WAS THE COLD WAR INEVITABLE ? D. F. FLEMING* that the Cold War was bound inevitable expression of the grasping nature of both communism and the Soviet Union. This basic assumption has been the stuff of their lives, so long that any other explanation of the great conflict which has absorbed half a trillion dollars of their wealth would seem strange. Already, too, the interplay of action and reaction, of force and counterforce, has created a kind of cyclonic whirl in people’s minds which obscures the origins of the conflict, and even much of its course. In any powerideological conflict the only thing which matters after it gets going is how can we win it ? Yet the power conflict which we call the Cold War has to be examined, even while it proceeds, because it was, and is, one power fight too many. It could be begun easily, as in all past ages, but it cannot be carried through as formerly without destroying both sides, and much MosT of the

West

to

was an

people in the happen. They believe it

assume

-

more.

It is essential then to try to understand how this great struggle began and developed, in order to find ways to end it before it is too late. This involve an attempt to set down the main events of the Cold War in the order in which they occurred. One cannot evaluate that conflict understandingly unless the time sequences are kept in mind. What came first ? What was action and what the reaction ? A later event is not necessarily caused by an earlier one, but an earlier act could not have been caused by a later development. Doubtless each student of the Cold War would make a chronology a little different from any other. Following are the events which the writer believes outline the waxing and waning of the Cold War. -

*

Dr. Fleming is Research Professor of International Relations at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A. He was Visiting Professor at the Indian School of International Studies, 19~-60. His two-volume study of The Cold War and Its Origins is due for publication late in 1960 both in London and in New York. Parts of this article are taken from the book manuscript. .

25

26 A

CHRONOLOGY

SEPTEMBER

5 DECEMBER 1941

4.

THE

COLD

WAR

East Europe achieved by Hitler at Munich. 4 FEBRUARY 1942 - State Department decisions not to

I938 - Control of

I. 2.

3.

OF

TO

make any wartime agreements about Russia’s western boundaries. APRIL 1942 TO JUNE 1944 -The second front postponed. Peripheral war conducted in Africa and Italy. Churchill and Stalin agreed on spheres of influence in the 9 OCTOBER 1944 Balkans : Greece to Britain; Bulgaria and Rumania to Russia ; Hungary and -

Yugoslavia 5.

5 0-5 0. 3 DECEMBER 1944

in 6.

TO

I

JANUARY

I94f - The British crushed the Greek leftists

heavy fighting.

24 DECEMBER 1944 TO 14 MAY 1945

- Bulgarian

purge trials executed 2,000

rightists and imprisoned 7. 8.

3,000. FEBRUARY I94.5

Soviet armies occupied East Europe. 29 MARCH 1944 To FEBRUARY I94.f - The Yalta Conference conceded friendly governments in East Europe to Russia, but with free elections and a reorganization of the Polish

government. 9. 10. I I.

-

z

6 MARCH 1945 Russia imposed a communist-led coalition in Rumania. MARCH I94.f -Friction with Russia over German surrender negotiations in Italy. 12 APRIL I945 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death, four months after Cordell Hull’s -

-

resignation. 12.

23 APRIL I94.5 - Truman’s White House lecture to Molotov

on

the Polish

government. 13. 14. 13.

16.

1 7-2 j JULY I94.5 in East Europe. 6 AUGUST I ~q.5

-

The Potsdam Conference failed to alter Russian arrangements

The first American A-bomb upset the expected world strategic balance. 18 AUGUST I 94j - Beginning of the Byrnes-Bevin diplomatic drive to force free elections in East Europe. SEPTEMBER 1945 - First Council of Foreign Ministers deadlocked over East -

Europe. 17. 18.

19.

1946 - Churchill’s Fulton speech demanded an Anglo-American preponderance of power against Russia, with reference to East Europe. APRIL 1946 Russian troops forced from Iran through the United Nations. AUGUST 1946 - Soviet demands upon Turkey for the return of two provinces 5 MARCH

-

and for 20.

21.

22.

23.

base in the Straits. DECEMBER JULY 1946 Peace treaties for Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Finland hammered out. The Republicans won control of the Congress, aided by NOVEMBER 1946 of charges widespread communist infiltration in the United States. General relaxation and expectation of peace. LATE DECEMBER 1946 I i MARCH 1947 - The Truman Doctrine, calling for the containment of the Soviet Union and communism. a

TO

-

-

-

27 24.

23 MARCH 1947 - Truman’s order

government 25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 3 2. 3 3 ·

34. 3 S

·

36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. ,

42.

43.

providing for

·

46. 47.

