The Communist World SOUTH-EAST ASIA AND THE RUSSIAN-CHINESE CONFLICT

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30534, 1 September 1964, Page 16

The Communist World SOUTH-EAST ASIA AND THE RUSSIAN-CHINESE CONFLICT

(By

ISAAC DEUTSCHER]

During the brief but violent storm in the Gulf of Tonking quite q few Western observers compared the events there with conflict over Cuba in 1962. (At the moment a calmer interval is prevailing off the coast of North Vietnam; but this may well be the calm before another storm.) If the comparison between the two crises, the Cuban and the Vietnamese, appears somewhat unreal this is so mainly because of the striking difference in the behaviour of the Great Powers involved.

When the Russians had established their missile base in Cuba, Washington confronted them with an ultimatum; and President Kennedy at once ordered American warships into the Caribbean Sea threatening to destroy the Soviet base. Not for a single moment did the United States accept the Russian presence in Latin America, so close to its own borders. Mr Khrushchev yielded and withdrew his missiles. By contrast, the action of the American naval units in the Gulf of Tonking did not bring forth any ultimatum either from China or from Russia. Both Peking and Moscow replied with verbal protests against American aggression; but none of them threatened any immediate retaliation. Both have “de fadto” accepted the American presence in Vietnam, Laos, and in South-east Asia at large. It would, in any case, be illogical of them to treat the American bombardment of the North Vietnamese coast as something like a “casus belli/’ when they have not treated as a “casus belli” the aid that 14,000 American experts and soldiers have been quite openly giving to the Government and the army of South Vietnam in their struggle against the North. What the events in the Gulf of Tonking have thrown into sharp relief is the actual state of moral-political and military inequality between Russia and the United States, an inequality that Moscow has tacitly accepted

Electioneering? Russian moderation during the crisis • was • calculated to demonstrate to electioneering Americans '.that they have nothing to fear from Russia Moscow has been trying io tell them in its own way that they ought not to allow Senator Goldwater to make their flesh creep with the old fear of communism once again. Will the American electorate be impressed by this Russian moderation? Will it heed Senator Fulbright’s warning that events in South-east Asia must not be allowed to upset the improved relations between Russia and. America? Or will the American electorate conclude that “it pays to be firm with the Reds” and that President Johnson has achieved some success in Vietnam because he has acted there in Senator Goldwater’s spirit? These are the important questions, for it is the result of the American elections

that is going to affect deeply Russo-American relations one way or another. The bombardment of North Vietnam, if it is not followed up by new and more massive military action, is not likely either to worsen or to improve those relations. But obviously the events in Vietnam tend to exacerbate the Russo-Chinese controversy. Once again the Chinese are arguing that Khrushchevite “appeasement” is a standing invitation tb American aggression, and that if Khrushchev acted over Vietnam with anything like the firmness with which President Kennedy acted over Cuba, the Americans would not dare id behave in South-east Asia as they do. Chinese Caution Yet, in spite of this argument and in spite of all their talk about the American “paper tiger,” the Chinese themselves behaved during the crisis not less cautiously and not less moderately than did the Russians. They have not even threatened to send “volunteers” across the boundary to help the North Vietnamese, although there has been no lack of demand in Peking for some such gesture of solidarity. And if the Chinese are asked why they demand of Russia more firmness and determination than they themselves show, they answer that the Soviet Union is the only Communist power which can deter American imperialism, but refuses to do so; and that it is all the more essential that the power of (nuclear) deterrence should not (within the Communist world), remain a Russian monopoly. More than ever the Chinese now feel justified in their ambition to develop their own nuclear arsenal and to go on opposing Khrushchevite “opportunism and capitulation.” In the. meantime the Russians have announced that if the United States and Britain do not agree to an unconditional convocation of a full scale international conference over Laos, they, the Russians, will resign as co-chairmen of the International Commission on Laos and probably also of the similar commission on Vietnam. There has been much talk in connexion with this of a Russian disengagement from South-east Asia; and the Russians themselves have done much to encourage such, speculation.

