Towards a new balance of power

FOREIGN POLICY TIBOR SZAMUELY

Richard Milhous Nixon is now the thirty- seventh President of the United States. Perhaps more to the point, he is the sixth President of the United States to have to conduct a foreign policy. The first thirty-one Chief Executives had been largely free of this encumbrance : with the single, and fairly calamitous, exception of Woodrow Wilson, they neither needed nor desired a foreign policy. Latin America did not count; since the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine it had been regarded as the United States' backyard, where, in the vivid expression of Secretary of State Olney, the us 'fiat' was law. For one and a half centuries the United States, the first modern 'new' nation, contracted out of world politics. Richard Milhous Nixon is now the thirty- seventh President of the United States. Perhaps more to the point, he is the sixth President of the United States to have to conduct a foreign policy. The first thirty-one Chief Executives had been largely free of this encumbrance : with the single, and fairly calamitous, exception of Woodrow Wilson, they neither needed nor desired a foreign policy. Latin America did not count; since the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine it had been regarded as the United States' backyard, where, in the vivid expression of Secretary of State Olney, the us 'fiat' was law. For one and a half centuries the United States, the first modern 'new' nation, contracted out of world politics.

For a young and weak state, cut off from Europe by the Atlantic, and about to embark on the colonisation of a vast continent, this was the obvious policy to pursue. That it became an immensely successful policy was due primarily to the Royal Navy's domination of the seas. Yet generations of Americans grew up not understanding that their country's fortunate iso- lation was an objective matter of geography plus power politics. Instead, they learned to regard it as a matter of subjective preference; this encouraged a sense both of omnipotence and of peculiar moral superiority—of American actions being governed by a different set of standards from those of other nations.

Then, suddenly; in the few years between Pearl Harbor and the end of the Second World War, the whole system upon which the us world-outlook had been based col- lapsed. Never before had there been a diplo- matic revolution of such magnitude : practically overnight, a country which had never had any real foreign policy became the most powerful nation on earth, the leader of the Free World, one of the only two remaining super-powers.

A quarter of a century has passed since America took up the burden of world leader- ship. Her outstanding positive successes— the salvation of Western Europe from chaos and communism, the stemming of open com- munist aggression in Asia—were achieved during the first six years of the Truman admini- stration. Since then one can hardly speak of the existence of a coherent American foreign policy, in the sense of a deliberate, thought-out course of governmental action, based on a set of consistent principles and designed to achieve certain specific aims. What we have had during eight Republican and then eight Democratic years was a series of spasmodic responses to communist actions and to situations not of America's making. The central weakness of American foreign policy since 1953 has been not so much even its loss of the initiative as the lack of any consistent design or plan or even original idea. Dulles spoke of 'roll-back' and Kennedy proclaimed a 'Grand Design.' Who remembers these now?

President Nixon, like President Truman, comes to the White House at a moment of great change in world politics. Whateyer else the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia may have achieved, it has certainly shown up the hollow- ness of 'peaceful co-existence' and of the misbegotten notion of a 'détente' between the us and the USSR. The Soviet government has demonstrated, more clearly than at any time since 1953, its utter unaccountability and un- trustworthiness. The Soviet Union is as great a menace to the peace and freedom of the world today, as it was under Stalin : greater, if anything, because of its enhanced military power and its infinitely less secure leadership.

Any statesman who wishes to negotiate with the Russians must remember that the present Soviet government has—for the first time since the USSR entered into diplomatic relations with foreign countries—officially declared itself to be free of any bounds or restraints set by inter- national law. In the words of a famous Pravda article of last September, 'Those who speak about the "illegality" of the actions of the allied socialist countries in Czechoslovakia forget that in a class society there is not and cannot be non-class law. Laws and legal norms are sub- ordinated to the laws of class struggle, to the laws of social development.' This has been pub- licly endorsed by Mr Brezhnev himself.

Czechoslovakia has also meant the final collapse of the policy of containment, the single original idea cast up by American diplomacy since the war. Basically, it meant stopping further Russian territorial encroachment in. Europe beyond the Yalta line, and then patiently waiting for the 'inevitable' mellowing of the communist system to lead to the gradual disintegration of the Soviet empire and to the retirement of Russian troops from Eastern Europe. Instead, a generation later, we have had the installation of Soviet forces in a country where they had never previously been stationed, and the proclamation of the so-called 'Brezhnev doctrine.' Ditente' today implies no more and no less than the full acceptance of the Soviet right to everything they hold in perpetuity.

