Moscow and Vietnam

...In the process of reducing the Communists' options, we have reduced our own options to the point of tying ourselves in knots...

...The new leadership, it turns out, has basically the same limited choices open to it as its predecessors...

...With the whole Soviet scene more fluid and "open-ended," Moscow's responses have now become even less predictable than they were a year ago...

...After the Bay of Pigs, Robert Kennedy was quoted as saying that the President had been told in advance that the chances of the operation's failure were only five per cent...

...It is a facile generalization to say that the show of force always produces Soviet moderation...

...There is still time to keep this two-camp theory, advanced in defense of a "forward policy," from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy...

...After Khrushchev's removal in mid-October 1964 the new Soviet leadership found itself without a clear-cut foreign policy...

...It is likely that not even the Soviet leaders can predict their own response...

...Vietnam may well have called for some sophisticated combination of the two, but-here the misleading analogies with the Cuban and other recent crises break down-perhaps including, besides a threat of force, a clear warning and an unmistakable "trip wire" whose crossing would predictably set off the actual use of force...

...It has, finally, done more to promote a sense of anti-American solidarity among Communists (and, regrettably, non-Communists as well) than any other recent event...

...Without access to classified information, and probably even with it, the prospects of Soviet involvement in Vietnam at a given moment are impossible to determine...

...If taken seriously, the implications of this message for the entire "coexistence" outlook are disastrous...

...As he was to argue a few years later, it was the fortunate circumstance that on both sides the "men of reason" exercised control—not the Gold-waters here and the Maos and Molotovs there—which made possible the admittedly slow, unsteady but perceptible progress toward the easing of tensions...

...To be sure, there remained considerable misgivings in Moscow about the larger vision which Khrushchev, on some occasions, was promoting with abandon: the view that the Soviet Union stood to gain from a series of further accords between Washington and Moscow which each could enter into in "good faith...

...American action in Vietnam has given the Communist advocates of a tougher course the biggest trump cards in the deck—bigger than they could have secured on their own...

...Even if this estimate had been correct, what he had not foreseen, the President's brother continued, was that if there were a failure, it was bound to be not a five per cent failure but a total, 100 per cent fiasco...

...What Vietnam has provided, in the internal Soviet debates over U.S...

...The philosophy of survival has replaced the revolutionary theories of Marxism-Leninism...

...How illusory, then-the Kremlin is bound to argue- was the Khrushchevian allegation that American policy is controlled by "sensible" men of moderation with whom one can deal and whom one can trust...

...In various ways Moscow has made clear its view that American policy has become profoundly hostile and provocative, willfully deceptive and double-dealing...

...Following the formal recognition, in 1956, that wars were no longer inevitable and, shortly afterward, the additional step acknowledging that the Soviet Union no longer found itself in a "capitalist encirclement," one more step remained to be taken as a theoretical prerequisite for a rapprochement with the United States: Soviet acknowledgment that the U.S...

...2) increase the risks of a Soviet-American showdown...

...The whole "Westward" movement in the Soviet outlook came to be symbolized by the belief in the possibility of such accords...

...It all comes down to our longrange estimate of the Soviet system and where it is headed...

...There is the alternative hypothesis that the United States has an interest in provoking the Soviet Union into intervening in Southeast Asia as a prerequisite for stabilizing the area by means of an American-Soviet understanding, which could presumably be reached far more easily than American accord with either Hanoi or Peking...

...No force-not even American power-can heal the deep wounds of conflict that divide the Communist camp...

...Only a few months ago did the Kremlin seem to emerge from its dilemmas...

...As the meaning of nuclear weapons sank in and as Khrushchev—for a variety of reasons—began to be attracted to the notion of a Soviet-American detente, the question of whether any arrangement with the "imperialists" was practicable for the USSR became crucial...

...If the effect of our posture in Vietnam-coupled with other "evidence" reinforcing this estimate-were to be a prolonged Soviet abandonment of, or detour from, the fundamentally "Westward" orientation of its evolution, this would indeed be too high a price to pay for all the paddies in Vietnam...

...As an editorial in the London Observer recently remarked, "Russia's obvious embarrassment at being threatened with the choice between siding with America (however clandestinely) and backing China (however reluctantly) is the most important single factor in the present situation...