48. 49. 5 0.

loyalty investigation of

all

employees.

MARCH TO AUGUST 1947 -The freely elected Smallholder’s Party government of Hungary disintegrated by communist pressure. The Marshall Plan announced. Rejected by Russia, 2 August 1947. 5 JUNE 1947 NOVEMBER 1947 The Cominform organized, uniting all the principal communist of parties Europe, including those of France and Italy. 22 JANUARY 1948 A plan for a Western Union in Europe announced by Bevin. 2 FEBRUARY 1948 - A communist coup seized control of Czechoslovakia. Western Union treaty signed. Devil theory address by President 2 j 5 MARCH 1948 Truman. 28 JUNE 1948 - Yugoslavia expelled by the Cominform. Received help from the West. JUNE 1948 TO MAY 1949 The Berlin blockade. MARCH TO AUGUST 1949 - The signing and ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty creating NATO. The first Soviet A-bomb hung the threat of total destruction 23 SEPTEMBER 1949 o ver West Europe. 1 FEBRUARY I 9 j o Drive for the H-bomb announced by Truman. 16 MARCH I950 - Acheson explained the policy of no AND 9 FEBRUARY, 9 with the Russians until strength had been accumulated. negotiation OCTOBER 1948 To JANUARY I950 - The Chinese Nationalist armies captured or destroyed by the communists. FEBRUARY TO MAY 195° The first explosion of McCarthyism. The outbreak of the Korean war. 25 JUNE 1930 12 SEPTEMBER I 9 S O The United States demanded the rearmament of Germany and began a vast rearmament. OCTOBER I950 - Having liberated South Korea, we decided to conquer the North Korean Republic. FEBRUARY I 9 j 2 Acheson’s Lisbon NATO arms goals overstrained our allies. MAY To NOVEMBER 1952 - Our allies escaped from control during the long American election campaign. NOVEMBER 1932 The first American H-bomb exploded, on the ground. 6 MARCH 1933 3 - The death of Stalin created uncertainty and a desire for relaxation in Russia. I MAY 19 5 3 - Churchill repealed his Fulton address and called for an end of the Cold War on the basis of guaranteeing Russia’s security in East Europe. 26 JULY I95 3 - Korean ceasefire signed. 9 AUGUST 19 5 3 - The first air-borne H-bomb achieved by Russia, and growing Russian air power brought the threat of incineration to all large American cities. 6 NOVEMBER 1953 3 - Ex-President Truman officially charged with knowingly harbouring a communist spy. MAY 19 5 2 TO JANUARY 19 5 4 - A growing realization that the power struggle had become a stalemate.

’

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

,

44. 45.

the

-

28

5 3.

5 5.

TO

15

JUNE 1954 -The

-

·

5 6. 5 7.

5 8. .

60. 6I. 62.

-

63. 64. 65. 66.

-

67.

-

’

69.

APRIL

-

34.

68.

crest of McCarthyism. 5 The First Summit Conference recognized the atomic arms 18-24 JULY I9 5 stalemate and the inevitability of competitive coexistence. Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin accelerated a wave 13-20 FEBRUARY 1936 of reforms behind the Iron Curtain, relaxing police state controls and giving greater incentives to individuals. 7 MARCH 19 5 6 - President Eisenhower urged that we counter the threat to us &dquo; more by positive measures that people throughout the world will trust, than just by trying to answer specific thrusts.&dquo; OCTOBER TO NOVEMBER 19 5 6 Revolution in Poland and Hungary against Soviet control and communism. NOVEMBER 19 5 6 - Attacks upon Egypt by Israel, France and Britain. 26 AUGUST 1957- The first intercontinental ballistic rocket claimed by the Soviet Union. 4 OCTOBER 19 5 7 - The first of the increasingly heavy Sputniks demonstrated Russia’s ability to lay down large pay-loads accurately across great distances. APRIL 1958 8 - The pro-American Liberal Party ousted in Canada by the strongly nationalistic Conservatives. MAY 1958 8 - Vice-President Nixon mobbed in Peru and Venezuela. JULY I95 8 Revolution in Iraq and the sending of American troops to Lebanon. AUGUST To OCTOBER 19 5 -The second Quemoy crisis, ending in China’s defeat. NOVEMBER I958 TO JULY 19 5 9 - The second Berlin crisis. 16 APRIL 1939 - The resignation of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. SEPTEMBER 19 5 9 -Khrushchev’s visit to the United States, inaugurating President Eisenhower’s effort to move toward making peace and ending the Cold War. SEPTEMBER TO OCTOBER I959 Soviet Lunik rocket hits the moon and another goes around it relaying to earth pictures of its hidden side, emphasizing Russia’s continued leadership in rocketry and the conquest of space. 16 NOVEMBER 19 5 9 Secretary of State Herter’s appeal for keeping the great competition of our time with communism &dquo; within the bounds set by the conditions of co-survival.&dquo; DECEMBER 19 5 9 Eisenhower’s eleven-nation crusade for a new international climate and peace, climaxed by his statement to the parliament of India on 10 December that the mistrusts, fixations and tensions that exist in the world &dquo; are the creations of Governments, cherished and nourished by Governments. Nations would never feel them if they were given freedom from propaganda and pressure.&dquo; MAY 1960 - The Second Summit Conference, convened as the first of a series to deal with the unsettled problems of World War II. 22

