Predictions of the collapse of the Soviet Union

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There were people and organizations who predicted that the USSR would dissolve before the eventual dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

Authors often credited with having predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union include Andrei Amalrik in Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? (1970), French academic Emmanuel Todd in La chute finale: Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère soviétique (The Final Fall: An essay on the decomposition of the Soviet sphere) (1976), economist Ravi Batra in his 1978 book The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism and French historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse. Additionally, Walter Laqueur notes that "Various articles that appeared in professional journals such as Problems of Communism and Survey dealt with the decay and the possible downfall of the Soviet regime." Some Americans, particularly conservatives, view Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative as not only predicting but causing the dissolution of the Soviet state.

Whether any particular prediction was correct is still a matter of debate, since they give different reasons and different time frames for the Soviet collapse.

Conventional wisdom discounting a collapse

U.S. analysts

Predictions of the Soviet Union's impending demise were discounted by many Western academic specialists, and had little impact on mainstream Sovietology. For example, Amalrik's book "was welcomed as a piece of brilliant literature in the West" but "virtually no one tended to take it at face value as a piece of political prediction." Up to about 1980, the strength of the Soviet Union was widely overrated by critics and revisionists alike.

In 1983, Princeton University professor Stephen Cohen described the Soviet system as remarkably stable.

The Central Intelligence Agency also badly over-estimated the internal stability of the Soviet Union, and did not anticipate the speed of its collapse. Former DCI Stansfield Turner in 1991 wrote in the US Journal Foreign Affairs, "We should not gloss over the enormity of this failure to forecast the magnitude of the Soviet crisis . . . Yet I never heard a suggestion from the CIA, or the intelligence arms of the departments of Defense or State, that numerous Soviets recognized a growing, systemic economic problem."

In a symposium launched to review Michel Garder's French book: L'Agonie du Regime en Russie Sovietique (The Death Struggle of the Regime in Soviet Russia), which also predicted the collapse of the USSR, Yale Professor Frederick C. Barghoorn dismissed Garder's book as "the latest in a long line of apocalyptic predictions of the collapse of communism." He warns that "great revolutions are most infrequent and that successful political systems are tenacious and adaptive." In addition, the reviewer of the book, Michael Tatu, disapproved of the "apocalyptic character" of such a forecast and is almost apologetic for treating it seriously.

Predictions of dissolution or collapse

Analysts, organizations and politicians who predicted that the Soviet Union would one day cease to exist included:

Ludwig von Mises

The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises argued in his 1922 book Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis that the Soviet system would eventually cease to exist. This book was published months before Lenin implemented the New Economic Policy reintroducing partial private property in agriculture. Mises' analysis was based on the economic calculation problem, a critique of central planning first outlined in 1920 journal articles. His argument was that the Soviet Union would find itself increasingly unable to set correct prices for the goods and services it produced:

We may admit that in its initial period a socialist regime could to some extent rely on the preceding age of capitalism [for the purpose of determining prices]. But what is to be done later, as conditions change more and more? Of what use could the prices of 1900 be for the director in 1949? And what use can the director in 1989 derive from knowledge of the prices of 1949?

Leon Trotsky

One of the founders of the USSR, later expelled by Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky devoted much of his time in exile to the question of the Soviet Union's future. In time, he came to believe that a new revolution was necessary to depose the nomenklatura and reinstate working class rule as the first step to socialism. In 1936 he made the following prediction:

In order better to understand the character of the present Soviet Union, let us make two different hypotheses about its future. Let us assume first that the Soviet bureaucracy is overthrown by a revolutionary party having all the attributes of the old Bolshevism, enriched moreover by the world experience of the recent period. Such a party would begin with the restoration of democracy in the trade unions and the Soviets. It would be able to, and would have to, restore freedom of Soviet parties. Together with the masses, and at their head, it would carry out a ruthless purgation of the state apparatus. It would abolish ranks and decorations, all kinds of privileges, and would limit inequality in the payment of labor to the life necessities of the economy and the state apparatus. It would give the youth free opportunity to think independently, learn, criticize and grow. It would introduce profound changes in the distribution of the national income in correspondence with the interests and will of the worker and peasant masses. But so far as concerns property relations, the new power would not have to resort to revolutionary measures. It would retain and further develop the experiment of planned economy. After the political revolution—that is, the deposing of the bureaucracy—the proletariat would have to introduce in the economy a series of very important reforms, but not another social revolution.

If—to adopt a second hypothesis—a bourgeois party were to overthrow the ruling Soviet caste, it would find no small number of ready servants among the present bureaucrats, administrators, technicians, directors, party secretaries and privileged upper circles in general. A purgation of the state apparatus would, of course, be necessary in this case too. But a bourgeois restoration would probably have to clean out fewer people than a revolutionary party. The chief task of the new power would be to restore private property in the means of production. First of all, it would be necessary to create conditions for the development of strong farmers from the weak collective farms, and for converting the strong collectives into producers' cooperatives of the bourgeois type into agricultural stock companies. In the sphere of industry, denationalization would begin with the light industries and those producing food. The planning principle would be converted for the transitional period into a series of compromises between state power and individual "corporations"—potential proprietors, that is, among the Soviet captains of industry, the émigré former proprietors and foreign capitalists. Notwithstanding that the Soviet bureaucracy has gone far toward preparing a bourgeois restoration, the new regime would have to introduce in the matter of forms of property and methods of industry not a reform, but a social revolution.

Let us assume to take a third variant – that neither a revolutionary nor a counterrevolutionary party seizes power. The bureaucracy continues at the head of the state. Even under these conditions social relations will not jell. We cannot count upon the bureaucracy's peacefully and voluntarily renouncing itself in behalf of socialist equality. If at the present time, notwithstanding the too obvious inconveniences of such an operation, it has considered it possible to introduce ranks and decorations, it must inevitably in future stages seek supports for itself in property relations. One may argue that the big bureaucrat cares little what are the prevailing forms of property, provided only they guarantee him the necessary income. This argument ignores not only the instability of the bureaucrat's own rights, but also the question of his descendants. The new cult of the family has not fallen out of the clouds. Privileges have only half their worth, if they cannot be transmitted to one's children. But the right of testament is inseparable from the right of property. It is not enough to be the director of a trust; it is necessary to be a stockholder. The victory of the bureaucracy in this decisive sphere would mean its conversion into a new possessing class. On the other hand, the victory of the proletariat over the bureaucracy would insure a revival of the socialist revolution. The third variant consequently brings us back to the two first, with which, in the interests of clarity and simplicity, we set out.

World War II

In 1941 Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany decided to attack the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa). In June 1941 the German Wehrmacht and other Axis military forces invaded the Soviet Union, and the Red Army retreated.

