Mr. Deng's Arms
Strausz-Hupé, Robert
Robert Strausz-Hupe MR. DENG'S ARMS Does Peking believe that a world war is inevitable or just desirable? The Carter administration and its supporters assure us that diplomatic recognition of the...
...Deng's jovial countenance...
...Five years later, 40,000,000 people had died in battle or of starvation, and the old order had been destroyed...
...That these efforts are competitive, this, too, can be squared by the law of "unity in struggle...
...No one steeped in the history of peoples that, in their time, could lay claim to great ness will take lightly the idea of historical justice, mysterious as its ways may be...
...On the face of it, the potentialities are enormous: 900,000,000 customers...
...More likely than not, for reasons of proximity and cultural affinity, the Japanese, the Koreans, and- (who knows...
...to aggravate the Soviet rulers' encirclement neurosis-a neurosis deeply embedded in the psyche of Communist Russia ever since its perilous beginnings...
...Taiwan's expulsion from the United Nations does not deprive Taiwan of its nationhood...
...The activation of Chinese buying power and, hence, of productivity will require enormous foreign investments over a long period of time...
...Within 20 to 30 years, if no global disaster intervenes, the PRC will become a very powerful country, able to project its power into the world and to do so free of the constraints that the present balance of power imposes on it...
...This prospect, and the further diminishment of the West's strategic reach and political and moral influence, will meet with the full approval of the enemies of the West, of whatever ideological ilk they may be...
...But all of Marxist-Leninist philosophy-with Maoism thrown in-is a colossal absurdity...
...Most Western observers of the quarrels in the Communist camp can perceive only two possible outcomes: either a gut fight that will lead to bloody hostilities, or a mere game that is being played according to secretly agreed rules...
...The Entente did not have a mechanism for "crisis management, '' for dealing with the German neurosis...
...This is far from saying that, tomorrow, Peking and Moscow will make up and then turn on the West...
...The exploitation of these resources will have to be financed by loans granted to China at low rates of interest and with late maturities...
...Gas and oil, when they flow, and minerals, when they can be moved by (now inadequate) roads and railways, are expected to pay off the lender and, so it is hoped, profit the investor...
...The Soviet Union, determined to occupy that "place in the sun" that Emperor William II claimed as Germany's proper place when this century was still young, has set about building up its military strength beyond mere defensive requirements...
...The "China card" has two faces: The one now turned up is Mr...
...But within the context of their common philosophy, there is no reason why they should not...
...Statistically, Soviet trade has been a negligible fraction of world trade and a minuscule fraction of ours...
...For if the U.S.-Chinese rapprochement is not actually intended to effect the encirclement of the Soviet Union, at least it can be taken as a broad hint in Robert Strausz-Hupe, professor emeritus in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, was Ambassador to NATO, 1976-1977...
...There is nothing mysterious about the iron law of history: A people ceases to be great when it forsakes the beliefs that have made it great...
...so can the hoisting of ambiguous signals...
...It is unlikely that the development of the China trade will differ markedly from the pattern established by Soviet trade...
...The PRC has never wavered in its profession of the one, the true, Communist faith...
...one day-the Taiwanese will have most to gain...
...They have no other...
...and that its benefits to the West will be- for years to come-not only very small but also unevenly distributed...
...But this is not a policy that can be pursued without risk...
...and its allies who will have to do the arming...
...Yet what exactly will be the concrete, enduring contribution of the PRC to the common strategic task of halting Soviet expansion worldwide...
...the other, turned down, is the matrix of Communist ideology...
...The PRC will do nothing of the kind so long as the present world balance of power holds, and so long as the West is prepared to supply China with the materials necessary for developing its arsenals of power...
...Is it so unlikely that the masters of the Kremlin are now haunted by the same perplexities and fears that drove the Kaiser and his generals into a war that, it now seems, most everybody wanted to avoid...
...Brezhnev's warnings to France, England, and Italy not to sell arms to the PRC might be insolent, but they are meant in earnest...
