Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR KATANGA Having examined my "motives," as Philip Kay suggests in your "Dear Editor" column of October 1, 1962, I still do not agree with his conclusions about the relevance of...
...Is every ethnic group to have its right of self-determination...
...The Non-Nuclear Club has a very decided advantage in present-day diplomacy...
...Kristol qualifies his statement to some extent by saying that he does not mean to suggest that we have a sacred mission to export democracy to Cuba or elsewhere...
...Did Philip Kay ever ask himself why Tshombe never asked for an impartial plebiscite...
...after secession-was seriously concerned lest a plebiscite be held over the question of secession...
...Thus we must intervene in the affairs of other nations not because they are run by Communists, but because they are outposts of the international Communist conspiracy...
...Herbert F. Weiss INTERVENTION IN CUBA Irving Kristors article, "The Case for Intervention in Cuba" (NL, October 15) is an effective and lucid presentation of the basic position...
...New York City H. DeVries...
...A number of nations have already joined, and more are considering it...
...Others say that an arms race will lead us to destruction...
...Some suggest that a strong military force will discourage attack...
...Since "inspection rights" offer safety to wide areas of a nation, it is within a nation's own interest to declare non-essential areas as disarmed and open to inspection...
...Distasteful as these regimes are, and much as we would prefer that they be democracies instead, we still must recognize them (as we already are doing), and maybe even help them economically (as we are also doing...
...The elimination of Juan Per??n did not eliminate Peronism in Argentina...
...Furthermore, it is a fact that the highest Belgian representative in Katanga in the summer of 1960-i.e...
...Cambridge, Mass...
...At best, it offers a method of gradual disarmament free from the paralyzing grip of disagreement...
...At the same time that our scientists are making more destructive weapons, they are also perfecting the means of pin-pointing their delivery...
...In fact, outside efforts to dictate the internal political structure of another nation have very often had an opposite effect (as in the case of Per??n on one occasion...
...The situation may be different when we extend foreign aid, however, for economic reforms may be needed to achieve the purposes for which such aid is given...
...At the very least, this third choice offers survival for a large chunk of the human race...
...This means increasing safety for non-combatant nations in case of war...
...But his own Lunda tribesman are in the minority in Katanga...
...In doing so we are not telling other peoples what form of government or what social system they should have, but we are preventing them from someday telling us what our social and political structure should be...
...But he qualifies his qualification by adding that any great power has the obligation, or is constrained by necessity, to see to it-so far as its power allows, and the dictates of prudence permit-that its smaller neighbors have stable governments which live up to their responsibilities, recognize certain minimum human decencies and honor their treaty commitments...
...He is probably as legitimate a leader of his own ethnic group as are other leaders in the Congo...
...But Trujillo was not trying to subvert other nations...
...Both are objectionable to us...
...DEAR EDITOR KATANGA Having examined my "motives," as Philip Kay suggests in your "Dear Editor" column of October 1, 1962, I still do not agree with his conclusions about the relevance of "the right of self determination" as applied to Katanga...
...And let us not equate the two or consider intervention in their affairs of equal importance to our own fate and future...
...In time, the very momentum developed by non-nuclear zones will inevitably protect greater segments of the world's population against war...
...Our recent difficulties at ironing out agreements at the conference table should thus make us more receptive to a peace plan that by-passes argument...
...In fact, the Katanga government answers Kay better than I can...
...I do not see the validity of the comparison...
...At the 1961 session of the UN, the Swedish representative recommended a Non-Nuclear Club to be composed of those nations which would voluntarily agree neither to make nor stockpile nuclear weapons...
...It would have been a clever move, and Tshombe has not exactly been an inept politician...
...In the White Book of the Katanga government on outlaw activities in some Baluba areas, it states: "Where would one end, if each of the hundreds of tribes inhabiting the former Belgian Congo wanted to erect itself as [an] Independent State...
...We cannot go around the world determining the kind of governments other peoples are to have, and it would avail us little to attempt it...
...If those countries now dominated by the Communists had freely chosen Communist regimes, we would have to consider that their business...
...He treated his people badly, but no worse than some of the regimes we have put up in business elsewhere and which, for some unknown reason, are always referred to as part of the free world...
...This development can also help deal with the big obstacle of "inspection" in disarmament plans...
...But since these regimes are all part of an international Communist conspiracy which is not content with ruling the countries it already dominates, but wants to subvert all other countries in order to make them part of the Communist empire, we have an obligation to resist, even at the risk of war, unless we would rather be Red than dead...
...Our conflict with the Communists is not based on the fact that they have imposed police states and denied elementary human rights to the peoples they have enslaved...
...He felt that it would require a few months before a result favorable to Tshombe could be "organized...
...Tshombe certainly did not grant it to Katanga's Baluba...
...If we must deal with dictatorships, as apparently we must, let us not treat with contempt those which are not threatening to destroy us while giving aid and comfort to those which are dedicated to our destruction...
...Since joining insures the member nations against attack, there is no need for any treaty or negotiation...
...Dictatorships can be imposed, democracy cannot...
...And if, after having been subjugated by the Communists, they tolerate such regimes, and will take no measures of their own to overthrow them, there is nothing we can do about it...
...He proceeds, by inference at least, to equate the Dominican Republic of yesterday with the Cuba of today...
...Fortunately, we now have a third choice available...
...There is, however, one argument of Kristol's which-while not vital to the issues itself-has some relevance to the broader aspects of the cold war struggle in which we are engaged, and is, I believe, subject to some qualification...
...Eventually, it may even be possible for our little human race to achieve true peace on earth...
...It is that in Cuba we are faced "with the same kind of challenge that the Trujillo dictatorship presented to us," and that in both cases our problem is "how to persuade a petty tyrant to ameliorate the abuse of his power-or, failing that, how to get rid of his regime altogether...
...Washington, D. C. Marx Lewis PEACE AND WAR Everybody wants peace, but there is a good deal of difference on how to go about it...
...While other points that would support his conclusion might be made, and some of the points he made might be elaborated upon, he has stated enough to make the case for intervention irrefutable...
...In my article ("The Tshombe Riddle," NL, September 17), I never suggested that the only basis of Tshombe's strength was white or European support...
...Not only did the Katangans (including Moise Tshombe) agree to the March 1960 Round Table resolutions, which laid the foundation for a single Congo nation, but in the May 1960 elections the plurality of Katangans voted for Tshombe's opposition, which firmly supports a single nation...
...There is, however, a greater hope inherent in the idea of a Non-Nuclear Club of nations: the possibility of declaring great areas, even within nuclear nations, disarmed, which can save many millions of lives in case of an accidental or purposeful war...
...In this light, I believe that a distinction ought to be drawn between the Castro regime and the Trujillo regime, to take one example of many that could be cited...
Vol. 45 • October 1962 • No. 22
