CENTRAL ASIA
SINO-SOVIET MILITARY FACE-OFF N Against the background of the famous "international détente" there have emerged many centers of tension in which troop and naval movements reflect the threat of international conflagration. One of the most threatening -- and one of the most tragic from the standpoint of the interests of the international working class -- is the focus of tension in central Asia along the Chinese-Soviet border. Although the world press does not refer to it often, a feverish activity is going on in diplomatic and paradiplomatic circles in several countries relative to the central Asian tension. Uneasiness has been spread not only by the maneuvers of Maoist and Brezhnevite diplomacy. It is also on the rise in the capitals of Eastern Europe and East Asia. While in Washington the State Department is rubbing its hands with glee, the leaders of the imperialist countries of Western Europe and Japan are adopting a more hesitant attitude. Their hope of seeing the "Communist countries" tear each other to pieces and thus decisively weaken the international workers movement is counterbalanced by their fear of the side effects, including the military side effects, that would be felt in various parts of the world, even along the frontiers of their own countries. The preparations for a new international conference of the Communist parties faithful to Moscow are most often made in direct relation to the stirring of the leaves in central Asia. For the Kremlin, it is a matter of condemning in advance the "nationalists" and "social chauvinists" in Peking as "aggressors, " a formula that could be used to justify an overt or disguised military intervention and could increase pressure on the "fraternal parties" of Eastern Europe to send some of their own troops to participate in the current show of force along the borders of the People's Republic of China. If this "maximum" objective cannot be achieved -- since many Communist parties draw back at going that far -- it would at least be necessary for the Kremlin to banish the "chauvinist splitters" of the "Mao clique" from the "international Communist movement. " That would be ideological preparation for something more sinister. While alarmists of all stripes -- whose intentions are often far from pure and who sometimes resort to deliberate provocation -- talk as if an all-out military conflict between the USSR and the People's Republic of China were imminent, an astonishing passivity holds sway among broad sectors of the by A. MILES workers movement, including its revolutionary wing. This is a result of a mixture of ignorance, complacent apathy, and naive faith in the tendency of state conflicts in the nuclear age to "work themselves out sooner or later. " The first position exaggerates the gravity of the conflict; the second clearly underestimates it A disturbing escalation To abandon the realm of speculation and move to the world of facts, it is necessary to begin by shedding some light on two predominant features of the tension that has reigned for several years along the Sino-Soviet border. First, the Kremlin has gradually assembled a colossal and impressive military force along the border. The deployment of forces has entailed a territorial redistribution of the Soviet army on a grand scale. According to estimates published in the June 13, 1974, Times of London, in 1968 there were 16 Soviet divisions on the Chinese border; in 1969 there were 21. The figure grew to 33 divisions in 1971, 44 in 1972, and 45 in 1973. Today it is reported to have reached 50 divisions (and some American sources say even 60). The Soviet armed forces have constructed some seventy air fields in the region, most of them during the most recent period, as well as many bases for launching tactical and Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles. There have also been reports that tactical nuclear weapons are being stockpiled. A second significant feature: Although initially (during the clashes along the Usuri River in the winter of 1968-69) the Soviet troops were deployed along the whole frontier, with special concentrations in "hot spots" where Soviet territorial sovereignty is contested by Peking, today the troops seem to be concentrated in the People's Republic of Mongolia, where there are half a dozen Soviet armored divisions with ultramodern equipment and some missile bases as well. Between the border of outer Mongolia and the city of Peking there is a narrow corridor less than 440 miles long. So Mongolia is the point from which the armed forces of the USSR can come closest to a vital center of the People's Republic of China. On June 10, 1974, speaking before the plenum of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary party of the People of Mongolia (the CP), Tsedenbal, the head of the party and new