31. 5 2.

-

SOME

MILESTONES

IN

THE

COLD

WAR

IN

E U R O P E

Appeasement. From the first the Cold War centred, and it still centres, in East Europe where the West has long opposed the inevitable. It is not

29 to understand the Cold War without a deep appreciation that East Europe was lost to the West at Munich in 1938, not at Yalta in i ~q.5 . The Munich Conference was the culmination of a long process of appeasing Hitler by turning him toward the East. Throughout the three years of the fascist conquest of Spain, beginning in 1936, the British government resolutely held the blanket of the London &dquo; Non-Intervention &dquo; Committee over the Spanish tragedy until the Republic had been slowly strangled to death. Then Austria was publicly warned by Neville Chamberlain on 7 March 1938 not to expect any help from the League of Nations, and she got none when overrun by Germany three days later. For Czechoslovakia, the third democracy to be deliberately sacrificed, Chamberlain planned in advance to put such pressure on the Czechs that they would never be able to fight for their lives, thus preventing their French and Soviet alliances from coming into operation. In this he was sadly successful, at the price of three flying trips to Germany to propitiate Hitler. Of course they want to dominate Eastern Europe,&dquo; he had said of the Germans as early as 26 November z~37,~ and all of his acts resolutely helped them to do so. By breaking down the powerful Czech bastion for the Nazis he gave them Eastern Europe, beyond any power to recall the gift by last minute declarations of support for Poland in 1939. Chamberlain and the pliant, defeatist governments of France that he carried along with him did not intend to turn East and Central Europe over to communism. They delivered them to fascism; but after Munich it was never possible to halt the march of events until the Russian armies occupied Berlin and Vienna. Decisions during the War. The inevitability of Russia’s arrival in Central Europe, if Hitler was to be defeated, was not understood even in Washington in the early stages of the war. In December 1941 and February 1942, the Dunn-Atherton State Department memoranda reasoned that Stalin might .not be able to recover all of his lost territories and ruled against recognizing his seizure of the .Baltic States and half of Poland.22 Our fear of another uproar over &dquo; secret treaties,&dquo; such as had been raised after World War I, and of the outcry of Polish and other citizens, combined with aversion to any extension of the area of communism prevented the British from making a more realistic agreement with Russia in

possible

&dquo;

April 1942. 1

&dquo;

Keith Felling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (New York, I946) 333. 2 Cordell Hull, Memoirs (London, I948) II, II65-70.

30

Then the British managed to lead Western war operations through peripheral warfare in North Africa, Sicily, an,d Italy until May 1944. This was justifiable strategy for us, but it left the main brunt of the land war on the Russians to the end and created in their minds lasting suspicions of being deliberately sacrificed. More important, it gave the Russian armies time to come into Central Europe, a~ the cost of many hundreds of thousands of lives, losses which we would have suffered had we struck sooner

and

directly at Germany.

During all the war years Churchill sought manfully to retrieve in East Europe what Chamberlain had given away. His eyes were always on the non-existent &dquo; soft underbelly of Europe, then in the late stages of the war, on an invasion through Trieste, and finally for lunges into Germany to seize areas beyond the agreed zones of occupation for bargaining purposes. But, always, the actual balance of forces defeated him. The Russians were required to maul the bulk of the German forces to the last day of the war. Allied forces thrown through Trieste might well have enabled the Russians to skirt the Baltic Sea and appear on the English Channel. Furthermore, last minute attempts to change the zones of occupation against the Russians would have been rejected by allied public opinion. Long afterward General Bedell Smith, one of General Eisenhower’s most trusted generals, recorded his conviction that it &dquo; would have been quite impossible in the light of world public opinion in our own country,&dquo; and his advice to Churchill at the time was &dquo; that I didn’t think his own public opinion would permit it.&dquo;3 Soviet control of East Europe was the price we paid for the years of appeasement of Hitler, and it was not a high price. In Toynbee’s judgment the Nazis would have conquered the world,&dquo; if we and the Soviets had not combined our efforts. They would eventually have crossed the narrow &dquo;