...Others in Russia had their doubts and reservations, or else expected (much as their opposite numbers in the West) that time would tell how viable the new line would prove to be...

...By and large we have tended to underestimate the extent to which Soviet policy has been formulated in response to that of the outside world, rather than guided by its autonomous pseudo-scientific "compass" or a long-range time-table of take-over...

...There is no reason to doubt that Moscow indeed believes this to be so...

...policy has accomplished more in restoring some "unity of action" (albeit vocalized and transient) than anything or anyone else, Khrushchev and Mao included, could have...

...and even if it should ultimately prove to be correct, the damage wrought by staking so much on a fixed Soviet posture could still be extreme...

...and American behavior during the Cuban missile crisis served to remind Moscow that we would make others similarly respect our own legitimate strategic perimeter...

...Until our moves against North Vietnam there was a good chance that the Kremlin would, before long, take a decisive step by breaking with Peking, thereby ipso facto opening the door to further accommodations with the West...

...We have tended for the most part to underestimate the quandaries of Soviet leaders torn between conflicting views...

...Events here and there threatened to undercut this belief...

...de- Stalinization and the Cuban missile crisis...

...Given the deep-seated Bolshevik compulsion to re-establish the "unity of theory and practice," Khrushchev introduced a new (and most un-Marxian) dichotomy between "men of reason" and "madmen," some of whom were to be found in both camps...

...They are intent on demonstrating- to Communists and non- Communists alike-that they yield to no one in their commitment to help those struggling for "national liberation," unity, sovereignty, social justice, or other virtuous goals...

...Paradoxically, American policy seems to have banked on Moscow's "rationality"-based, in this instance, on the Kremlin's no doubt real desire not to become involved in Vietnam...

...Surely one cannot assume that in Moscow all pleas and pressures, blackmail and blandishments, appeals to prestige and proletarian solidarity will always be ignored and resisted...

...A policy which, for its success, depends on one specific response (or lack of response) on the part of Moscow should a priori invite grave misgivings...

...Alexander Dallin, Professor of International Relations at Columbia, is author of The Soviet Union and Disarmament, published this year...

...goals and intentions, is the evidence that the United States has taken the initiative (for so things are bound to look from Moscow) to extend the conflict and carry it- for the first time-into the territory of the Communist "commonwealth," of which North Vietnam is an integral part...

...Pressured by Hanoi, pilloried by Peking, closely watched and at times counseled by the other Communist parties and states, tempted by the non-Communist world, keenly aware of its domestic needs and predicaments, exposed to conflicting advice from different voices of uncertain authority, the new leadership is torn between different sets of values, different loyalties and role-images...

...Hans J. Morgenthau in a recent article in the New Republic has made a persuasive case for such a view...

...policy Moscow & Vietnam By Alexander Dallin A mid the welter of contradictory statements and commentaries on the crisis in Vietnam, there has been a remarkable lack of debate regarding its impact in Moscow...

...like Peking and Tirana, he has continued to speak of American imperialism and imperialists as a single phenomenon, immutably aggressive and menacing for the USSR, which had to be ready to strike back...

...By contrast, the peculiar application of direct action against North Vietnam marks a return to a political primitivism which seems to ignore all the insights gained in recent years into the nature of conflict and change in the non-Western world and within the Communist camp as well...

...It would be tragic if, at a time when Moscow gives some evidence of assimilating these lessons, we ourselves were to act as if there are no bounds to what the U.S...

...Western observers of all political persuasions have been wrong in predicting or interpreting Soviet developments too often to have their judgment trusted in so crucial a matter...

...The nature of Soviet weapons procurement and arms deployment, the tenor of Soviet political sallies and internal estimates all support such a view...

...and Great Britain, in the summer of 1963, the Soviet leaders had apparently come to believe that in the nuclear age a meaningful agreement with the major adversary was neither an exercise in futility nor an exposure of naivete nor a be-trayal of purpose...

...There had indeed grown up, in recent years, a substantial corpus of unwritten understandings between the two super-powers, uncoded ground rules of behavior in situations generating conflict, as well as tacit and informal exchanges of reciprocal gestures...

...But by the time Moscow had to choose between conciliating Peking and signing the Test-ban Treaty with the U.S...

...The Chinese correctly diagnosed some of the values shared by those whom Khrushchev labeled "men of reason...

