赫爾辛基真正的教訓：這是一項跨世代的工程，一場重建共享原則信念的長期戰爭；為了當真正的外交機會降臨時——它終將到來——我們擁有足以應對莫斯科的道德指南針。

瓦爾托寧說：「即使是威權領導人，當代價太高時也會選擇談判。總有一天，所有人都必須重新坐上談判桌。而這樣的努力往往需要數年之久。」

（作者奧利佛・穆迪為《泰晤士報》柏林特派員）
（本專欄由羅傑・博伊斯休刊期間代筆）

Remember détente? Finns want to try it again

new

Kissinger ridiculed the Helsinki accords 50 years ago but they helped to end the Cold War

Oliver Moody

Tuesday July 22 2025, 9.00pm BST, The Times

‘The European security conference,” said Henry Kissinger, “bores me to death. I have not studied the material … They can write it in Swahili for all I care: they will never end up with a meaningful document.”

The US secretary of state was by no means alone in this sentiment. The Helsinki Final Act of 1975, whose 50th anniversary falls next week, was one of the unexpected triumphs of 20th-century diplomacy, when the leaders of the US, the Soviet Union and 33 other European countries signed what ultimately turned out to be the framework for the end of the Cold War. Without this document, it is conceivable that our continent would not be the way it is today.

Many of those involved, though, privately found the preceding years of summitry a mind-numbing and pointless warren of platitudes. For a process that so profoundly shaped the modern world, the security conferences of the early Seventies now feel as obscure and distant as the Second Council of Ephesus in 449AD, albeit without the episcopal lynchings and fisticuffs that enlivened the latter.

Next Thursday Finland will revisit this strange passage of history with a high-level conference in the Finlandia Hall, the original venue for the Final Act, and a keynote speech from the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The hope is to breathe some life back into the moribund vision of a Europe with a common core of rules and principles. “Reviving the spirit of Helsinki is not just preferable — it is essential,” Elina Valtonen, the Finnish foreign minister and organiser of the summit, told me. “We need to find ways to settle disputes in a peaceful manner.”

It would be easy to dismiss all this as nostalgic displacement activity at best, and at worst as an island of geopolitical lotus-eaters, lost in dreams of a multilateral order that no longer exists. Vladimir Putin has comprehensively trashed the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which was set up to guard the Helsinki principles. He is waging unrestricted conventional war on one neighbouring state and a sub-military war on many others. In these times, terms such as “détente” and “European security architecture” are not just hollow, they are weapons that can be used against us.

But it is instructive to take a fresh look at what actually happened half a century ago. The Helsinki Effect, a witty and thoughtful documentary by the Finnish film-maker Arthur Franck, does just that. His archival research shows that almost no one at the time really understood what they were getting themselves into.

Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, wanted the West to formally recognise the de facto borders that had been drawn around the eastern bloc at the end of the Second World War. The Cold Warriors on the other side saw this as a trap that would provide a needless propaganda victory to Moscow and a veneer of legitimacy and permanence to the Soviet sphere. The pragmatists, though, viewed the conferences as a chance to exploit Brezhnev’s eagerness and extract concessions from the Kremlin on human rights and the free movement of people and information across the Iron Curtain.

The result was a painstakingly negotiated but non-binding compromise. Brezhnev got his borders in exchange for what he took to be a handful of empty promises. At first it seemed that he had won. The Soviet intelligentsia might have gained access to a handful of carefully selected socialist newspapers from Europe but the repression of dissidents actually worsened, détente unravelled and a US congressional committee set up to monitor compliance with the Helsinki agreement was blocked from visiting the USSR. As the British historian of communism Robert Conquest put it in one of his poems: “The road to Helsinki is paved with good intentions”.

It was only over the course of the 1980s that the true Helsinki effect began to kick in. Opposition groups in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, East Germany and the three Baltic states seized on the Final Act as a lodestar for their protests, using the Kremlin’s own words against it, mobilising support in the West and ultimately wrenching back their independence from Moscow. Looking back on the process from 1994, Kissinger himself concluded that it had been a “significant western diplomatic achievement” and “accelerated the collapse of the Soviet empire”.

Valtonen was born six years after the Helsinki Final Act, although her father covered it as a journalist. She grew up in Bonn around the end of the Cold War, in an atmosphere of zealous conviction that institutionalised dialogue truly would supersede conflict in Europe. “If you’re talking, you’re not shooting,” as Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the German foreign minister of the day, famously said.

But Valtonen is no naif. Next week’s conference is not about trying to resurrect the age of détente for its own sake. The real lesson of Helsinki is that this is a generational endeavour, a long game of rebuilding our belief in our shared principles and ensuring that when the hour of meaningful diplomacy does come — as one day it must — we will have a collective moral compass strong enough to handle Moscow.

“Even authoritarian leaders negotiate when the cost of not doing so becomes too high,” Valtonen says. “A time will come when everyone needs to sit around the table again. These efforts take years.”

Oliver Moody is Berlin correspondent

Roger Boyes is away