Workers World, Vol. 17, No. 21, May 23, 1975
May 16 – Only one day has passed since the Mayaguez provocation and yet one can easily see, through the fog of capitalist propaganda, what the Pentagon’s piratical assault on the Cambodians amounts to.
No one has seriously ever doubted that with its overwhelming naval and air power, the U.S. can launch a hit-and-run mission in a selected area of the world. The Pentagon is, of course, equipped with all the most modern and sophisticated technology, including a tremendous nuclear capability.
But such successes are of the type that the late Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon warned against. He was one of the two Senators who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution after one of those briefing sessions by the military to Senate Foreign Relations Committee of which he was a member. Senator Morse said, in 1964, “What the military have in mind doing in Asia will make the United States the most hated nation in the world.”
There’s no question that the Mayaguez provocation has succeeded splendidly in fulfilling Morse’s prediction. The hatred of the popular masses all over the world is not directed against the American people as a whole; it is against the imperialist system which continually fosters such unbridled militarism.
When the bragging dies down, it will be seen very clearly that the real U.S. objective in the renewed Cambodian assault cannot be achieved. The dream of the Pentagon planners to recover in Southeast Asia what has been won by the revolutionary masses is only a dream. It is impossible to recolonize Southeast Asia. The position of American finance capital in that part of the world is hopelessly lost and will never be retrieved, not even by the most forcible and violent methods.
This, however, does not exclude maniacal efforts to do the impossible. Nor will it stop the Pentagon from utilizing one pretext or another to make a show of force in order to prevent the liberation of other enslaved areas of the world from imperialist banditry.
Unquestionably, the Mayaguez operation was calculated to intimidate the Korean people, to stifle any effort to overthrow the yoke of the fascist Park regime, and to strengthen the U.S. military position in all of northeast Asia.
Relations between USSR and China
Here it is necessary to once again examine Sino-Soviet relations in the new context of the rapidly deteriorating U.S. world position, especially in light of the monumental victory of the Vietnamese and Cambodian peoples. There is every reason in the world for both the Soviet Union and China as workers’ states to feel enormously strengthened and self-confident in relation to imperialism and particularly in relation to the U.S. And yet one must ask just how did the crisis engendered by the Mayaguez adventure find both China and the USSR? Did it find them closer together vis-à-vis U.S. imperialist objectives or did it find them further apart than ever?
A dispassionate view of the relationship confirms that on the day of the military provocation, China and the USSR were both deeply engaged in hostile maneuvers against each other, to the advantage of imperialism.
U.S.-USSR naval visits
Consider these two undeniable facts: On the day of the provocation a Soviet destroyer was paying a friendly visit to Boston while a U.S. destroyer was reciprocating in Leningrad. Why? For purely ceremonial reasons? To celebrate the Nazi defeat 30 years ago?
Such a reciprocal military exchange is not part of normalizing relationships between countries having diametrically opposed social systems. It is in fact an abnormality. Such military exchanges are regarded as hostile acts by countries which are oppressed by imperialism. They are evidence not of “normalizing relations,” but of efforts at an alliance. Alliances, in the context of contemporary world relationships, are made only against third parties.
In this respect, China has every reason to regard the visits as a hostile act. And how should Cambodia, Vietnam, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, not to speak of Cuba, all Latin America, and the oppressed peoples of the Middle East, regard this military exchange?
However, it is only one aspect of a larger effort which includes plans for a joint USSR-U.S. space mission – a spectacle which, if it takes place, will be just as odious and offensive to the sensibilities of all oppressed people and a fraud and deception upon the world proletariat, including most of all the people of the USSR. Such a demonstration is not calculated to advance scientific development. It can only be viewed as an effort at political accommodation, at the expense of proletarian internationalism and socialist obligations to the rest of the world.
