Containing Communism: East and West

THE October, 1962, Cuban missile crisis was the great watershed for American foreign policy. The United States demonstrated decisive strategic superiority in second-strike missile deterrents and also local conventional superiority. Above all, we conveyed the clear determination to use them if need be. Since then our military lead over Moscow has grown larger. Rather than trying to close this gap, the new Soviet leadership seems to have intensified Khrushchev’s post-1962 shift from heavy industry to consumer goods. The whole post-Stalin Soviet shift at home from terror to incentives and the emphasis on preventing thermonuclear war require at least atmospheric détente with the West.

Moreover, American strategic superiority, the Sino-Soviet split, and the reassertion of Eastern European nationalism confront Brezhnev and Kosygin with far more serious problems of imperial readjustment than Stalin’s successors faced. Our alliance problems fade into relative insignificance when compared with their dilemma: the longer Moscow tries unsuccessfully to excommunicate China in order to contain Mao’s rising influence, the more Russia’s allies, notably Rumania and Cuba, can assert against Soviet wishes their increased autonomy (given them by Moscow lest they support Peiping), and therefore the fewer reliable allies Moscow has to contain Peiping.

Moscow’s strategic pause is also prolonged by the Chinese challenge to Russian territorial integrity and national interests and to Soviet hegemony in the international Communist movement. The SinoSoviet split thus works in our favor, except in areas where neither Moscow nor Peiping can pre-empt major influence, such as Africa (most recently, in the Congo), where the Chinese drive makes Moscow more aggressive.

Our foreign policy toward the Soviet Union should have three major objectives: 1) preventing thermonuclear war by 2) containing Soviet power within its present limits, a policy which, as Professor Richard Lowenthal wrote in these pages last month, “has proved its worth,” and thus 3) gradually replacing the U.S.S.R.’s present nationalistic and ideological expansionism by moderation and protection of its true national interests.

Our major current policy problems with the Soviet Union are the control of nuclear weapons, Germany, and Cuba. The first is the most general, and potentially, although not immediately, the most important. General and complete disarmament is unlikely in the near future. As long as the Soviets remain expansionist, we must maintain decisive strategic superiority over them. Also, since agreements with Moscow are unreliable if there is no provision for inspection, we must not give up onground inspection as a prerequisite. Soviet authoritarianism and strategic inferiority compel them to secrecy. Even so, peripheral arms-control measures remain desirable, if only to make miscalculated or accidental thermonuclear war less likely and to consolidate détente — which, among other things, is a precondition for liberalization in the Communist world. The partial-test-ban treaty, signed in August, 1963, not only furthered these aims but also greatly intensified Sino-Soviet hostility, since it proved to Peiping that Moscow preferred détente with Washington to support of China against the United States.

GERMANY AND REUNIFICATION

No crisis in Berlin is now in sight, but only because we succeeded in the Cuban missile crisis. The best way to prevent another Berlin crisis is adamantly to maintain our rights in the city by resisting, as we have been doing, Communist efforts to whittle at them.

For us, the German question is whether West German military and industrial power will remain in the Western alliance, or whether it will join France in trying to remove American influence from Europe, or be neutralized, or, at worst, fall under Soviet influence. The German question also involves NATO’s main current problem: nuclear targeting and sharing. The discrepancy between Western European economic and military power is so great, France’s nuclear ambitions probably so persistent, and Germany’s willingness to remain deprived of any access to atomic weapons probably so limited in time that we cannot reasonably expect NATO to continue effectively without some nuclear-sharing plan.

It is entirely possible that by imaginative expansion of our allies’ role in the planning for the use of nuclear weapons, West Germany’s willingness to forgo a national nuclear deterrent can be kept alive. If the Soviets oppose such sharing, they arc disingenuous or hypocritical, for it is a far better thing for them than an independent West German nuclear potential. Since NATO remains necessary to contain potential Soviet expansionism, and thereby to work toward its gradual erosion, we must move toward meeting European, and specifically German, desires for nuclear sharing in targeting and weapons in such form and at such speed as the Europeans propose and as will keep Germany and Great Britain, and, if possible, France, reasonably satisfied.

American troops in Germany not only contain Soviet expansionism but also prevent any potential German unilateral moves, an unlikely but possible contingency. Disengagement in Central Europe therefore remains, for now, contrary to our interests, as it is to the genuinely defensive interests of the Soviet Union.

Moscow and Paris know that the German problem involves German reunification, and that this in turn is inextricably tied up with developments in Eastern Europe. The most significant new political fact in West Germany today is the great rise in popular commitment to reunification. This has been caused by the growth of German economic and conventional military power, and, in the younger generation, where it centers, by lack of guilt feelings for Nazi crimes, search for an idealistic goal beyond their material affluence, and hope that the recent changes in Eastern Europe will make reunification possible.