This general debacle of American foreign policy and of all the assumptions upon which it was based coincides with the advent of a new administration. Mr Nixon arrives un- encumbered by either past failures or future obligations, free to devise new policies and seek new openings. But the us can discover an effective foreign policy only if it tackles the real reason which prevented it from having developed one in the past: its abrupt transi- tion from a country without any foreign policy into a super-power. America had by- passed the stage of power politics, the in- tricate practice of which had been developed and perfected with consummate skill for many centuries by every other modern great power.

The very concept of power politics has been profoundly alien to the United States—an object of dire suspicion and dislike. In an earlier era the conduct of power politics was thought to be demeaning to a free new nation, con- ceived in liberty etc; more recently it has been spurned as beneath the dignity of the Leader of the Free World. The us world-outlook has always consisted of two basic strains. One is. the illusion of omnipotence, of 'Manifest Destiny,' of Henry Luce's 'American Century.' The other- is the legalistic-moralistic' approach to world affairs : 'open diplomacy' exorcising the demon of power politics; the establishment of 'demo- cratic' international organisations for the solu- tion of every problem by means of traditional American debating and voting procedures; the. formulation of precise moral principles as absolute standards for judging the righteousness of other countries' policies.

The belief in American omnipotence has died in Vietnam; the dream of a world organisation founded upon reason and sustained by the 'public opinion of enlightened mankind' has turned into the nightmare farce of the UN. It is time to return to first principles.

In recent years the us military establishment has been rethinking its strategic ideas. Con- ventional methods of warfare are coming back into favour. The new administration's foreign policy makers would do well to follow this example. The United States should return to the principles of conventional diplomacy—yes, of `power politics.' There is no other way out of the present impasse.

The most important, most enduring and probably most beneficial principle of 'power politics'-has been that of the Balance of Power: a pattern of relations among states directed at limiting and thwarting. the ambitions of the most powerful and dynamic national units by means of an international equilibrium • based • upon a system of shifting alliances. Or, even more simply, any one state was ;to be prevented from becoming strong enough to impose its will upon others.

The Balance of Power has been the basic principle of international relations ever since 'world-empires' were superseded, or challenged, by nation-states. From the Renaissance on- wards it was esteemed as a law of nature. It was frequently challenged, by advocates alike of Universal Empire or Universal Ideology, but somehow it always managed to re-emerge. And though, like any other human institution, the Balance of Power was an imperfect instrument, on the whole it worked. As Mr A. J. F. Taylor remarks: 'Europe has known almost as much peace as war; and it has owed these periods of peace to the Balance of Power.'

The essence of the Balance of Power concept, and the reason for its success throughout the centuries, has been its totally non-ideological nature. No nation has had a more successful record in applying the precepts of the Balance of Power than, Great Britain. Its main principle was formulated by Sir Eyre Crowe in his famous memorandum of 1 January 1907: 'It has become almost a historical truism to identify England's secular policy with the maintenance of this balance by throwing her weight now in this scale and now in that, but ever on the side opposed to the political dic- tatorship of the strongest single state or group at a given time.'

No room here for ideology : at various times, for instance, when the Balance of Power was threatened, Britain entered—equally. cheerfully —into alliances with a slave-holding Russia against a revolutionary France, with a semi- autocratic Russia against Imperial Germany, with a Bolshevik Russia against Nazi Ger- many. And each time, although the alliances were made primarily in the name of national self-interest, they served the common good of Europe and the world.. The 1914-18 War dealt a mortal blow to the Balance of Power. Not because it had failed: it was never presented as a foolproof system for preserving the peace. But public opinion, sickened by the horrors of the war, sought a culprit. The Balance of Power, based as it was not upon 'justice' but upon 'expediencY' and 'force,' was indicted for having caused the war. Especially by the United States: if there was anything American statesmen had always abhorred, it was this immoral sys- tem, run by a few European great powers

in their own selfish national interests. Away with it, cried Woodrow Wilson—let us have instead a high-minded international peace-

keeping organisation in which every nation, great or small, could have an equal voice. Meekly, even guiltily, European politicians fell into step.

Twenty years later the world was at war aeain. And once again, when it ended, America looked to her traditional solution: a new

peace-keeping organisation—the UN. But with this, too, a broken reed, what is there left to serve as a basis for stability? The 'balance of terror'? Effective, as far as it goes—but much too dangerous and inflexible an instrument for doing anything short of preventing the tokal destruction of our planet. The 'balance of terror' is unfitted to cope with the increasingly chaotic situation in many parts of the world: the Middle Eastern crisis and the Russian breakthrough into the Mediterranean; the Vietnam war and the uncertain future of South- East Asia; the unrest in Russia's East European empire, particularly Czechoslovakia; the Russian menace to Ruinania and. Yugoslavia.

