CHANGED SOVIET POLICY THE RUSSIANS RETURN TO SOUTH EAST ASIA

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30677, 17 February 1965, Page 12

CHANGED SOVIET POLICY THE RUSSIANS RETURN TO SOUTH EAST ASIA

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ISAAC DEUTSCHER)

The shifts in Soviet foreign policy that have occurred since Khrushchev’s downfall have been thrown into relief by the latest events in Vietnam ; and they are bound to affect the future of that country. During the crisis in the Gulf of Tonking last summer, Mr Khrushchev was telling everyone who cared to listen that his Government was not vitally interested in South east Asia; Mr R. A. Butler, Britain’s Conservative Foreign Secretary, stated then on good authority, after a visit to Moscow, that the Russians were prepared to withdraw from that part of the world. The present crisis found Mr Kosygin (and a large Soviet delegation) at Hanoi, promising to step up military and economic assistance to North Vietnam.

The Russians, it may be said, are back in South-east Asia: and they acknowledge their involvement in its affairs. “En route,” Mr Kosygin had stopped in Peking—this was the first time since 1959 that a Soviet Prime Minister was seen there: and he informed Mr Chou En-lai, the Chinese Prime Minister, of the purpose of his journey to Vietnam. Mr Kosygin did not go to Hanoi just in order to persuade Mr Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese Communists to attend the conference of the Communist Parties convened to Moscow for March. He realised that the Vietnamese could hardly attend that conference if the Chinese were to boycott it: and, in any case, this issue looked rather remote and unreal amid the storm over Vietnam. The Soviet Premier came to Hanoi primarily in order to demonstrate his Government’s determination to have a decisive say in the fastapproaching final act of the Vietnamese drama.

America’s Position All reports reaching Moscow from Vietnam on the eve of this mission spoke about the virtual collapse of the American military position in South Vietnam and about the nearness of “another Dien Bien Phu,” which would soon force the Americans out of the country just as the original Dien Bien Phu disaster had forced out the French. And indeed, most of the countryside of South Vietnam is under effective control of the Communist-led Viet Cong guerrillas, who are quite

capable of blockading the shaky urban strongholds of the anti-Communist regime in the South. The Communists have so far refrained from blockading the towns and cities: and they have confined themselves to ceaseless and highly effective propaganda, which surrounds the ever toppling and changing anti-Communist governments by a moral vacuum. Instead of blockading the cities, the Viet Cong guerrillas have concentrated on blockading the scattered American military bases, especially the American airfields. They have been lying in ambush just outside these airfields and kept the runways under mortar fire. The

Viet Cong leaders are confident that by means of these tactics they will squeeze out the Americans and capture the whole of the South, without having seriously to fight for the cities. These optimistic expectations are not shared by the Russians and perhaps not even by the Chinese. Nevertheless, both Moscow and Peking have to reckon with the prospect of the “American Dien Bien Phu”, even though they may not wish to precipitate it, for the risks are too obvious. Probably the North Vietnamese, too. especially the “moderate” Ho Chi Minh, would prefer the tempo in the South to be less hot. But it is the self-willed Viet Cong guerrillas, assisted as they are by the ineptness and stupidity of the Southern anti-Com-munists and their American protectors, that are setting th? tempo, in accordance with rapidly-developing processes of social and military conflict. The Soviet governmental delegation went to Hanoi precisely in order to agree with Ho Chi Minh’s government about how to deal with the collapse of the American position in the South and with possible American reactions. Bombing Of Dong Hoi The American bombing of Dong Hoi and other North Vietnamese targets during Mr Kosygin’s visit has not been seen in Moscow as pure coincidence. The Russians do not believe that the Americans were merely retaliating for Communist attacks on American bases. Such attacks, they point out, were the work of local guerrillas, not of the North Vietnamese; and they had been quite frequent in recent months without provoking American raids across the 17th parallel. The American action during the Kosygin visit was evidently meant to intimidate Moscow as much as Hanoi: it was designed to exercise pressure on Russian policy, to force Moscow back to “Khrushchevite moderation,” and to stir the Russo-Chinese conflict back into the open. If so. the Russians reply, the Americans have miscalculated: they are not going to achieve their objective. On the face of it, the Americans appear to have already achieved part of their objective: in Peking between one and two million people demonstrated in the streets against the United States; in Moscow only between a thousand and two thousand students, mostly Vietnamese, Koreans, and Chinese (?) were allowed to stage a protest outside the American Embassy. In China, solidarity with Communist Vietnam brings a vast and turbulent national emotion into play; in Russia the issue evokes little or no popular response. The Russians would like to avoid a situation in which the Americans would be left with one choice only: the choice between surrendering in humiliation or spreading the war. And so Mr Kosygin not only promised more help to Hanoi but also proposed ways and means by which it might be possible to “soften the blow” for the Americans and to make their disaster more bearable for them. This was, after all, what both the Russians and the Chinese had done for the French at the Geneva conference of 1954. In other words, Kosygin and Ho Chi Minh were to find out whether in case of a complete triumph of the Vietcong it would still be possible to create conditions enabling the Americans to withdraw without complete loss of face.

