Three Challenges to the West

...A transfer of recognition from Chiang to Mao Tse-tung would not now be accepted by the latter unless it included the transfer of effective control over Formosa...

...The Chinese Communists would not be content with a seat in the UN and the dropping of Chiang...

...That society needs peace, and its leaders know it...

...protection on Formosa, and the use of U.S...

...But what little is known about Khrushchev's visit to Peking certainly does not indicate agreement on the tactics of "renunciation of force...

...What is clear at this stage is that, since Khrushchev first posed his threat of a Berlin crisis, the differences of outlook and interest among the Western powers have come into the open to an extent unprecedented since the creation of NATO...

...and having convinced themselves that there is no practical possibility of that now, they see no use in talking about either...

...All this does not prove that no useful agreements are possible with the Soviet Government...

...But given the right mixture of patience and firmness, it should be possible gradually to educate them to its final acceptance...

...but it insists on its fundamental, unbridgeable conflict with all non-Communist states, and on the need to struggle incessantly against them until they have become subject to the same kind of dictatorship...

...secondly, that a newly negotiated agreement on Berlin could be "favorable" in the sense of preserving the viability of the city and the freedom of its cititzens under Western protection, even though it would require East German Communist consent and even though Khrushchev has steadfastly refused to accept the presence of Western forces on more than an interim basis...

...But the French, in contrast to the Germans, are still keeping another diplomatic road open...

...Without the disguise of the legitimacy claim of Chiang, a straight territorial conflict would remain, and for the Chinese Communists this is the real issue even now...

...side is much less urgent than in the conflict with Russia...

...but one fairly safe generalization is that any retreat that is not strictly inevitable—any surrender to the Communists of territory whose people have not willingly chosen Communism—will set up a pressure for further retreats of the non-Communist powers, because it will undermine the will to resist of the neighboring peoples...

...was that the "abnormal situation" in Berlin was part of the abnormal partition of Germany, and could only be cured together with the latter...

...The French know as well as everybody else that all-around disarmament is not only too complicated and time-consuming an issue to be brought appreciably nearer agreement at a summit meeting, but that it cannot be settled by four powers...

...France has not been able to exercise a decisive influence on any of the major postwar agreements, either between East and West or among the Western powers...

...The wilder forms of that speculation, which visualize a Khrushchev so frightened of the "yellow peril" that he is practically forced to come to terms with the U.S., can hardly be shared by the U.S...

...And even its most urgent, and perhaps most hopeful aspect—a permanent ban on nuclear tests with agreed inspection provisions—would require further negotiations, above all with China, to become effective...

...But while agreements of this type are strictly meaningless, they are not without political effect...

...So long as the Americans refuse this demand, basing themselves on good democratic principles as well as on their moral obligations to an ally, diplomatic recognition of Peking will not even succeed in establishing diplomatic relations...

...and, like all good Leninists, he regards it not just as a "law of social evolution," but as a supreme objective of policy...

...and they create a tendency to equally unilateral political and military disarmament...

...We live in a world where populations and techniques, ideas and forms of social organization, keep changing with historically unprecedented rapidity...

...But the evidence for tactical differences between the Communist allies is more serious, and the hope of broadening them may well be one of the motives behind the change in U.S...

...Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's journey to Moscow and Khrushchev's visit to Washington may or may not have been harbingers of a lasting East-West detente...

...policy makers must be uneasily wondering about the reverse possibility—that Mao may drag Khrushchev away from his "renunciation of force...

...Nor do the Germans share the hope—if it is a real hope, and not a mere pretense—that a newly negotiated "interim agreement" about Berlin could be either "favorable" or stable...

...If in 1948 the Western powers had yielded to Stalin's blockade of Berlin, it would have been impossible to create the West German Federal Republic...

...and the threat to back an ally or satellite in a showdown—which is the form that Soviet threats most frequently take— may be repeated at any time despite such an agreement: There is no sanction against it...

...policy has to face the fact that Communist China and the Soviet Union are allies...

...Today, recognition of the permanence of the partition of Germany would be bound to discourage the people of West Berlin, who morally live by the hope of ultimate reunification, even if no concessions were made on the city's own status...

...but that is so formal a description of their differences as to make them appear an almost meaningless, and correspondingly irritating, jostling for prestige...

...it is animated by a different spirit...