No Russian government, Soviet or other, will ever really want the reunification of Germany except under Russian control. It can therefore occur only if Moscow reluctantly accepts it as a lesser evil than continuing Central European instability. Moscow will not accept reunification without at least two major preconditions: first, the guarantee by the West (primarily the United States) of the present Polish-German and Czechoslovak-German frontiers; second, a similar guarantee that what is now East Germany will not become a military base against the Soviet Union, but that rather, through regional arms control in Central Europe, Soviet security will profit. This in itself would require that the evolution in Eastern Europe toward national independence and liberalization produce a kind of stability that would eliminate East Germany as a necessary strategic and ideological outpost of the U.S.S.R.

Thus independence and liberalization for the countries of Eastern Europe and the guarantee of their boundaries with Germany are prerequisites for German reunification. The Soviet Union cannot stabilize its position in East Germany. We cannot stabilize our position in West Germany and Europe if we accept the division of Germany. Given the rise in sentiment in West Germany for reunification, we must be credibly committed to it. We must also be committed to the changes in Eastern Europe and the boundary guarantees set forth above. The last is perhaps the easiest. The French and British have already publicly supported the present PolishGerman boundary, and we should move toward doing the same, thereby depriving the Warsaw Communist leadership of its principal source of popular support — fear of Germany — and thereby influencing it toward more concessions to its people.

In Eastern Europe we have the opportunity to intensify our policy of peaceful engagement — what President Johnson calls bridge-building—primarily in trade and cultural exchange. We should vary our policy toward individual countries, first, according to their degree of independence from the Soviet Union, and second, according to their internal liberalization. We must also make clear that we are not striving to produce in Eastern Europe states which would be allied with us or with NATO, or even neutral states, like Austria. Our objective should be states whose foreign policies, like Finland’s, take legitimate Soviet security interests into account.

Finally, our policy toward East Germany must be decisively different from our policy toward the rest of Eastern Europe. First, we wish Moscow to loosen its grip on East Germany rather than fruitlessly hoping to stabilize and hold it. Second, no East German Communist leader can last long without strong propping from Moscow; Communism deprived of Soviet support would be overthrown because such “national Communism” requires a nation, and East Germany cannot become one. Third, since East Germany is of vital interest to our West German ally, we must not take a more favorable posture toward East Berlin than Bonn does (all the more so now, when Ulbricht has outplayed Erhard in Cairo).

Bonn’s policy is to isolate East Germany; ours must be the same. Only in this way may we hope eventually to persuade Moscow to exchange an isolated, unstable satellite for a modus vivendi with Europe and with us.

As Dr. Halperin points out in this issue, in Latin America we can profit by aiding the moderate nationalists (like the followers of Betancourt of Venezuela and Frei in Chile) through the Alliance for Progress; we can render harmless the extreme nationalists (Castro and his supporters) by demonstrating, as President Kennedy did in 1962, that they cannot expect Soviet military aid because Moscow dares not give it. We demonstrated in 1962 that we will not allow, and will if necessary prevent, by a naval blockade backed up by our superior strategic deterrent, a Soviet attempt to establish a military capability in this hemisphere.

Castro is no real threat to the United States now. He is, in fact, a kind of hostage which we could use against the Soviets as the Soviets have thought of using West Berlin against us. It must be clear to Soviet analysts, especially after their misreading of American determination in the cases of Korea and of Cuba, that we could use even stronger medicine against threatened Soviet military intervention in Vietnam or direct military expansion elsewhere. It is within the theoretical power of the U.S. military establishment not only to bar Soviet access to this hemisphere but, should the Russians retaliate, to deny their vessels access to Murmansk, Vladivostok, the Danish Straits, and the Dardanelles. Soviet planners must contemplate this.

UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS

After we foiled the Kremlin’s 1960 attempt to gain predominant influence in the Congo, Moscow was until recently relatively quiet in the Afro-Asian area. But new Soviet opportunities in the Congo, plus Chinese competition there and elsewhere, have reawakened Soviet ambitions. We must not allow Moscow to enjoy détente with us and simultaneously support national liberation struggles. Were it not for Soviet and Chinese intervention, we might well leave Africa and Asia to their own devices. But we still must attempt to contain Soviet and Chinese expansionism; the strategic and economic prizes that could fall to the Communists in the underdeveloped world deny us the luxury of indifference. We must do what we sensibly can to prevent Sovietor Chinese-armed rebellions from capturing major countries in “the third world.”

Our problems in Africa are particularly serious for two reasons. First, the South African white redoubt is so strong and the black Africans so weak that only outside help can overcome South Africa, and only Moscow (or perhaps Peiping) can and may give this help. Second, the resultant conflict would be racial war at its worst, and this would inevitably nourish our racial problems at home. We cannot proclaim integration at home and support white supremacy in South Africa. We must therefore find ways to re-establish good relations with moderate African nationalists. We should try, for example, to disengage from our unholy alliance in the Congo with South African white mercenaries. We must also add deeds to our words against Portuguese, South African, and Southern Rhodesian white domination, which cannot last, in any case, for these whites are on the losing end of history. Specifically, we should begin to discourage American investments in the white supremacy countries of Africa.

