The Cold War and the Third World

...But under the circumstances, it is difficult to imagine either side risking direct hostilities...

...Why wait for the outcome of the one struggle when action can be taken that could have a decided impact on its resolution...

...Has Soviet intimacy with Guinea, Algeria, or Syria really challenged the U.S...

...It would certainly be to the Communists' advantage to present the U.S...

...Thus nearly all those familiar with Indian affairs believe that political fragmentation, a military coup, or some form of Hindu authoritarianism are far greater threats to the regime than the Communists...

...true, the U.S.S.R...

...Sympathies have been redirected to a degree...

...government, not unexpectedly, has claimed credit for their defeat, arguing that the American military presence in Vietnam gave heart to the army, the students, and the anti-Communist forces...

...fails there, the Communists will be encouraged to employ the same techniques elsewhere in the area...

...Unhampered by any feelings of moral commitment to Israel, the Soviets have had the freer hand and quite cynically were willing to sacrifice Israel in June 1967 to achieve a certain degree of political influence in the area...

...Nevertheless, the evidence of detente and the appearance of world conditions that limit the opportunities for major shifts in the balance of power have not prevented the great powers from giving an East-West coloration to international disputes that have little to do with the Cold War...

...The military reverses suffered by the Arabs demonstrated just how limited is the capacity of the great powers to determine the outcome of events involving third parties...

...The sense of vulnerability is understandable yet unrealistic...

...According to available facts, the long awaited showdown in Indonesia came about because of the peculiar circumstances with in the country...

...In support of this contention, I offer four propositions intended to summarize a "revisionist" view of the contemporary Cold War...

...Certainly, the organizational acumen of the carefully conceived and rigorously trained political apparatus usually, but not always, enjoyed by the local Communists give them somewhat of an advantage...

...4. The competitive effort of the great powers (the two superpowers and the long-range contender for that designation, China) to gain influence and assert a degree of control over the foreign policies of well-established governments in the Third World is narrowly circumscribed by the search for independent national status on the part of these states...

...If, contrary to the historical evidence and to what we know about the dynamics of revolutionary movements in the postcolonial world, such movements can be launched and controlled by external forces, it is difficult to understand why guerrilla insurrections have not been instigated throughout Asia...

...had a commitment to maintain the national integrity of Israel and would have honored it...

...What has become a nationality conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors would exist at the same pitch of emotional intensity whether or not the great powers intruded upon (or let themselves be drawn into) it...

...I question whether the Soviet Union (China does not as yet enjoy the power to play this global role) seriously entertains the possibility of isolating the U.S...

...Its urbanized Communists are a politically marginal force...

...Yet if anything definite has been settled by the contest it is that neither side can win the war for "the hearts and minds" of mankind (the only war that the balance of terror permits) . For all the competition for the allegiance of the developing world, the political future of the new nations is largely beyond the control and the struggle of the Great Powers and marginal to their interests...

...and the U.S.S.R...

...What I have been arguing in this essay is not the case for an American neoisolationism...

...has a legitimate commitment to use its resources in the interests of a stable international order...

...But to accept a wholly subservient position vis a vis the established powers would grate nationalist sensibilities...

...Oratorical flourishes that reiterate the goal of world Communism should not be confused with substantive commitment...

...The higherpriority being given to domestic concerns, the stress on the importance of maintaining peaceful coexistence— all these will lead to an assessment of Soviet foreign policy objectives that diverge from the stated goal of achieving hegemony...

...Upon achieving power, indigenous Communist movements that tapped nationalist sentiments on the way to victory are likely to be sensitive of their independence...

...Is it at all plausible to have expected the Soviets to intervene, in the name of an unpublished equivocal pledge, in order to save Sinai for a regime MICHAEL J. BRENNER which keeps its local Communists imprisoned, when they have refrained from belligerent action against the U.S...

...The actions of a politically mobilized population, working through well-structured organizations like the army and the CPI, are not readily controlled by external events like the war in Vietnam...

...MICHAEL J. BRENNER a series of as yet unclear coincidental developments provoked the crisis...

...the United States, write them off...

...Japan, the world's fourth industrial power, is well advanced beyond the developmental stage of growth and possesses a social structure unsuited to insurrectionist activity...