Teng in Paris
And where was the People’s Republic of China on the day of the monstrous provocation by the U.S. in the waters of the Gulf of Siam? Deputy Premier Teng Hsiao-ping have arrived in Paris for a 6-day visit. His avowed purpose was to line up imperialist Europe against the USSR. His visit was supposed to cap months of intensive agitation and diplomatic activity calculated to firm up the NATO powers against a workers’ state. This is so openly and so flagrantly stated in the Chinese press as to make it utterly fantastic as it is fallacious politically.
It was a frightened leader of the French CP, George Marchais, who denounced Deputy Premier Teng’s visit as an attempt to line up the monopolies of Europe and to curry favor with President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the chief executive of French imperialism.
But Marchais is in poor standing to denounce Teng’s maneuvers in the light of his support of Soviet diplomacy – let alone the sorry class collaborationist position of the French CP.
There are those who would prefer to close their eyes to Sino-Soviet relations and concentrate on the task of combatting imperialism at home. This might certainly seem preferable, were it not for the fact that the imperialists are certainly not closing their eyes to Sino-Soviet relations. Nor is it possible for a revolutionary working class party to combat imperialism without taking into account the actual situation of the socialist countries and of the world working class as a whole. To neglect such a task is to fly in the face of the most elementary precepts regarding internationalism. Again there are those who would like to say “a plague on both your houses” and utilize every opportunity to borrow imperialist propaganda to attack both China and the USSR. This approach was all too often practiced in certain radical circles and broad sections of the liberals here during the entire Cold War period.
The objective result of this policy has been to embellish and strengthen imperialist to the detriment of class truth.
Then again, there are blind camp followers who either unabashedly endorse and uncritically pursue the Soviet or the Chinese line. Thus the Daily World here completely evaded in the current Cambodian crisis the fact that the USSR withheld recognition of the Khmer Rouge (National Khmer United Front), and has given the most tepid, pro-forma support to the Cambodian revolutionary government on the Mayaguez assault (if it could even be called support).
On the other hand, the Maoist groupings here vociferously support the false and spurious social-imperialism theory of the People’s Republic of China, and applaud China’s efforts to galvanize imperialist NATO against the USSR.
Socialist support for Korea
How then will it be with the USSR and China in the forthcoming struggle of the Korean people to free themselves from the scourge of the puppet Park regime and the U.S. military?
One U.S. aim in the Mayaguez adventure was to intimidate the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and to threaten the rebellious masses groaning under the heel of the Park regime.
This June 25 will be the 25th anniversary of U.S. aggression in Korea. Both the USSR and China have a common border with Korea. Both have a stake in the liberation of south Korea from imperialist enslavement. The DPRK needs support, not only from the USSR and China but, like Vietnam, it needs the support of all the socialist countries and all the progressive people of the world.
Instead of the unprincipled Teng maneuver in Paris and the equally unprincipled Gromyko-Kissinger maneuvers in Vienna, would it not be in the interest of socialist solidarity to have a joint Sino-Soviet statement of support and solidarity with the DPRK and the oppressed south Korean people against U.S. aggression?
Would this not be more in the interest of all the world’s oppressed? Such a joint statement would help cut the ground from the Ford-Kissinger-Schlesinger latest exercise in imperialist brinkmanship.
The orgy of jingoism and chauvinism which the Mayaguez adventure has engendered requires a renewed and more determined dedication, particularly by the American working class movement and by all progressive forces, against the ugly spectacle of another U.S. intervention in Asia.
Our task here is to give the same kind of aid, the same unconditional support to the Korean struggle that we have given so magnificently in the Vietnam liberation war. We will do so all the more vigorously because we are cognizant of the difficulties imposed by the false and spurious struggle between the Soviet and Chinese leaders and those who echo their line here. We are unswervingly committed to defend all the socialist countries and the oppressed people everywhere not only against imperialist reaction but also against internal bourgeois reaction.
Our criticism of Sino-Soviet policy is absolutely consistent with our global class view of defending all socialist countries, while at the same time retaining our own independent view of the political and diplomatic conduct of both China and the Soviet Union.
Last updated: 11 May 2026