...While the argument cannot be publicly aired in Moscow, except in the most esoteric and circuitous terms, the Chinese Communists and their friends have been free to state the case quite explicitly...

...It would be lunacy to force Russia into the latter course...

...This thesis has now been proved publicly and indisputably to be sheer nonsense...

...would so humiliate, provoke, or weaken the other side as to imperil the tacit strategic stand-off...

...and 3) bring Soviet presence and power into an area which has been more or less immune to it...

...What we are confronted with is a choice between evils of uncertain magnitude...

...In the post- Stalin period one of the central issues in the Kremlin's internal foreign- affairs discussions has been the extent to which the United States could be trusted...

...If there is a Communist master-plan of world conquest, and if we face a coherent Communist movement following a coherent strategy, then one can at least defend the plausibility of the demand that we stop "it" everywhere, in all its forms and expressions-including Vietnam...

...Soviet Russia is still the Number One challenge, the Number One power, and Number One potential adversary of the United States...

...Moscow continued to coast, minimizing moves and initiatives...

...Who then can make any firm predictions about the way the USSR will (or will not) react to our moves in Vietnam...

...foreign policy may well undo a large part of what has been accomplished in educating the Soviet leadership, over the past decade, to some of the hard realities of world affairs...

...Explicitly challenged by Peking, variously buttressed by official Soviet policy as, for example, in the defense of "personal summit diplomacy"—this belief found prominent Soviet dissenters too...

...Such a course would: 1) give the Soviet side credit for the victory — which would be firmly opposed precisely by those who would argue for such a "provocation...

...the Polish and Hungarian events of 1956 and the end of political terror after 1953...

...was not about to attack, invade, or subvert any part of the "Socialist camp...

...The Kremlin may reluctantly conclude that inaction—or token support— would exact too high a price in international prestige, in its standing within the Communist camp, and in its self-image as champion of the victims of "imperialist aggressiveness...

...By implication, then, each side seemed to agree not to use force to alter the status quo in the adversary's camp...

...imperialism' have been clamoring that the 'sensible group' as represented by Kennedy and Johnson should be distinguished from the 'warlike group' as represented by Goldwater and his like...

...Formulators of policy are obliged to consider what consequences might obtain if their underlying assumptions prove to have been wrong...

...The same would be true if our assumption of Soviet abstention were to prove wrong—and here the chances of error seem considerably higher than one in 20...

...It has also given new credibility to the Chinese contention about the illusory foolishness of "peacefully coexisting" with the United States, and to Peking's assertions about the only way to deal with American power...

...Still, it would be an understatement to suggest that, if the conflict continues (and especially if the iron logic of events leads the U.S...

...While in the case of Berlin or Cuba (or the off-shore islands) a firm stand led the other side to back away from its offensive initiatives, in other instances-President Kennedy's American University speech of June 10, 1963, for example-a relaxed and receptive Western posture provided the Kremlin with options which, it was correctly assumed, are of advantage to the West as well as to the Soviet people...

...can or must do-no limits to American power, presence, and potential for manipulating the globe...

...How then are we to proceed...

...to further "escalate" its military operations), there is a likelihood that Moscow will find it impossible to stay out...

...Yet the intense frustration endemic in Moscow is scarcely conducive to rational policy-determination...

...The results of these Soviet endeavors to date have been ambiguous, adding in turn to the mounting frustration in Moscow, which continues to be bombarded with appeals from all sides...

...We can, presumably, continue to do what we are doing because the other side will have the good sense not to strike back...

...But U.S...

...Moscow has once again been impaled on the horns of frustrating dilemmas...

...It is the application of American force against North Vietnam that increasingly deprives both Moscow and Hanoi of the options in their own policies-options which we had striven to enlarge-and thus leaves them no realistic or "honorable" choice but to pursue a "harder" line toward the U.S...

...Khrushchev's rise to power and his fall...

...There are certainly no simple and satisfactory solutions open to the West in Vietnam...

...But even if the Soviet Union does not get involved in the actual shooting and fighting—and even if, by some device, the conflict is terminated— the total impact of the Vietnam tangle on Moscow's thinking on international relations, on the balance of forces, and on U.S...