...Whatever assistance they might have received from China, it is improbable that they should allow their foreign or domestic policies to be dictated by her...

...Certain—but by no means all—economic relationships have been rearranged, an occasional U.N...

...They have been singularly unsuccessful, however, in taking advantage of failures in the industrialization program and the weaknesses of the Congress party to forge a coherent national movement...

...and it THE COLD WAR AND THE THIRD WORLD might well run counter to Realpolitik and the necessity of avoiding the implacable hostility of the United States and of maintaining trade relations with the West...

...The two sides fought as everyone expected them to fight...

...It follows that if the U.S...

...The very fact that a local regime is in imminent danger of collapse under the pressure of a Communist-led insurrectionist movement (as was Saigon in early 1965) might then be taken as prima facie evidence that symbolic appeal and political capability have passed to the challenger-dooming not only the regime, but also any U.S.-led salvage operation...

...2. Given the nationalist dynamic at the heart of these movements it is doubtful that the success of Communist-inspired insurrections would constitute an absolute increase in the power of the existing Communist nations or shift the scales drastically against the West...

...3. Few of the major countries in the Third World are liable to internal Communist revolution...

...this, however, does not mean that we should accept his assessment uncritically...

...When and if a Communist-inspired revolutionary movement comes to power in one of the larger countries of the Third World, there is every reason to expect that it soon will be as independent of either of the two Communist rivals as the Cold War situation and its own capacity for industrialization allow...

...with three or four Vietnams simultaneously...

...these countries possess few critical resources and are of strategic importance only in relation to each other...

...There is cause for concern, however, in the outdated thinking on both sides...

...A further achievement would follow a reappraisal of this conflict by recognizing that the stakes are not control of the "other third," but rather the limited, and rarely permanent, increments of prestige and influence that are minor compared to the stable resources available to the great powers...

...Whatever the tentative conclusions reached in that exercise, there is reason to believe that in the face of hard realities the U.S.S.R...

...in Vietnam despite the fact that a fraternal Communist state has been severely bombarded for three years and her own ships are periodically hit in Haiphong Harbor...

...Pakistan has been governed, from the point of view of economic development successfully so, by a benevolent authoritarianism of the military variety and it has few home-grown Communists to concern itself about...

...At stake are only the four or five thinly populated countries of mainland Southeast Asia...

...In fact, the official American interpretation of the Chinese-led revolutionary challenge has not been worked out to a logical conclusion...

...To specify further what is at stake in this competition, we should consider the Communist capability to undermine Western interests...

...had allowed itself to get suckedinto a situation in which the dangers were out of all proportion to the possible gains...

...Having been accorded the world role of fomenter of revolu tion by Washington, China has yet to respond by recognizing her own potential for disruption...

...I think not...

...In this sense, Lin Piao's manifesto offers a policy with "built-in obsolescence"—one whose very success would create new obstacles to Chinese national aggrandizement...

...In a new nation the size of Indonesia, the political forces are of such dimensions and the nationalist passions so deep that its pol itics are not liable to manipulation from without...

...High-ranking American officials have declared on many occasions that the war in Vietnam is a test of wills between the Communists (China and her auxiliaries) who attempt to impose their system on a reluctant people and the American resolve to support existing governments in their resistance to such takeover attempts...

...Through a series of miscalculations the U.S.S.R...

...vote has been garnered, and in one case limited naval accommodations were accorded the Russians...

...India's Communist party mirrors the country's deep regional, linguistic, and even caste antagonisms, and it is suffering from many of the same infirmities that threaten the democratic republic...

...In each of these cases the leadership has been local, the organization largely independent of external forces, and the fighting forces have been nearly self-reliant in terms of arms and munitions (in Vietnam large-scale Soviet and Chinese material aid was required only after the introduction of American troops had altered the character of the war...

...Despite radical changes in the landscape of international politics, it remains a seductively comfortable concept that dominates both learned and popular discourse...

...Lin Piao formulated a doctrine that equates the success of a "national liberation" movement with an advance of Chinese interests and a step toward the isolation and ultimate destruction of "Western imperialism...