Military observers around the world watched closely. It appears that most of them shared Hitler's opinion, expecting that Germany would win, destroy the Soviet system, and establish a Nazi New Order in Europe. Very few American experts thought the Soviet Union would survive. The German invasion began on 22 June 1941. Subsequently, the United States Department of War advised Franklin D. Roosevelt that the German army would conquer the Soviet Union within one to three months. In July 1941 the American general staff issued memoranda to the American press that a Soviet collapse was to be expected within several weeks. British analysts held similar views, believing that Germany would win within three to six weeks without heavy losses. Predictions of an expected Soviet defeat had an important impact on President Roosevelt; while the United States was not at the time at war, Roosevelt favored the Allies (represented primarily at that time by the British Empire and the Soviet Union), and decided to try to avert the collapse of the USSR by extending to the Soviets (October 1941) the supply of munitions through Lend-Lease (which had started in March 1941), and also to pressure Japan not to attack while the USSR was so vulnerable. The Red Army held the line at the outskirts of Moscow (December 1941) and predictions of Soviet collapse changed to "uncertain."

Early Cold War

George Orwell

George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, wrote in 1946 that "the Russian regime will either democratize itself or it will perish". He was regarded by US historian Robert Conquest as one of the first people who made such a prediction. According to a Conquest article published in 1969, "In time, the Communist world is faced with a fundamental crisis. We can not say for certain that it will democratize itself. But every indication is that it will, as Orwell said, either democratize itself or perish...We must also, though, be prepared to cope with cataclysmic changes, for the death throes of the more backward apparatus may be destructive and dangerous".

George Kennan

American diplomat George F. Kennan proposed his famous containment theory in 1946–47, arguing that, if the Soviet Union were not allowed to expand, it would soon collapse. In the X Article he wrote:

[T]he main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies... Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be constrained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvres of Soviet policy.

The United States would have to undertake this containment alone and unilaterally, but if it could do so without undermining its own economic health and political stability, the Soviet party structure would undergo a period of immense strain eventually resulting in "either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power."

Kennan later regretted the manner in which his theory was received and implemented, but it nevertheless became a core element of American strategy, which consisted of building a series of military alliances around the USSR.

Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill made repeated claims about the imminent fall of the Soviet Union throughout his political career. In January 1920, he denounced Bolshevism as a "rule of men who in their insane vanity and conceit believe they are entitled to give a government to a people which the people loathe and detest... The attempt to carry into practice those wild theories can only be attended with universal confusion, corruption, disorder and civil war." Later, he made a similar prediction in a journal article in 1931. After World War II, speaking about the recently established Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe, he stated in 1954: "The forces of the human spirit and of national character alive in those countries cannot be speedily extinguished even by large-scale movements of populations and mass education of children." And in the epilogue to the one volume edition of his World War II memoirs, published in 1957, Churchill wrote: "The natural forces are working with greater freedom and greater opportunity to fertilize and vary the thoughts and the power of individual men and women. They are far bigger and more pliant in the vast structure of a mighty empire than could ever have been conceived by Marx in his hovel... Human society will grow in many forms not comprehended by a party machine."

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter, predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union on several occasions. In a 2006 interview, Brzezinski stated that in his 1950 master's thesis (which has not been published) he argued that "the Soviet Union was pretending to be a single state but in fact it was a multinational empire in the age of nationalism. So the Soviet Union would break up."

As an academic at Columbia University, Brzezinski wrote numerous books and articles that "took seriously the option of collapse", including Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics (1969) and Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era (1970).

Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics contained fourteen articles dealing with the future of the Soviet Union. Six of them, by Brzezinski himself, Robert Conquest, Merle Fainsod, Eugene Lyons, Giorgio Galli, and Isaac Don Levine, considered "collapse as a serious possibility although not immediately."

On the other hand, in 1976 Brzezinski predicted that the politics of the Soviet Union would be practically unchanged for several more generations to come:

A central question, however, is whether such social change [modernization] is capable of altering, or has in fact already altered in a significant fashion, the underlying character of Soviet politics. That character, as I have argued, has been shaped largely by political traditions derived from the specifics of Russian / Soviet history, and it is deeply embedded in the operational style and institutions of the existing Soviet system. The ability of that system to resist de-Stalinization seems to indicate a considerable degree of resilience on the part of the dominant mode of politics in the Soviet context. It suggests, at the very least, that political changes are produced very slowly through social change, and that one must wait for at least several generations before social change begins to be significantly reflected in the political sphere.

In 1989, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet power throughout Eastern Europe, Brzezinski published The Grand Failure: The Birth and Decay of Communism in the Twentieth Century. In that work he wrote:

Marxist-Leninism is an alien doctrine imposed on the region by an imperial power whose rule is culturally repugnant to the dominated peoples. As a result, a process of organic rejection of communism by Eastern European societies—a phenomenon similar to the human body's rejection of a transplanted organ—is underway."

Brzezinski went on to claim that communism "failed to take into account the basic human craving for individual freedom." He argued there were five possibilities for USSR:

1. Successful pluralization,
2. Protracted crisis,
3. Renewed stagnation,
4. Coup (KGB, Military), and
5. The explicit collapse of the Communist regime.

Option #5 in fact took place three years later, but at the time he wrote that collapse was "at this stage a much more remote possibility" than alternative #3: renewed stagnation. He also predicted chances of some form of communism existing in the Soviet Union in 2017 was a little more than 50 per cent. Finally when the end did come in a few more decades, Brzezinski wrote, it would be "most likely turbulent."

Ferenc Farkas de Kisbarnak

Ferenc Farkas de Kisbarnak, an exiled Hungarian general and leader of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union due to nationalist pressures. From June 12–14 of 1950, the Convention of the ABN was held in Edinburgh, Scotland under the auspices of the Scottish League for European Freedom. At the conference, Farkas gave a speech entitled "The War Against Bolshevism and the Military Factors Represented by the Subjugated Nations" where he predicted the disintegration of the USSR along ethnic lines which would eventually leave European Russia isolated. He predicted the eventual independence of Ukraine, the Baltic states, Turkestan, the Idel-Ural republics, and Siberia. The third resolution of the ABN convention further called for "The destruction of Russian imperialism and the guarantee of world peace by splitting the USSR up and re-establishing on ethnic principles, the independent national states of all nations living under bolshevist oppression bearing among other things, in mind that whole national groups have been forcible [sic] deported and are awaiting the moment when they could return to their native land."

Charles de Gaulle

Only a handful of thinkers, ranging from French President Charles de Gaulle to the Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik, foretold the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union itself, and even they saw it as likely to happen as a result of disastrous wars with China or pressures from the Islamic Soviet states of Central Asia.

On 23 November 1959, in a speech in Strasbourg, de Gaulle announced his vision for Europe: Oui, c'est l'Europe, depuis l'Atlantique jusqu'à l'Oural, c'est toute l'Europe, qui décidera du destin du monde. ("Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the destiny of the world.") This phrase has been interpreted in various ways—on the one hand, as offering détente to the USSR, on the other, as predicting the collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe.

Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Adenauer has been cited predicting the reunification of Germany as early as the 1950s, but according to Hans-Peter Schwarz, in the last few years of Adenauer's life he repeatedly said that Soviet power would last a long time.

In 1966, at the Christian Democrats' party conference, Adenauer stated his hopes that some day the Soviets might allow the reunification of Germany. Some analysts say it might be considered a prediction:

I have not given up hope. One day Soviet Russia will recognize that the division of Germany, and with it the division of Europe, is not to its advantage. We must be watchful for when the moment comes... we must not let it go unexploited.

