Workers World Vol. 18, No. 17
April 20 – The world is now witnessing a period of the most intense diplomatic maneuvering and political speculation since the early 1930s.
It is to be remembered that at that time, too, an economic crisis was shaking the capitalist world. Only a renewed wave of capitalist rearmament helped the beginning of recovery from the vicious capitalist cycle. Today, too, the capitalist economic crisis is still in progress and taking an enormous toll in human lives and material resources. And again there has been a renewed wave, really a tidal wave, of imperialist rearmament that is virtually universal. No country can easily escape it and none is.
But there are events of truly international significance that account for the immediate flurry in diplomatic maneuvering and speculation. The first, of course, is the fall of Teng Hsiao-ping in China and the ascendency of Hua Kuo-feng to the apparent leadership in the internal struggle – which is by no means over.
More recently has been the beginning of a normalization in relations between India and China as well as the former’s attempt to straighten out its relations with Pakistan. All of this must inevitably be viewed in the light of the Sino-Soviet conflict and the position of U.S. imperialism vis-à-vis the two great socialist states.
The gist of the diplomatic maneuvering relates, of course, to a possible alteration in what is called in imperialist diplomatic jargon the “balance of forces.” What is meant by this in the contemporary era is not some change among the allies of NATO or any new development between European imperialist powers and the U.S., or even any changes in the under-developed countries of the world. What it refers to today is a possible change in the relations between China and the USSR, which certainly would change the real balance of power in the world.
For too long buried under an avalanche of utterly false ideological polemics, the question of a renewal of Sino-Soviet relations on a normal basis has at last surfaced and become the subject of discussion in all the more serious journals of the capitalist press.
Thus James Reston for the first time raises the possibility of “a restoration of the Sino-Soviet alliance” (New York Times, April 16). And the well-known Far East expert and advisor to U.S. foreign policy makers, Professor Doak Barnett, raises the same issue and concludes that a limited accommodation between the two socialist countries is possible (U.S. News & World Report, April 26).
But it can go either way. It depends to a large extent on the leadership in the USSR as well as in China.
Socialist diplomacy differs in this fundamental respect, among others, from bourgeois geopolitics: Socialist diplomacy, unlike bourgeois geopolitics, takes its stand in the light of the prevailing correlation of class forces, acknowledging the class struggle as the driving force of the present epoch and recognizing that these driving forces inevitably lead to proletarian revolution.
Bourgeois geopolitics, while masking the class character of its diplomacy, bases itself on external manifestations of “strength” and pursues a policy based on force and violence as the supreme arbiter in the struggle for world domination.
Marxist social diplomacy does not neglect temporary alliances with bourgeois states where necessary. But these temporary alliances are subordinate to the main and fundamental lever of the class struggle in the defense of the socialist revolution and workers’ states.
Alliances with bourgeois states, whether imperialist states or under-developed bourgeois states like India or Egypt, are viewed in communist strategy as the small levers in the struggle against imperialism, where the fundamental long-range and invincible weapons are contained in the encouragement, promotion, and vigorous and relentless prosecution of the class struggle and the world oppressed against imperialism and bourgeois reaction.
This is what has long been lost sight of in the diplomacy of People’s China and the USSR.
Take, for instance, the USSR’s role in Egypt. For almost two decades the USSR had an alliance with Egypt. The alliance, as understood in terms of Leninist politics, should have been strictly a foreign affairs matter, strictly divorced from the class struggle in Egypt and free from collaboration with the Egyptian bourgeoisie in relation to the domestic situation in Egypt. It should have been rigidly pursued as a strategy to defend Egypt and the other Arab countries against imperialist aggression. But it went far beyond that.
Khrushchev as well as Kosygin and Brezhnev sanctioned the “Arab Socialism” of the Egyptian leaders – which was a fraud upon the masses and stifled the independent initiative of revolutionary forces attempting to give leadership to the struggle of the proletariat and peasantry against the bourgeoisie.
Even in his best days, and he certainly had some heroic ones, especially during the Suez crisis, Nasser was always a representative of the bourgeoisie. The Egyptian bourgeoisie became strengthened, partly due to Soviet assistance, and at the same time more fearful of the possible contagion of Marxism. Unable to get what in reality would have been an excessive commitment of military aid by the USSR, Nasser’s successor Sadat used this to break with the USSR and turn full circle so that he is now fully in the embrace of U.S. imperialism and has, to boot, betrayed the heroic cause of the Palestinians.
This costly error on the part of the Soviet leadership has left the USSR weakened in its diplomatic position vis-à-vis the Middle East.
Now the larger question looming is whether India, where the USSR leadership has practiced the same sort of self-defeating policy, will bear the same fruits.
This week the government of India announced it was reopening diplomatic relations with China. The question yet to be answered is: was this done with encouragement from the Soviet leaders hoping to reach an understanding with China, or was this move in reality an effort to veer in the direction of U.S. imperialism?
Should it turn out to be the result of insidious and unrelenting pressure from U.S. imperialism, and should the Indira Gandhi regime be turned around in the same way as Sadat, the result would constitute a diplomatic catastrophe for the leadership of the USSR of incalculable consequences.
In India, as in Egypt, the bourgeoisie has become strengthened as a result of industrialization, greatly accelerated by Soviet economic and technical assistance. The proletariat, however, is severely, savagely repressed and lacking in a unified revolutionary working class party, expressing the independent class interests of the workers and peasants free of Soviet and Maoist revisionism. The mass revolutionary potential of the proletariat has been greatly debilitated in the process.
