Fallacy of the Sino-Soviet Rift

...And it is natural for the Soviets and Chinese Communists to approach in quite different ways the problem of removing this obstacle...

...An excellent sample of this has already appeared on the borders of India, where the neutralist proclivities of Prime Minister Nehru's Government made it possible to test under optimum conditions the formula of Chinese aggression without Russian support— in fact, with open Russian opposition...

...In particular, lacking any-atomic or hydrogen weapons of its own, only with the USSR standing behind it can it have any power to intimidate and blackmail the West...

...But if Nikita Khrushchev were genuinely concerned about the se-curity of his borders vis-a-vis Communist China, would he not cut off the present flow of indispensable petroleum, trucks, machines and war materiel to his ally...

...magnitude the disagreement between the United States and Britain and France over the Suez issue in 1956...

...In this sense of the word...

...In these circumstances, if Khrushchev and Chinese Party boss Mao Tse-tung must disagree to lure the West into supporting Communist China, the price is not too great...

...The result might be a substantial measure of economic relief for the whole Communist bloc, as well as the ultimate building up of Communist Chinese strength with Western aid at a much faster pace than would be possible through assistance from the Communist bloc alone...

...But would we be the first to use them if Communist China, lacking them itself, is not supplied with them by the USSR...

...Still further clues to what the Communists hope to secure from flaunting their disagreements before us lies in the very area of these Haunted disagreements themselves...

...For it is clear that China's advantage in such a war would be its closely adjacent very large masses of military manpower, armed with relatively simple weapons...

...on the other hand, could hardly win in Southeast Asia with nuclear weapons and is dealing with free world powers who seem to have put a great deal of reliance upon them, even for fighting future "brush wars...

...But they did not allow themselves to risk any policy adventures on this hope...

...But why is there disagreement on this particular issue...

...Our own advantage in such a war, given our serious shortages in trained and mobile land power, would lie in the employment of tactical atomic weapons...

...which would put the United States in a very difficult position...

...They see it as an unsolved problem which is moving many Americans to cry out for a "long-range solution...

...For Mao, in the light of this fact, the best course at this stage of Communist China's technological development is to hold out his hands empty of nuclear weapons and dare us to use those weapons first...

...Thus, to the extent that we become convinced by the current Communist strategy of public disagreement between Mao and Khrushchev, we may be victimized from a military-strategic point of view...

...any notion that there is a rift between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Chinese Peoples Republic is erroneous on the face of it...

...The most notable case in this respect was the Chinese Communist germ warfare propaganda campaign during the Korean War...

...What can the Communist world hope to gain from it...

...This is precisely the pattern, if the Chinese Communists are allowed to preserve it if and when they undertake aggression in Southeast Asia, which would conduce most positively to their military success...

...The Chinese Communists would thus be projecting the doctrine of limited war into the strategic area...

...Under its pressures we openly and fervently foreswore for the indefinite future the initiation on our side of the use of germ warfare in any war...

...Consequently, any strategy of Russo-Chinese military disentanglement is probably only a plan for liberating Communist China for radical military aggressions in Southeast Asia and elsewhere...

...In the United States today, by contrast, there is a good deal of evidence that current Soviet-Chinese disagreements are being overestimated, and that they are being counted on to produce advantages for the free world which can hardly come to realization...

...A Brief History...

...But no matter how the Chinese people are deprived by their regime, progress cannot be made fast enough in this way...

...It is perhaps normal for partners in crime not to trust each other too far...

...We did not have to do this...

...All we really needed to do was to deny that we had used it in the Korean War, and leave open the question of future use...

...More and more the national product will have to be consumed in just maintaining bare existence for the massive population of 675 million, which is increasing by 12-15 million each year and destined within a very few years to reach 800-900 million and to still go on increasing...

...They know that many Americans are wedded to the idea that we can "wean China away" from Russian Communism...

...At that time, no doubt, Moscow and Peking were hoping that the crisis would result in the final dissolution of the Western alliance...

...Combined with the remoteness and difficult terrain of the area, this was enough to guarantee that only the most elementary types of arms would be used, even if India did resist by the use of military force...

...They also know that many people in this country are interested in trading with the China mainland, and would not object if such trade had to be supported by loans to Communist China secured or provided by the United States Government at the taxpayers' expense...

...Thus a war in Southeast Asia might well avoid becoming an atomic war...

...The Communist bloc evidently cannot provide the resources to do this job...

...military and economic framework of the Communist bloc, the net result for decades to come will be political instability in China, compounded over and over again as crises lead to crisis solutions, and the law of diminishing returns grinds into application...

...It would not be the first time that a purely propaganda effort has effectively controlled or inhibited our use or non-use of specific military weapons...

...For well over a year now, for example, it has been suggested that the Russians actually fear the Chinese Communists, and that this fear is based upon the supposedly tremendous development of Chinese power and political influence...

...and the USSR...

...Will we be similarly trapped in the military-strategic field in the near future by the efforts of the current Communist-inspired propaganda campaign stressing the existence of a Moscow-Peking rift, or the imminence of such a rift in the future...