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SINO- SOVIET
Chinese demonstration at Communist party headquarters in Peking hails successful test of hydrogen bomb. president of Mongolia, accused the Peking leaders of nour-
"annexationist" aims toward Mongolia and of "openly ishing preparing war against the USSR and the People's Republic of Mongolia. " When put in the context of the Soviet troop concentrations, these assertions have a disturbing ring. ful to its custom of "responding tit for tat" and has assembled From all evidence, the Maoist leadership has remained faithforces of nearly equivalent numerical strength to those of the Soviet Union on its side of the border. It is reported that 4550 divisions of the People's Liberation Army are now deployed in the region. These forces have moved progressively closer to the border. While Chinese air fields are located further into the interior, numerous preparations have been made for "people's war" on a grand scale. Not the least of these preparations has been construction of gigantic "underground cities" beneath many cities in northern and central China. These are intended to serve as refuges for the population, administrative centers, and storage areas for food and even industrial production in the event of massive bombing or nuclear attack. According to an Indian observer who visited the city of Talien (Darien), the entire population (1 million) of this industrial center could find refuge and subsistence in such an "underground city" in case of nuclear attack. (Financial Times, June 19,1974.) Moreover, the Chinese leaders are accelerating the development of their own nuclear arsenal. Recently they conducted their sixteenth nuclear test. Already they have a limited number of missiles that are capable of hitting targets in the European section of the Soviet Union. They are said to be in process of dispersing their nuclear forces in order to stop a preventive nuclear attack from being able to destroy their entire arsenal in one blow. It is clear that these preparations, which on both sides cost the equivalent of thousands of millions of dollars and mobilize (and therefore immobilize!) considerable parts of the resources of the two countries, cannot be considered as simple "propaganda gestures. " Clearly, what is involved is a deployment of land forces that indisputably increases the risk of incidents breaking out. And risk of incidents also means risk of uncontrollable chain reactions. 24
89 6839 1 There is a recent example of such an incident. In March 1974 the Chinese armed forces shot down an armed Soviet reconnaissance helicopter that, according to Moscow, had "strayed" over the Chinese border. The Chinese version is that the overflight was deliberate, designed to carry out military espionage, and that the helicopter had "penetrated deeply into the autonomous region of Uighour in Chinese Sinkiang. " The Peking government has since refused to return the helicopter crew, which was taken prisoner, to the USSR. Tension grows considerably in the wake of such incidents. The ideological justification The deployment of military forces has been accompanied by a deployment of propaganda that tends to prolong and justify it. But to reduce the military deployment to the propaganda deployment would be to take mere appearances for reality. From the Soviet side, the propaganda machine is axised around the "social chauvinism" or "great Han nationalism" ties living in northern and western China is denounced. Pe- of the Peking leaders. The oppression of minority nationaliking's "annexationist aims" concerning the Mongolian People's Republic are brought up. But the main accusation remains that the Peking leaders are "sowing division and subleaders have come up with some curious new terms to describe version" within the "socialist camp." The Mongolian Soviet
"ideological aggression" and "ideological this sort of action: sabotage. " These terms refer to the content of the Chinese propaganda campaign, which has been no less violent and intense than the Soviet campaign. The most trenchant accusations are raised against the Moscow "social imperialists, " who are said to be resorting to "neocolonialist methods" against the "peoples of Eastern Europe and Mongolia who are held under world" as a whole. There are also many references to the their bloody yoke" and against the "countries of the third "oppressed nationalities" in the Soviet Union itself, both in Soviet Asia and in Europe. Powerful radio stations broadcast this propaganda from Chinese territory in the most diverse languages and directions, including toward the Ukraine.
