Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLTAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Communist Bluff and Blackmail Lenin's familiar commandment-- "It is necessary to use any ruse, cunning, unlawful method, evasion, concealment of...
...But there is no reason for us to allow Moscow to get away with this sort of thing...
...This cut followed, it did not precede, a cut of similar absolute and greater relative size in U.S...
...This same technique--using human beings unjustly imprisoned as a lever for the extraction of political concessions--has been very much in evidence during the prolonged negotiations in Geneva between the American Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, U. Alexis Johnson, and the Red Chinese representative in Poland...
...Marshal Zhukov and other Soviet leaders also struck a virtuous pose over the relinquishment of the Soviet base at Porkkala, outside Helsinki, in Finland...
...Bluff as well as blackmail is a striking element in Soviet diplomacy...
...The American overseas bases in Great Britain, France, Germany, North Africa, Japan and elsewhere were set up with the agreement of the governments concerned...
...Ability to spot and parry such tactics, which are almost certain to be employed in the second round at Geneva, will be an important factor in determining whether the United States can spark a rally against the crumbling which is visible in some sectors of the Western front since the effusive interchange of cordiality at the "summit" conference last July...
...but recent Peking broadcasts intimate that these 19 are being treated as hostages, their release being made dependent on the opening of general political discussions between the United States and Red China at a higher diplomatic level...
...Yet, yielding to blackmail is a dangerous precedent...
...The restrictions on a limited number of Chinese students in this country who were refused permission to go to Red China (because of special technical knowledge acquired in American universities) have long been removed...
...Suppose the Soviet rulers are still holding back some German prisoners and offer to release another 5,000 or 10,000 in return for some other German concession, such as the stopping of anti-Communist broadcasts...
...But these instructions should be crystal clear on the point that this government will not engage in discussion with the Peking regime on any subject until every American citizen who wishes to leave China is safely over the border...
...So the Soviet Government tries to extract credit from finally consenting to an Austrian treaty...
...This bluff takes the form of trying to make a noteworthy "contribution to relaxation of international tension" out of ceasing to do something which should never have been done in the first place...
...Soviet leaders were quick to suggest that the United States should go and do likewise and abandon the overseas bases which, as NATO chief Alfred M. Gruenther recently told me in Paris, represent our best defense against a sneak atomic Pearl Harbor...
...Any Chinese misguided enough to want to return to the horrible tyranny which has gripped his homeland is now free to do so...
...It is quite in keeping with Communist philosophy that methods of blackmail and bluff should figure prominently in Soviet foreign policy...
...This is mere reciprocity...
...forces...
...We should insist that corresponding freedom be given to all Americans in China before negotiations on the renunciation of force against Formosa or any other subject are taken up...
...Yet, the treaty could have been signed years ago had it not been for Soviet refusal to release prisoners who should have been freed at the end of the war or who should never have been arrested in the first place...
...There has been much ballyhoo in Moscow about an announced reduction of 640,000 men in a standing army whose exact size has never been revealed, but which is known to be the largest in the world...
...and this seems to have been the decisive weapon in overcoming Adenauer's misgivings and breaking down his resistance...
...When the discussions began early in August, there were over 40 American citizens held in Red China...
...No one should underestimate the disappointment which would have been felt in many German homes if the Chancellor had returned from Moscow without obtaining some satisfaction on the question of the prisoners...
...This number has now been reduced to 19...
...Bulganin and Khrushchev cold-bloodedly insisted that German prisoners, who had been kept for ten years, would be released only if the Federal Republic consented to resume full diplomatic relations...
...Johnson, an able career diplomat of considerable Far Eastern experience, seems to have been doing a good job within the limitations of his instructions...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Communist Bluff and Blackmail Lenin's familiar commandment-- "It is necessary to use any ruse, cunning, unlawful method, evasion, concealment of truth"--is being faithfully put into practice by Stalin's heirs...
...It is hard to say where this process would end...
...The joker here is that the Porkkala base, like other territorial annexations at Finland's expense, was seized by force...
...Quite recently, Moscow and Peking have made two attempts to use the plight of prisoners as a means of extorting a political advantage...
Vol. 38 • October 1955 • No. 43