...and they will henceforth be increasingly under the pressure of the modern, educated society they have created to fulfill the expectations they have aroused...

...This article is printed by arrangement with the Observer...

...they would demand the handing over of the island with its population, which has prospered under the present dispensation and shows no desire to join the mainland regime...

...relations with Communist China...

...We have been told that they disagree, both on the desirable date for a four-power conference with Khrushchev, and on its agenda...

...Precise, enforceable agreements based on mutual interest and backed by the real relation of strength—be they about state frontiers or about trade—will be kept by them as well as by other states...

...Yet even before this statement there had been no hope in Washington that the new detente would apply to the Far East as well...

...Administration, which has had occasion to observe that Khrushchev did not come in the role of supplicant and offered no concessions of substance to win American friendship...

...Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and President Eisenhower have agreed on such a renunciation, but the leaders of Communist China have not...

...In fact, the underlying causes are divergent opinions about Soviet objectives and the way to counter them, which are little short of fundamental...

...Agreements about peace-loving phrases with the Soviets are, in fact, acts of unilateral ideological disarmament by their opponents...

...But agreements involving ideological principles, like "democratic governments and free elections" (as in Yalta) or "non-interference in each other's affairs" (as in the famous Bandung Five Principles of Co-existence) are not worth the paper on which they are written...

...Objections from the Europeans, who would be the first victims of such a policy, criticism within the United States both inside and outside the President's party, realization of the difficulties involved as the details come to be negotiated at a summit meeting, may still prevent the execution of the whole illusory concept But unless such a reversal takes place soon, the danger is real that Western statesmen, seeking to cast off a burden on their climb to the summit, will start an avalanche that may bury the very people they mean to protect...

...On the other, the power conflict between the U.S...

...Its answer so far has been to ask Khrushchev, as "leader of the Soviet bloc," to obtain from his Chinese comrades a renunciation of force parallel to his own, which would pave the way to an end of the cold war in the Far East as well...

...policy: first, that the present Western position in West Berlin is no longer tenable since it has been seriously challenged by Khrushchev...

...and the USSR are not really important...

...Far from securing international stability, the attempt to "end the cold war" by concessions is thus the first step down a slippery slope...

...It has renounced mass terrorism and given its subjects a new deal...

...As differences on this issue between Russia and the Western powers had been narrowed down so far that agreement seemed within reach, the failure of Khrushchev even to discuss the subject with Eisenhower, and his tendency in his speech to the UN General Assembly to make effective inspection dependent on total all-round disarmament were the most disappointing part of his U.S...

...By the time the next failure to agree on disarmament under effective inspection, or the next Soviet threat, destroys the illusion, the relation of forces has been shifted further in their favor...

...Hence, U.S...

...it would also be bound to weaken support of the Western alliance in West Germany, where people would feel that they had been "abandoned" by their allies in their most vital national issue...

...alliance...

...and they do not imagine that Khrushchev, when faced with political instability in a hitherto solid opponent in the center of Europe, will refrain from exploiting it merely because of an "atmosphere of detente...

...Read in that light, President Charles de Gaulle's invitation to Khrushchev to visit him before the East-West summit does not look like a mere prestige affair, but like an attempt to test whether Russia would be willing to pay for the withdrawal of the French veto on Berlin concessions with a quid pro quo of interest to France...

...In fact, the change in American assumptions concerning Soviet policy has been accompanied by a flood of public speculation about these differences...

...A war started by the Chinese over Formosa would be a just and liberating war, not only in the Chinese, but also in the Soviet view— even though in the latter it might well be an inexpedient one...

...and they can continue to arm without having to justify the effort before any democratic forum...

...What outsiders often overlook and Americans rarely spell out, however, is that a decade of non-recognition has created special complications which by now are difficult to overcome, even if the will existed on the American side...

...Unless he succeeds in this, the U.S...

...For the one thing that has not changed at all in Russia is the complete monopoly of political power exercised by the Communist party, resting on its monopoly of information and organization...

...it will merely shift the issue of conflict in such a way as to place the U.S...

...He has been for many years an authoritative student of the Communist movement in the Soviet Union, Western Europe and China...

...Their analysis of the situation evidently agrees with that of their West German partners in the growing six-power community of continental Western Europe...