Whittaker Chambers

In a posthumously published 1964 book entitled Cold Friday, Communist defector Whittaker Chambers predicted an eventual Soviet collapse beginning with a "satellite revolution" in Eastern Europe. This revolution would then result in the transformation of the Soviet dictatorship.

Robert A. Mundell

In the late 1960s, economist Robert A. Mundell predicted the collapse of the USSR.

Michel Garder

Michel Garder was a French author who predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the book L'Agonie du Regime en Russie Sovietique (The Death Struggle of the Regime in Soviet Russia) (1965). He set the date of the collapse for 1970.

Détente

RAND corporation

In 1968 Egon Neuberger, of the RAND Corporation, predicted that "[t]he centrally planned economy eventually would meet its demise, because of its demonstrably growing ineffectiveness as a system for managing a modernizing economy in a rapidly changing world."

Robert Conquest

In the book Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics, which was a collection of authors edited by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Conquest in his section, "Immobilism and decay", saw "the USSR as a country where the political system is radically and dangerously inappropriate to its social and economic dynamics. This is a formula for change - change which may be sudden and catastrophic."

Conquest also predicted the fall in his book, The Nation Killers: The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities (1970).

Sun Myung Moon

Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church repeatedly predicted that Communism was inherently flawed and would inevitably collapse sometime in the late 1980s. In a speech to followers in Paris in April 1972, he stated:

"Communism, begun in 1917, could maintain itself approximately 60 years and reach its peak. So 1978 is the borderline and afterward communism will decline; in the 70th year it will be altogether ruined. This is true. Therefore now is the time for people who are studying communism to abandon it."

Andrei Amalrik

In 1969, prominent dissident Andrei Amalrik wrote in his book Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?:

There is another powerful factor which works against the chance of any kind of peaceful reconstruction and which is equally negative for all levels of society: this is the extreme isolation in which the regime has placed both society and itself. This isolation has not only separated the regime from society, and all sectors of society from each other, but also put the country in extreme isolation from the rest of the world. This isolation has created for all—from the bureaucratic elite to the lowest social levels—an almost surrealistic picture of the world and of their place in it. Yet the longer this state of affairs helps to perpetuate the status quo, the more rapid and decisive will be its collapse when confrontation with reality becomes inevitable.

Amalrik predicted the collapse of the regime would occur between 1980 and 1985. The year in the title was after the novel of the same name.

Soviet authorities were skeptical. Natan Sharansky explained that "in 1984 KGB officials, on coming to me in prison" when Amalrik's prediction was mentioned, "laughed at this prediction. Amalrik is long dead, they said, but we are still very much present."

Marian Kamil Dziewanowski

Historian Marian Kamil Dziewanowski "gave a lecture titled 'Death of the Soviet Regime' at the Russian Research Center at Harvard University. The same lecture was delivered at Cambridge University in England in 1971 and 1979. The text of the lecture (titled 'Death of the Soviet Regime: a Study in American Sovietology, by a Historian') was published in Studies in Soviet Thought. In 1980, he "updated this study and delivered it as a paper at the International Slavic Congress at Garmisch; titled 'The Future of Soviet Russia,' it was published in Coexistence: An International Journal (Glasgow 1982)."

Emmanuel Todd

Emmanuel Todd attracted attention in 1976 when he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as increasing infant mortality rates and foreign trade data in his work La chute finale: Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique (The Final Fall: an Essay on the Disintegration of the Soviet Sphere). Todd deduced that the Soviet Union had stagnated in the 1970s and was falling behind not only the West but its own Eastern European satellite states economically. In addition to this, low birth rates, a rising suicide rate, and worker discontent all were factors in an increasingly low level of productivity in the economy. Todd also predicted that poorly carried-out political and economic reforms would lead to a break-up of the Soviet Union with non-Russian republics seceding.

Bernard Levin

Bernard Levin drew attention in 1992 to his prophetic article originally published in The Times in September 1977, in which an uncannily accurate prediction of the appearance of new faces in the Politburo was made, resulting in radical but peaceful political change.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a series of articles and interviews from 1975 onward discussed the possibility, indeed likelihood, of the breakup of the Soviet Empire. But Moynihan also expressed the view that liberal democracy, too, faced an uncertain future. He argued in January 1975 that the Soviet Union was so weak economically, and so divided ethnically, that it could not long survive. However he said it "might have considerable time left before ethnicity breaks it up." By 1984 he argued "the Soviet idea is spent. History is moving away from it at astounding speed." Some of his essays were published as Secrecy: The American Experience in 1999.

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse

In her 1978 book L'Empire éclaté, historian (and later member of the Académie française and the European Parliament) Hélène Carrère d'Encausse predicted that the Soviet Union's political legitimacy would be fatally strained by diverging fertility between its culturally Russian/Eastern European parts (dominant in government and industry but with plummeting birth rates) and its culturally Asian and/or Muslim parts (with growing birth rates but little representation in the established "gerontocracy"). L'Empire éclaté generated substantial media interest at the time, winning the 1978 Prix Aujourd′hui.

Samizdat

Various essays published in samizdat in the early 1970s were on similar lines, some quite specifically predicting the end of the Soviet Union.

Hillel Ticktin/Critique

In 1973 the Marxist, Hillel H. Ticktin, wrote that the Soviet "system is sinking deeper into crisis". In 1976 he entitled an article: "The USSR: the Beginning of the End?". In 1978 he predicted that the Soviet Union would "break asunder and develop either to capitalism or to socialism". And in 1983 he wrote that "the system is drawing to a close". (For a summary of Ticktin's approach, see Wikipedia's Stalinism entry.)

Late Cold War

Raymond Aron

David Fromkin wrote of Raymond Aron's prediction,

I know of only one person who came close to getting it right: Raymond Aron, the French philosopher and liberal anti-Communist. In a talk on the Soviet threat that I heard him give in the 1980s at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, he reminded the audience of Machiavelli's observation in The Prince that 'all armed prophets have conquered and all unarmed ones failed.' But what happens, Aron asked, if the prophet, having conquered and then ruled by force of arms, loses faith in his own prophecy? In the answer to that question, Aron suggested, lay the key to understanding the future of the Soviet Union.

Ravi Batra

The economist Ravi Batra predicted the collapse of the USSR in his 1978 book The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism.

Randall Collins

In 1980 the sociologist Randall Collins presented his paper "The future decline of the Russian empire" at the University of South Florida and at Columbia University and published his predictions in the book "Weberian sociological theory" (1986).

Robert M. Cutler

In 1980, the political scientist Robert M. Cutler published an article "Soviet Dissent under Khrushchev" that concluded that the following events were likely: (1) that in the generational turnover of elites after Brezhnev died (which began when he died in 1982), the Soviet regime would seek to increase public participation (which began in 1985 via glasnost, after two more top gerontocrats had died); (2) that the Communist Party's rule would be challenged in Central Asia (which occurred in the 1986 rioting in Kazakhstan before the Baltic republics erupted); and (3) that Party leaders at the local level would go their own way if the Party did not give them a reason to remain loyal to the Moscow center (which occurred in all republics in the late 1980s, but most dramatically when the new RCP and the RSFSR sapped some of the power of the CPSU and the USSR in 1990–1991).