Support of the United Nations remains in our interest, because the UN can limit some local wars, and thus aids containment of Moscow and Peiping; for the same reasons, Moscow obstructs the UN and Peiping tries to destroy it. No longer, though, can we rely on a safe majority in the General Assembly. It is in our interest, then, to abandon our recent insistence on compulsory assessments for UN peacekeeping expeditions. Those that are in our interest are worth our contributions. Those that are not in our interest — and we are approaching a time when an unfriendly majority can vote them into existence — we should not arbitrarily be required to pay for. We may not like the principle in the abstract, but in practical terms we can be no more willing in the future than are the Communists now to tie our interests to a hostile majority of the 115 United Nations countries.

CHINA

How dangerous to us is China, and how may we best deal with it? We fought World War II in part to prevent a hostile major Asian power, Japan, from conquering East Asia and threatening us in the western Pacific. We fought a limited war in Korea to prevent a similar threat. We are now confronted with another such challenge, this time by a China with an immense land army and the beginnings of an atomic capability which may eventually threaten our physical security.

Unlike imperial Japan, Communist China is socially revolutionary as well as anticolonialist, and its ambitions, although also centered in East Asia, are worldwide in scope. China centers its worldwide revolutionary drive in the nonwhite underdeveloped regions, but its propagandists are even at work to exploit its racist appeal within our own country, among the American Negroes. (The underdeveloped world is not alone a threat to us, because it is too weak; but if China should capture it, and also bring Japan into its orbit, our peril would be great.)

Mao’s determination to displace Moscow at the head of a purified international Communist movement has been most successful in East Asia. The 1962 Chinese victory over India scared much of the rest of Southeast Asia into neutrality or a proChinese position. Sukarno is increasingly allied with Peiping. India is weak and divided.

Long-range Chinese goals begin with expansion to the previous limits of imperial Chinese influence, including Southeast Asia, the Soviet maritime provinces, and Taiwan. These aims make China hostile to Russia and, unless we turn Taiwan and Southeast Asia over to them, to us. Chinese pressure now centers in South Vietnam and Laos, but China’s revolutionary activity is not limited to East Asia. Peiping supports its Adriatic ally, Albania, the first East Asian foothold in Europe since the Mongols. It is splitting Communist parties throughout the world, including North and South America, where the Chinese support Fidelista activity against the pro-Soviet Latin-American Communist parties. In Africa the Chinese give radical anti-Western elements money, arms, and training. China everywhere preaches and acts on Mao’s doctrine that the United States cannot win in guerrilla warfare and will eventually have to abandon it.

Our strategic choice, therefore, is between two alternatives. The first is to contain China within its present limits of geographic influence, in order, through prolonged frustration, so to moderate its geographic ambitions and its atomic threat that we may eventually achieve with China something like our partial precarious modus vivendi with the Soviet Union. The second is to abandon, as gradually and with as much face-saving as possible, Southeast Asia and Taiwan but continue to defend India and Japan by our sea and air power. Immediately, this means that we would leave Saigon.

South Vietnam is far away; the war there is dirty and bloody, and Americans have a deep revulsion, confirmed in the war with the Japanese in the Pacific and with the Chinese in Korea, against fighting fanatical troops in Asian jungle wars. Furthermore, the argument for abandonment goes, there is no viable anti-Communist, to say nothing of a democratic, government in South Vietnam; the Vietnamese are weary of the war, and its extension would only bring in millions of Chinese troops. Let us, therefore, leave Vietnam, and fight, if we must, where there are strong popular governments on our side — in Thailand, Malaysia, or even India or Japan.

Those who advocate the second alternative miss the main point: the nature and extent of Chinese ambitions. As Roderick MacFarquhar wrote in these pages last month, China’s rulers are totally hostile to the United States. Such men’s appetites, history teaches, are whetted by victory, never satiated by their foes’ concessions. Furthermore, the longer we wait effectively to contain them, the closer they come to effective atomic delivery capability. Today Mao and his associates are very confident. They beat us, they think, in the Korean War. They faced down the worst the Russians could do to them and still gained influence every year. They humiliatingly defeated India. They are the first Asian, colored, revolutionary power to explode an atom bomb. Their influence in Africa is rising rapidly. Finally, we have been steadily losing and they have been gaining in South Vietnam. If they will not stop now, why should they stop if and when we leave Saigon? And why should anyone believe we would keep pledges to other Asian countries after we break them with Saigon? Thus everywhere time works for China and against us: the sooner we decide on containment, therefore, the better.