Given the violence of the tone and the total absence of precision (not to mention scientific Marxist precision) in the vocabulary employed, it is difficult to separate the "defensive" and "offensive" functions of such propaganda campaigns. Manifestly fearing a Soviet military attack -- nobody could conceive of a Chinese invasion of the Soviet Union, independent of the limited operations in the disputed border zones -the Maoist leaders are prepared to utilize all "ideological" means to weaken the presumed adversary. The scarcely concealed objective of the Chinese propaganda crusade is to provoke rebellion, and even insurrection and guerrilla warfare, in the rear areas of the Soviet army. The campaign would achieve its main goal even if it simply compelled the Soviet high command to utilize a portion of its forces to strengthen the garrisons assigned to keep watch over regions in which the population is considered "unreliable. " It would be fully crowned with success if the communications lines of the Soviet troops were to be disturbed or even cut by local or national uprisings. From their side, the Soviet leaders are using Peking's propaganda preparations to demonstrate to the leaders of the Communist parties (beginning with those of Eastern Europe) that the Maoists have become "objectively and subjectively enemies of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, " and that they are prepared to resort to any method, up to and including supporting "obviously anti-Soviet and anti-Communist dissident movements, " "bourgeois nationalism, " and "religious and feudal remnants" in their desire to "cling to power. " And if it can be conclusively proven that Mao and "his clique" are behaving like "counterrevolutionary saboteurs and diversionists" and "declared enemies of the Soviet Union, " then would not a lightning action designed to put the Maoists out of commission and reestablish the "unity of the socialist camp" be justified? And since such lightning action would be considered "fascist imperialist aggression" by the Peking leaders, the Maoists would feel justified in responding with all their power. Thus, the circle is closed. The double logic of Stalinism An honest communist militant ignorant of the history of Stalinism and the Soviet bureaucracy and taking for good coin claims
February 1967 Effigies of Soviet leaders burned on fence surrounding Soviet embassy compound. about the socialist character of Soviet society could only react to this sinister chain of events with appalled consternation. There is less reason for revolutionary Marxists to be astonished. Ever since the Soviet bureaucracy rose to power in the USSR and bureaucratized -- and thereby destroyed the proletarian essence of -- the Soviet Communist party, one of the principal characteristics of its behavior has been systematic use of police measures, and later of violence and physical terror, to "settle" ideological conflicts and "eliminate" groups or individual cadres of the party that were considered annoying by the faction in power. From the use of spies infiltrated into the Left Opposition to the assassination of Blumkin, from the arrest and deportation of opposition militants to the murderous purges of the 1930s and the assassination of Trotsky, Stalin and Stalinism have become synonyms for blackmail, violence, and terror as the main weapons of political struggle within the Communist movement. When Communist parties took power outside the borders of the Soviet Union, the transference of these methods to the international arena (which had already been effected during the Spanish civil war and the campaign of assassinating revolutionary militants throughout the world after 1936) inevitably transformed ideological conflicts into state conflicts. This was shown in a spectacular way after the Yugoslav CP was excommunicated by the Cominform in 1948. At that time, the Kremlin leaders did not merely launch a vast ideological campaign (made up mostly of lies and slanders) against the Yugoslav communists. They also decreed an economic blockade against Yugoslavia and massed significant armed forces on the Yugoslav frontier. On several occasions, they came within a hair's breadth of military intervention. Nevertheless, this did not happen. In the cases of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968, ideological conflict between leading factions of the Hungarian and Czechoslovak Communist parties (under Nagy and Dubcek) and the leading faction of the Soviet bureaucracy were settled by overwhelming military intervention from the Kremlin. (The intervention of the Soviet occupation forces against the workers revolt in East
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SINO-SOVIET Germany in 1953 had a formally different character, for the leading faction of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands--Socialist Unity party of Germany--which was the Ulbricht faction, fully supported the intervention.) In all these cases, desire to repress a mass movement that had become uncontrollable and was orienting toward a real regime of workers councils was the fundamental political motivation for the intervention. It can be asked why there was a military intervention in Hungary and Czechoslovakia but not in Yugoslavia. The most obvious reason is that the interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia were practically military parades, given the existing military and political relationship of forces. In Yugoslavia, however, the Kremlin was convinced that it would have faced a long and hard resistance that would probably have been prolonged by a popular guerrilla war. The military and political price for such an adventure, independent of its short- and medium-term success, seemed too high. A concomitant but probably not determining factor was that the geographical position of Yugoslavia made the possibility of an active intervention by the capitalist powers much more pronounced than in the case of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which the Yalta and Potsdam agreements had clearly placed in the Kremlin's exclusive sphere of influence. In this regard also the risk was