China’s foreign policy now differs little from that which has been practiced by the USSR, as evidenced in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other areas – one need not even give the most recent examples of Chile and Angola.
Should India go the way of Egypt, it would tremendously isolate the USSR. When one takes into consideration that the Soviet leadership long ago lost the allegiance, that is class allegiance, of the European CP leaders, it puts the USSR in a position almost as isolated as it was in the early 1930s. But the losses of the USSR in the field of diplomacy, such as Egypt and possibly India, do not at all add up to gains for China. That is all appearance and no substance. The real gain is for U.S. imperialism, and in the case of India, would represent an application of the finely tuned Kissinger “Mideast diplomacy” to Asia.
There is great danger in relying on bourgeois allies so heavily to the detriment of the international proletariat and the oppressed. The true strength of both China and the USSR lies first of all in their defense capacities at home and then in the sympathy of the oppressed workers and peasants in India, Egypt, Western Europe, and all over the world – not in merely temporary (which most often means treacherous) alliances with bourgeois states.
Certainly these alliances may on occasion be needed, even urgently needed and useful. But they are not used occasionally – they have become the standard weapon and completely subordinate the struggle of the oppressed.
Of course, the USSR leadership has tremendously raised its prestige with its vigorous support for the Angolan people. Even more so has revolutionary Cuba. This, however, doesn’t cancel out the overall policy pursued by the USSR or that of China.
A proletarian revolutionist in an imperialist country, during an imperialist war, cannot but hope, cannot but wish, for the defeat of his “own” imperialist government. That is a fundamental tenet of revolutionary Marxism, which Lenin developed in the first imperialist war. As a corollary to this, proletarian revolutionists cannot but hope for a restoration of friendly socialist relations between China and the USSR and the resumption of the struggle against imperialism.
This thought has never left the ideologists, statesmen, and politicians of the bourgeoisie. Their class instincts and irreconcilability towards the socialist states has never really been altered (except during certain intervals made necessary for the prosecution of their own predatory interests).
Following the announcement that Hua had become China’s Prime Minister, Ford dispatched a telegram of congratulation. Later Kosygin did likewise. But this is the small change of diplomacy.
In an earlier article we strongly suggested the timeliness and correctness of the Soviet Union initiating a troop withdrawal along the Sino-Soviet border as an objective act which would certainly be unambiguous in its character and free from misinterpretation. It remains to be seen whether there are enough wisdom and pressures from within the Soviet Union to effectuate such an initiative.
In the meantime, Ford has let it be known that he is at last ready to visit India. And along with that the U.S. is now “sympathetic” towards giving some material aid to India which it previously withheld.
Finally, former Secretary of Defense Schlesinger has let it be known that he has accepted an invitation to visit China. The latter’s assertion in his CBS broadcast (“Face the Nation,” April 22) that he regarded China as a “quasi-ally” might easily lend itself to deepening the illusions of the Chinese leadership regarding the U.S., just as has been the case all the more so with respect to Soviet leaders, beginning with Stalin.
Schlesinger even indicated that he was amenable to military aid for China, plus sophisticated technology for civilian purposes. It is easy to understand how this could be attractive to at least some of the Chinese leaders. And Schlesinger is, of course, a spokesman for the Pentagon, certainly for a substantial part of it. Otherwise he would not be given freedom to air his opinions twice over the national networks in so short a time – on CBS and Channel 13 [PBS].
But we must assume that the Chinese leaders are also aware of such Pentagon spokesmen as Senator Goldwater, who in an extraordinary letter to the New York Times on April 20 excoriated the Times for conveying the impression “that American plans to abandon our legal ties with the Republic of China” (Taiwan).
“I was told on two occasions,” he goes on to say, “after Mr. Nixon’s visit to mainland China that the United States would never grant formal diplomatic recognition to Red China. I was given a personal assurance immediately after Mr. Nixon had completed his visit and I was subsequently given a reaffirmation of that pledge. I was also assured on each occasion by then President Nixon that the United States would not terminate its defense commitment to the Republic of China. ...
“I find it impossible to conceive how the United States, with its 200 years of history as the representative of democracy and freedom, could ever consider delivering over the peaceful people of Taiwan to the tyrants who govern the mainland, and I am convinced that this will not happen.”
Goldwater is not just a discredited right-wing presidential aspirant who lost to Johnson in 1964. He is a key political leader for the military-industrial complex and a retired Air Force officer. He is one of the principal figures, if not the principal one, pushing such projects as the B-1 bomber. He wants literally hundreds of them at a cost of almost a hundred million dollars each. And these are the bombers which are calculated to penetrate not only the airspace of the USSR but also that of China.
Schlesinger calls China a “quasi-ally,” but what Chinese leaders should know is that Goldwater is no quasi-ally of Schlesinger but a 100 percent ally.
What Schlesinger said in his TV broadcast about being a quasi-ally of China should be seen in the light of what Goldwater says in the brutally frank language he almost always uses. Schlesinger’s statement is merely a vicious anti-Soviet appeal, while Goldwater is crudely open in opposing both China and the Soviet Union – but not opposed at all to getting China and the USSR to fight each other! Viewing their two statements together in light of the tremendous military build-up initiated by the Pentagon and Ford and even exceeded by Congress could conceivably help the leaders of both China and the USSR recognize where their true interests lie.
Last updated: 11 May 2026