James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg

James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in their book The Great Reckoning in the early 1980s.

Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman

Milton Friedman and his wife Rose mentioned briefly in their book Free to Choose (1980) that "the collapse of communism and its replacement by a market system, seems unlikely, though as incurable optimists we do not rule it out completely."

Robert Gates

Stewart Brand said when introducing the work of Philip Tetlock that Brand's partner had given a talk in the 1980s to top Central Intelligence Agency people about the future of the Soviet Union. One scenario he raised was that the Soviet bloc might break up; a sign of this happening would be the rise of unknown Mikhail Gorbachev through the party ranks. A CIA analyst said that the presentation was fine, but there was no way the Soviet Union was going to break up in his lifetime or his children's lifetime. The analyst's name was Robert Gates.

On the other hand, in hearings before the U.S. Senate on March 19, 1986, when Gates (then head of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence) was asked "what kind of work the Intelligence Community was doing to prepare policymakers for the consequences of change in the Soviet Union," he responded: "Quite frankly, without any hint that such fundamental change is going on, my resources do not permit me the luxury of sort of just idly speculating on what a different kind of Soviet Union might look like."

Anatoliy Golitsyn

In 1984, Anatoliy Golitsyn, an important KGB defector published the book New Lies For Old, wherein he predicted the collapse of the communist bloc orchestrated from above; but he didn't mention any possible collapse of the USSR itself.

He claimed this collapse was part of a long-term deception strategy designed to lull the West into a false sense of security, abolish all containment policies, and in time finally economically cripple and diplomatically isolate the United States.

Among other things, Golitsyn stated:

• "The 'liberalization' [in the Soviet Union] would be spectacular and impressive. Formal pronouncements might be made about a reduction in the communist party's role; its monopoly would be apparently curtailed."
• "If [liberalization] should be extended to East Germany, demolition of the Berlin Wall might even be contemplated."
• "The European Parliament might become an all-European socialist parliament with representation from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. 'Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals' would turn out to be a neutral, socialist Europe."

Collaborating opinions can be found in an archive of classified documents collected by Vladimir Bukovsky, a defector also.

John le Carré

John le Carré is a writer of fiction, but his "spy novels" are known for their keen insights on East-West relations in general and conflicts between Western and Soviet intelligence services in particular. In The Russia House, published on May 22, 1989, there is the telling quote: "The Soviet Knight is dying inside his armour."

Werner Obst

In 1985 German economist Werner Obst published a book entitled Der Rote Stern verglüht. Moskaus Abstieg - Deutschlands Chance (The Red Star is Dying Away. Moscow's Decline - Germany's Chance), Munich: Wirtschaftsverlag Langen-Müller/Herbig, third edition in 1987, in which he predicted the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the reunification of Germany within the immediate future for about 1990, based on the analysis of economical statistics and trends.

Ronald Reagan

United States President Ronald Reagan, throughout his 1980 election campaign and first term in office presented a public view that the Soviet Union had been growing in power relative to the United States. In 1981 he stated that "the Soviet Union has been engaged in the greatest military buildup in the history of man." and the next year stated that "on balance the Soviet Union does have a definite margin of superiority" compared to the US military.

The Reagan administration used a perceived strength of the Soviet Union to justify a significant expansion of military spending according to David Arbel and Ran Edelist. In their study Western Intelligence and the dissolution of the Soviet Union they argue it was this position by the Reagan administration that prevented the American intelligence agencies from predicting the demise of the USSR. Arbel and Edelist further argued that CIA analysts were encouraged to present any information exaggerating the Soviet threat and justifying the military buildup, while contrary evidence of Soviet weakness was ignored and those presenting it sidelined.

At the same time Reagan expressed a long range view that the Soviet Union could eventually be defeated. On March 3, 1983, President Reagan told the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida: "I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last—last pages even now are being written."

In his June 1982 address to the British Parliament he stated:

It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then. The dimensions of this failure are astounding: A country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people. Were it not for the private sector, the tiny private sector tolerated in Soviet agriculture, the country might be on the brink of famine.... Overcentralized, with little or no incentives, year after year the Soviet system pours its best resource into the making of instruments of destruction. The constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is putting a heavy strain on the Soviet people. What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones. ...In the Communist world as well, man's instinctive desire for freedom and self-determination surfaces again and again. To be sure, there are grim reminders of how brutally the police state attempts to snuff out this quest for self-rule – 1953 in East Germany, 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, 1981 in Poland. But the struggle continues in Poland. And we know that there are even those who strive and suffer for freedom within the confines of the Soviet Union itself. ...What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term – the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism–Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people. And that's why we must continue our efforts to strengthen NATO even as we move forward with our Zero-Option initiative in the negotiations on intermediate-range forces and our proposal for a one-third reduction in strategic ballistic missile warheads.

Analyst Jeffrey W. Knopf has argued that Reagan went beyond everyone else:

Reagan stands out in part because he believed the Soviet Union could be defeated. For most of the Cold War, Republican and Democratic administrations alike had assumed the Soviet Union would prove durable for the foreseeable future. The bipartisan policy of containment aimed to keep the Soviet Union in check while trying to avoid nuclear war; it did not seek to force the dissolution of the Soviet empire. Ronald Reagan, in contrast, believed that the Soviet economy was so weak that increased pressure could bring the Soviet Union to the brink of failure. He therefore periodically expressed confidence that the forces of democracy 'will leave Marxism–Leninism on the ash heap of history'.

P.R. Sarkar

The leader of the Ananda Marga cult in West Bengal, P.R. Sarkar, predicted in the 1980s that Soviet Communism would fall with "a few blows from the hammer". He cited "inner and external stasis" as major weaknesses of communism.

Ruhollah Khomeini

On 7 January 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, supreme leader of Iran, sent a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Soviet Union. This letter was Khomeini's only written message to a foreign leader. Khomeini's letter was delivered by the Iranian politicians Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, Mohammad-Javad Larijani, and Marzieh Hadidchi. In the letter, Khomeini declared that Communism was dissolving within the Soviet bloc, and invited Gorbachev to consider Islam as an alternative to communist ideology.

Anders Åslund

Anders Åslund predicted the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1989 book Gorbachev’s Struggle for Economic Reform.

Why were Sovietologists wrong?

According to Kevin Brennan:

Sovietology failed because it operated in an environment that encouraged failure. Sovietologists of all political stripes were given strong incentives to ignore certain facts and focus their interest in other areas. I don't mean to suggest that there was a giant conspiracy at work; there wasn't. It was just that there were no careers to be had in questioning the conventional wisdom. ... There were other kinds of institutional biases as well, such as those that led to the ... "Team B" Report."