...On the other, the Chinese have not offered to let it be turned into a "free island," nor have they renounced the use of violence for obtaining their aim...

...Now there is no reason to think that any of these assumptions are shared by either the French or the most directly interested party—the West Germans and West Berliners...

...Like the equally meaningless non-aggression pacts frequently proposed by the Soviets, they furnish a splendid argument against the maintenance of alliances among the democratic countries and the continuation of armaments within them...

...Khrushchev's Russia, so the argument runs, is not only far more modern technically and far stronger militarily than Stalin's Russia ever was...

...Because they are in an earlier and more difficult phase of their revolution which demands much greater sacrifice from their people, they are assumed to be far more in Richard Lowenthal, who is now visiting the United States, is the London Observer's roving diplomatic correspondent...

...policy...

...In principle, they all could be repeated under Khrushchev's latest pledge...

...That applies also to any agreement to "renounce the use or threat of force...

...France's European marriage with West Germany may not prevent it from supporting a new East-West deal at the last minute, if the concessions are not too wounding to its partner, and if the present offered by Khrushchev looks sufficiently alluring...

...though in practice, I should not expect anything as drastic to happen quickly, and nothing of the kind if it involved any serious risk...

...Another type of explanation, more favored by neutrals, blames U.S...

...need of a threat from outside to justify these sacrifices than Russia is now...

...The underlying motives of the French attitude are perhaps more complicated...

...but their vital interests are not as directly involved...

...The U.S., without being quite as outspoken, has gone along with this view ever since Khrushchev convinced President Eisenhower that a new solution, "acceptable to all interested parties," had to be found for the "abnormal" Berlin situation...

...Any agreement to "end the cold war" is necessarily of the latter type —the futile type of Yalta and Bandung...

...But implied in this attitude are several large assumptions of British and U.S...

...But in this writer's opinion, it suffers from a fatal flaw in assuming that the improvement in the material and cultural standards, and in the personal security of the average Soviet citizen, makes him an effective force in influencing the policies of the Communist regime—any more than the high material and cultural level of the average citizen of the Third Reich made him an effective force in influencing the policies of the Nazi party...

...opinion for possible concessions to Russia in Europe...

...Hence, the Germans do not want negotiations on Berlin at the summit...

...Many of the most aggressive actions of the cold war involved no direct use of Soviet force—not the Greek civil war, not the Prague coup d'etat, not even the war in Korea...

...and China, not even the outlines of a compromise are visible, while the military need for a compromise on the U.S...

...But at the same time, U.S...

...they do not, in their view, affect the existence of a broad "balance of terror" sufficient to prevent the use of Soviet military force at so sensitive a spot...

...It has persuaded itself, and is seeking to persuade its people and its allies, that the chance for a new policy aimed at "ending the cold war" has come about because of profound changes in the character and dynamics of the Soviet regime in Russia...

...On the one hand, the cold war is to be replaced by ordinary great power relations between the U.S...

...If asked why this should be so, most Americans will point to the great militancy of the Chinese Communists...

...It is idle to speculate at this stage whether in such a case the West Germans, too, would have to give in, or whether, though formally not concerned in an East-West summit, they could hold out against agreement as the party most directly concerned...

...The article published during the Khrushchev visit to Peking by Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi in Izvestia (which reached the West only after its subsequent reprinting in Peking, because the Moscow censor prevented correspondents from cabling it abroad) made it clear that the Chinese Communists refuse to believe in any significant change in U.S...

...Certainly, the popular image of skilful U.S...

...The means for struggling toward this objective are manifold, and cannot be exhausted by the ingenuous distinction between peaceful economic competition, on one side, and the direct use of force by the Soviet Government on the other...

...but it has always known how to extract a special price for its consent...

...It may be useful to compare the Formosa and Berlin situations in this respect...

...The first fruit of widening Russo-Chinese tactical differences may well be increased Chinese insistence on exploding as soon as possible their own nuclear bombs...

...willingness to yield to Soviet pressure at their expense...

...Because this ideology is not an irrelevant remnant of a distant revolutionary past, but an indispensable part of the cement which holds the Soviet regime and its system of alliances together, Khrushchev could not discard it even if he wished to...

...They know that any Western concessions over Berlin are likely to undermine both the viability of West Berlin and the confidence of the West German electorate in the value of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's foreign policy...