too great for the Soviet bureaucracy. In light of all this, the show of force that the Soviet bureauChinese border is not surprising. And taking account of the Yugoslav precedent, it can be concluded that an actual military intervention would be less than unlikely. In China, even less than in Yugoslavia, the Kremlin leaders could not hope to carry out a "military parade. " They would be plunging into a long and costly adventure that could only weaken their power and aid all their internal and external enemies. An attempted intervention by classical means seems pure madness from the military standpoint. A nuclear intervention, which would yield a much greater military payoff, would be even more damaging from the political and social standpoint and would deliver a death blow to the Kremlin's international influence, beginning with its influence in the world Communist parties and the national liberation movements in the colonial and semicolonial countries. The goal of the Soviet show of force in central Asia is thus essentially political. It is a way of exerting pressure on the Chinese bureaucracy, of forcing it to consign a considerable part of its resources to military ends, of demonstrating the very heavy price that the People's Republic of China has to pay for its hostile attitude toward the Kremlin, and of thus favoring the emergence at the right moment (after the death of Mao, for example) of a faction in the leadership of the Chinese Communist party that would be prepared for an ideological and political compromise with Moscow and for stopping all public attacks on the Kremlin. This calculation includes a certain evaluation of the possibility of the re-appearance in China of autonomous military centers (the equivalent of classical "warlordism'"). It could even go so far as to include the possibility of a rapid military intervention if the conflicts within the Chinese CP and the explosive development of a mass movement were to convince the bureaucracy that there was a threat of "anarchy" (that is, real workers power) emerging out of the political upheavals in China. It goes without saying that should the improbable nevertheless materialize, and should the Soviet bureaucracy crown its
26 crimes against socialism and the international revolution with a military intervention against the People's Republic of China, revolutionary Marxists would condemn that intervention just as decisively as they condemned the counterrevolutionary interventions against the German, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak workers and would support with all their power the just defensive war of the Chinese revolution and the Chinese workers state. Today, however, there is no Sino-Soviet war, and, we repeat, it is extremely unlikely that there will be one. Today a political test of strength is going on within which the show of force on the border is being used as a means of pressure and blackmail, just as it was during the Stalin-Tito conflict. The right of the Chinese government to take all necessary measures to counteract the pressure and the military threats that the Kremlin is bringing to bear cannot be denied. But the political orientation that the Chinese government has lent its intervention into this test of strength can and should be denounced as nefarious, irresponsible, and ineffective. Having thrown elementary Marxist principles overboard, Maoist diplomacy no longer categorizes states according to their class character. It now considers that there are three groups of countries in the world: the two "superpowers, " the United States and the Soviet Union, which together are "the greatest international exploiters and oppressors of our epoch"; the countries of the so-called Third World, which Peking now follows bourgeois ideologues in calling "developing countries"; and the "developed countries that are not superpowers, " which fall between the first and third worlds, that is, the capitalist countries of Western Europe as well as the countries of Eastern Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, and so on. (It would be interesting to find out which category South Africa and Israel belong in according to this theory.) All this was developed in great detail by Teng Hsiao-ping during his speech to the United Nations special session held in April 1974. (See INPRECOR, No. 2, June 20, "The Three Worlds of Teng Hsiao-ping.") The consequence of this outlook is a policy of closer and closer collaboration with the governments of all semicolonial countries, regardless of their class or political nature. The shah of Iran, the emperor of Ethiopia, and other sinister hangmen have suddenly been elevated to the status of "courageous anti-imperialist fighters. " The colonial bourgeoisie has become the "main revolutionary motive force. " A second consequence is an increasingly equivocal position on the imperialist governments of Western Europe, which are encouraged to "resist the threats of social-imperialist aggression, " "unite, " and "overcome the state of dependence to which the superpowers want to reduce them." From there it is but a short step to accepting the principle that these imperialist bourgeois states should be defended against the Soviet Union, a step that various Maoist groupings in countries like Sweden and West Germany have hastened to take. They come close to far-right circles in their respective countries in their denunciations of the "threat of Soviet aggression. " When the Swedish Maoists organize demonstrations against the visit of a Soviet warship, when the West German Maoists put a headline on their newspaper that reads "Brezhnev is Worse than Hitler, " when other Maoist groups assert that a Giscard victory was preferable to a Mitterrand victory in the French presidential elections, it is not only that they are crossing the class line. Such aberrations can only provide grist for the mill of the anti-Chinese campaign waged by the leaders of the Soviet bureaucracy. They aid the Kremlin in convincing the leaders of the Communist parties that Mao considers alliance with imperialism preferable to compromise with the USSR, even on the level of state relations.