Softie statesmen, particularly in the two super-powers, had hoped that the bipolar divi- sion of the world might come to represent a new Balance of Power, and, with it, a new stability. They were wrong: bipolarism has resulted, not in balance, but at best in dead- lock, stalemate, impasse. Balance of Power is the opposite of stagnation: it implies the ex- istence of more than two centres of power— and therefore the possibility of movement, manoeuvre, flexibility. But to be effective the balance must be world-wide: this is why re- peated American attempts, over the past ten to fifteen years, to set up 'local balances of power,' chiefly through hastily constructed regional defence pacts, have ended in failure. The Balance of Power is a policy for Great Powers; small nations, especially the weak and unstable states which emerged after 1945, can serve at best as weights in a balance operated by others. At worst they can—and do—create a mess.

Today the bipolar world is breaking up; the two super-powers are stronger than ever be- fore—but the 'balance of terror' looks less and less credible. Political instability, with all its accompanying dangers, is spreading fast. With every post-war 'peace-keeping' device futile and discredited, the only hope of stop- ping the rot is by creating some new variation of the-old Balance of Power system.

Fortunately, at the present moment there does exist a very real- opportunity for breaking the twenty-year-old deadlock and for estab- lishing a worldwide 'Balance of Power—a bal- ance favourable to the us and the western alliance. It is presented - by the Sino-Soviet conflict, probably the most momentous event of the second half of our century. The two largest countries in the world are divided by a 7,000-mile-long - border - and by an un- bridgeable,- indissoluble hatred. .This feeling has reached,• on both sides, a pitch of intensity surpassing anything ever experienced between Russia and the West. It is a compound of ideo- logy, nationalism, fear, racial hatred, contempt, folk memory, historical grievances. It repre- sents the gravest challenge that the USSR has e‘er had to meet.

Here, then, we have the makings of a classical Balance of Power situation. The us faces two enemies, who are in turn rent by an even more

serious quarrel of their own. One of them is immensely powerful, nearly as strong as the us itself, and poses a constant threat to the heart of the western alliance. The other, although potentially strong, is still undeveloped, and pre- sents no real threat to the West. Every elemen- tary rule of power politics should indicate a rapprochement, even an entente between the us and enemy 'number tivo, that is China, against enemy number one—the USSR. For a historical analogy one need look no further than the Entente Cordiale of 1904, or Churchill's calls for a Soviet alliance in the 1930s. But no--incredible as it may sound, ever since they became convinced some years ago of the authenticity of the Sino-Soviet split, the us policy-makers have repeatedly entertained the idea of making common cause with Russia against China—even to the extent of jointly 'taking out' China's nuclear capability.

Take, for example, the 1965 hearings on the Sino-Soviet conflict before the House Foreign

Affairs Subcommittee on the Far East and the Pacific. Professor Kennan argued against trying to benefit from the internecine com- munist struggle. In his view the us should further improve its relations with Russia in order to help Russia towards 'the preservation of an effective balance between the Chinese and ourselves' (the idea that it might be even more advantageous for America to effect a balance between Russia and China never even arose). Professor Brzezinski, the eminent Sovietologist, thought that 'the Sino-Soviet dispute . . . is pushing the Soviet leaders into a more moderate, although still hostile, attitude toward the West; and it is prompting a gradual "Europeanisation" of Russia. Russia is increasingly identifying itself with Europe and is beginning to view China as a major national threat.' So—get even closer to Russia.

There is no rational explanation for such attitudes. Indeed, American attitudes are grounded in the hysteria engendered by the Chinese communist victory of 1949, the sudden breaking-off of America's old involvement with China, and the Korean War. It is a harsh legacy—but surely with the passage of time it has become possible to overcome it?

After all, the basic facts are irrefutable.

China, unlike Russia, was not expansionist in the past and has not pursued expansionist policies under her communist rulers. Soviet Russia has swallowed three independent Euro- pean states and seized large chunks of five others; she occupies four European countries, one Asian country, and half of Germany— yet China's borders are the same as they were twenty, fifty or a hundred years ago, and not a single Chinese soldier is stationed outside his country. Europe, the historic target of Russian

aggression, is vital to the West: it is the West. South-East Asia, hard as this may sound, is peripheral to us interests. Besides, there is no evidence that China wants to 'seize' South- East Asia.

The American case for Chinese expansionism is based on four specific instances, none of which really stands up to close scrutiny.

1. Korea. It is by now well-established that China was not even privy to the Soviet-North Korean plan for aggression against the South. China intervened only after issuing repeated warnings, when she had reason to believe that MacArthur intended to cross the Yalu.

