M and K
DRESUMABLY with the idea of preserving r Western unity and strengthening Western resolution, there has long been a tendency to
accept unquestioningly the argument that though Russia and China may have their little local difficulties, Communism is inherently monolithic, and in the long run the two powers will stick together. As Desmond Donnelly argues in his article this week, this belief is historically false. The surprise is, in fact, that the two should ever have come so close as at one time, in the mid- Fifties, they appeared to do.
That they came together at all, in fact, was largely an accident; Mr. K and Mr. M happened to be moving, temporarily, in the same direction. But in Mao's case, the trend towards flexibility and liberalism was soon reversed; and almost every move China has made since the season of the Hundred Flowers ended has been in direc- tions calculated to irritate Mr. Khrushchev. There was the flirting with war over Formosa, and there was the conduct of the Chinese in Tibet. Not that Mr. K cared what happens to the wretched Tibetans, but up to that point he had been wooing India with some success: the moment the Chinese soldiers appeared in the Himalaya passes, all his hard work was undone, The fact that both leaders are, or believe they are, orthodox Marxists increases the chances of friction. The history of the Churches, and of all other bodies where a fanatical devotion exists to the beliefs of the founder, is that there are no mutual hatreds so corrosive as those which arise between two rival groups each of which claims to be the true descendants of the prophet. And in; this case, for Mr. K. it is not simply .a matter of persuading the faithful at home that his ortho- doxy is the right one: he has also to worry about the impact of Mao on Communists the world over. Can they be kept obedient to their direc- tives from the Kremlin if a pretender appears, with apparently convincing evidence that he is the real descendant—and on top of this offering to prove it by threatening a much more vigorous war on capitalism and all its works?
What has been causing Mr. K most con- cern, probably, is the way the Chinese have begun assiduously to undermine the confidence of the satellites in Russian leadership. In par- ticular, they have been going out of their way to be friendly to the East German Communists; and the East Germans have taken the oppor- tunity to enjoy Mao's favour, •and to accept his invitations to stay at a time when Russian technicians are being impolitely shown the door. The East Germans have waited too long for Mr. K to conclude a separate treaty with them: what better pressure can they exercise on him, they feel, than by showing that they are really inde- pendent of Russian goodwill,- having fqund another protector? True, China is a long way off: but Mr. Khrushchev, they guess, will not dare to take punitive action for their disloyalty —it would expose more decisively than ever the hollowness of his pretence that the satellite governments reflect their citizens' desires.
The assumption must be that these discords will remain and increase—even if, for the sake of appearances, Mao and Khrushchev patch up some kind of an agreement. The West will then have an opportunity it has not had for a long time—so long that we have probably almost forgotten how to use it. There will be no need for appeasement; it will be the Russians, in due course, who will be in the mood to make conces- sions. There can-be no question of trusting them, in the sense of accepting terms which depend on their word or their goodwill; but there may soon be opportunities to exploit their fear of the East, and if they arise they should be grate- fully taken.
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