In Vietnam, as toward China altogether, we can expect little help from our allies. Britain is fully occupied in Malaysia, whose enemy, Indonesia, is moving closer to Peiping. France, convinced we will leave Saigon, favors neutralization — that is, saving as much face as possible while adjusting to Chinese victory. Germany and Japan are inactive. India, still suffering from the shock of the Chinese Himalayan victory, needs our aid. Whatever we decide needs to be done in East Asia, we must do ourselves.

As for the Soviets in East Asia, the Sino-Soviet split has greatly reduced Soviet power and influence there. In areas where it cannot bring military power directly to bear, Moscow will therefore probably offer little more than verbal protests to American containment of Chinese expansionism, so long as we do not attempt to invade and occupy either North Vietnam or China.

South Vietnam is far from the most favorable terrain on which to contain China, but the alternatives — the loss of Southeast Asia to China, the encirclement of India, the threat even to Japan: in short, Asia’s adjustment to our withdrawal and Chinese advance — would all be worse. Therefore, to hold South Vietnam is our most important present priority in containing China. Can we? And how?

Our objective should clearly be limited to holding South Vietnam and ending the guerrilla warfare there —specifically, to return to the 1959 status quo, before Viet Cong guerrilla action became extensive; it should not include the overthrow of the North Vietnamese regime. We need not, and should not attempt to, achieve that. In South Vietnam the cards are still stacked against us. and our position there may well continue to worsen. We must intensify our efforts all the more. Furthermore, instability in Saigon is best remedied by demonstrated firmness on our part.

Peace in Korea on the basis of the status quo ante, let us remember, came from the credible American threat to Peiping that we would otherwise begin air strikes on Manchuria. The war in South Vietnam is different, but the principle is the same: we must borrow strength from our opponents’ weakness — North Vietnam’s vulnerability to air and sea attack. Furthermore, Ho Chi Minh, although under predominant Chinese influence, hardly wants to fall under total Chinese domination, which would be inevitable if he had to call in major Chinese forces to defend him and if our bombing destroyed the industrial capacity he has with such difficulty built up. Our leverage on North Vietnam is considerable, but only if our intentions as well as our capabilities are made clear to Hanoi.

Opponents of escalation reply that even if Hanoi wanted to, it probably could not stop the Viet Cong; most of the rebels’ supplies come from South Vietnam itself. This is true, and Viet Cong troops are mostly nationalist and social revolutionary rather than Communist; but it is far more important, as the overwhelming weight of expert opinion holds, that the Viet Cong are directed from and controlled by Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh called off the guerrilla war once, after the French left in 1954; he began it again in 1959; if he wishes, he can call it off again.

And what, opponents of escalation ask, of Chinese intervention? In the first place, Chinese policy is not high risk but low risk. As analysis of captured Chinese military documents has shown, Peiping is quite aware of the threat of American conventional and thermonuclear capacity, the more so since it can no longer depend on Soviet aid against us, and it has no intention of engaging us in these fields. Moreover, its advocacy and support of guerrilla warfare, in South Vietnam and elsewhere, are based on its assessment that we cannot win such a war and will withdraw rather than escalate it.

Moscow seems to believe, on the other hand, in the reality of our determination to escalate, and therefore believes the guerrilla warfare is too risky. It is of the utmost importance for us not only to prove the Chinese wrong, and thus to contain them, but also to prove Moscow right, lest the Russians also renew their broad-scale support of guerri11a struggles.

Our best course in Vietnam is neither negotiation (which now, since Hanoi is winning, could mean only defeat) nor all-out attack; it is, rather, careful, graduated conversations and escalation. This seems to be the choice President Johnson has made. At each stage, we should privately convey to Hanoi, Peiping, and Moscow our goals and our methods. We should make clear to Hanoi and Peiping that we can and will continue to escalate, unless and until they are prepared to go back to the 1959 status quo, to the gradual destruction of North Vietnamese ports and then of industrial installations. More may be necessary — Chinese intervention would force us to consider extending our air strikes first to South China and then to their atomic potential; this possibility should be made clear to Red Chinese leaders. We should emphasize to the Russians our self-imposed limitation on our objectives and also make clear that while we want détente with them, as we hope eventually to obtain it with China, any substantial military intervention by them will risk the use of our ability to blockade not only Cuba but the Dardanelles and the Baltic Sea as well.

China’s drive for power centers in the colored underdeveloped world. Peiping has especially great hopes in Africa and is investing much effort there. We must therefore move rapidly and intelligently to prevent the racist Chinese, as well as the Russians, from fishing too successfully in these waters.

This may seem a tough and dangerous policy. It is. But Demosthenes vainly warned the Athenians about Philip of Macedon, “if any man supposes this to be peace, which will enable Philip to master all else and attack you last, he is a madman.” Appeasement now will mean not lasting peace but major war later.