Russian Proposals The Russian proposals for a settlement over the South Vietnam can be summed up in the following points:— 1. The National Liberation Front, the political organisation of the Viet Cong, which is to form the future government of South Vietnam. Meanwhile, it is to be widened into some sort of a Popular Front. Already now the organisation, in which the Communists predominate, includes various Buddhist and quasi-liberal groupings. But its membership is to be enlarged even further so as to provide the framework for a “respectable” governmental coalition. 2. The National Liberation Front is to set up an administration that is to be “independent of the government of North Vietnam.” Saigon and Hanoi are to remain the capitals of two separate states (despite the fact that Communist propaganda has till now clamoured for the unification of the whole of Vietnam). 3. South Vietnam is to remain neutral militarily and to avoid entanglement in any alliances. 4. The formation of the new regime is not to be made dependent bn prior military withdrawal by the Americans, although the liquidation of all American bases must necessarily follow. But the new government is to see to it that the Americans should be able to withdraw “in a friendly atmosphere, not under openly hostile pressure.” 5. During the period of transition the Communists of

Vietnam, Laos, and neighbouring countries are to “exercise restraint and prudence” so as not to give antl-Communists an excuse for the outcry that “communism is sweeping across the whole of South-east Asia." The Communists should, for the time being, content themselves with a limited but very real gain, for there is no doubt that the new regime in the South would bring near the unification of the whole of Vietnam under Communist rule. Chinese Sceptical The Russians have, without the slightest doubt, persuaded Ho Chi Minh to accept this scheme. The Chinese, as far as one can judge, seem also prepared to co-operate, or at least not to interfere, in the implementation of this plan. But they are sceptical about its feasibility. Peking holds that the Americans will not agree to withdraw without first making an attempt to carry the war to the North. Whatever form this attempt takes, it is said in Peking, Russia and China must be prepared to counter it. While some American air raids across the 17th parallel do not require Chinese or Russian intervention in Vietnam, a more systematic and massive American action would be met by the Chinese in the way they met during the Korean war. General MacArthur’s armies north of the 38th parallel. Chinese “volunteers” would fight side by side with the Vietnamese: and the Chinese would expect the Russians to supply the munitions, the aircraft, and the moral-political support they supplied during the Korean war. Moscow sees no need to prepare for so grave a contingency. It holds that the Americans are anyhow not in a position to cross into North Vietnam and that all they can do is to intensify naval and air attacks. To meet this threat the Russians have undertaken to expand North Vietnam’s air force and to equip generously its anti-air defences with powerful missiles. The Russian willingness to go as far as that provides a basis for a certain “rapprochement” with the Chinese over the Vietnamese issue. On the whole, both the Chinese and the Russians are conscious that they are playing from strength. Neither of them believes that the fighting in Vietnam may escalate into a nuclear war; and in conventional warfare American inferiority is so marked that the Pentagon has little, if any, scope for effective action. Both Kosygin and Chou En-lai expect that when the tension reaches breaking point the Americans will be forced to re-negotiate a settlement.

Crisis Not Sought But the Russians would like to delay the final showdoWn, if only because they have not yet settled the succession to the Khrushchev regime and are not yet ready to face any international crisis as grave as was the Cuban crisis. Should such a crisis nevertheless develop very soon, the Soviet Presidium would prefer to cope with it in multilateral negotiations, along the lines of the 1954 Geneva conference, rather than by means of a bilateral RussoAmerican deal similar to the Khrushchev-Kennedy deal over Cuba. The famous Red Line between the While House and the Kremlin is, for the time being, out of action. This fact is soothing to the Chinese, who bitterly resented Khrushchev's personal diplomacy. In Moscow as well as Peking therefore, there has been a favourable response to General de Gaulle’s proposal for a big summit meeting in which China would participate. Somewhat ironically the genera) has helped to throw a bridge, which is admittedly still narrow and brittle, across the gulf between the two Communist Powers. But the main architects of that bridge are to be found in Washington, notably in the Pentagon—World Copyright Reserved by Isaac Deutscher.