WAR IN KOREA-1
Stalin's Sideshow
By PETER FLEMING
/N the map-room somewhere underneath the Kremlin (for I am sure that there is such a place, and almost equally sure, from my experience of domestic economy in Russia, that the air-conditioning arrangements are always breaking down) the pins with red heads, which only the other day clustered in a compact and menacing array round their blue or black or green opponents on the tip of the Korean peninsula, are now climbing untidily up the map. Every morning they are a little further from the floor, a little nearer to the ceiling. What goes on in the minds of the august personages who, looking in on their way to a conference, observe this process ? How do the Russian leaders evaluate the outcome of an adventure which they underwrote ?
The first thing they do, at a guess, is to congratulate themselves— or, to be technically accurate, Comrade Stalin—on the prudent economy with which Russia has conducted her part of the affair. It is true that a good deal of the arms and equipment with which she provided the North Koreans is now unlikely to be paid for ; but that is a small matter to her, and at least the weapons— unlike those supplied by America to the Chinese Nationalists—were put to the use for which they were intended. Russia's war-effort in Korea has not, unlike the exertions of her enemies, imposed any strain on her economy or called for sacrifices by her population. No Russian lives have been lost. A ruler less sagacious than Comrade Stalin might have acceded, when the Imperialists were threatened by disaster, to the North Koreans' repeated requests for support by the Soviet Air Force ; and potentially embarrassing treaty arrangements might have been entered into with the Korean People's Republic, which is, in fact, the only satellite not formally linked to the U.S.S.R. by some form of alliance.
But none of these solecisms was committed ; Russia's Korean policy was forged in a spirit of Marxist-Leninist objectivity. It must, of course, seem regrettable that the North Koreans are being defeated, but no Russian hostages to fortune are endangered in the process, there are no chestnuts for her to pull out of this brisk conflagration which she almost certainly helped to kindle and quite certainly stoked with munitions and moral support. There is nobody to rescue, nobody (even) to disown. Success has not crowned the cause which Russia championed ; but she championed it so cheaply that she can view its failure with a measure of detachment, if not with complacency, especially when she compares her own small, sly outlay with the price the Imperialists have had to pay for victory. As for the North Koreans, Communist comradeship has no room for the bourgeois, feudal conceptions of chivalry or sentiment ; the North Koreans mean no more to the Kremlin than any of the other guinea-pigs in the laboratory of world-revolution.
In the sphere of international relations the three months' campaign might—even though it culminated in the defeat of the North Koreans—have produced indirect benefits for Russia. The preci- pitate lead which America gave to the United Nations could easily have led to something less than the unanimity which in fact was strikingly shown. There was—on paper, at any rate—a chance that the Chinese might have committed themselves to the conflict ; and on paper they should have complicated matters by at least making a demonstration against Hongkong. But none of these things hap- pened. The West stood up boldly and successfully to aggression, and the Russians—who took so few risks themselves—may well be impressed by the size of those which America was prepared to accept. The Kremlin can, it is true, find a certain amount of comfort in the reflection that the victors will be left with major political and economic problems to clear up in Korea ; but this must be to a certain extent offset by the knowledge that, for some years at any rate, she will have to put up with United Nations forces (in practice mostly American) being stationed on the Asiatic main- land in close proximity to Vladivostok. Nor, however callously Russia contemplates the fate of the North Koreans, can she view with unruffled equanimity the total destruction of a tough and well. trained army which she had trained, equipped and indoctrinated. She can hardly feel that events in Korea have increased her prestige, and their pattern may well have put into the minds of some of her tougher satellites, like Finland and Poland, thoughts that may one day prove dangerous to Russian interests.
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In purely military terms the. Korean balance-sheet may seem to the more realistic Russian leaders to leave them in the red. Korea caused an immense and costly diversion of strength by Russia's principal enemy ; but there is no particular point in causing a diversion of military strength unless you are in a position to take a military advantage of the resultant weakness ; and Comrade Stalin was not, it seems, in such a position. The campaign began dis- astrously for the Americans, and no doubt the Kremlin was jubilant as the red pins hopped swiftly down the map towards the floor. But an army learns more from a few weeks of defeat in the field than it does from five years of training at home ; and the Russians— remembering, perhaps, how they profited from the Finnish fiascoes of 1940—must realise that America today is worth much more as a military power than she was three months ago. Moreover, not only America but all her associates have been startled by the Korean developments into rearming on a considerable scale ; and whether (which I doubt) Russia contemplates one day ,waging a war of aggression, or whether she is genuinely the victim of neurotic and congenital fears about being attacked herself, she cannot congratu- late herself on the military by-products of her escapade in Korea.
They can, of course, argue in the Kremlin that to oblige the democracies to rearm is the best way to sabotage their economies; but they appear already convinced that these economies are headed for self-destruction, and I doubt if they find much solace in this rather specious line of thought. A slightly more promising (but still to my mind academic) approach is to reason that Russia emerges—or can be made to appear to emerge—from the Korean war as the champion of peace. It was not Russian bombers which gutted the cities of North Korea ; none of the pins on anybody's war-map represents a formation of the -Red Army. In the turgid realm of propaganda this humbug is undoubtedly worth something ; but though the Russians did not invest much in Korea, they took certain risks, entertained certain ambitions. It is going a bit far to suppose that they are content with such a measly little dividend as this.
If they hoped to impress on the world, and especially on Asia, the fact that it pays to have them on your side, they have not done well. For all her ready apprehension of spiritual values, for all her under-currents of mysticism, Asia has a deep and healthy respect for a display of brute strength. For racial reasons it is probable that most Asiatics would rather have liked to see the Americans driven out of Korea ; but that did not happen, and in assessing what did happen Asia (and for that matter the world) can hardly help contrasting unfavourably—even if only in purely materialistic terms—the conduct of the Russians with the conduct of the Americans. The Americans, with their British and other Allies, crossed half the world to right a wrong on behalf of the United Nations ; the Russians, though they had powerful forces close at hand, contented themselves with abusing the Americans and praising the North Koreans, and when it came to the point did nothing to oppose the former or to save the latter from defeat.
It is in such over-simplified terms as these that the outcome of the conflict in (and behind) Korea will present itself to many millions of people. They are, I suspect, the sort of terms in which Stalin himself is apt to think: (Once, warned by a foreign Ambassador that his attitude over something was giving great offence to the Vatican, he asked: " How many divisions has the Pope got ? How much responsibility he bears for the outbreak of what started as a civil war nobody knows, nor what he hoped to get out of it. But I should be surprised if, when he pauses in the doorway of the map-room and sees the pins with red heads climbing back up the wall, the expression on those admired Caucasian features reflects a deep, inner satisfaction.
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