Seymour Martin Lipset and György Bence write:

Given these judgments of the Soviet future made by political leaders and journalists, the question is why were they right and so many of our Sovietological colleagues wrong. The answer again in part must be ideological. Reagan and Levin came from rightist backgrounds, and Moynihan, much like the leaders of the AFL–CIO, from a leftist anti-Stalinist social-democratic milieu, environments that disposed participants to believe the worst. Most of the Sovietologists, on the other hand, were left-liberal in their politics, an orientation that undermined their capacity to accept the view that economic statism, planning, socialist incentives, would not work. They were also for the most part ignorant of, or ignored, the basic Marxist formulation that it is impossible to build socialism in impoverished societies. Brzezinski's 1969 collection, Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics demonstrates this point, of "the fourteen contributors...Two-thirds (four out of six) of those who foresaw a serious possibility of breakdown were, like Levin and Moynihan, nonacademics. Three quarters (six out of eight) of those who could not look beyond system continuity were scholars.

Richard Pipes took a slightly different view, situating the failure of the Sovietological profession in the larger context of the failures of social science:

It seems likely that ultimately the reason for the failure of professionals to understand the Soviet predicament lay in their indifference to the human factor. In the desire to emulate the successes of the natural scientists, whose judgments are "value free," politology (sic) and sociology have been progressively dehumanized, constructing model and relying on statistics (many of them falsified) and, in the process, losing contact with the subject of their inquiries—the messy, contradictory, unpredictable homo sapiens.

Treaty

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty

The 1786 Moroccan-American Treaty of Peace and Friendship, sealed by Sultan Mohammed III.

A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between actors in international law. It is usually made by and between sovereign states, but can include international organizations, individuals, business entities, and other legal persons. A treaty may also be known as an international agreement, protocol, covenant, convention, pact, or exchange of letters, among other terms. However, only documents that are legally binding on the parties are considered treaties under international law. Treaties vary on the basis of obligations (the extent to which states are bound to the rules), precision (the extent to which the rules are unambiguous), and delegation (the extent to which third parties have authority to interpret, apply and make rules).

Treaties are among the earliest manifestations of international relations, with the first known example being a border agreement between the Sumerian city-states of Lagash and Umma around 3100 BC. International agreements were used in some form by most major civilizations, growing in both sophistication and number during the early modern era. The early 19th century saw developments in diplomacy, foreign policy, and international law reflected by the widespread use of treaties. The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties codified these practices, setting forth guidelines and rules for creating, amending, interpreting, and terminating treaties and for resolving disputes and alleged breaches.

Treaties are roughly analogous to contracts in that they establish the rights and binding obligations of the parties. They vary significantly in form, substance, and complexity and govern a wide variety of matters, such as security, trade, environment, and human rights. Treaties may be bilateral (between two countries) or multilateral (involving more than two countries). They may also be used to establish international institutions, such as the International Criminal Court and the United Nations, for which they often provide a governing framework. Treaties serve as primary sources of international law and have codified or established most international legal principles since the early 20th century.

Notwithstanding the Law of Treaties and customary international law, treaties are not required to follow any standard form. Nevertheless, all valid treaties must comply with the legal principle of pacta sunt servanda (Latin: "agreements must be kept"), under which parties are committed to perform their duties and honor their agreements in good faith. A treaty may also be invalidated, and thus rendered unenforceable, if it violates a preemptory norm (jus cogens), such as permitting a war of aggression or crimes against humanity.

Modern usage and form

The signing of the Geneva Conventions in 1949. A country’s signature, through plenipotentiaries with "full power" to conclude a treaty, is often sufficient to manifest an intention to be bound by the treaty.

A treaty is an official, express written agreement that states use to legally bind themselves. It is also the objective outcome of a ceremonial occasion that acknowledges the parties and their defined relationships. There is no prerequisite of academic accreditation or cross-professional contextual knowledge required to publish a treaty.

However, since the late 19th century, most treaties have followed a fairly consistent format. A treaty typically begins with a preamble describing the "High Contracting Parties" and their shared objectives in executing the treaty, as well as summarizing any underlying events (such as the aftermath of a war in the case of a peace treaty). Modern preambles are sometimes structured as a single very long sentence formatted into multiple paragraphs for readability, in which each of the paragraphs begins with a gerund (desiring, recognizing, having, etc.).

The High Contracting Parties—referred to as either the official title of the head of state (but not including the personal name), e.g. His Majesty The King of X or His Excellency The President of Y, or alternatively in the form of " Government of Z"—are enumerated, along with the full names and titles of their Plenipotentiary representatives; a boilerplate clause describes how each party's representatives have communicated (or exchanged) their "full powers" (i.e., the official documents appointing them to act on behalf of their respective high contracting party) and found them in good or proper form. However, under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties if the representative is the head of state, head of government or minister of foreign affairs, no special document is needed, as holding such high office is sufficient.

The end of the preamble and the start of the actual agreement is often signaled by the words "have agreed as follows".

After the preamble comes numbered articles, which contain the substance of the parties' actual agreement. Each article heading usually encompasses a paragraph. A long treaty may further group articles under chapter headings.

Modern treaties, regardless of subject matter, usually contain articles governing where the final authentic copies of the treaty will be deposited and how any subsequent disputes as to their interpretation will be peacefully resolved.

The end of a treaty, the eschatocol (or closing protocol), is often signaled by language such as "in witness whereof" or "in faith whereof", followed by the words "DONE at", then the site(s) of the treaty's execution and the date(s) of its execution. The date is typically written in its most formal, non-numerical form; for example, the Charter of the United Nations reads "DONE at the city of San Francisco the twenty-sixth day of June, one thousand nine hundred and forty-five". If applicable, a treaty will note that it is executed in multiple copies in different languages, with a stipulation that the versions in different languages are equally authentic.

The signatures of the parties' representatives follow at the very end. When the text of a treaty is later reprinted, such as in a collection of treaties currently in effect, an editor will often append the dates on which the respective parties ratified the treaty and on which it came into effect for each party.

Bilateral and multilateral treaties

Bilateral treaties are concluded between two states or entities. It is possible for a bilateral treaty to have more than two parties; for example, each of the bilateral treaties between Switzerland and the European Union (EU) has seventeen parties: The parties are divided into two groups, the Swiss ("on the one part") and the EU and its member states ("on the other part"). The treaty establishes rights and obligations between the Swiss and the EU and the member states severally—it does not establish any rights and obligations amongst the EU and its member states.

A multilateral treaty is concluded among several countries, establishing rights and obligations between each party and every other party. Multilateral treaties may be regional or may involve states across the world. Treaties of "mutual guarantee" are international compacts, e.g., the Treaty of Locarno which guarantees each signatory against attack from another.

Role of the United Nations

The United Nations has extensive power to convene states to enact large-scale multilateral treaties and has experience doing so. Also, under the United Nations Charter, which is itself a treaty, treaties must be registered with the UN to be invoked before it, or enforced in its judiciary organ, the International Court of Justice. This was done to prevent the practice of secret treaties, which proliferated in the 19th and 20th centuries and often precipitated or exacerbated conflict. Article 103 of the Charter also states that its members' obligations under the Charter outweigh any competing obligations under other treaties.

After their adoption, treaties, as well as their amendments, must follow the official legal procedures of the United Nations, as applied by the Office of Legal Affairs, including signature, ratification and entry into force.

In function and effectiveness, the UN has been compared to the United States federal government under the Articles of Confederation.