It is difficult to believe that they can afford pursuing such a policy in the long run; but the Russians may well see in it definite short term advantages. They realise that the protracted socio-political crisis in the successor states of old Indo-China is coming to a head. The contest between communism and anticommunism is approaching a decision. The Russians are finding it more and more difficult to curb the Com-munist-inspired guerrillas in South Vietnam and Laos, who feel that they are powerful enough to overthrow the antiCommunist governments there and to unite their respective countries. To prevent a total Communist victory the United States, on the other hand, is increasing its stakes in backing the tottering southern regimes; and it may be tempted or driven to carry the war to the North. Leaning Towards Mao The time for meditation between the warring parties seems to have passed; and it was mainly as mediators that the Russians have acted. The more decidedly the local Communists line up with the Chinese, the less inclined are they to heed Russian warnings and take Russian advice. They are all Maoists now; they are all impatient for. decisive revolutionary action. Even Ho Cbi-Minh, the Khrushchevite leader of North Vietnam, must, if he is to hold his office, play along with the pro-Chinese majority in the Vietnamese Poiitbureau.

The Russians resent this and moodily threaten to withdraw, while some of them are in fact anxious to effect the withdrawal before the next great clash of arms has begun, the clash of arms which the skirmishes in the Gulf of Tonking may have foreshadowed. In any case, the threat of a Russian disengagement is double-edged: it is meant to warn the Americans that if they do not behave less provocatively, Moscow will no longer exert itself to curb the “wild men” among the Vietnamese and Laotian Communists and guerrilla leaders; and it tells those “wild men” that, if they go on pursing a Maoist policy, Moscow will wash its hands of them and leave them “at the mercy of American imperialism.” However, in this disengagement manoeuvre the Russians may be playing with fire. Will the Pentagon not misinterpret any Russian move that looks like a withdrawal and conclude that South-East Asia is

a vacuum into which American power is free to move? This would be a dangerous illusion and a dangerous temptation. For one thing, China is by no means as weak as she is supposed to be: she is quite capable of filling the vacuum ’eft by Russia —indeed, if the Russians do withdraw from South-east Asia, they will do so. it will be partly because they are already being squeezed out by the Chinese. Response To Expansion

But what is even more important is that any American expansion in South-east Asia, or even the mere fear of such an expansion, is all too likely to force Russia back into that area. And once this happens a major Russo-American clash may well develop. Such, it should be recalled, was the pattern of events in Korea in 1949-50, only that there the United States did the disengagement and withdrew its occupation forces from Southern Korea, with the result that soon thereafter it returned to fight a long and devastating war. A Russian disengagement from Southeast Asia may entail comparable blunders and even graver complications. In this connexion the question arises whether Moscow has now definitely torn up the Russo-Chinese alliance or whether that alliance is still to some extent operative. Recently, the Soviet press warned the Maoists that they must not take it for granted that Russia would give them the benefits of the alliance regardless of how disgracefully they behaved towards those who speak for the Soviet Union, that is towards Khrushchev and his friends. These hints were meant for Western as well as Chinese ears: and some Western commentators have even jumped to the conclusion that Khrushchev aims at nothing less than a Russo-American alliance. This is a bit too naive, however. Moscow’s game is far more complicated and ambiguous. Mr Khrushchev would like to have his cake and eat it. He would like to keep the Chinese alliance in force, without himself and his nolicy being subject to the force of the alliance. He knows that Russia cannot easily give up the strategic advantages of an association with China, but he calculates that some measure of a dissociation may well promote a further detente and even “rapproachement” between Russia and the United States. “Double-facedness” The Chinese denounce, of course, this attitude as yet another instance' of “Khrushchevite double-facedness." But in Moscow too, some oeople find th? game a bit too “Machiavellian": and the problem of the Chinese alliance is still at the centre of an important debate within the Soviet ruling group. Hence the contradictory statements that are coming from Moscow: one day “Pravda” makes transparent hints at a renunciation of the alliance; and the next day Mr Khrushchev himself speaks as if he intended to reaffirm the validity of the alliance. Thus, in his speech at Ordjonikidze, in the Caucasus, he said: . should the imperialists nevertheless dare to unleash war against any socialist state, the peoples of the Soviet Union will . . . defend not only their own country, but also other socialist countries.” Mr Khrushchev spoke these words at the height of the Vietnamese crisis: and, in terms which had an almost Maoist flavour about them, he went on to warn the "imperialists” that if they were nevertheless to provoke war, they would meet in it with their doom.

Yes, the whole game over South-east Asia has, on all sides, become extremely subtle—so subtle indeed that the players seem quite entangled in its complexities.— World Copyright Reserved by Isaac Deutscher.