...and the Party's cohesion, in turn, depends on its ideology...

...The former inmates of the labor camps, the collective farmers who used to vegetate on the edge of starvation, the workers who once had to be tied to their factories by police regulations, are beginning to taste the first fruits of their labors and work better in the expectation of further improvement...

...spokesmen have lost no time in reminding Khrushchev of just how inexpedient it would be, emphasizing that they would hold the leading power of the Communist bloc responsible for any violent action...

...criterion for "ending the cold war" is the renunciation by both sides of the use or threat of force...

...The British Government has been pressing for the earliest possible summit meeting, because it believes that the atmosphere is now propitious for getting a "favorable" interim agreement on Berlin...

...will continue to treat the two great Communist powers differently, in the hope that this different treatment will gradually widen the tactical differences assumed to exist between them...

...The leaders who have shaken this great country out of the rut of Stalinist stagnation have proved by this that they are practical-minded men, capable of looking at the facts of social life without ideological blinkers...

...Yet U.S...

...But so far, only the first step has been taken...

...The official U.S...

...For the force used by the Soviets is mostly indirect...

...Meanwhile, the area of unresolved tactical differences between Moscow and Peking may well engulf another issue of vital importance for the future of world peace: that of a permanent ban on nuclear tests, enforced by world-wide inspection...

...Khrushchev's rise to his present undisputed leadership was due to his control of the Party machine, and depends on it...

...That line of argument has not, of course, been invented by the American Administration...

...in a weaker position than before...

...if not, they would rather see their allies face Khrushchev's threats than yield to them in advance...

...it has long been heard from many persuasive writers in European, and particularly in British, discussions of Soviet developments...

...As Western statesmen prepare to coordinate their views about negotiation with Russia at a "Western summit" on December 19, their puzzled citizens are asking themselves what is so difficult about it...

...and China retains all the ideological overtones of the most intense phases of the cold war...

...and the USSR...

...they have certainly been milestones in the weakening of mutual confidence and community of outlook among the Western allies...

...On the contrary, they have in Khrushchev's presence reaffirmed their right to "liberate" Formosa "by one means or another...

...Finally, the whole concept of stability apparently underlying the new American policy is inapplicable to relations with a revolutionary power...

...thirdly, that such an "interim agreement," which clearly would have to embody some Western concessions compared to the status quo would, despite its provisional character, not be the first step along a road of further retreats, because it would contribute to a general detente leading to stabilization...

...Of course, they are proud and suspicious and have been reared in a doctrine of uncompromising hostility to the non-Communist world, and there may be many difficulties ahead in the attempt to agree with them on a stable division of the world...

...On the one hand, Formosa is militarily defensible in a way in which Berlin is not...

...Any concession on the future of West Berlin, in particular any step that tended to make its status dependent on East German Communist consent and to weaken its constitutional and financial links with the Federal Republic, would inevitably multiply this effect Thus, an agreement which in the minds of Western diplomats was not intended to abandon West Berlin, but rather to stabilize the situation by its political "neutralization" in some form, could in fact lead to its loss by the demoralization of its people within a few years—and start a corresponding process of demoralization in West Germany...

...diplomacy weaning the "realistic manager," Khrushchev, away from the "dangerous fanatic," Mao, is helping to prepare U.S...

...Their original position, when the Geneva conference met...

...So they act as the main spokesmen, within allied councils, of the German fears, and have also adopted Adenauer's "constructive alternative" that a summit conference should chiefly deal with plans for all-around disarmament...

...policy...

...They have never looked at the Berlin situation in local military terms, and they remain convinced that for the effectiveness of the NATO guarantee the marginal shifts in relative power between the U.S...

...influence to keep Chiang inside, and the Chinese Communists outside, the United Nations...

...The Soviet Communist party, in contrast to the Nazis, has never wanted world war, and its ideology does not regard such a holocaust as inevitable...

...The Soviets, in their turn, do not depend on formal alliances because the ruling parties of the Communist states act under a single discipline in foreign affairs...

...Because their less industrialized and more decentralized economy is less vulnerable to nuclear war and their huge population more likely to survive it in numbers adequate for a future world power, they are supposed to be less afraid of the risks involved in the use of force in local conflicts...

...intervention of preventing them from "liberating" a part of Chinese territory they claim as their own...

