Workers World Vol. 18, No. 39
October 4 – The sharpening of the social contradictions inherent in monopoly capitalism makes it virtually impossible for imperialist diplomacy to function within the confines of the old ambassadorial framework that sufficed in the early days of the capitalist system. Even then, crucial issues occasionally had to be resolved by meetings of heads of state.
Where once the conventional ambassadorial level was the main diplomatic channel, today the imperialist countries must employ a variety of diverse diplomatic instrumentalities. At a time when ever-larger sections of the broad masses of people everywhere are awakening to political life, it is more than ever necessary for the ruling class to conceal its predatory aims by the use of new methods.
As long ago as the Wilson administration, the U.S. government found it necessary to circumvent the official ambassadorial levels of diplomacy by appointing a presidential assistant, or advisor, who in reality conducted the president’s diplomacy over and above the heads of the U.S. diplomatic corps.
For Wilson it was Colonel House. For Roosevelt it was Harry Hopkins. President Kennedy employed both Secretary of State Dean Rusk and McGeorge Bundy, his so-called National Security Advisor. And Henry Kissinger, as is well known, served und the Nixon administration first as National Security Advisor and only later as Secretary of State.
But the ruling class establishment is so riddled with virulent factionalism and the imperative need to conceal its motives and plans from the masses that ambassadors, presidential advisors, secretaries of state, and even special envoys with plenipotentiary powers no longer suffice.
Inner ruling class tensions arising from conflicts in policy among formidable groupings in the capitalist establishment, and especially in the military, have given rise to a new breed of unofficial ambassadors. These are usually former office holders in previous administrations of government. Most often these men, who represent significant class groupings, have fallen out with the administration or find it necessary to disassociate themselves from the current policies of the governing group.
Unofficial representatives, especially if they represent only a faction of the ruling class, are a highly dangerous breed. Presumably the Logan Act, which was passed a long, long time ago and prohibits any unauthorized person from representing the U.S. government abroad or negotiating on its behalf, should apply to them.
The difficulty, however, lies in determining whether these unofficial representatives are truly unofficial – or whether they have the sanction of the government. The Logan Act hasn’t prevented somebody like David Rockefeller from making any one of his innumerable trips abroad or consummating deals which sooner or later are bound to be official U.S. foreign policy. Large multi-national corporations, like the giant conglomerate ITT or the Exxon corporation, are frequently referred to as “sovereign states”; they virtually conduct their own foreign policy.
No one would ever cite the Logan Act against them. It’s only when the State Department and the Pentagon want to intimidate somebody who is actively trying to oppose aggressive U.S. war policies abroad that the Logan Act is remembered by the Justice Department.
Unofficial representatives, as emissaries, have come into vogue as the crisis of American finance capital deepens.
Last week two unofficial representatives from the U.S. ruling establishment were abroad, one in the People’s Republic of China and the other in the Soviet Union. It was no mere coincidence that they arrived at their destinations and left almost simultaneously.
Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger spent his time in China, and former Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averill Harriman was in the USSR.
Schlesinger was invited by the PRC presumably because of his “friendly understanding” of China’s problem with the USSR. Almost a year ago, on Nov. 3, 1975, Schlesinger was unceremoniously ousted from the Ford administration. He is widely regarded as an extremist in his antipathy to the USSR.
The New York Times of Nov. 7, 1975, in its lead editorial admitted that “Schlesinger believes that this country needs the option of actually fighting a limited nuclear war” against the USSR. This is all too true. Unfortunately, his is not the only one among the Pentagon brass who believes in promoting a policy of so-called limited nuclear war. Who among them does not?
Schlesinger surely is a representative of extremist elements in the military-industrial complex.
As seen from the vantage point of American finance capital, his mission to China is to deepen the split with the USSR, to envenom the relations between the USSR and China, hopefully to the point of military conflict. Such is the “friendly understanding” which Schlesinger offers to China. It is incredible that China’s leaders should invite such a guest, but this is the policy they have been pursuing for some time now. Schlesinger is only one of a number of similar imperialist dignitaries to whom China’s leaders have opened the door.
Harriman, on the other hand, is an unofficial representative to the USSR who is well-known for his professions of friendship and for his promotion of détente with the USSR. The corollary to the U.S. concept of détente with the USSR is to poison Soviet relations with China, deepen the split between them, and, like Schlesinger, urge them to the point of military conflict.
Thus we see two “unofficial” representatives presumably preaching opposite points of view on foreign policy but in reality promoting merely different aspects of the struggle of U.S. imperialism against the socialist countries. The fundamental aim of imperialist strategy lies in widening and deepening the split between the socialist countries. This lies at the very heart of the general strategy of every administration of the U.S. government since the victory of the Chinese Revolution, which attained its 27th anniversary on October 1st.
It is significant that both Harriman and Schlesinger have offered their services to the Ford administration and that both are offering their services to Carter. Harriman, of course, is a long-standing figure in the Democratic administrations. But he is not partisan. And Schlesinger has said that he “would feel comfortable” in a Carter administration.
Upon his arrival from China, Schlesinger spent a full half-day with Carter briefing him on his China visit. Carter was deliberately anxious to publicize his meeting with Schlesinger, whose official pronouncements coincide with those of Ronald Reagan. But this is precisely the point. Just as Harriman was playing the role of soft cop on foreign policy in his visit to the Soviet Union, Schlesinger was playing the hard one. Each carried out a mission vital to the interests of American finance capital: to keep the socialist countries at each other’s throats while the multi-national corporations devour the life-blood of the dependent and developing Third World countries and prepare for one military aggression after another.
