Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

This shift in the Soviet attitude toward neutralism was helped by Dulles’s refusal to accept the existence of neutralism. His rebuffs tended to drive those areas which wanted to be neutral into the arms of Russia, because the new nations of the developing Buffer Fringe valued their independence above all else. The Russian acceptance of neutralism may be dated about 1954, while Dulles still felt strongly adverse to neutralism four or even five years later. This gave the Soviet Union a chronological advantage which served in some small degree to compensate for its many disadvantages in the basic struggle to win the favor of the neutrals.

While these changes were occurring, the strategic debate in the Soviet Union continued. In this subject also, the fact that the Soviet Union was straining its economic resources was of great importance. The demands of the unsuccessful Soviet agricultural program made it necessary to put more and more manpower into agriculture at the very time that the demands of the defense effort and the civilian economy (and the rampant waste and inefficiency in the Soviet system) were increasing the demands for manpower in industry. Moreover, the heavy casualties of the period 1928-1945 from purges and warfare had reduced the population figures and the birthrate to such a degree that the Soviet population figures, even in 1970, would be tens of millions below normal. The only source from which such demands for manpower could be met was in the conventionally armed units of the Soviet defense forces.

As a consequence of these conditions, the Soviet defense strategy debate from 1955 onward took a form somewhat parallel to that going on in the United States; that is, some of the political leaders, including Khrushchev, began to force upon the Soviet military leaders a shift in emphasis from mass conventional forces toward greater reliance upon strategic bombers and missiles. Khrushchev’s version of the Eisenhower “New Look,” in which the latter’s “Bigger bang for a buck” was played by a Soviet version of “More rubble for a ruble,” was adopted by Soviet Chief of Staff Marshal Sokolovsky and, less vigorously, by Defense Minister Marshal Malinovsky. The former’s view was stated in a widely read book, Military Strategy , published in Moscow in September 1962, (Edited by V. D. Sokolovsky and published by Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1963) but it is quite clear that the military leaders were prepared to yield, slowly, to Khrushchev and other political leaders. The net result seems likely to be a mixed one, somewhat similar to the struggle in the United States. The chief difference is that Soviet production and wealth is so much less than that of the United States that all such critical decisions must be made within much narrower parameters.

In spite of these limitations of resources and demonstrations of inexperience and lack of competence parallel to that of the United States, the impact of the super-Powers was tremendous, especially in eastern and southern Asia and in the Near East.

The Cold War in Eastern and Southern Asia, 1950-1957

THE FAR EAST

In the Far East, as a consequence of the Yalta Conference, the Soviet government decided that the chief feature of its policy in the postwar period would be public collaboration with the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. This non-Communist area was to be held within limits by Soviet control, through local Communist groups, of various peripheral areas of which the chief would be Korea, Outer Mongolia, Sinkiang, possibly Manchuria, and some portions of Southeast Asia. Soviet control of Korea was envisaged as a threat to Japan as much as a buffer on Nationalist China.

This Soviet attitude toward China was reflected in the Sino-Soviet Treaty of August 14, 1945, which obtained Chiang’s consent to the concessions which had been made, on his behalf, by Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta. The most significant section of the agreement was in Molotov’s note of the same day which promised that the Soviet Union’s moral and material support “be entirely given to the National government as the central government of China” and promised to end any Soviet support of the Chinese Communists in Sinkiang, since it “has no intention of interfering in the internal affairs of China.” As implementation of this agreement, Stalin summoned the Chinese Communists to Moscow, told them that “the uprising in China had no prospects and that the Chinese comrades should seek a modus vivendi with Chiang Kai-shek, that they should join the Chiang government and dissolve their army.” The Chinese Communists agreed, but returned to China to continue their struggle against the Nationalist government. Only when that struggle was achieving its final success, four years later, did Stalin accept a Communist regime in China and seek to bring it under his influence by means of the Red Chinese-Soviet treaty of February 14, 1950.

The lack of Soviet support for the Chinese Communists in the period of their final victory does not mean that the Russians were completely loyal to their commitments with Chiang Kai-shek. They fully expected him to remain the ruler of China, but they wished to hem him in so that he would find it difficult to cooperate with the United States in any anti-Soviet policy in eastern Asia. Accordingly, they not only expected the Communists to remain dominant in Sinkiang; they were also eager to see them take over an additional zone or buffer belt in northwestern China and in Manchuria. For this reason, the Soviet forces, in violation of the treaty of 1945, yielded parts of Manchuria to Communist rather than to Nationalist Chinese forces as they withdrew from that province.

Stalin’s real concern in the Far East was with Japan, which he feared might become an aggressive and militarized agent of the United States. He wished to participate in the military administration of Japan but was excluded by the imperious MacArthur. There can be little doubt that the Kremlin under Stalin was much more concerned with getting a Communist Japan than a Communist China, and hoped to see the former reduced to economic and social chaos as a step on the way to a Communist Party victory there. All these hopes were frustrated. The growing prosperity of Japan, and especially the success of Ladejinsky’s agrarian reforms, steadily reduced the influence of Communism, with the result that the Communist Party of Japan obtained less than 3 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections of October 1952 and lost all of its twenty-two seats in the Diet.

As protection against such an eventuality, Stalin insisted on the total demilitarization of Japan, the breakup of the industrial complexes like Mitsui, and possession or domination of surrounding areas such as south Sakhalin Island, the Kuriles, and Korea. The decartelization of Japan was never seriously considered by the MacArthur regime, and the demilitarization, although guaranteed by the new Japanese constitution, was abandoned by MacArthur in the name of Japanese defense needs, beginning in December 1950.

These defeats in Japan made it all the more urgent that Stalin get control of all of Korea, but here again he met a resounding defeat which largely destroyed Soviet prestige in the Far East. The vital event in this process was the need for Soviet-dominated North Korea to call for Red Chinese help to bail it out of the dangerous situation to which the Moscow-encouraged attack on South Korea had brought it.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Stalin’s disappointments in the Far East were also extended to Southeast Asia. This area forms the triangle between the great land masses of India, China, and Australia. It is a jumble of islands and peninsulas occupied

by a jumble of peoples of diverse origins and cultures. The indigenous peoples with their animistic religions have been subjected to cultural, religious, and political intrusions of very diverse characteristics. The chief of these intrusions have been those from India and China, a somewhat later Muslim influence from the West, and finally, in recent centuries, the political and commercial influence of Europe and America. For generations there has been persistent Chinese immigration from the north.