Adding and amending treaty obligations

Reservations

Main article: Reservation (law)

Reservations are essentially caveats to a state's acceptance of a treaty. Reservations are unilateral statements purporting to exclude or to modify the legal obligation and its effects on the reserving state. These must be included at the time of signing or ratification, i.e., "a party cannot add a reservation after it has already joined a treaty". Article 19 of the Vienna Convention on the law of Treaties in 1969.

Originally, international law was unaccepting of treaty reservations, rejecting them unless all parties to the treaty accepted the same reservations. However, in the interest of encouraging the largest number of states to join treaties, a more permissive rule regarding reservations has emerged. While some treaties still expressly forbid any reservations, they are now generally permitted to the extent that they are not inconsistent with the goals and purposes of the treaty.

When a state limits its treaty obligations through reservations, other states party to that treaty have the option to accept those reservations, object to them, or object and oppose them. If the state accepts them (or fails to act at all), both the reserving state and the accepting state are relieved of the reserved legal obligation as concerns their legal obligations to each other (accepting the reservation does not change the accepting state's legal obligations as concerns other parties to the treaty). If the state opposes, the parts of the treaty affected by the reservation drop out completely and no longer create any legal obligations on the reserving and accepting state, again only as concerns each other. Finally, if the state objects and opposes, there are no legal obligations under that treaty between those two state parties whatsoever. The objecting and opposing state essentially refuses to acknowledge the reserving state is a party to the treaty at all.

Amendments

There are three ways an existing treaty can be amended. First, a formal amendment requires State parties to the treaty to go through the ratification process all over again. The re-negotiation of treaty provisions can be long and protracted, and often some parties to the original treaty will not become parties to the amended treaty. When determining the legal obligations of states, one party to the original treaty and one party to the amended treaty, the states will only be bound by the terms they both agreed upon. Treaties can also be amended informally by the treaty executive council when the changes are only procedural, technical change in customary international law can also amend a treaty, where state behavior evinces a new interpretation of the legal obligations under the treaty. Minor corrections to a treaty may be adopted by a procès-verbal; but a procès-verbal is generally reserved for changes to rectify obvious errors in the text adopted, i.e., where the text adopted does not correctly reflect the intention of the parties adopting it.

Protocols

See also: Environmental protocol

In international law and international relations, a protocol is generally a treaty or international agreement that supplements a previous treaty or international agreement. A protocol can amend the previous treaty or add additional provisions. Parties to the earlier agreement are not required to adopt the protocol, and this is sometimes made explicit, especially where many parties to the first agreement do not support the protocol.

A notable example is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which established a general framework for the development of binding greenhouse gas emission limits, followed by the Kyoto Protocol contained the specific provisions and regulations later agreed upon.

Execution and implementation

The International Court of Justice is often called upon to aid in the interpretation or implementation of treaties.

Treaties may be seen as "self-executing", in that merely becoming a party puts the treaty and all of its obligations in action. Other treaties may be non-self-executing and require 'implementing legislation'—a change in the domestic law of a state party that will direct or enable it to fulfill treaty obligations. An example of a treaty requiring such legislation would be one mandating local prosecution by a party for particular crimes.

The division between the two is often not clear and is often politicized in disagreements within a government over a treaty, since a non-self-executing treaty cannot be acted on without the proper change in domestic law. If a treaty requires implementing legislation, a state may be in default of its obligations by the failure of its legislature to pass the necessary domestic laws.

Interpretation

The language of treaties, like that of any law or contract, must be interpreted when the wording does not seem clear, or it is not immediately apparent how it should be applied in a perhaps unforeseen circumstance. The Vienna Convention states that treaties are to be interpreted "in good faith" according to the "ordinary meaning given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose". International legal experts also often invoke the 'principle of maximum effectiveness,' which interprets treaty language as having the fullest force and effect possible to establish obligations between the parties.

No one party to a treaty can impose its particular interpretation of the treaty upon the other parties. Consent may be implied, however, if the other parties fail to explicitly disavow that initially unilateral interpretation, particularly if that state has acted upon its view of the treaty without complaint. Consent by all parties to the treaty to a particular interpretation has the legal effect of adding another clause to the treaty – this is commonly called an 'authentic interpretation'.

International tribunals and arbiters are often called upon to resolve substantial disputes over treaty interpretations. To establish the meaning in context, these judicial bodies may review the preparatory work from the negotiation and drafting of the treaty as well as the final, signed treaty itself.

Consequences of terminology

One significant part of treaty-making is that signing a treaty implies a recognition that the other side is a sovereign state and that the agreement being considered is enforceable under international law. Hence, nations can be very careful about terming an agreement to be a treaty. For example, within the United States, agreements between states are compacts and agreements between states and the federal government or between agencies of the government are memoranda of understanding.

Another situation can occur when one party wishes to create an obligation under international law, but the other party does not. This factor has been at work with respect to discussions between North Korea and the United States over security guarantees and nuclear proliferation.

The definition of the English word "treaty" varies depending on the legal and political context; in some jurisdictions, such as the United States, a treaty is specifically an international agreement that has been ratified, and thus made binding, per the procedures established under domestic law.

Enforcement

While the Vienna Convention provides a general dispute resolution mechanism, many treaties specify a process outside the convention for arbitrating disputes and alleged breaches. This may by a specially convened panel, by reference to an existing court or panel established for the purpose such as the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Justice or processes such as the Dispute Settlement Understanding of the World Trade Organization. Depending on the treaty, such a process may result in financial penalties or other enforcement action.

Ending treaty obligations

Withdrawal

Treaties are not necessarily permanently binding upon the signatory parties. As obligations in international law are traditionally viewed as arising only from the consent of states, many treaties expressly allow a state to withdraw as long as it follows certain procedures of notification. For example, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs provides that the treaty will terminate if, as a result of denunciations, the number of parties falls below 40. Many treaties expressly forbid withdrawal. Article 56 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties provides that where a treaty is silent over whether or not it can be denounced there is a rebuttable presumption that it cannot be unilaterally denounced unless:

• it can be shown that the parties intended to admit the possibility, or
• a right of withdrawal can be inferred from the terms of the treaty.

The possibility of withdrawal depends on the terms of the treaty and its travaux preparatory. It has, for example, been held that it is not possible to withdraw from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. When North Korea declared its intention to do this the Secretary-General of the United Nations, acting as registrar, said that original signatories of the ICCPR had not overlooked the possibility of explicitly providing for withdrawal, but rather had deliberately intended not to provide for it. Consequently, withdrawal was not possible.

In practice, states sometimes use their sovereignty to declare their withdrawal from and stop following the terms of a treaty even if this violates the terms of the treaty. Other parties may accept this outcome, may consider the state to be untrustworthy in future dealings, or may retaliate with sanctions or military action. Withdrawal by one party from a bilateral treaty is typically considered to terminate the treaty. Multilateral treaties typically continue even after the withdrawal of one member, unless the terms of the treaty or mutual agreement causes its termination.

Suspension and termination

If a party has materially violated or breached its treaty obligations, the other parties may invoke this breach as grounds for temporarily suspending their obligations to that party under the treaty. A material breach may also be invoked as grounds for permanently terminating the treaty itself.

