Back to the Cold War?
LOWENTHAL, RICHARD
Back to the Cold War? Since Khrushchev's victory in the Kremlin, Moscow has talked with a new toughness, which may mean an end to policies of persuasion and peaceful coexistence By Richard...
...NATO was born from the acuteness of the Soviet threat...
...but there are more solid reasons discernible for such an action than mere historical analogies...
...Once that session was over, it was believed, the Russians would drop the shrill trumpets of propagandist reproaches and once again resort to the muted strings suited for the negotiation chamber...
...As for the Middle East...
...Sixth Fleet...
...The combination of assurances of international good will with tough bargaining and keen competition foi the uncommitted countries, which had been characteristic of Soviet foreign policy in recent years, has suddenly been replaced by a bitterly hostile propaganda reminiscent of the last years of Stalin, combined with an apparent lack of interest in serious negotiation...
...Zorin's recent behavior, in particular, would seem to be singularly ill-adapted to prepare the ground for any propaganda offensive intended to convince neutral opinion...
...The Soviets appear to be saying by implication what their East German satellites are spelling out explicitly— that there is no longer much point in negotiating disarmament because they will soon be in a position to achieve their principal negotiating objective, the withdrawal of the Americans from their forward bases, by threats and without any corresponding concessions of their own...
...and the publicity accorded to this particular advance at this particular time would seem to reflect a deliberate policy decision rather than a technical breakthrough...
...I do not mean that I doubt that the Russians have successfully tested a long-range rocket...
...Even before this turn in the disarmament talks...
...and once that is realized by America's European allies, they will no longer feel protected by NATO but will break away and hasten to come to terms with Russia...
...Soviet propaganda has lost any trace of caution induced by fear of starting a general conflagration in that explosive area, and has gone out of its way to magnify every local incident, as well as to aggravate the situation in Syria by putting out false reports about alleged orders to the U.S...
...and that conclusion would seem to be in harmony with Khrushchev's increased dependence on the Army...
...it is also likely to fail in its principal objective—the disintegration of the Western alliances...
...Yet, it harmonizes perfectly with the publicity accorded to the recent Soviet testing of an intercontinental rocket...
...In ether words, it looks as if a technical advance, which in itself is important but by no means decisive, has been presented as a strategic turning point for political reasons quite independent of the technical sphere...
...that was bound to happen sooner or later, and there is nothing inherently improbable in it...
...To those who remember the manner in which Stalin adopted Trotsky's idea of forced industrialization shortly after defeating Trotsky, this will not be very surprising...
...it has no immediate strategic consequences by itself until a lot of further steps have been taken...
...If that is the Soviet calculation, we are faced not with a temporary switch in propaganda but with a major change of political strategy...
...Not only would it endanger what is left of the "moral conquests" achieved by the policy of coexistence...
...Once that sense of security was shattered and the atmosphere of 1948 or 1950 restored, they would feel compelled to make much more serious defense efforts...
...Yet a diplomacy of blackmail, if adopted now by the Soviets, may easily prove as much of a miscalculation as in Stalin's time...
...Instead, he confined himself to vague general declamations that the Western proposals offer "no basis for negotiation" and contain "nothing new"—which is patently untrue...
...When the first signs of this change in tone became apparent a few weeks ago, the tendency in British official circles was to regard them as nothing more serious than a temporary switch in Soviet propaganda, due partly to the approach of the West German elections but chiefly intended to gather ammunition for an effective attack on the Western powers during the coming session of the United Nations General Assembly...
...But not all the gambles have been successful—and least of all the gamble based on "coexistence" and the international appeal of ideological reformation...
...The logical conclusion from all this would seem to be for the Soviets to rely less on ideological gambles, and in particular to get rid of Khrushchev...
...For the West European member states of NATO will not necessarily remain as dependent on the American capacity to retaliate as they have lately become: They have relied on that capacity only as a means of economizing on their own defense in a period of comparative security...
...In fact, the latter gamble resulted in the Polish declaration of independence and the Hungarian disaster, in a tremendous weakening of the ideological authority of the Soviet Government both in the outside world and with its own subjects...
...in fact, with a return to the methods of Soviet political blackmail employed in the darkest days of the cold war...
...During the last few meetings, Zorin asked no questions, answered none, and generally refused to discuss any specific points...
...But such a successful test is, technically speaking, only one more step on a long road of competitive advances in armament technique...
...Nikita Khrushchev himself had used his August visit to East Germany to proclaim that the Soviet Government was not interested in am- four-power negotiation on German unity, but only in a reduction and eventual withdrawal of Western forces in Germany without preliminary agreement on German unity...
...Throughout his rapid rise to power, Khrushchev has been consistent in one thing only: in moving from gamble to gamble, always depending on the hope of quick and spectacular success...
...It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that these reasons must be somehow connected with the victory of Khrushchev over his rivals, and with the increasing dependence on the Soviet armed forces which he seems to have incurred as the price of that victory...
...Barely a month after purging his opponents for alleged opposition to the policy of "peaceful coexistence," Khrushchev has jettisoned the substance of this policy...
...That has been the common denominator of the "virgin soil campaign" and of the latest economic reorganization, of the Geneva "summit meeting" and the visit to Belgrade...
...I believe there are serious reasons for doubting the strictly technical explanation...
...There, the Soviet representative, Valerian Zorin, after months of patient negotiation rewarded by important Western concessions, was suddenly instructed by his government to reject the completed package of Western proposals for a first stage of all-around disarmament before they had even been fully presented...
...After all, the secular trend of the Soviet state, despite all efforts to produce a "Leninist renaissance," has been for its ideology to lose in attraction but for its physical power to increase...
...It has been most striking in the London meetings of the United Nations Subcommittee on Disarmament...
...once that is the case, they will no longer be prepared to counter any local Soviet aggression automatically by nuclear retaliation...
...Since Khrushchev's victory in the Kremlin, Moscow has talked with a new toughness, which may mean an end to policies of persuasion and peaceful coexistence By Richard Loiventhal London In recent weeks, symptoms have been accumulating of a major change in Soviet behavior toward the West...
...And by its repercussions it also deprived Russia of some of the fruits of the diplomacy of coexistence...
...For, once intercontinental rockets are operational, so the argument runs, the Americans will be as vulnerable to nuclear attack against their main centers as Russia is now...
...but this is naturally not a conclusion that would recommend itself to the First Secretary himself...
...Yet, if that is the case, another question is raised immediately: whether that change of strategy from persuasion to blackmail is really due to a major technical breakthrough by Soviet rocket technicians, or whether it is rooted in the recent shifts of power among the Soviet political leaders...
...The nearest alternative is to put less emphasis on ideological persuasion, which has failed, and more on Soviet military power, which saved what could be saved in Hungary...
...any return of the threat is more likely to revive than to destroy it...
...Copyright, "The Observer" (London...
...The change is noticeable along the whole breadth of the diplomatic front...
...But, as the new policy gathered momentum, more and more experts have begun to doubt this comfortable explanation...
Vol. 40 • September 1957 • No. 38
