Asia's 'Agonizing Reappraisal'

...It depends on whether the non-Communists have enough strength of will to resist any encroachments in good time—and enough military strength to make it risky for the Communists to attempt breaking that resistance by force...

...But partly it was based on a vital but hidden factor which the present crisis may help to bring into the open: the factor of weakness and fear in the face of Communist military power...

...It was the latter that made a number of the new states turn in practice increasingly "neutral on one side"—the Communist side...

...In exactly the same way, the Communists describe the existence of an independent West Berlin as a "cancerous growth" because it is an obstacle to the fulfilment of the Russian Communist program in East Germany, and even elsewhere in Eastern Europe...

...But this is part of the nature of the Communist system...

...After World War II Japan was defeated and disarmed, and Britain withdrew from the Asian mainland...

...In other words, the promise to maintain Tibetan autonomy was broken because it proved an obstacle to the fulfilment of the Communist program in Tibet, and even in part of China itself...

...Foremost in this reappraisal, thrust on the unwilling Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, is the real meaning and practical diplomatic value of the whole ideology of Asian, and particularly Indian, neutralism...

...In this vacuum, Communist China rapidly became-the only major military power east of Russia...

...Hence their resistance convinced the Chinese Communists that the standstill of proposed reforms in Tibet was incompatible with their disciplined execution in China proper...

...Keeping that struggle peaceful does not primarily depend on declarations of common principles by both sides which serve mainly to confuse the issue...

...It is on the basis of that agreement that the Chinese Communists now claim that, should India protest against the destruction of the solemnly promised autonomy of the Tibetan people, it would be "interference in China's internal affairs," and therefore contrary to the five principles...

...They did not know the nature of the new Communist empires by experience, and found it easy to overlook half the instances of Communist aggression and conquest, and accept specious explanations for the other half...

...And this happens at the very moment when it has also become the subject of bitter controversy between President Carnal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, owing to Nasser's belated discovery that Russia is trying to use friendly relations with neutral independent states to foster the growth of Communist influence in those states...

...This was based partly on illusions nourished by onesided experience: the long experience of Western colonialism, and the lack of experience with the practices of the new Communist empires as distinct from their assurances...

...That context is not the gradual extension of a tribal uprising to Lhasa, the capital...

...It was a realization of these Chinese plans to end the truce, to impose the full rigors of Chinese Communism in Tibet and to hold the Dalai Lama in Peking if he refused to cooperate, that led to the Lhasa uprising...

...Thus, men like Nehru have had strong "realist" motives for cultivating illusions about the nature and intentions of the Communist powers...

...in particular, in the forcible extension of the new rural "communes" to the Chinese Province of Tsinghai...

...While nearly everybody in Asia has heard of these five principles, few remember the exact occasion when they were first enunciated by Nehru and Communist China's Premier Chou En-lai in the name of their respective governments...

...Punch Shila, which are supposed to be Asia's specific contribution to curing the ills of our divided world...

...Last autumn, this attempt resulted in considerable local uprisings admitted in the local Communist press...

...Party cadres from Tibet were called to China to study the practice of the new communes early this year, and the Dalai Lama himself was invited to Peking for April to clinch the matter...

...But besides, they have really believed in these illusions...

...That occasion was the signing in Peking in April, 1954, of an agreement on trade and cultural relations between India and "the Tibet region of China...

...It follows that coexistence between Communist and non-Communist powers will always be a hard and bitter struggle...

...A new look is called for directed at one of the asumptions underlying the Bandung ideology...

...It is here that the object lesson of Tibet will be important, provided it is understood in its true context...

...The urge of forcible expansion arises from the effort to impose a preconceived, totalitarian pattern on the unwilling peoples that have already been subjugated...

...This is not, as might be expected, the assumption that newly-independent nations do best to avoid military commitments to one of the great power blocs...

...The tribal trouble had actually become less dangerous since 1957, when the Chinese promised a five-year standstill in "reforms...

...That ideology developed around the famous five principles of peaceful coexistence...

...They knew by long experience what Western colonialism could do...

...even if the leading Western nations had shown a remarkable capacity to learn from the past and change their outlook, the Suez affair proved that there was still a risk of at least episodic relapses...

...Accordingly...

...it is the further assumption that the independence and neutrality of the new nations are more likely to be threatened by the old, colonial imperialists of the West and their new American ally than by the Communist sponsors of peaceful coexistence...

...But in the light of the Tibetan experience, the meaning of Panch Shila has become questionable to Asians...

...Asia's 'Agonizing Reappraisal' By Richard Lowenthal LONDON ASIA, under the shock of the Communist suppression of Tibet's battle for autonomy, is beginning to undergo its own "agonizing reappraisal...

...This is a central fact of Asian postwar politics which neutralist statesmen constantly bear in mind...

...which borders Tibet and has a population largely consisting of national and religious minorities, notably Moslem Dungans and Tibetan Buddhists...

...But the Tibetan minority in Tsinghai acknowledges the spiritual authority of the Dalai Lama...

...This, it is being further realized, would lead ultimately to the end of both their independence and their neutrality...

...One vital reason why the governments of India, Burma or Cambodia have appeared to believe so fervently in the chances of long-term peaceful coexistence with Communist China is that they feel utterly ill-equipped to face the alternative...

...The roots of the new crisis are to be found in the internal development of China and...