In this regard the Maoist leaders can but follow the logic of Stalin and Stalinism in their turn. The conception of diplomacy as Realpolitik allowing for any amount of lies and deceptions, a conception that disregards the elementary interests of the workers and that sows intense confusion and demoralization among the very supporters of that conception, flows from the same right-wing line as was upheld by those who believed it "useful" and "necessary" to "raise our glasses to the health of the Fuhrer, because we know how much the German people love him. " This line did not hold up the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union by a single minute. But it weakened -- how it weakened! -- the ability of communists to bring about the necessary mobilization of the toiling masses against Hitler during 1940 and 1941, not only in Germany but in many other countries as well. And it thus facilitated the formidable buildup of the Nazi war machine along the Soviet border in 1941 and the launching of the aggression itself. In the extremely unlikely event of a military conflict with the Kremlin rulers, the Peking leaders will not obtain any "aid" from the likes of the shah of Iran or Sirimavo Bandaranaike by disorganizing the revolutionary movement in many semicolonial countries and stabbing it in the back. But they will succeed in weakening, if not losing, their only sure ally should such an eventuality actually come to pass: the masses of revolutionary and communist militants throughout the world, the masses of oppressed peoples. Imperialism and the Sino-Soviet conflict Like Peking, Moscow is trying in every possible way to "neutralize " Washington in case of a military conflict in central Asia. Toward this end, Moscow's emmissaries are using an especially despicable language, presenting the Soviet army as the "last bastion against Chinese barbarism, " affirming that Moscow would "also be defending the West" against the "terrible threat to world peace represented by nuclear arms in the hands of the crazy Peking fanatics." Maoist spokesmen have responded in analogous style, calling on the West to oppose the USSR's aims of "world hegemony" and cynically explaining that the United States would have greater interest in a weakening of the Soviet Union than of China, which is in nothing like the same position of being able to threaten Washington's essential interests around the This display of appeals and counterappeals is nauseating enough. But in fact, imperialist governments are not susceptible to these miserable "ideological" arguments that are being advanced by both sides. They decide their orientation on the basis of their general class interests and their particular interests, which are different for each imperialist power. From the standpoint of class interest, world imperialism as a whole has a manifest interest in seeing the two main bureaucratized workers states, the two main parts of the world that have torn themselves loose from the direct exploitation of international capital, weaken each other through conflict. The gains world imperialism stands to reap through such conflict are obvious, not only on the political and social levels, but on the strategic-military level as well. For a whole period, American imperialism considered the People's Republic of China its number-one enemy, especially because of the direct confrontation that was going on in Southeast Asia between anti-imperialist forces and imperialist forces directed from Washington. The idea of extending aggression against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to aggression (even nuclear aggression) against the People's Republic of China was widely debated in leading Pentagon circles. Later, Kissinger-style diplomacy made a turn that led to the lifting of the American blockade against China (which had been imposed at the time of the Korean war) and to China's entry into the United Nations. In exchange, the Maoist leaders reduced or cut off their aid to guerrilla movements in Southeast Asia and did their part in exerting "moderating" pressure on the Indochinese Communist leaders. Obviously, Peking's general alignment with the bourgeoisie and governments of the semicolonial countries can only be pleasing to Thus, North American imperialism is today adopting an attitude of "benevolent neutrality" in the Sino-Soviet state conflict, going so far as to offer its good offices to calm possible warlike spirits. Should an armed conflict break out anyway, its attitude would most probably fall within the same logic. This might even be accompanied by some discreet economic and technical aid to Peking, whether extended directly or through third parties, sufficient to prolong Peking's resistance but insufficient to radically reverse the military relationship of forces. This might even include sending shipments to both sides. The basic line that would be adopted by American imperialism in this eventuality would thus be to exhaust