&dquo;

gap of the South Altantic to Brazil and the rest of South America, where strong fifth columns could have been organized in more than one country. By our war alliance with the Soviets we prevented the unification of the world by the Nazis. That was a victory beyond price, but, says Toynbee, we &dquo; could not have put down Hitler without consequently producing the situation with which all of us now find ourselves confronted.&dquo;4 " Walter Bedell Smith, " The Cold War — An Audit, The New York Times Magazine, I0 October I954, 30-I. " 4 Arnold J. Toynbee, What World War II Did and Didn’t Settle," The New York Times Magazine, I May I955, 66.

3

3I

All this was fully evident during the war and it is still true. C. B. Marshall has reminded us that we do not have to guess what the Axis powers would have done had they won. They set it down plainly in their Tripartite &dquo; a pattern for the conquest of the rest Alliance on 27 September 1940 of the world and the beleaguerment of the United States.&dquo;5 Why then did we have ten years of Cold War over Russia’s control of East Europe, and over her desire to have a military base on the Turkish Straits ? East Europe Divided by Churchill and Stalin. Early in October 1944 Churchill sought to come to terms with the inevitable. Over the strong opposition of our State Department, but with Roosevelt’s permission, he went to Moscow to make a temporary &dquo; agreement for three months concerning the Balkans. On 9 October he proposed to Stalin that Russia have 90 per cent predominance in Rumania, others i o per cent ; and 7 j per cent predominance in Bulgaria, others 2 per cent. In Greece, Britain would have 90 per cent &dquo; predominance, and others 10 per cent. The &dquo; predominance was to be divided S o-5 o in Hungary and Yugoslavia. Nothing was said about this division of influence being temporary6 Stalin accepted this proposal without a word. He permitted a really free election in Hungary, which the old ruling classes duly won, and he did his best to force Tito to. honour the bargain about Yugoslavia.’ Also he held his hand completely while Churchill promptly crushed the forces of the Left in Greece, thereby sealing his agreement with Churchill and committing Roosevelt to it before Yalta. The communist revolution in Bulgaria was already in full cry when the Yalta Conference met. The overthrow in the preceding December of the mighty ELAS movement in Greece by the British army and the Greek office caste had suggested to the Russians that something very similar could occur in Bulgaria, where the Bulgarian army officers used the coup d’etat &dquo; as a normal political instrument.&dquo;8 &dquo; People’s Court &dquo; trials began on 24 December 1944 and cut down the Bulgarian army officers as with a scythe until the end of February i ~4 S . On 6 March the Soviet government imposed a communist-led government upon Rumania, deposing the Rumanian conservatives. It was &dquo; very hard to think of any constructive alternative,&dquo; since free elections -

&dquo;

C. B. Marshall, The Limits of Foreign Policy (New York, I954) 72. Winston Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (New York, I953) 227-8. 7 Vladimir Dedijer, Tito (New York, I953) 232-4. 8 Howard K. Smith, The State of Europe (New York, I949) 35I, 289.

5 6

32

in Rumania under their control would have been &dquo; an invitation to Fascism here more than elsewhere.&dquo; 9 The situation was worst in Rumania, where government was &dquo; so corrupt that it is a synonym for corrupt government.&dquo;1 There was no country in East Europe, with the exception of Greece, where the kind of free elections we wanted would not have been controlled by the old ruling classes. They had manipulated the elections for generations. No free election had ever been held. The Hungarian landlords had been ruthless rulers for a thousand years, and elsewhere the cliques which ruled for their own benefit had virtually all of the knowledge of political manipulation. Hungarian and Rumanian ruling groups had also sent two million conscripted troops into Russia, behind Hitler’s armies. Free Elections. In these circumstances the question arises, why did Stalin agree at Yalta to conduct &dquo; free elections &dquo; in Eastern Europe ? Why we demanded them was clear. That is the American way of doing things, subject to the operations of political machines, and we wanted very much to prevent East Europe from being communized. No one at Yalta dreamed of denying that the region must cease to be a hostile cordon sanitaire against the Soviet Union and become politically &dquo; friendly &dquo; to her. No one could deny that, with the Red armies at that moment across Poland, within thirty miles of Berlin, and beyond Budapest sweeping up the Danube, while the Western allies were still in France, set back by the Ardennes offensive. But could governments friendly to Russia be obtained in this region by &dquo; free elections &dquo; in which the ruling groups participated freely ? It was inconceivable that these groups could be friendly to Russia, or that communist Russia could think of depending on them. That was as incredible as that we should freely arrange for a communist government in France or Italy. The Soviets also happened to believe that their system of government was as valid as ours, and that they could really depend only upon it to stop East Europe from being used as an invasion corridor into the Soviet Union. If the Americans at Yalta committed a fault, it was not in &dquo; giving away &dquo; East Europe. That had been done at Munich long before. It was in trying to achieve the impossible under the formula of &dquo; free elections.&dquo; Yet free elections were in their blood and they could do no other than to believe that this was a solution which all must accept. On his side, it is 9