A treaty breach does not automatically suspend or terminate treaty relations, however. It depends on how the other parties regard the breach and how they resolve to respond to it. Sometimes treaties will provide for the seriousness of a breach to be determined by a tribunal or other independent arbiter. An advantage of such an arbiter is that it prevents a party from prematurely and perhaps wrongfully suspending or terminating its own obligations due to another's an alleged material breach.

Treaties sometimes include provisions for self-termination, meaning that the treaty is automatically terminated if certain defined conditions are met. Some treaties are intended by the parties to be only temporarily binding and are set to expire on a given date. Other treaties may self-terminate if the treaty is meant to exist only under certain conditions.

A party may claim that a treaty should be terminated, even absent an express provision, if there has been a fundamental change in circumstances. Such a change is sufficient if unforeseen, if it undermined the "essential basis" of consent by a party if it radically transforms the extent of obligations between the parties, and if the obligations are still to be performed. A party cannot base this claim on change brought about by its own breach of the treaty. This claim also cannot be used to invalidate treaties that established or redrew political boundaries.

Cartels

Cartels (“Cartells”, “Cartelle” or “Kartell-Konventionen” in other languages) were a special kind of treaty within the international law of the 17th to 19th centuries. Their purpose was to regulate specific activities of common interest among contracting states that otherwise remained rivals in other areas. They were typically implemented on an administrative level. Similar to the ‘’cartels’’ for duels and tournaments, these intergovernmental accords represented fairness agreements or gentlemen’s agreements between states.

In the United States, cartels governed humanitarian actions typically carried out by cartel ships were dispatched for missions, such as to carry communications or prisoners between belligerents.

From the European history, a broader range of purposes is known. These ‘cartels’ often reflected the cohesion of authoritarian ruling classes against their own unruly citizens. Generally, the European governments concluded - while curbing their mutual rivalries partially - cooperation agreements, which should apply generally or only in case of war:

• Deserters, escaped serfs and criminals were to be mutually extradited.
• Prisoners of war should be handed out according to rank in different exchange ratios.
• The maintenance of postal and commercial traffic including the entry and exit of couriers should be guaranteed in the fields of communication and transport.
• ‘Customs cartels' (“Zollkartelle”) and 'coin cartels' (“Münzkartelle”) were 'regulatory' agreements between Continental-European states in the 19th century.
• Against smugglers and counterfeiters, a joint action approach was adopted by the governments contracting on international trade treaties. The latter often contained the relevant ‘cartel’ regulations in their annexes.

The measures against criminals and unruly citizens were to be conducted regardless of the nationality and origin of the relevant persons. If necessary, national borders could be crossed by police forces of the respective neighboring country for capture and arrest. In the course of the 19th century, the term ‘cartel’ (or 'Cartell') gradually disappeared for intergovernmental agreements under international law. Instead, the term "convention" was used.

Invalid treaties

An otherwise valid and agreed upon treaty may be rejected as a binding international agreement on several grounds. For example, the serial Japan–Korea treaties of 1905, 1907 and 1910 were protested; and they were confirmed as "already null and void" in the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea.

Ultra vires treaties

According to the preamble in The Law of Treaties, treaties are a source of international law. If an act or lack thereof is condemned under international law, the act will not assume international legality even if approved by internal law. This means that in case of a conflict with domestic law, international law will always prevail.

A party's consent to a treaty is invalid if it had been given by an agent or body without power to do so under that state's domestic laws. States are reluctant to inquire into the internal affairs and processes of other states, and so a "manifest violation" is required such that it would be "objectively evident to any State dealing with the matter". A strong presumption exists internationally that a head of state has acted within his proper authority. It seems that no treaty has ever actually been invalidated on this provision.

Consent is also invalid if it was given by a representative acting outside their restricted powers during the negotiations, if the other parties to the treaty were notified of those restrictions prior to his or her signing.

Misunderstanding, fraud, corruption, coercion

See also: Unequal treaty

Articles 46–53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties set out the only ways that treaties can be invalidated—considered unenforceable and void under international law. A treaty will be invalidated due to either the circumstances by which a state party joined the treaty or due to the content of the treaty itself. Invalidation is separate from withdrawal, suspension, or termination (addressed above), which all involve an alteration in the consent of the parties of a previously valid treaty rather than the invalidation of that consent in the first place.

A governmental leader's consent may be invalidated if there was an erroneous understanding of a fact or situation at the time of conclusion, which formed the "essential basis" of the state's consent. Consent will not be invalidated if the misunderstanding was due to the state's own conduct, or if the truth should have been evident.

Consent will also be invalidated if it was induced by the fraudulent conduct of another party, or by the direct or indirect "corruption" of its representative by another party to the treaty. Coercion of either a representative or the state itself through the threat or use of force, if used to obtain the consent of that state to a treaty, will invalidate that consent.

Contrary to peremptory norms

A treaty is null and void if it is in violation of a peremptory norm. These norms, unlike other principles of customary law, are recognized as permitting no violations and so cannot be altered through treaty obligations. These are limited to such universally accepted prohibitions as those against the aggressive use of force, genocide and other crimes against humanity, piracy, hostilities directed at civilian population, racial discrimination and apartheid, slavery and torture, meaning that no state can legally assume an obligation to commit or permit such acts.

Treaties under domestic national law

Main article: Monism and dualism in international law

Australia

See also: List of Australian treaties and Law of Australia § International law

The constitution of Australia allows the executive government to enter into treaties, but the practice is for treaties to be tabled in both houses of parliament at least 15 days before signing. Treaties are considered a source of Australian law but sometimes require an act of parliament to be passed depending on their nature. Treaties are administered and maintained by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which advised that the "general position under Australian law is that treaties which Australia has joined, apart from those terminating a state of war, are not directly and automatically incorporated into Australian law. Signature and ratification do not, of themselves, make treaties operate domestically. In the absence of legislation, treaties cannot impose obligations on individuals nor create rights in domestic law. Nevertheless, international law, including treaty law, is a legitimate and important influence on the development of the common law and may be used in the interpretation of statutes." Treaties can be implemented by executive action, and often, existing laws are sufficient to ensure a treaty is honored.

Australian treaties generally fall under the following categories: extradition, postal agreements and money orders, trade and international conventions.

Brazil

The federal constitution of Brazil states that the power to enter into treaties is vested in the president of Brazil and that such treaties must be approved by the Congress of Brazil (Articles 84, Clause VIII, and 49, Clause I). In practice, that has been interpreted as meaning that the executive branch is free to negotiate and sign a treaty but that its ratification by the president requires the prior approval of Congress. Additionally, the Supreme Federal Court has ruled that after ratification and entry into force, a treaty must be incorporated into domestic law by means of a presidential decree published in the federal register for it to be valid in Brazil and applicable by the Brazilian authorities.

The court has established that treaties are subject to constitutional review and enjoy the same hierarchical position as ordinary legislation (leis ordinárias, or "ordinary laws", in Portuguese). A more recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Brazil in 2008 has altered that somewhat by stating that treaties containing human rights provisions enjoy a status above that of ordinary legislation, subject to only the constitution itself. Additionally, the 45th Amendment to the constitution makes human rights treaties approved by Congress by a special procedure enjoy the same hierarchical position as a constitutional amendment. The hierarchical position of treaties in relation to domestic legislation is of relevance to the discussion on whether and how the latter can abrogate the former and vice versa.