...To Western minds, this philosophical twist must seem quite absurd...
...The German generals, brilliant military technicians and political morons, decided that the time was now to break out of the encirclement...
...It seems that for the PRC, that point is still far off...
...Ambassador in its directory of diplomatic protocol...
...As the sky darkened over Europe, the Germans began to perceive what they should have anticipated when they first embarked on their campaign of boasting and intimidation: They had alarmed all of Europe...
...Do we share the PRC's belief that a world war is "inevitable...
...Just 40 years ago, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, queried in Parliament about the deal that gave Hitler a free hand in Czechoslovakia, said, "Czechoslovakia is a far off country about which we know little,'' meaning that the extinction of a small independent nation mattered little to Britain and the rest of democratic Europe...
...The manipulation of the balance of power is a delicate business: A small error in weighing one end or the other can have grave consequences...
...Since for the foreseeable future the PRC cannot arm itself, it is the U.S...
...It will be the disappearance of another once independent nation behind the frontiers of Communism, which, be they guarded by barbed wire or bamboo fences, are a great deal more impenetrable than the frontiers of freedom...
...This does not mean, however, that as a thought conditioner it does not work...
...The Carter administration and its supporters assure us that diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China has achieved what could not be achieved otherwise-Peking's cooperation, as a partner in resisting Moscow's "hegemonial" aspirations...
...By the analogy of Spain, Portugal, and Japan, it would have seemed likely that an independent Taiwan would endow itself, within another generation, with a representative government...
...What Bismarck had so skillfully avoided had happened: Germany was encircled by hostile powers...
...Then the denouement of the Peking-Moscow wrangle might be quite surprising-as surprising to the West as was the denouement of August 1939...
...To improve it will be an undertaking even more costly and time-consuming than it turned out to be in the case of Russia- where it has not been completed to this day...
...At present, the only contribution the PRC can make is to stay upright rather than falling down...
...Only a few Americans are familiar with the ways of China...
...The abandonment of Taiwan in disregard of the rights of nations and human rights, and contrary to our fervent professions of devotion to these rights, would be the most troublesome aspect of the United States' compliance with Peking's condition for inserting a U.S...
...The moral is: With totalitarian states, you never know...
...All that can now confidently be anticipated about the economic development of China is that its financing will be very, costly...
...they had overplayed their hand...
...Brezhnev have spent their lives in the forum of dialectical debate...
...At a certain point, so Marx tells us, quantitative advantage turns into qualitative advantage...
...Today, 50 years later, it is still highly debatable how much benefit the world-at-large, excepting select bankers and industrialists, has derived from Soviet trade...
...It will also be the expiration of another democratic option...
...By historical comparison, we can now place the PRC at the same stage of economic development that the Soviet Union had reached in the 1930s when Western capitalists financed the first Soviet push into modernity and, thus, into the status of a major military power...
...Furthermore, it is questionable whether the generous credit terms exacted by the Soviets from Western lenders have been consistent with prudent banking practices and the avowed intent of Western governments to "fight inflation...
...The law of unity and the struggle of contradictions are basic elements of dialectical materialism...
...Today, Taiwan's regime is not democratic...
...The Soviet Union has been "rattling the saber," more noisily than diplomatic discretion might have counselled...
...This is not an altogether pleasing prospect, for no one can tell what alignments or re-alignments a China that is no longer fettered by economic penury and military impotence might choose...
...American diplomacy is now helping to put the PRC on the road towards modernization of its industrial plant and military arsenal...
...Indeed, in many parts of the world they are engaged in parallel efforts, such as supporting "liberation wars" and a variety of movements hostile to Western interests, notably democratic institutions...
...They do not understand, as every Communist does, that there can be unity in struggle-a struggle that strengthens unity by overcoming error and achieves a new synthesis of opposites...
...Is it necessary and prudent for the U.S...
...Ever since the mid-nineteenth century, the Chinese market-"oil for the lamps of China"-has loomed large in the calculations of Western commerce...