...They are chiefly concerned because if concessions over Berlin lead to instability in West Germany, that instability may also affect the future of the community on which France has staked so much of its political and economic hopes...

...hence it is plausible that they mean what they say when they speak of peaceful competition...

...To them, the criterion of "an end to the cold war" is the surrender of Formosa, just as to Khrushchev it is Western acceptance of the permanence of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe...

...visit But clearly, final Russian agreement to nuclear inspection in any form must depend on the chances of getting China to accept such an agreement, which would permanently bar it from making its own nuclear bombs, and of getting itself accepted as a partner in whatever international authority is set up for the purposes...

...Incidentally, the day on which the Germans and the other outlying allies of the United States lost that conviction would be the signal not for their agreement to some limited concessions on Berlin, but for a general panic flight from the U.S...

...In their official statements pleading for a postponement of the East-West summit to next spring, they have suggested that their ultimate attitude may depend on the development of Soviet policy outside Europe in the intervening time...

...In fact, of course, these changes are rarely as predictable as the Communists think...

...He has written frequently on internal Communist developments, as well as on East-West relations, for THE NEW LEASEE, Commentary, problems of Communism and Encounter...

...and in his Peking speech, while warning against the horrors of modern war, he repeated the familiar Communist distinction between "aggressive war" and "just, liberating war...

...policy toward the Chinese Communists for maintaining them in this mood: the refusal of diplomatic recognition after 10 years, the maintenance of Chiang Kai-shek's counter-government under U.S...

...If the Berlin crisis can be politely buried by handing it to Deputy Foreign Ministers for long-term examination of the details, they will be happy...

...There are no known indications of any immediate Chinese plans for military action against Formosa...

...There is no better illustration of this than the case of Berlin, Germany and Western Europe...

...if West Germany had continued in economic and administrative chaos and constant fear of further Western retreat, none of the joint institutions which now form the common framework of continental Western Europe could have come into existence, and even the Marshall Plan could not have achieved what it did...

...But all his important, programmatic speeches show that, for all his pragmatism in detail, he believes in the inevitable expansion of his regime— in what used to be called "world revolution"—rather more ardently than Stalin did...

...From all indications, this is what Khrushchev had in mind with his "moderate" proposal for turning West Berlin into a "Free City...

...once that is obtained, the ideological conflict may be reduced to a harmless form of economic competition across stable frontiers...

...The United States Administration is not admitting it...

...So far as the profound changes in the living conditions of the Russian people are concerned, the argument rests on an indisputable basis of fact...

...President Eisenhower's new hope that a reasonably stable settlement of outstanding issues may be reached between the United States and the Soviet Union does not extend to U.S...

...But the moral and material support of Communist movements abroad is as old as the Soviet Government, and the Kremlin's formal repudiation of responsibility for the actions of these movements goes back to its very first diplomatic exchanges with the non-Communist world—a good quarter-century before the term "cold war" was ever heard of...

...They talk less and less about Chiang and simply accuse U.S...

...The Germans in particular, who have had to live with the Berlin situation ever since the victors of 1945 created it, are neither as worried as the British about the danger of ever-recurrent incidents at this critical spot, nor as impressed as the Americans because Russia may be gaining an edge over the West in military power...

...Thus, on the most acute issue dividing the U.S...

...A peacetime military alliance with a joint command machinery depends for its effectiveness on a constant effort by all major partners to adjust their policies to the overriding common interest It cannot flourish if the real motto of each of these partners in turn becomes "every man for himself...

...and the practical focus of the difference is still at the point where Khrushchev created it—in Berlin...

...Khrushchev's negative attitude to a project which is equally in the interest of all the nuclear powers suggests that he sees no chance of winning that acceptance from Peking at this time...

...The Soviet Union, It is not easy for the government of a great nation to admit to the world, to its own electorate, or even to itself, that it is renouncing long-held policy objectives because of failure and that it is preparing to surrender exposed positions out of weakness...

...What they see, though they do not put it so bluntly in public, is an Anglo-U.S...

...and the Soviets, believing that the changes must follow the laws indicated by Communist ideology and working incessantly to make them do so, regard every agreement from the point of view of what further changes it will promote...

...Even during the talks with Eisenhower, Khrushchev insisted that Russia would have to stand by China's side if international armed conflict developed over Formosa...