FOREIGN FOCUS
The other border
CRABRO
During the past week the eyes of most of us who have taken time off from bucket and spade to scan the newspapers or the television screen have been focused on a frontier near home. But on another frontier, on the other side of the world, there is a dispute which has led one of the parties to speak of nuclear retaliation, which it has ample resources to apply, while the other talks of defending its territory with a million 'pioneers'. In our natural preoccupa- tion with Ulster. have we been inclined to overlook an imminent threat of massive nuclear conflict?
For more than ten years now the Peking Government has been trying to consoli- date its enormous land frontiers. It has succeeded in coming to peaceful boundary settlements with five of its neighbours: Burma, Mongolia, Pakistan. Afghanistan and Nepal. Only two parts of the frontier are still in dispute—those with India and Russia. In 1962 the Chinese, after an ex- change of almost 400 diplomatic notes with Delhi. apparently lost patience, and appro- priated by force the border areas to which they felt themselves entitled, in Ladakh th the north of Kashmir, and in the North East Frontier Agency (NEra) region, giving the Indians a nasty fright in the process.
The dispute with Russia is. ostensibly, a narrow one. The Chinese say that they are prepared to accept the 5.000 mile long frontier as it was defined between the Chinese and the Russian Empire in the treaty of 1861. They wish the Russians in return to acknowledge that this Ifelity was
what they call an 'unequal treaty' to which Chinese acquiescence was extracted by force majeure at a time of weakness; and— what is the nub of the matter—that the Russians should negotiate on 'necessary adjustments in individual places' where, according to them, the Russians have en- croached well beyond the frontiers defined in the 'unequal treaty.' The Russians say they cannot acknowledge the 'inequality' of the treaties concluded by the Tsarist regime, and insist that any negotiation must be limited to adjustments along 'individual stretches of the frontier, which they would apparently define in advance.
But this is only the occasion of the con- flict. The causes concern both the relation- ship between Mao's Communist party and that of the Soviet Union, right back to the time of Stalin's attempt to disown it, and also no doubt the fears of Russia's ram- shackle leadership over a neighbour that seems certain in a few years to assemble a powerful nuclear arsenal. They are at once ideological and military.
The Russians have an uphill task in convincing the watching world that the vision of Chinese bottoms bared towards the slogans of Leninism across the Ussuri river constitutes a threat to world peace. Yet no-one can accuse them of not pulling out all the stops. They have persisted, not- withstanding frequent rebuffs, in attempts to secure the formal excommunication of China from the communist Church. They have instructed their ambassadors in western capitals to appeal for support and understanding in their righteous stand against Chinese aggression.
It might be argued that the Russians have the experience of India to tell them what happens to countries which frustrate China's territorial ambitions, and therefore have reason to take precautions. But the Indian precedent does not stand up. In Ladakh and the NEFA in 1962 China enjoyed crushing military superiority on the ground, whereas in Sinkiang and on the Amur and Ussuri rivers the reverse is true. Indeed what evidence there is suggests that the Russians have gone to considerable lengths to strengthen their existing superiority on their eastern Siberian frontier in conven- tional weapons and in the air. And not- withstanding their aggressive language and a chaotic internal situation the Chinese have shown themselves remarkably reluctant to engage in aggressive actions beyond their own territory since 1962.
Two other possible explanations of Rus- sian conduct suggest themselves. One is that the Russian military hierarchy may find it convenient to whip up anxieties about the yellow peril at a time when the political bosses are showing great interest in nego- tiations with America on the limitation of new weapons systems. The other is that the Russians are really concerned, not about the situation today, but rather about the situation as it could evolve in the 1970s.
By the mid-1970s, it is suggested, the Chinese will be facing intolerable popula- tion pressures, and will be tempted to ex- ploit the possession of strategic nuclear weapons to recover the territories in eastern Siberia extracted from them by the 'unequal treaties' of the nineteenth-century. Therefore it behoves the Soviet Union, in self-defence, to use what may well be its evanescent military superiority on a pre- emptive strike now. Last week's incident on the Sinkiang frontier would fit in with this pattern. Logically this seems a most im- probable area for Chinese aggression the incident is much more likely to have been a warning blow by the Russians.
The motto of the present leadership in the Kremlin could fairly be summed up as 'what I have I hold.' Its conduct in Czecho- slovakia showed that it will readily sacrifice its ability to win friends and influence people beyond its own immediate sphere of influence rather than surrender an inch of the territory inherited from the years of Stalinist expansion. It is entirely in char- acter, therefore, for it to react with exag- gerated fury to any threat, however marginal, to the integrity of its empire. But Mr. Brezhnev and his colleagues have also shown themselves not much less cautious than the Chinese about foreign adventures. They acted in the end in Czechoslovakia, but only after weeks of well-publicised dithering. Moreover they seem to be well aware of the disciplines of the nuclear age which were so forcibly brought home to Mr Khrushchev at the time of the Cuban crisis.
But while the brandishing of nuclear weapons against the Chinese can be safely discounted, the possibility of a preventive conventional strike against the Chinese nuclear establishment at Lop Nor in Sinki- ang is a different matter, although even this would be an uncharacteristically determined step for the Brezhnev team. The most likely future course of events on the Sino-Soviet frontier seems, therefore, to be one of continuing clashes for which the responsi- bility will be difficult to establish, but to which the Russians will respond with, in- creasing severity.
There is in fact a striking analogy wit' the Arab-Israel conflict. Here, too the very existence of one party to the dispute is standing affront to the other. Here, also one side enjoys such a commanding military superiority over the other that the right! and wrongs of the dispute are a matter ol academic importance. And for the sant reason talk of the threat to world peace can be safely dismissed. The Chinese are no more capable of carrying through a major act of aggression against the Sovie Union that the Arabs are of carryini through a major act of aggression agains! Israel; and equally the Russians have no more need than the Israelis to resort to nuclear weapons to defend themselves Finally, the Americans are no more likely to come to the assistance of the Chinese however roughly they may be treated by the Russians, than the Russian; are to intervene directly on behalf of the Arabs.
Hence our natural inclination to treal the Sino-Soviet frontier dispute as a remote and somewhat unreal affair must be the right one. On balance the Chinese are pro bably justified in regarding thernsehes the injured party, and the Russian appeal for international endorsement of their conduct can be treated with the contempt they deserve But the Chinese are in no military condition to obtain redress of their grievances, and if the Russians resort to large-scale conventional retaliation, nobody is likely to come to Peking's assistance. So back to Ulster.
Previous page