...Why...

...and for good reasons, apprehensive about the future success of the Communist revolution in China...

...for example, even a genuine parting of the ways in respect to the generally agreed-upon objectives of the two partners in Communism...

...The current conspicuous demonstration of Sino-Russian disagreement is doubtless designed to facilitate the renewed advocacy in this country of the idea that the Chinese Communists are so different from their Soviet counterparts that we can not only tolerate them, but deal with them, while continuing to oppose Khrushchev and all his works...

...which clearly displayed the complete partnership of the Soviets and the Chinese Communists...

...The United States and its chief allies also differ on the question of how to deal with the two Communist countries, and this without causing anything like a "rift...

...China was and still is a relatively poor country...

...There is no evidence to suggest...

...To answer these questions we must try to understand how the problem of China policy for the United States looks to the Russians and Chinese...

...And they know that the argument that "the Chinese Communists are here to stay" persuades many well-intentioned persons in this country that we should attempt to "normalize" our relations with Peking...

...Its per capita poverty in natural endowments cannot be waved away by the wand of Communist dogma or hidden behind the fog of Communist propaganda...

...The current situation is much closer to being a partial and perhaps even quite temporary disagreement than it is to being a final and complete rupture...

...This is not to mention the current assistance he is giving the Chinese in the development of atomic energy, without which Communist China would quickly revert to the status of a 10th-rate power, instead of the mere fourth-rate power it truly is today...

...Russian policy has been to exact payment for everything, thus putting the extreme pressures of deprivation upon the Chinese peasantry in order to export ever more quantities of agricultural products—and this in face of catastrophic rises in population...

...This they clearly cannot do so well while they are militarily tied to the USSR, which is currently emphasizing the decrease of mobilized manpower in its armed forces in favor of the use of the most advanced and sophisticated weapons of total destruction in the modern military arsenal...

...then, the recent egregious display of Russo-Chinese divergencies...

...That truth is that he is...

...By David Nelson Rowe FALLACY OF THE SINO-SOVIET RIFT Study of Moscow-Peking divergencies reveals that they are part of Communist tactics A STANDARD dictionary definition of "rift" is: the condition of being split, divided or separated...

...Indeed, thus far in USSR-Chinese Communist relations there has never been any disagreement which even began to approach in intensity or DAVID NELSON ROWE, Professor of Political Science at Yale and specialist on Chinese affairs, is the author of Modern China...

...All of these ideas have been current in minority circles in this country for years, although their dissemination was temporarily inhibited by the Korean War...

...It is said that Mao is more warlike than Khrushchev, that he believes in the inevitability of war with us while Khrushchev fears a general war and believes that he can "bury" us without it...

...If the Communists are successful in convincing the West that there is a high degree of military disjunction between the USSR and China, this could quite literally free the Communist Chinese for military adventures in Southeast Asia, without the danger of a general conflagration involving both the U.S...

...But he can do this only if we are convinced in advance that the Russians are not standing directly behind him ready to pass along all the latest weapons...

...It has been apparent since before the end of World War II that the only possible source for the relatively rapid solution of these problems lay in the free world, where the needed capital for China's rapid industrialization could be found...

...Even those who assert most vigorously that Communist China's supposed power gives it ideological autonomy from the Soviet Union are not likely to deny that it is still militarily dependent upon the USSR...

...The simultaneous development of this type of military establishment and strategic emphasis, therefore, does not so much embody fundamental disagreement between these two allies as it does their strategically sound belief in a partnership of and between variegated and differentiated military establishments in different areas of the Communist world...

...Since Nehru could be counted upon to reject help from the West in repelling this aggression, there was very small danger that the United States would become involved...

...Since the United States is the most powerful nation of the free world, they hoth consider this country the chief obstacle to their aim...

...They are both still out to produce the tinal triumph of the world Communist revolution...

...Perhaps because it may convince many gullible persons that the actual Moscow-Peking military alliance is beginning to disintegrate...

...It is time we realized clearly that behind all the false statistics and all the false front of the so-called Great Leap Forward lie a hard body of unpleasant truths that cannot be wished away...

...Under these circumstances their massive manpower could have its maximum effect, both as a weapon of preliminary intimidation and blackmail, and as a decisive military weapon...

...The Communists do pick the nicest subjects to disagree on...

...The greatest results in social and political instability are just beginning to appear...

...No matter how the Communists deal with their own problems within the total political...

...Here we may begin to approach the kernel of truth to be found behind the false idea that he is genuinely afraid of the Chinese Communists...

...What advantage would this be to Khrushchev...

...Thus Mao believes he has to kill us, while Khrushchev feels the best thing to do is to bury us without killing us...

...In the light of everything known about both the Russian and the Chinese Communists, we would do well to treat with the greatest possible caution any suggestions for policy which are based on the supposition that current Sino-Russian divergencies can provide us with real or material advantages from a policymaking point of view...

...Khrushchev emphasizes and propagandizes disarmament for the free world, pleading his own quantitative reductions in manpower which cost him nothing in view of technological advances, because he is dealing with opponents who are most vulnerable to nuclear attack...