The constitution does not have an equivalent to the supremacy clause in United States Constitution, which is of interest to the discussion on the relation between treaties and legislation of the states of Brazil.

India

In India, subjects are divided into three lists: union, state and concurrent. In the normal legislation process, the subjects on the union list must be legislated by the Parliament of India. For subjects on the state list, only the respective state legislature can legislate. For subjects on the concurrent list, both governments can make laws. However, to implement international treaties, Parliament can legislate on any subject and even override the general division of subject lists.

United States

Main article: Treaty Clause

In the United States, the term "treaty" has a different, more restricted legal sense than in international law. US law distinguishes what it calls "treaties" from "executive agreements", which are either "congressional-executive agreements" or "sole executive agreements". The classes are all equally treaties under international law; they are distinct only in internal US law.

The distinctions are primarily concerning their method of approval. Treaties require advice and consent by two-thirds of the Senators present, but sole executive agreements may be executed by the President acting alone. Some treaties grant the President the authority to fill in the gaps with executive agreements, rather than additional treaties or protocols. Finally, congressional-executive agreements require majority approval by both the House and the Senate before or after the treaty is signed by the President.

Currently, international agreements are ten times more likely to be executed by executive agreement. Despite the relative ease of executive agreements, the President still often chooses to pursue the formal treaty process over an executive agreement to gain congressional support on matters that require the Congress to pass implementing legislation or appropriate funds as well as for agreements that impose long-term, complex legal obligations on the US. For example, the deal by the United States, Iran, and other countries is not a treaty.

See the article on the Bricker Amendment for the history of the relationship between treaty powers and Constitutional provisions.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Head Money Cases (1884) that "treaties" do not have a privileged position over Acts of Congress and can be repealed or modified by legislative action just like any other regular law. The Court's decision in Reid v. Covert (1957) held that treaty provisions that conflict with the U.S. Constitution are null and void under U.S. law.

Treaties and indigenous peoples

A treaty delegation of the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute indigenous tribes to Washington, D.C. (1858).

Treaties formed an important part of European colonization and, in many parts of the world, Europeans attempted to legitimize their sovereignty by signing treaties with indigenous peoples. In most cases, these treaties were in extremely disadvantageous terms to the native people, who often did not comprehend the implications of what they were signing.

In some rare cases, such as with Ethiopia and the Qing dynasty, local governments were able to use the treaties to at least mitigate the impact of European colonization. This involved learning the intricacies of European diplomatic customs and then using the treaties to prevent power from overstepping their agreement or by playing different powers against each other.

In other cases, such as New Zealand with the Māori and Canada with its First Nations people, treaties allowed native peoples to maintain a minimum amount of autonomy. Such treaties between colonizers and indigenous peoples are an important part of political discourse in the late 20th and early 21st century, the treaties being discussed have international standing as has been stated in a treaty study by the UN.

Australia

Main article: Indigenous treaties in Australia

In the case of Indigenous Australians, no treaty was ever entered into with the Indigenous peoples entitling the Europeans to land ownership, mostly adopting the doctrine of terra nullius (with the exception of South Australia). This concept was later overturned by Mabo v Queensland, which established the concept of native title in Australia well after colonization was already a fait accompli.

Victoria

On 10 December 2019, the Victorian First Peoples' Assembly met for the first time in the Upper House of the Parliament of Victoria in Melbourne. The main aim of the Assembly is to work out the rules by which individual treaties would be negotiated between the Victorian Government and individual Aboriginal Victorian peoples. It will also establish an independent Treaty Authority, which will oversee the negotiations between the Aboriginal groups and the Victorian Government and ensure fairness.

United States

Prior to 1871, the government of the United States regularly entered into treaties with Native Americans but the Indian Appropriations Act of 3 March 1871 had a rider attached that effectively ended the President's treaty-making by providing that no Indian nation or tribe shall be acknowledged as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty. The federal government continued to provide similar contractual relations with the Indian tribes after 1871 by agreements, statutes, and executive orders.

Canada

Colonization in Canada saw a number of treaties signed between European settlers and Indigenous First Nations peoples. Historic Canadian treaties tend to fall into three broad categories: commercial, alliance, and territorial. Commercial treaties first emerged in the 17th century and were agreements made between the European fur trading companies and the local First Nations. The Hudson's Bay Company, a British trading company located in what is now Northern Ontario, signed numerous commercial treaties during this period. Alliance treaties, commonly referred to as "treaties of peace, friendship and alliance" emerged in the late 17th to early 18th century. Finally, territorial treaties dictating land rights were signed between 1760 and 1923. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 accelerated the treaty-making process and provided the Crown with access to large amounts of land occupied by the First Nations. The Crown and 364 First Nations signed 70 treaties that are recognized by the Government of Canada and represent over 600,000 First Nation individuals. The treaties are as follows:

• Treaties of Peace and Neutrality (1701–1760)
• Peace and Friendship Treaties (1725–1779)
• Upper Canada Land Surrenders and the Williams Treaties (1764-1862/1923)
• Robinson Treaties and Douglas Treaties (1850–1854)
• The Numbered Treaties (1871–1921)

Treaty perceptions

There is evidence that "although both Indigenous and European Nations engaged in treaty-making before contact with each other, the traditions, beliefs, and worldviews that defined concepts such as “treaties" were extremely different". The Indigenous understanding of treaties is based on traditional culture and values. Maintaining healthy and equitable relationships with other nations, as well as the environment, is paramount. Gdoo-naaganinaa, a historic treaty between the Nishnaabeg nation and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy is an example of how First Nations approach treaties. Under Gdoo-naaganinaa, also referred-to in English as Our Dish, the neighbouring nations acknowledged that while they were separate nations they shared the same ecosystem or Dish. It was agreed that the nations would respectably share the land, not interfering with the other nation's sovereignty while also not monopolizing environmental resources. First Nations agreements, such as the Gdoo-naaganigaa, are considered "living treaties"’ that must be upheld continually and renewed over time. European settlers in Canada had a different perception of treaties. Treaties were not a living, equitable agreement but rather a legal contract over which the future creation of Canadian law would later rely on. As time passed, the settlers did not think it necessary to abide by all treaty agreements. A review of historic treaties reveals that the European settler understanding is the dominant view portrayed in Canadian treaties.

Treaties today

Canada today recognizes 25 additional treaties called Modern Treaties. These treaties represent the relationships between 97 Indigenous groups which includes over 89,000 people. The treaties have been instrumental in strengthening Indigenous stronghold in Canada by providing the following (as organized by the Government of Canada) :

• Indigenous ownership over 600,000 km² of land (almost the size of Manitoba)
• capital transfers of over $3.2 billion
• protection of traditional ways of life
• access to resource development opportunities
• participation in land and resources management decisions
• certainty with respect to land rights in round 40% of Canada's land mass
• associated self-government rights and political recognition