Ibid., 364.

10

Joseph

C.

Harsch, The Curtain Isn’t Iron (New York, I950) 48.

33

likely that Stalin thought the formula would prevent him from purging the long dominant elements in East Europe, whose hostility to Red Russia needed no further demonstration. These elections might be managed and &dquo; people’s democracies &dquo; set up which would be acceptable

not

the Americans. He knew that the decisive settlement for the area had already been made in his gentleman’s agreement with Churchill, on 9 October 1944, and that its execution was already far advanced on both sides. He was loyally holding to his side of the bargain with Churchill and he could hardly have believed that the Yalta formulas would disrupt allied relations as soon as the war was over and lead to long years of bitter cold war. Truman’s Reversal of the Roosevelt-Hull Policy. It is possible that if Roosevelt had lived, the same deadly quarrel would have developed, though it is far more likely that he already understood the deeper forces involved and the impossibility of frustrating them. What made a clash certain was the accession of Truman just at the close of the war. He intended to carry out Roosevelt’s engagements, loyally and fully, and to exact from Stalin the same complete fulfilment, including free elections in East Europe. This theme runs through the first volume of his memoirs. However, his methods were poles apart from those of Roosevelt and Hull. All through 1944, his last year in of~ce, Hull had conducted offthe-record conferences with groups of editors, clergymen, and members of Congress, to explain to them how far the Russians had come with us, how they had been &dquo; locked up and isolated for a quarter of a century,&dquo; used to receiving violent epithets. It would &dquo; take time for them to get into step,&dquo; but they would do it. He urged that &dquo; we must be patient and forbearing. We cannot settle questions with Russia by threats. We must use friendly methods.&dquo; No one was more opposed than Hull to Soviet control of East Europe, &dquo; interfering with her neighbors,&dquo; but as he left office his policy rested on two bases, to show the Russians by example how a great power should act and to continue in constant friendly discussions with them. &dquo; Consult them on every point. Engage in no ’ cussin matches ’ with them.&dquo;11 Nothing could have been further from President Truman’s approach. He quickly read all the dispatches about friction with Russia over German surrenders, listened to everybody who wanted to get tough with the to

11

Hull, n.

2,

I464-7I, I406-8.

34

Russians, and when Molotov came by on 23 April i~q.S to pay his respects to the new President, he received such a dressing down that he complained the end of it that no one had ever talked like that to him before. 12 This was exactly eleven days after Roosevelt’s death. It took Truman just that long to reverse the entire Roosevelt-Hull approach to Russia and to inaugurate an era of toughness and ever greater toughness in our dealings with her. Then on 6 August yq.s the Hiroshima explosion gave him the means to back insistence on free elections in East Europe, and when the London Conference of September 1945 deadlocked over this issue he made up his mind at once to contain Russia.13 It was at this moment that Lippmann, noting that we had terminated lend-lease &dquo; abruptly and brutally &dquo; and had drifted into an arms race with the Soviet Union, warned : &dquo; Let no one deceive himself. We are drifting at

toward a catastrophe.’ 114 To the already deep fears of Russia for her own security, thrice justified since 1914, was added a new and dreadful fear of a fourth Western attack, backed by the atomic bomb. From the psychological point of view the policy of toughness was &dquo; the worst treatment &dquo; that could have been devised. &dquo; If a patient is suffering from genuine fear, you do not cure his fears and establish a rational relationship with him by making him more afraid. You endeavour to show him patiently and by your actions toward him that he has nothing to fear.&dquo;155 Exactly the opposite course was followed, with increasing momentum. In the following spring of 1946 Churchill issued at Fulton, Missouri, and in President Truman’s applauding presence, his call for an overwhelming preponderance of power against Russia, hinting broadly at later forcible interventions in East Europe. Nevertheless, peace was made in Europe during the remainder of 1946. In three sessions of the Council of Foreign Ministers and a conference of twenty-one nations in Paris, peace treaties were hammered out for Italy and the East European states in substantially the terms established by the various armistices. Really free elections had been held in Hungary and there were many signs of relaxation of tension as the year closed. The Truman Doctrine. However, in February the British turned the burden of supporting Greece over to the USA and Truman seized the 12 13 14

15

Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Year of Decisions (Garden City, I955)I, 8 z. Arthur Krock, The New York Times, 23and 25March I947. The Nashville Tennessean, 4 November I945. Kenneth Ingram, History of the Cold War (New York, I955) 228.

