NIXON’S VISIT: EACTION IN MOSCOW
From DAVID BONAVIA, PRESIDENT Nixon’s announcement that he is to visit China is something the Soviet Government has been apprehensive of for several years, and its suddenness will turn the apprehension into controlled indignation.
As far as is known, the possibility of a visit by Mr. Nixon to the Soviet Union has never been seriously discussed since he became President. The signs are that the Soviet leaders strongly distrust him personally, and this latest development will tend to strengthen their animosity.
As long as two years ago, a study of American-Chinese relations was published here, which predicted that the United States would move towards detente with Peking through secret diplomacy, as long as China continued to be hostile to the Soviet Union.
UNPARDONABLE MEDDLING
Moscow regards American overtures to China as unpardonable meddling, because it still officially considers China to be a socialist country, although one which has gravely erred. Peking’s new friendliness towards the United States will be represented as a clear betayal of everything the “socialist camp” stands for.
The fact that Peking may not be aiming at a relationship with the United States any closer than the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union is totally disregarded in Soviet propaganda. There is one rule for the Soviet Union, and another for China.
The Russians will make great play with the idea that the Chinese are betaying the Vietnames Communists, in particular, by inviting an American President to China while American soldiers are still on Vietnames soil. And they will taunt the Chinese with reminders of the pledge to “liberate” Formosa and support North Korea in its drive for reunification.
The Soviet Union will point to the Chinese-American thaw as proof of Chinese “hypocrisy: in supporting extremist revolutionary movements in South-East Asia and Latin America,
It will plant lurid pictures of the glee of the American “monopolies” at the prospect of access to the world’s biggest population group as a commercial market (regardless of the fact that the Soviet Union has recently signed a protocol with an American firm, providing for studies in a project to build the world’s biggest lorry factory in Russia).
OPPORTUNITY MISSED
The Russians still seem far from blaming themselves for their failure to preserve the alliance with China-an alliance whose destruction will be finally symbolized by the Nixon visit. In the Peking talks which began nearly two years ago after the fighting on the Chinese border, the Russians had an opportunity to offer China concessions and put their relations on a better basis.
But they missed the chance through rigidity, lack of imagination and sympathy for Chinese sensitivities, and above all the determination that Moscow should again be recognized as the unchallenged leader of the Communist world.
By force of necessity, the Russians have become accustomed to living with China as a difficult neighbour. They have thought long and hard about the implications of better Chinese-American relations, but they have not come up with any reassuring answers.
While they profess to believe that China’s anti-Soviet stance is simply one of those twists and turns which are characteristic of the revolutionary path, and that “true socialism” will win out in China in the end, they have not been ash enough to set any deadlines.
They refuse to contemplate the outcome that would seem most likely to Western observers; that China will successfully develop its own brand of socialism, yet still manage to establish friendly relations with the capitalist wold and remain way of Russia. By Soviet definition. China cannot be “truly socialist” unless she acts in complete concert with the Soviet Union-a piece of arrogance which has cost Moscow dearly.
In essence the Russian understanding of the strategic situation seems to be this; China is not in herself a really serious threat to Soviet security, because even her leaders are not keen to risk annihilation, and they cannot close the arms gap. Nor will American friendship with China drastically alter the strategic balance of nuclear weapons and means of delivery.
The tragic thing for Russia is not what China will be in the future, but what she might have been if the split had not been allowed to get out of hand.
ADVANTAGES LOST
A pro-Soviet China would have been Russia’s main supplier of meat and consumer goods, a bottomless market for surplus Soviet technology and industrial plants, an inexhaustible infantry reserve in case of war, a naval base dominating South-East Asia and the pacific, and a proof to Asia and Africa that Moscow is the true friend of non-white peoples.
If all this is not lost to Russia for ever, at least the way in which is might be returned to her is impossible to see at present. The Russians can only whistle in the dark and hope that the Americans will be true to their own tradition of misunderstanding China.–From The Times, London.
Reference: Hindustan Standard 22.07.1971