...The danger is further mitigated by what appear to be the very limited opportunities for significant Communist advances in Asia...

...On the contrary, I would argue that by committing themselves to a strategy that to a very considerable extent identifies their world status with the victory of other nationalist forces following their example—a strategy that subordinates direct armed aggression to political-ideological warfare—the Chinese have hit upon a world policy with manifest contradictions...

...And in Southeast Asia, where the United States is by its own calculations defending the ramparts against a Communist sweep, there is not one nation where a Communist government could have an unsettling effect on the relations among the major powers...

...neither do I assume that insurrectionist movements, outside of Vietnam, are inevitably going to succeed...

...In India, the political health of the country is more uncertain and the Communists have established strong bases of support in a number of states...

...The advice being urged is that the United States rest more confidently in its own security and "avoid the elaborate vocabulary of make-believe" by whose terms it fights daily a worldwide struggle against assaults of assorted Communist enemies...

...A considerable political wisdom was incorporated in the cumulative decision to conduct the Cold War according to the rules of peaceful competition...

...True, the U.S...

...the army won —thereby denying the Communists the opportunity to assert their brand of Indonesian nationalism...

...Generally speaking, the United States is the status quo power in these areas and consequently feels its interests threatened by Soviet or Chinese encroachments...

...In this situation the chances of a conflagration were probably exaggerated...

...The Arab-Israeli conflict is exactly the type of dispute that is not comprehensible in Cold War terms...

...They are also secure in that the persistent contest for the allegiance or support of third parties is unlikely in the foreseeable future to shift significantly the weights of international power...

...policy...

...Nothing vital to the security of either side was at stake, no basic interests were engaged, no military alliances were being torn asunder, no "diabolical" new technique for worldwide aggression was being tested...

...Nationalism, the source of the movement's strength, can be expected to condition the behavior of the party now in control of the state apparatus...

...It is instructive on the great powers' tendency to fabricate crises between themselves in situations that are in fact beyond their control...

...the red phones of the hot line were dutifully employed, sharp exchanges took place in the Security Council, Kosygin hopped off to New York, and an unplanned Summit meeting was held...

...We argued earlier that the success of Communist movements there will be determined primarily by domestic conditions, that the Chinese capacity to organize revolution is generally overestimated, and that the establishment of Communist governments in the Third World will not necessarily constitute a grievous setback to the West...

...Indonesia is the fourth non-Communist Asian state of consequence...

...The logic of revolutionary politics in the Third World would lead one to the same conclusion...

...History does not provide us with a single example, short of military invasion, of a major political upheaval in a modern nation produced by foreign forces...

...The significance of these developments seems to be greatest in the uncertain realm of prestige where the great powers maneuver to achieve narrow victories that increasingly have taken on the character of points won in a game of oneupmanship...

...1. Neither major Communist power can control the location, timing, or ultimate success of a revolutionary nationalist movement (i.e., war of national liberation) . Guerrilla insurrections, espousing some variety of Communist ideology, are not characteristically plotted from without and instigated by foreign elements...

...It then would be possible to make more sagacious discriminations between real and hypothetical foes, between vital and nonessential interests, between the world in its concrete complexity and the simplified world of ideological pretense...

...But the Administration has not turned up any solid evidence to support this contention...

...Since all the major non-Communist Asian states seem secure against a "national liberation movement," the policy debate narrows to a more immediate concern for the fate of the non-Communist nations of the Southeast Asian mainland...

...The belief persists that the struggle goes on, though in a muted form and with little threat of a nuclear showdown, to control the political destiny of the world...

...will be more THE COLD WAR AND THE THIRD WORLD dovish than hawkish in the immediate objectives it pursues...

...They must also distinguish themselves carefully from the alien forces, real or doctrinally presumed, who together with "reactionary" local elements are stigmatized as enemies of national self-realization...

...Here again we should be careful not to confuse ideological affinities with substantial political and military power...

...Indeed, as Professor Kautsky wisely pointed out, "The more the Soviet government changes its policies from those which were once associated with the goal of world Communism, the less it can afford to stop insisting that it continues to stand for this goal...

...The apparent fallacy in this thinking has been pointed out by several critics of U.S...