the resources of the two "Communist" countries by prolonging their fratricidal conflict. European and Japanese imperialism would have a fundamental interest in following the same strategy. Nevertheless, this would be partially modified by their own particular interests. As for the countries of capitalist Europe, there is an evident fear of a military strengthening of the Soviet forces in Eastern Europe concurrently with the show of force on the Sinc-Soviet border. This reinforcement in Eastern Europe, which could be aimed basically at "taking care of the rear areas" and avoiding dissident movements and uprisings in case of a conflict in central Asia, nevertheless entails developments that would modify the military relationship of forces on the whole European continent. (For example, the rumor has been floating around recently that Moscow has demanded that Ceaucescu provide a "corridor" that would allow Soviet troops to cross Rumania on their way to Bulgaria.) Hence the drive of the European capitalist powers toward military reinforcement, and even toward development of a "European nuclear striking force. " Hence also a tendency to react to a possible Sino-Soviet military conflict in function of politico-military developments in Europe itself. The same goes for Japan. As an Asiatic power, Japan would find it difficult to remain insensitive to the violent reactions that an invasion of China by what is considered a "European" power would provoke among a good part of the peoples of Asia. Moreover, penetration of the Soviet army and fleet into China and the China Sea would completely change the strategic situation of Japanese imperialism. Tokyo would thus be led to react in function of its particular interests as well. Bitter fruits of socialism in one country Even a superficial examination of the consequences of a prolonged military conflict between the USSR and China is enough to determine the class positions that revolutionary Marxists must adopt in this regard: The interests of the world proletariat and the international revolution demand that such an armed conflict be avoided.
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FROM BAD TO WORSE
This is but an extension of the attitude revolutionary Marxists adopted from the beginning of the Sino-Soviet conflict. As salutory as they considered the outbreak of ideological and political debate, which dealt heavy blows to the revisionist monolith of the Stalinist parties, they equally condemned any extension of the ideological debate and conflict to the level of conflict between states. The demand that we ceaselessly advanced, which incontestably corresponded to the concern of the great majority of rank-and-file communist militants, was the maintenance or reestablishment of indispensable unity in action to aid the Indochinese revolution and the maintenance of common solidarity against imperialism. It must be repeated that the initial responsibility for the rupture of solidarity lies with the Soviet bureaucracy. The withdrawal of aid and technicians from China, the refusal to aid the People's Republic of China in arming itself with nuclear weapons in face of the American threat, the attempt to surround China with a "cordon sanitaire, " the support extended to the Indian bourgeoisie with this aim in mind -- all these acts, which were contrary to the interests of the Chinese and international revolutions, are at the root of the deterioration of relations between the two states. The Maoist leaders then responded with equally inadmissible words and deeds, so that today the responsibility for the rupture of the united front of the workers states against international capitalism is clearly shared by Moscow and Peking. Never before has the character of the reigning bureaucracy in the two capitals as an obstacle and impediment to consolidation of the gains of the revolution been manifested so strikingly as in the threat of a Sino-Soviet military conflict. The international communist movement is now reaping the latest bitter fruits of the theory of socialism in one country, whose fruits it had a foretaste of during the terrible months of the summer and autumn of 1941. By breaking with the SOUTH ASIA DAKISTAN AND BANGLADESH: by TARIO ALIA traditional tactic utilized by bourgeois leaders in South Asia has been to try to distract attention from the mess at home by attempting to win victories in foreign relations. Up till now the most successful, albeit shortlived, venture was the military intervention by the Indira Gandhi regime in Bangladesh in 1971. Since that time Pakistan's prime minister,
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, has gained first position in the foreign policy stakes by obtaining the release of all the Pakistani prisoners of war (90, 000 officers and soldiers) without making any substantial concessions; by holding an Islamic summit in Pakistan in February 1974 which enabled him to sell the recognition of Bangladesh to the