2. Tibet. Although China's treatment of the Tibetan people has been atrocious, her legal title to Tibet is at least as strong as that of Russia to the Ukraine, and much stronger than Russia's right to hold Georgia.

3. India. The rights and wrongs of the Sino- Indian border dispute are debatable, to say the least. The fact remains that at the very moment when Russia brought the world to the brink of war over Cuba, the Chinese conducted a strictly limited military campaign against India. Having won it, they returned of their own ac- cord to the Indian version of the frontier.

4. Vietnam. Here, obviously, it is hardest of all to establish the facts. But I think it would be fair to say that (a) no Chinese soldiers have ever been spotted in Vietnam; (b) Russia's sup- port for the Vietcong has been far greater in every respect than China's; and (c) the prolonga- tion of the war is much more advantageous to Russia than to China.

America's extraordinary fixation on China as enemy number one, apart from the shocks of 1949-50, has also had a lot to do with the strange moralistic practice of judging govern- ments by their words rather than their deeds. And the Chinese leaders' violent words have certainly weighed very heavily in the balance. But a closer glance at American policy in 1949 might be rewarding. In his Letter of Trans- mittal accompanying the White Paper on `us Relations with China,' Secretary of State Acheson wrote on- 30 July, 1949: 'In the im- mediate future the implementation of our his- toric policy of friendship for China must be profoundly affected by current developments. It will necessarily be influenced by the degree to which the Chinese people come to recognise that the communist regime serves not their in- terests but those of Soviet Russia and the manner in which, having become aware of the facts, they react to this foreign domination.'

In other words, the touchstone would be whether the Chinese communist regime proved itself independent of Moscow or not. After the Chinese intervention in Korea the us decided that Mao's government was 'a colonial Russian government—a Slavic Manchukuo on a larger scale. It is not the government of China. It does not pass the first test. It is not Chinese.'

Whatever its justification at the time, the

statement has clearly been proved wrong. Mao's government is nothing if not Chinese. So far from being a 'colonial Russian govern- ment,' it is probably the most anti-Russian regime that China has known in modern times.

The time has come for the us to seek an accommodation with China—an accommoda- tion desirably leading to friendship and col- laboration. There is no need to repeat the mis- take committed so often with regard to the USSR: the Chinese communists should not be depicted as democrats or liberalisers or secret believers in the virtues of private enterprise. They should be accepted for what they are: nationalistic communists, bitterly hostile to Russia. Despite the profound differences in ideology, there is an overriding common in- terest: to make the world, the West as well as the East, safe from Russian imperialist expan- sion. The establishment of this new Balance of Power would, for one thing, transform the whole situation in Eastern Europe—it might even induce the Russians to disgorge some of their spoils. At the very least, such a policy would open up new possibilities for the West— for the first time in twenty years.

Many hurdles would have to be cleared be- fore a rapprochement with China became feas- ible—notably the question of Formosa: it is clear that Peking could never agree to the con- cept of 'two Chinas.' Yet Peking has shown enough flexibility in its treatment of former high Kuomintang dignitaries for hope that the issue could be settled without a sell-out.

But is there any chance of China agreeing to take part in such a rapprochement? Twelve months, even six months, ago the answer would probably have been negative. Immersed in the frenzy of the 'Great Cultural Revolu- tion,' Mao's government patently gloried in its complete isolation from the impure world. Today this attitude has perceptibly changed. The shock of Czechoslovakia has had a more sobering effect upon the Chinese than on many western governments. They make no secret of their genuine apprehension that the Russian leaders, in their present mood and backed up by their new-found' nterventionist doctrine, are perfectly capable of embarking upon a military invasion of China. In recent weeks there have been frequent references to the possibility that the Soviet oligarchs may 'dare invade Albania and China.' And, although still fulminating against 'American imperialism,' the chief target of Chinese propaganda is now unmistakably the USSR. Compared to the ferocity of the anti-Russian invective the attacks on America seem positively mild. Take, for instance, this recent declaration by the Chinese Chief of General Staff: 'The Soviet revisionist renegade clique is a bunch of social-imperialists and social-fascists. It is the new tsar riding rough- shod over the Soviet people and the people of the East European countries.'

The Chinese leaders, it seems, have been making even more pointed hints in private. A few weeks ago Foreign Minister Chen Yi re- portedly told a European ambassador: The Americans are bastards, but honest bastards. The Russians are liars and traitors.' This, I believe, is the Chinese position in a nutshell.

Twenty years ago a great debate broke out in the United States on the subject of 'Who lost China?' The young Senator Nixon was an active participant in that debate. Today.Presi- dent Nixon has the opportunity to 'win' China back—on terms acceptable to both sides, and in the interests of the United States and the western world.