If the Nixon-Brezhnev summit is viewed as a logical culmination of the process that began with the conclusion of the partial nuclear tests ban treaty in Moscow in October 1963 and as an extension of the Nixon-Chou parleys in Peking last February, it may well be said to mark the end of the East-West ideological cold war. The Russo-US competition for influence, specially in developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, will still continue. But this is likely to be a very different affair from the struggle of the ‘fifties and the early ‘sixties.
The process of winding up the cold war could perhaps have been accelerated if, after the Cuban crisis and the simultaneous Chinese attack on India in October-November 1962, the United States had decided to act on the assumptions that the Sino-Soviet split was irreparable, that the national interests of the two communist giants were irreconcilable and that, despite the virulence of Chinese propaganda and its emphasis on ideological purity, it was possible to do business with them on a pragmatic basis. But one cannot be sure because it is possible that at that stage the rulers in Peking might have spurned a US initiative. In any event America’s direct and massive involvement in the civil war in Viet Nam blighted the prospects of Sino-US rapprochement and consequent improvement in Russo-US relations in the ‘sixties.
Though it is arbitrary and wrong to fix a date, it is not unreasonable to take the view that despite the distortions produced by the Viet Nam war, the issues had become sufficiently crystallised by the middle of 1969 to make it possible for perceptive students of international affairs to predict that in the early ‘seventies the Russo-American global rivalry and the Sino-US conflict were likely to be superseded by the Sino-Soviet confrontation. Three sets of developments may be cited in support of this contention.
Limitations
First, when Mr Nixon came to occupy the White House in January 1969, he could be in no doubt that there were limitations even to US power, that it was beyond the country’s physical and psychological resources to establish Pax Americana a la Pax Britannica in the 19th and early part of the 20th century, that it was neither necessary nor possible for it to try to contain China by military means, that Peking was not hell-bent on expansionism, that it did not constitute a serious threat to essential American interests in Asia and that it was more worried about its disputes with the Soviet Union and the staggering growth of Japanese economy than about its old problems with Washington.
Mr Nixon has, of course, been extremely reluctant to accept defeat in Viet Nam and end the war on Hanoi’s terms. The withdrawal of American forces which was necessitated by public opinion at home, he has, in fact, spared little effort to ensure the survival of the anti-communist regime in Saigon so much so that he ordered the mining of North Vietnamese harbours and intensification of bombing raids over that country on the eve of his visit to Moscow. But however deplorable some of his actions in Indochina were in the past three years, it is self-evident that he has not shared the illusion of his predecessors regarding America’s place in the world and that he has been willing to negotiate honourable settlements with the Soviet Union and China.
Secondly, Chairman Mao Tse-tung had utilised the so-called proletarian cultural revolution from 1966 to 1968 to eliminate from positions of authority almost all important political and military leaders who either favoured the Soviet model of economic development or advocated co-operation with Moscow so that they could obtain the sophisticated military hardware which they thought the country needed desperately to cope with a possible US invasion of North Viet Nam and China. That was not all. He had gone so far as to indicate in no uncertain terms that he regarded the Soviet Union as China’s main enemy. He might even have provoked the armed clashes on the Ussuri in March 1969 to prove the validity of his stand.
Initiative
Finally, whatever the calculations and compulsions behind the Soviet military build-up along the 4,500-mile-long common border with China it obliged Moscow in 1969 to begin reshaping its policy in Europe with a view to reducing tensions there. That is why it readily seized the opportunity provided by Mr Brandt’s election as Chancellor of the Federal German Republic later in the year. It gladly responded to his initiative, though only a year ago it had used the German bogey as a pretext for occupying Czechoslovakia and for proclaiming the doctrine of limited sovereignty for socialist countries.
It is possible that the United States and the Soviet Union could have negotiated an agreement on the lines of the present Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty even in the absence of the Sino-Soviet confrontation and America’s disillusionment with its self-assumed role of the world’s gendarme because the further development and deployment of offensive and defensive missiles would have been at once extremely costly – each would’ve had to spend upward of $50 billion on an ABM system – and futile in that it would not have contributed much to their security against each other. But it would not have been quite as significant in that context as it is in the present one. It symbolises not only their decision to restrict the scope of the nuclear arms race but also their willingness to co-operate in more positive ways. The other agreements signed in Moscow, specially the one which provides for the establishment of a joint commission to promote trade between the two countries, should leave little scope for doubt. Incidentally, a ceiling on the nuclear armoury of the super-powers will facilitate their task in winning China’s co-operation in course of time.
All this is not to suggest that the more far-sighted among American and Russian leaders will in future find it easy to deal with backwoodsmen who speak for the military-industrial complex in their respective lands. This combination is as much of a reality in the Soviet Union as it is in the United States. The military leaders in Moscow may in fact be in a somewhat stronger position to resist encroachments on their domain than their American counterparts partly because the Soviet people seem to share their fear of China, partly because glory abroad compensates for a none too remarkable economic performance at home, and partly because party apparatus men are said to be reluctant to give up the Stalinist orthodoxy that heavy industries must have priority over consumer goods in the interest of security as well as socialism.
These people apparently feel threatened by economic reforms which seek to arm professional managers with wide powers and whittle down central planning because that would inevitably reduce their own role in the economy and erode their privileges. But in historical terms the spokesmen of the military-industrial complexes in Washington and Moscow are beginning to lose ground. For once, Mr Nixon is not indulging in hyperbole when he says that the transition from the era of confrontation to that of negotiation has begun. It is likely to acquire its own momentum in course of time.
It can be argued that this analysis ignores the war in Viet Nam and the Arab-Israeli political stalemate in West Asia. This in a sense is true. But however much the Arabs and the Vietnamese may dislike it, the fact remains that these disputes are peripheral to Russo-American relations. The summit itself would not have been held if it were not so.
Despite the reported failure of Mr Nixon and Mr Brezhnev to agree on possible solutions of these conflicts, it is notable that both before and during the Moscow talks Soviet sources went out of their way to tell American officials and journalists that in their view, the Chinese inspired the recent North Vietnamese offensive, that while reporting on the special meeting of the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party on May 19, Pravda took a swipe at the “anti-Leninist line” of the Chinese leaders and that the US Defence Secretary, Mr Laird, revived the plan to reopen the Suez Canal as Mr Nixon was paying homage to the victims of Nazi aggression in Leningrad.
Weaknesses
No one can predict the likely course of events in Indochina and West Asia with any sense of assurance. But it is not inconceivable that the United States will let the North Vietnamese prevail if it can withdraw its remaining forces without total loss of face in coming months, that is if, having exposed the weaknesses of Mr Nixon’s Vietnamisation programme, Hanoi is prepared to bide its time and does not launch another major offensive before the presidential elections in America next November. The present one is sure to lose its intensity during the rains.
Similarly, it cannot be ruled out that in West Asia the Soviet Union will slowly reconcile itself to Israel’s military superiority. Once it has undertaken, even if by implication rather than by direct statement, not to participate directly in an Egyptian attempt to win back its lost territories through force, it has not much of an option. It cannot even go on arming its Arab allies with more and more sophisticated weapons without taking risks which it obviously regards as unacceptable.
The Times of India, 30 May 1972