...Peking went on to detail and publicize its charges of alleged Soviet- American collusion, which meant to bar China (and other powers) from their "attempt to decide major problems of the world and to manipulate the destinies of mankind" by themselves...

...If, on the other hand, we conclude that there is a reasonable prospect of meaningful and benign changes in the Soviet system and in Soviet society, changes of a kind already visible and bound to alter Soviet priorities of objectives, Soviet perception of the outside world, and Soviet willingness to take risks or to make adjustments to "stubborn facts"-then it follows* that such changes may constitute Our best hope for a way out of the nuclear impasse and the seemingly insoluble conundrums of the cold war.: 'It follows, too, that it is in our own interest (as well as that of the1 Soviet Union) not to jeopardize this hopeful, albeit unsteady and at times intangible evolution...

...If—as one hopes—American policy in Vietnam is formulated with some awareness of Soviet attitudes, official Washington is apparently taking it for granted that the Soviet Union will stay out of the fighting.* This assumption is open to serious question...

...Moscow had surely read into American "restraint" during the crisis of October 1956 an acknowledgment that the U.S...

...His successors have tried hard (though without manifest success) to woo the recalcitrant and dissident "Marxist- Leninists"-including those in Hanoi...

...The Defense Minister, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, for one, never accepted the distinction between "men of reason" and "madmen...

...Against this background, the extension of American operations into North Vietnam—regardless of their debatable moral, political and military wisdom—could not have come at a worse time...

...In its efforts to promote greater political sophistication and maturity, the West has tried to bring Soviet leaders to look upon politics as the art of the possible, to accept the notion that there are limits to what can be done, and that one must learn to stomach failures as well as gains...

...True, this prospect was already lessened by the removal of Khrushchev (who might well have been prepared, in 1964- 65, to jettison North Vietnam in cavalier fashion rather than jeopardize his general line...

...While the occasional efforts to demonstrate the menace to American security which a Vietcong victory (or even a neutralization of the country) ostensibly represents are pathetic, it would be in conflict with our national interest to promote a retrogression in Soviet outlook and policy...

...the Sino- Soviet split and the effective autonomy of Rumania—none of these had been anticipated by Western policy-makers in projecting future Soviet moves...

...This new exploration of Soviet-American com-munities of interest no doubt looked doubly inviting to Khrushchev after his Cuban thrust had backfired shamefully—and looked so despite the increasingly vociferous Chinese denunciations of his "deals" with the "imperialist" foe...

...Thus, on April 2 an editorial in Akahata, the official Japanese Communist daily, lectured the "revisionists" on the lessons of Vietnam (and was promptly reprinted by Peking): "The advocates of the thesis of 'polarization of U.S...

...As of 1959 (and perhaps earlier) this, too, had become an operational axiom in Moscow...

...The United States, too, must give evidence of political maturity and recognize that in some situations it takes more courage not to act than to act...

...The political ineffectiveness of the American raids appears to have silenced those who earlier predicted that they would force the Vietcong or the North Vietnamese to "submit...

...As Liu Shao-ch'i disparagingly put it in 1963: according to their opportunist view, "to survive is everything...

...There was every indication that a good deal of fluidity and uncertainty remained, with the "harder" elements in Moscow somewhat more strongly represented than before, but without any firm commitment to a new harder line, and with the new masters keenly anticipating such lessons as their imminent experiences with the outside world would bear...

...We must try to keep our eyes on all the balls in the air, at a time when the multiplicity of trajectories seems to have unnerved some Washington observers and prompted them to homogenize our variegated universe by public-relations devices into a Stalinesque model of "goodies" and "baddies...

...would not try forcibly to detach Hungary from the Soviet sphere...

...It would be foolish to assume that today this reasoning finds no support within the leadership in Moscow, too...

...One of the most important of these unspoken accords was precisely the Soviet assumption that, as a matter of self-interest, neither the USSR nor the U.S...

...Now there is no simple formula that would permit one to tell when a big stick and when speaking softly-or both-will be more effective in dealing with the USSR...

...If we assume that nothing in Communism has changed or is likely to change, or that no changes will significantly moderate Soviet objectives, cool revolutionary militancy, dissolve underlying Communist loyalties, or help remove the basic causes of inevitable world conflict-then indeed Moscow's internal doubts and debates can be dismissed as tedious and ultimately irrelevant...