...It is a cardinal rule of foreign policy never to do more than is necessary...
...The ideological controversy between Peking and Moscow continues unabated...
...A surrender of Taiwan to Peking would violate both principles...
...If the "Chinese card" is to be validated, the PRC needs to be armed...
...of President Carter's "normalization...
...that it will take a very long time...
...If this were not so, then neither Israel nor Ireland nor most African states would now be counted as nations...
...The people of Taiwan will not be given the opportunity to determine their future-except, perhaps, the PRC having taken over, by a rigged plebiscite...
...The Czar was not helpful, for he could not recall the mobilization of his forces...
...Deng and Mr...
...If the PRC can enforce its claims to Taiwan, as conceded by the U.S., then Taiwan's democratic option will have been closed with considerable finality...
...that direction-no matter our assurances about the peaceful purposes of this novel association between two great peoples resolved to resist "hegemony...
...For a long time, the returns on these investments cannot be much else than the export of minerals, notably non-ferrous, and oil, of which China is said to possess large reserves...
...As regards the right to individual freedom- " human rights''- the future exercise of this right by the people of Taiwan will, upon annexation by Peking, be guaranteed as securely as is the right to individual freedom on the Chinese mainland, namely, not at all...
...The 60-odd billion dollars of Comecon indebtedness to the West has begun, so we are told, to disquiet prominent Western lenders...
...But this does not relieve them of their responsibility before the court of historical justice...
...It is their intellectual and spiritual home...
...Unfortunately, here and now, their buying power is minimal, about that of 6,000,000 Swiss...
...As a great power, the United States has made its debut on the world stage as the champion of two fundamental principles of international order under law: 1) the right of national self-determination and 2) the right to individual freedom under democracy...
...Taiwan is a far off country, and conceivably our statesmen know as little about it as did the British Prime Minister about Czechoslovakia...
...On the eve of the Great War, the neurotic Emperor, appalled by his own handiwork, tried to wriggle out of his dilemma: He appealed to his Russian cousin...
...What of the alleged economic benefits to the U.S...
...Once these arsenals are well stocked, the PRC will be able to conduct the dialectical dialogue with Moscow not only as a forceful philosophical interlocutor, but also as a power political equal...
...China's mass-900,000,000 people struggling for bare subsistence-has not yet transformed itself into economic power, let alone military power, that can be projected on a world scale...
...A nation does not cease to be one by virtue of any external act, save total conquest or annihilation...
...The Emperor's bellicose posturings had fateful consequences-some quite unanticipated by himself and his advisors: The French, the British, and the Russians took him seriously, became frightened, and banded together in the Entente directed against Germany...
...At present, however, Taiwan is very prosperous, wide open to Western trade and visitors, and closely linked to two great democracies, Japan and the U.S.-conditions that our most eminent experts on Third World political development have extolled as being conducive to the growth of democratic institutions...
...If Peking is not thinking now of a future Asian Co-Prosperity Zone, then it must have forgotten all it ever knew about the millennial history of the Empire-of-the-Middle...
...The "changes for the better" we are allowed to see are being explained to the cadres ex cathedra as dialectical approaches towards the establishment of a true Marxist-Leninist society...
...W hat will be the net result, as perceived by every good Communist and every non-Communist unshaken by the bursts of media disinformation, of the U.S.-Peking deal...
...Most Americans are familiar with, and proud of, the noble traditions of American conduct in the world, consecrated by vast sacrifices in two world wars...
...The status of nation, once acknowledged by the international community, is irreversible...
...The forms of the anticipated China trade seem closely to resemble those now prevailing with the Soviet Union...
...The fact is that Peking and Moscow are exchanging, day by day, the most atrocious invectives-and have so far done very little tangible damage to one another...
...It may differ in one respect: The infrastructure of China's economy is a great deal skimpier than that of the Soviet Union in the 1930s...
Vol. 12 • June 1979 • No. 6
