RUSSIA AND CHINA Kremlin Preparing In Case Clash Comes

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31247, 20 December 1966, Page 21

RUSSIA AND CHINA Kremlin Preparing In Case Clash Comes

<N'.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

NEW YORK, December 19.

Mounting evidence indicates that the Soviet Government has begun preparing its people and armed forces for the possibility of a serious military clash with China, according to the “New York Times.” Last Tuesday the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee asserted that the “anti-Soviet policy of Mao Tse-tung has entered a new’, dangerous stage.”

Two days later the Soviet Finance Minister announced an 8 per cent rise in next year’s military budget. He justified the move by reference to the alleged dangers arising from American “aggression” in Vietnam.

But it seems unlikely the Kremlin would restrict itself to an 8 per cent increase if it seriously believed war with the United States was near

That modest increase makes more sense as a means of financing the regrouping of troops needed to strengthen defences along the Chinese border.

From Russian areas near China come reports of intensified military training for the civilian population, while the Chinese Foreign Minister, Chen Yi, has charged the Soviet Union with moving 13 divisions from Eastern Europe to the Chinese frontier.

No denial of Chen's charge has come from Moscow.

Perhaps most important of all, the Soviet propaganda machine this year has made certain that the Soviet people know fully the bitterness and ferocity of Mao Tse-tung’s anti-Soviet campaign. The impact of this effort is suggested by recent visitors to Moscow.

Asian Analogue They tell of Russian citizens comparing the Red Guards to the Hitler Youth and terming Mao’s regime it self “Fascist.”

The background has been created, in short, so that if war with China should come it could be presented to *he Soviet people as an Asian analogue of the struggle against Nazi Germany. An even older chord has been sounded by some Soviet references to the “great Khan chauvinism” of the Chinese.

Such references must inevitably remind Russians of the Mongol invaders who conquered their country and slaughtered their ancestors wholesale in the 13th century.

Rational Case At first sight it may seem fantastic that the Kremlin, with its wealth of nuclear weapons, missiles and bombers, fears a possible serious military challenge from China in the foreseeable future. Yet a rational case can be made that such misgivings are far from silly.

There is first the fact that the Chinese have made no secret of their ambition to regain the lands they believe Russia stole from them in the past. These lands include much of Siberia and Central Asia as well as Mongolia. Moreover, the Chinese may well believe that a war with Russia that was kept east of the Urals would be primarily a conventional war.

Not Used It could be argued that Moscow would not dare use nuclear weapons against China for the same reasons the United States has not used them in Vietnam. Moreover, Chen Yi warned

Moscow in a recent interview that if it uses nuclear weapons against China those same weapons would be used against Russia. Finally, the Soviet military and political strategists must be acutely aware of how vulnerable their foothold in the Far East is to a conventional attack from China.

Strong Forces Moscow undoubtedly has strong forces and substantial supplies there, but they are separated by thousands of miles from the main sources of Soviet power in the Urals and European Russia. It would not be very difficult for the Chinese to cut the Trans-Siberian railroad and the other land links between the Vladivostok-Khaba-rovsk region and the rest of Russia. All such speculation in Moscow and elsewhere could, of course, be vastly exaggerated. The Chinese have shown in Vietnam that they can combine prudence of action with the most militant verbiage.

High Price And a Russo-Chinese war would raise such disastrous possibilities that the international community would attempt energetically to prevent it should it seem in the offing. But the men in the Kremlin remember vividly the high price Russia paid 25 years ago for Stalin’s stubborn re-

fusal to believe that Hitler would attack.

It would be surprising if they were prepared to take any serious chance of committing a similar error with regard to the man they regard as the Asian Hitler, Mao Tse-tung.