35

occasion to proclaim the doctrine of containment, on 12 March 1947, which George F. Kennan spelled out fully in the July issue of Foreign Affairs as &dquo; long term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.&dquo; Otherwise the Kremlin would take its time about filling every &dquo; nook and cranny available to it in the basin of world power.&dquo; On its face this was the rashest policy ever enunciated by any American leader. For the first time in history the encirclement of a great power was openly proclaimed. This power, too, was in firm possession of the great heartland of Eurasia. It had already demonstrated that it could industrialize itself quickly and enough to defeat Hitler’s armies. What it would do, after the Cold War was declared by Churchill and Truman, was easily predictable. The Soviet Union would put up a bold front to cover its frightening post-war weakness and work mightily to gain strength to hold what it had and then break the encirclement. This was a difficulty undertaking, for not only was the Soviet Union frightfully devastated, but Eastern Europe was in nearly as bad shape. However, what the Soviet peoples had done twice already they could do again under the lash of containment. After the two gruelling forced marches, before 1941 and after the German invasion, they undertook still a third, and within eleven years from 1946 they had achieved first their A-bomb in 1949, then the H-bomb in 1933 and the first ICBM in 1937. In all other vital respects also they had gained that position of strength which was our announced goal after March 195 o. In the course of containment, &dquo; negotiation from strength &dquo; and liberation, we revivified fully the machinery of totalitarian rule in Russia. As William A. Williams has pointed out : &dquo; Appearing as a classic and literal verification of Marx’s most apocalyptic prophecy, the policy of containment strengthened the hand of every die-hard Marxist and every extreme Russian nationalist among the Soviet leadership.&dquo; Containment also gave Stalin total power over the Soviet peoples. Williams continues : Armed with the language and actions of containment, which underwrote and extended his existing power, Stalin could and did drive the Soviet people to the brink of collapse and, no doubt, to the thought of open resistance. But the dynamic of revolt was always blocked, even among those who did have access to the levels of authority, by the fact of containment and the open threat of liberation. Thus protected by his avowed enemies, Stalin was able to force his nation through extreme deprivations and extensive purges to the verge of &dquo;

36

physical and psychological exhaustion. But the perils of reconstruction to the security

he also steered it through of nuclear parity with the

United States.&dquo;16 Clo.red Corridor. Throughout the Cold War it was never possible for the Soviet Union to relinquish control of East Europe, for the reason that Russia had been invaded disastrously through that region three times since 1914. During World War I, the Western interventions of 1918-20 and World War II the Soviets lost at least 30,000,000 people and suffered property and psychological damage beyond the power of any other people really to comprehend. No great power which had sufFered even one of these tragedies would have failed to hold East Europe as a security zone. If the West had made any effort to realize this, the Cold War could have been avoided. Instead, Western promises of liberation and the backbreaking pressures of the Cold War combined to make life almost unendurable to the peoples of East Europe, until the Polish and Hungarian revolts of 19 5 6 demonstrated finally that the West had no power to help the East Europeans. Now, if peace is finally made, peaceful evolution can go far to improve the lot of these peoples and to promote at least some of the basic individual liberties among them. The second Berlin crisis of I ~ 5 8-~ demonstrated clearly that the military writ of the West does not run even to West Berlin. Months of talk about sending tank columns and airlifts ended in a realization that it makes no defend &dquo; West sense to destroy Berlin, Germany and much else just to Berlin. This is the meaning of President Eisenhower’s wise decision to try to end the atmosphere of the Cold War and try to save as much as possible of the Western position in Berlin by negotiation. Much might also be accomplished in this direction if the West would abandon the nuclear armament of West Germany. &dquo;

THE

CONTAINMENT

OF

CHINA

The failure of the West to accept the unavoidable result of the war in Europe, and to accept the Soviet Union as an equal, postponed the making of peace for nearly two decades, at immense cost and loss to both sides. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on arms which should have been devoted to internal reconstruction, and to external aid to the William A. Williams, " The The Nation,5 May I956, 376-9. 16

Irony

of Containment: A

Policy Boomerangs,"