...And to this extent the formation of cadres in Communist countries does constitute an external factor impinging on the situation...

...But little if anything of crucial economic or military importance has been altered...

...Israel and the conflict her presence has engendered are factors tangential to the East-West competition...

...I suspect that the situation was a good deal less serious than we were led to believe...

...In fact, as an East-West stand-off, the Middle East crisis was a nonstarter...

...had given a vague pledge of support to Egypt...

...Persons of otherwise diverse opinions and ideological leanings share the convention of seeing all international events through the optic of an East-West confrontation universal in its proportions...

...They are secure not merely in the sense that a stabilized deterrence has created military standoff...

...Where they exist at all, they are almost always capable of instigating a revolt of some scale—however small that might be...

...I am not suggesting that the West, i.e...

...Even the truncate countries of North Korea and North Vietnam (to leave aside the example of Cuba), strongly dependent on their Chinese big brothers, have striven, on the whole successfully, to avoid satellite status...

...The U.S...

...On the surface, it has all the appearances of an authentic Cold War crisis...

...Indeed, there is little evidence that they are of formidable proportions elsewhere in the area...

...As both the world's leading economic and military power the U.S...

...the deterioration in Sukarno's health that set off a series of mutually threat ening moves by the army and the Com munists...

...Chances for success of an insurrection undertak en along these lines is in inverse proportion to the existing regime's ability to satisfy nationalist aspirations, meet social and economic grievances, and assert its administrative control over the country...

...and if the Arabs had gotten the upper hand, necessitating American involvement, the situation could have become dangerous...

...But the "loss" of these countries, if that should come to pass, would be something less than a disaster...

...Under existing conditions there appears little opportunity for empire-building or for the use of these nations as instruments of someone else's foreign policy...

...But since it is the overriding concern of the Arabs, the great powers cannot have avoided considering it...

...At some level of the Soviet government a debate might well be going on as to the practical desirability of continued adherence to this totalist conception of world competition...

...In Vietnam, the Philippines, Cuba, and in China a Communistinspired leadership has sought to cultivate newly evoked nationalist sentiments and to link them to popular social discontents to create a revolutionary movement on a mass base...

...The U.S.S.R.'s intentions, however, in protecting its security interests and retaining the influence of its present position, cannot be doubted, as events in Czechoslovakia make clear...

...Under the circumstances, China might find that she helped spawn several independent Communist states which felt a real interest in limiting Chinese power...

...The ethnic and religious antagonisms that are at the heart of it predate the Cold War, as does the political contest for the control of former British Palestine...

...After the bloody civil conflict of 1965-66 the once powerful Communist party was organizationally obliterated and barely survived physical liquidation...

...Short of forging the formal military alliances which seem unattainable under the circumstances, it is difficult to envisage what sort of successes the Communist powers might achieve that could meaningfully affect Western security...

...The real Cold War issue in the area has been the contest to win Arab allegiance...

...or her European allies in any tangible way...

...The U.S...

...The disparity between this interpretation and the Washington perspective on wars of national liberation, which insists on seeing them as plotted and directed by foreign Communist powers, leads to equally divergent views as to the international significance of the civil struggles they evoke...

...It is the foremost principle of revolutionary guerrilla warfare that the popular forces must mobilize mass support, tapping it for manpower and supplies...

...At the same time, the June war presented us with a classic example of how easily an East-West drama is created out of others' political material...

...have failed to appreciate fully just how secure they are and how limited is the vulnerability of their opponent to indirect assaults...

...militarily, strangling her economically by gaining control over critical resources in the developing countries, and of thereby winning a worldwide political victory...

...The picture presented of the two superpowers posturing in the wings gave the impression that a major confrontation was at hand...

...But whether the rebel group evolves into a full-fledged revolutionary movement will be determined by the MICHAEL J. BRENNER crucial variables of nationalist legitimacy and governmental efficacy internal to the system...

...Ideology, past associations, and the perception of common enemies dictate that they should forge ties of friendship with other Communist states, that they should seek economic aid from them, and that they should align their foreign policies up to a point...

...The Middle East crisis of 1967 is a case in point...

...Wherever such movements have achieved a modicum of success they have been undertaken by groups indigenous to the country of operation...