Peking's blind and sectarian line of non-cooperation with the Soviet "revisionists" against U.S. aggression, they have become increasingly disturbed by Moscow's feeble reactions since Johnson's first air attacks on north Vietnam in February 1965.
Sartre ‘is the most prestigious figure.among the Left intellectuals of France. The forthright voicing of grave misgivings about Soviet policy in his magazine follows a line of approach to .. the world situation. which has hitherto been confined to the inter-, national Trotskyist movement:and certain speeches of Fidel Castro. These views are bound.to have wide repercussions in the antiwar movement throughout Western Europe, especially among the youth who respect and follow Sartre.
The editorial is also noteworthy for its criticism of the careerist French politician, Mitterrand in the last election. His | scorn for Mitterrand's kowtowing before Johnson, along with a rejection of de Gaulle's diplomatic maneuvering, indicates that Sartre is having some second -- and third -- thoughts on these questions... pe
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| TEXT OF SARTRE EDITORIAL
.- [The following is a translation of the editorial which appeared in the August 1966 issue of Les Temps Modernes and which has become : the center of a sharp debate among radical circles in Europe because of its criticism of the ineptness and weakness of Soviet policy in the Vietnam situation. The editorial appeared under the title of peop) ylation ou Contre-escalade" (Capitulation or Counterescala~ tion
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After having fruitlessly, but with impunity, bombarded "chosen objectives" in north Vietnam in 1964; after having increased their repressive ground forces in south Vietnam to 300,000 men -- slated . to be 600,000 by the end of this year; after having poisoned crops, burned forests, destroyed villages, deported the inhabitants of entire regions, tortured and executed prisoners and "suspects"; after having unloaded on this small country, in 15 months, a third of the tonnage. of bombs (rounded out between times by the use of napalm, harmless gases that nevertheless. kill, and slivers of steel) dropped on all of Western Europe during the fifty-six months of the second world war; after having systematically bombarded, beginning with last year, the: roads, bridges, railroads, puildings (including » hospitals and schools) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, .and all that fruitlessly, but with impunity, the United States began bombarding Hanoi and Haiphong at the end of June.
' They know the ‘Vietnamese: will ‘not capitulate despite every=. thing; neither the peasant fighters of the south, who took up arms again in 1959 on their own initiative to. liberate themselves from a regime imposed from abroad; nor the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which is defending, alone, at a price without. precedent in history, the right -- and the duty -- that a socialist state has to prevent the crushing of a revolution which surged up by itself in the other half of the same country.
That is why the American escalation will not halt at this point. Its next steps envisage the destruction of all organized social activity in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The American air force is preparing to bomb the dikes of the Red River, thus wiping out all the Tonkinese rice cultivation and a good part: of. the ten million inhabitants of the Delta; the American infantry is preparing to land on the shores of north Vietnam.
These next steps of the escalation are known, as the earlier ones were known a long time in advance. The United States is deliberately taking the risk of a world war because, in view of the internal division in the socialist.camp, they consider this risk to be very small. Their aim, - which goes far. beyond Vietnam, - ‘is: to demonstrate:
(1) That imperialism has enough forces to crush, there or anywhere else, a victorious revolutionary movement, whether or not
it ‘is armed;
(2) That every socialist state that. tries to prevent this. repression: will -itself be pitilessly annihilated, even if the revolution that it Becks. to aid has broken» out in the other half of the same nation;
(3) That despite the solemn mutual defense treaties which bind this state to'the rest of the socialist world, it will be abandoned by them, so formidable is the warlike determination and the ‘strategic. superiority of the United. States; :
(4) That, consequently, every attempt, armed or peaceful, which tends:“to change the social and international relations» imposed by American imperialism, is a hopeless undertaking anywhere in: the. world for a long time to come. te
This demonstration has not yet been completed but it is well on the way. For six years imperialism has been on the offensive in the entire world, making and unmaking regimes, in Santo Domingo, =~ Brazil, West and Central Africa, Indonesia, Bolivia, Argentina... -. In the wake of the American aggression against Vietnam, the most. .extreme and obscurantist™reaction moves forward on all fronts, without the Wilsons, the -Brandts, the Mitterrands , the Mollets, the . Nennis, who protest: very politely -- for isn't Johnson irascible and doesn't one have to have his ear in order to influence this great American? -- taking into account that imperialism, at its present pace, can soon dispense with their loyal services.
In this. situation humanitarian and pacifist phraseology is as disgusting as praise of the Gaullist strategy is idiotic. Actually de Gaulle does ‘nothing to aid the struggle of the Vietnamese people; he is using both that struggle and the American gliding toward a war against China to restore to European imperialism a part of its lost independence. That oppressed peoples should seek to derive advantage and borrow arms from the weakest -- and therefore the ” less dangerous -- imperialism against the most powerful is entirely in order and a matter of tactics. But to take that as a pretext for identifying Gaullist imperialism with anything progressive only reveals the-vacuity of the international strategy to which opportunism leads.
Lack of clarity, cowardly waiting, "realism" are the grave of the socialist and revolutionary movement; they prepare further | defeats as surely as nonintervention against Spanish fascism in. 1936 prepared 1940 and its sequel. However, the obvious parallel is. not only with the war in Spain but also with the capitulations: which preceded and followed the Munich agreement. bie
The United States is convinced that the Soviet Union will retreat to the very end before engaging in any test of strength. It believes that-a provocation against China will not make the Soviet. camp budge. It thinks it can coerce.China either to lose face by remaining passive before the annihilation and occupation of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam or to provide them with the pretext, by its reaction, to destroy its nuclear centers and, if that is not enough,. to transform the Chinese cities into immense charnel houses. They ‘calculate that the USSR will watch the humiliation or massacre of the Chinese without acting. They calculate that after that the... USSR will be glad to grasp the bloody hand of America and sign a new global Munich pact.
Is this calculation ‘insane? If 50; it is high time to say so. Each week that passes without the socialist camp fixing precise | limits, the breaching of which will entail direct reprisals, renders . the unfolding of the American plan more probable. Hach new aggression against the People's Republic of Vietnam narrows the margin of maneuver for the socialist camp and comes close to the moment when: it will.be confronted. with the worst dilemma -- general capitulation
or general war.
The incapacity to fix this limit and threaten the United States, before any new phase of the escalation, with "graduated reprisals" of counterescalation, is disheartening and tragic. As easy to measure out'das-the American escalation, the counterescala- | tion of -the- socialist powers would have the superiority of being. legitimate and effective: The aero-naval bases and the installations of the American Seventh Fleet are located at Formosa, at Okinawa; in- Thailand, in the Philippines, in the Guif of Tonkin. Seven years ago, the Soviet artillery demonstrated its ability to bit a » target 10, 000 kilometers away. .
To proclaim that there is a strict limit beyond which one would- return blow:for blow; to assure, while so doing, support to all.the peoples discouraged by the American killings as well as by their own inability to aid Vietnam which is fighting for them.all; to deliberately" assume. the risk of war today is the surest way.to' avoid the choice tomorrow between the reality of an imposed war and the destruction, ohe after the other, :of the revolutionary... states and movements of Asia and elsewhere’: .