37

underdeveloped countries. Beyond that, the United States placed itself in the position of being a loser in World War II, instead of a victor. This sense of loss was compounded by the inability of powerful rightwing elements in the United States to accept the inexorable results of the war in Asia. China had been cast for the role of our post-war ally in the Pacific under Chiang Kai-shek. Great amounts of money and effort had been invested in him and when he proved incapable of either leading or controlling the great revolution turned loose in China by the war, there was intense and long continued bitterness in the United States. Still filled with the old belief in the invincibility of Americans, the myth embraced on a national scale that failure in China could have resulted only because some Americans did not do their duty. The State Department’s handful of thoroughly trained experts on China were all driven from it by Congressional persecution, on the ground that they must be communists or they would not have predicted the failure of Chiang and the rise of the communists. The embittered ones refused to acknowledge that the war had turned loose in China forces that even the full power of the United States could not have suppressed, even if the war-weary American people had been willing to send their sons on into such a giant undertaking. Then this first evident failure in American history was made much more unacceptable by the first American military defeat in North Korea. These reverses produced a determination to apply containment to China, which the Truman Doctrine had somewhat absent-mindedly covered. This has already resulted in two Formosa Strait crises, with others certain as Chinese power grows. As they develop, it is essential to realize that behind our economic, diplomatic and military embargoes of China, and behind our self-imposed wall of non-intercourse, the foundations have already been laid for the same swift industrialization and armament of a great people as occurred in Russia. On 17 May 1958 the London Times published an article by its special in China which said that the world cannot afford to ignore correspondent &dquo; determination of the leaders to achieve their goals, reshaping iron the the whole structure of the State, society and industry. Neither can there be any illusions about the loyalty and obedience which they now command.&dquo; Ten days later the New York Times carried the eyewitness report of Nicholas Kaldor, a Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge University, saying that he would be relieved if United States’ aid to India was

Tu

I

38 one-fifth as large as Russia’s aid to China. The Soviets were supplying technical assistance on the widest scale and vast amounts of equipment. James Muir, President of the Royal Bank of Canada, returned from China saying : &dquo; The growth in industry, the change in living standards, the modernization of everything and anything, the feats of human effort and the colossal impact of human labour are not within our power to describe and still give a worthwhile picture of the scene. All I can say is that it must be seen to be believed. It’s truly stupendous. 1117 A New Zealand professor of geography surveyed much of China and concluded that China has all the essentials for large-scale industry iron, coal, oil, water power, vast labour resources conclusions which were fully shared by J. Tuzo Wilson, a Canadian scientist who visited a new Chinese capital of science deep in the interior. He had no doubts that China’s great resources would be scientifically developed. 18 It is imperative that Americans take a cold, hard look at their relations with the rapidly emerging new China, before it is too late. William E. Hocking, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, pointed the way when he suggested that containment was a suitable policy to curb the ambitions of would-be dictators, &dquo; but not to limit the needs of great peoples &dquo; and that &dquo; to defeat the natural intercourse among populations is folly.&dquo; Noting that our containment policy was &dquo; visibly breaking down in the Middle East,&dquo; he added that it is not possible to contain the needs of the Soviet peoples &dquo; for ample sea outlets,&dquo; and that &dquo; the effort to keep the Chinese coast in permanent pawn to Formosa, in whole or in part, is doomed to failure.&dquo;19 Must the United States now repeat in China’s case the long and dismal record of the failure of non-recognition and containment to control the Soviet Unicn ? Can we learn nothing from our Russian experience ? Must we continue trying to blockade and encircle China closely until she has generated the power to smash the blockade, and perhaps to impose her will on the entire Orient ? It will not do to rely on China’s world-wide unpopularity as a result of her border disputes with India in i ~ s ~. The largest, oldest, toughest people in the world also one of the proudest, cleverest and most capable of closely organized effort such a people cannot be successfully ostracized. To continue their hostile encirclement

were

-

-

-

-

17

18

Royal Bank of Canada Bulletin, " A Visit

to

26 June I958. Red China’s Hidden Capital of Science,

I958, 47-56. 19 Letter to The New York

Times, 29 April I956.

"

Saturday Review, 8 November

39

they have already demonstrated intense dynamism is to invite great explosions of every kind political, economic and military. It is idle to think that peace can be made in a nuclear world while excluding such a giant factor. Peace must be made with China too, perhaps by degrees but effectively. We are already late in beginning, and there is no safety in assuming that time is on our side.

after

-

DIVERSITY AND

Instead of

DISARMAMENT

world polarized between two great powers we are now entering a period when China will become a really great power. This may be true also of Western Europe, if the projected West European State can survive the stubbornness of Adenauer and the greatness of de Gaulle, and if it can develop without planning to use Africa’s resources as the base of its power. In South-East Asia we have the hopeful advance of India toward great power status. This is said with some di~dence, since India has rightly emphasized other things than power, minimizing the role of force and seeking both to avoid and to discourage the formation of power groupings. This is the direction in which the world ought to move and if it does, Nehru’s leadership in opposing power rivalries will stand out increasingly in the future. Nevertheless, as he well knows, power in the sense of possessing great national strength of many kinds is essential to the peaceful competition of nations and systems into which we now appear to be entering. It is accordingly of the utmost importance that the growth of Indian industry should accelerate and that the institutions and customs of the past should not continue to weaken or paralyze the incentives for greater production in agriculture. Without resorting to the draconian regimentation of rural labour which is fast remaking the face of China, it is urgently necessary that democratic means be found for greatly reducing the unemployment or underemployment of rural labour in India. There must be ways by which a democratic society can release the energies of the people in greater measure. The dynamism of China need not be equalled, but the democracies must not be without a dynamism of their own. They must not either confess themselves unable or unwilling to control the production of too many people in countries which are already overcrowded. Given the continued vitality of both private and public enterprises in the non-communist countries, and the renewed dedication of all democrats to freedom of thought and its expression, we should find ourselves a

40

entering a period in which a great diversity of states and systems compete for the favour of mankind. Nor should the democracies fear such a competition. We have already created welfare states which work, dynamic capitalism which gets things done. We have also in the mechanism of the graduated income and inheritance taxes the means of preventing our societies from congealing into plutocracies, means which must be honestly and rigorously used if we are to remain democratic. Of one thing we may be certain : all societies will continue to change and evolve perpetually. No power on earth can prevent that while time remains. All revolutions run down; all societies that become too conservative fail or suffer revolution. Yet today we are faced with the constant probability that time will end for man on this planet. Two governments already have the power to end civilization, at least in the northern hemisphere, and other governments are determined to grasp the same power of annihilation. The final war can also be touched off accidentally, as well as out of some mad ruler’s malice. All of our hopes for the future must therefore depend on a great world campaign for disarmament which will force all governments to curb their military researchers and move rapidly into real disarmament and control of the engines of destruction. Until a few months ago it was almost too much to hope this could be done, but Khrushchev’s initiative for disarmament and the current detente may enable us to save ourselves. How it can be done is set forth clearly in Noel-Baker’s great book The Arms Aace.2His urgent message is that a grand design, an overall plan &dquo; for disarmament is required, and that attempts at partial disarmament have always failed. Against the great evil of the present arms race and the modern weapons, small remedies would not produce a small result; they would probably produce no significant result at all. Even if they were signed and ratified, they would be so difhcult to control that in all probability they would soon break down.&dquo; &dquo;

&dquo;

TOWARD WORLD

COMMUNITY

beyond us ? It may be. In that case peaceful evolution into a world of nations governed by law will never come about. Enough world law to take the weapons of destruction out of the hands of the national governments is the goal toward which we must work, in the not very long run. In the United Nations we have an organization which

Is real disarmament

20 Philip Noel-Baker,

The Arms Race

(London, I958).

41

could be developed into an institution strong enough to save the peoples from nuclear extermination, or whatever more eflective death for the world is devised next. For this we must rally together in the United Nations in time. Will we do so? By past experience we will not. We will blunder into just one more world war. Yet man has finally outsmarted himself. He has perfected the means of destroying his brothers to such an extent that if he uses them he himself will cease to exist. Now he has no choice but to grow up rapidly and learn on the international level to practise cooperation instead of conflict. He can no longer make the law of the jungle work among the nations. Peace will remain precarious until an organized world community is established. Of course we are not ready for that, but it is none too early to begin to conceive the needed social and political inventions and then to proceed to draw an image of a functioning world community.&dquo;21 The basic question before us is whether we can move fast enough to build such a community, before we cease to exist.&dquo; The time before us may be so short, before a fatal thermonuclear clash occurs, that real progress should be made each year in turning the United Nations into a place of cooperation and constructive achievement, looking toward dependable world law. To say that this is utopian or idealistic after the abysmal tragedies of the two world wars, and after a thermonuclear arms race is well along, is to invite the oblivion which now hovers over us. &dquo;

&dquo;

21

Leo

Szilard,

I955, 307.

"

Disarmament and Peace,

"

Bulletin

of the

Atomic

Scientists, October