This week at the UN, China’s Foreign Minister Chiao Kuan-hua once again dished up the warmed-over theory of the two superpowers. His talk was received jubilantly by the U.S. press. The headline in the New York Times, which accurately sums up Chiao’s talk, read, “China, at UN, Spurns Attempts by Soviets to Resume Old Ties; Moscow Policies Denounced; Peking Foreign Minister Charges Russian Expansionism – U.S. is Criticized Only Mildly.”
Whatever significance it may have at home, especially in the light of the internal struggle in China, one thing is certain: this won’t improve China’s position vis-à-vis the U.S. What the U.S. imperialists really are saying to China’s leaders is, “If you’re that worried about the USSR, then you are obligated to cooperate with us, and not vice versa.”
This summarized the complete bankruptcy of the current foreign policy of China. It hasn’t won a single, solitary concession from the U.S. which it didn’t have before the split. It hasn’t even won diplomatic relations; it hasn’t gotten back Taiwan; all it has won is the “friendly understanding” of nuclear war maniac Schlesinger.
The Chinese leaders used to correctly attack Togliatti of the Italian CP and Khrushchev for ignoring the class character of the two world camps. Now they brand the USSR and the U.S. as two “superpowers.” They are trying to liquidate the class character of the USSR and falsely equate it with U.S. imperialism.
They pose as champions of the Third World, which once meant champions of the oppressed people. But it is clearly seen now by their role in Angola and their support of Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, the late Haile Selassie, etc., that they are defending some of the worst of the oppressors. And this is music to the ears of the imperialists.
No one would have believed in Lenin’s time, and certainly not in Marx’s time, that it would be possible for a socialist country to virtually ally itself with the most rabid and bellicose section of imperialism and continually advocate to the imperialist powers what amounts to a virtual war against the USSR. Such in fact is the official policy of the PRC and has been for several years. Of course, it has been in part a reaction to the blatant efforts of the Soviet leadership to themselves collaborate with the U.S. against China.
The ideological and political struggle between the USSR and China has been so long in process and has so deeply cut into state-to-state relations that many have forgotten that there is a working class basis for normalizing relations between the two countries. But after all is said and done, the imperialists have not forgotten that both China and the USSR have become great powers precisely because they have a planned socialized economy based on common ownership of the means of production in the hands of a workers’ state.
The imperialists never forget, as no class conscious workers should, that in the midst of a ravaging economic crisis in the capitalist world, with its galloping inflation and rising unemployment – the two principle symptoms of an incurable social disease – China and the USSR stand out as uniquely free of precisely the very maladies which afflict the capitalist system.
There are, of course, other social, political, and economic problems in China and the USSR, but rampant unemployment and escalating inflation are not characteristic of the socialist economies of the USSR and China. This is not to say that they are unaffected by the capitalist crisis, but the cause is strictly external in character and does not flow from the nature of the social system of the USSR or China.
The imperialists understand this and that is why their hostility to both the USSR and China is of such an utterly irreconcilable character.
At the present time, the USSR is regarded by the imperialist countries as enemy number one only because it is the most powerful economically and militarily, and has therefore been able to thwart imperialist ambitions to dominate the world. The USSR also has on occasion extended revolutionary fraternal assistance in the recent period, as in the case of Angola and earlier in Cuba.
The fact that China’s foreign policy is at the present time wholly misdirected does not necessarily signify that it is of a permanent character. The nervousness of the imperialist press over Chinese foreign policy is manifested by a virtual torrent of capitalist speculation over the future direction of China’s foreign policy following the death of Mao.
The ruling class is obsessed with the factional struggle in China and apprehensive over whether a turn in Chinese foreign policy toward accommodation with the USSR may be in the offing. They understand that there is a class basis for a revival of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty signed in 1950 which was directed against any aggression from imperialism to either country.
It is wholly in the interests of both China and the USSR that a new start at normalizing relations be made. It is, however, up to the leadership of the USSR to make the appropriate steps in that direction.
Immediately upon the heels of Chairman Mao’s death, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, over the signature of Chairman Leonid Brezhnev, sent a condolence message to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Superficially it was the right thing to do. But in reality it was a false start. Relations between the two parties were long ago broken and the ideological differences between the two are as wide as a canyon. A renewal of party relationships is not objectively possible at the present time, especially since not only have party relations been thoroughly ruptured but state-to-state relations have greatly deteriorated as well.
Party-to-party relations could only be resumed after a foundation for them had been laid in which at least some of the state-to-state relations had been ironed out. Moreover, by dashing off this condolence message to the CCP, the Soviet leaders invited a none-too-polite rebuke which was entirely predictable.
In the first place, the condolence message publicly put the CCP leadership on the spot at a time when the only answer could be a rebuke to the Soviet CP. It is not possible, so far as anyone can gauge the situation from here, for the current leadership in China to resume party-to-party relations with the Soviet leaders without the risk of a deep split in the Chinese leadership.
Of course, it is in the interests of China as a workers’ state, as a country building socialism, to resume negotiations with the Soviet Union to resolve outstanding issues over which there has been a continuing struggle, such as the border dispute. It is precisely here, however, that the Soviet Union should take the initiative.
Perhaps a small beginning has been made. On the occasion of the recent 27th anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese government, a message was sent to China. On this occasion, it was properly address to the People’s Republic of China, that is, to the government, not to the party. But it will take more than words to make an impact. What are needed are some meaningful deeds, such as the commencement of withdrawal of Soviet troops along the Chinese border.
Even if this were to be interpreted by the current Chinese leadership as weakness on the part of the Soviet leaders, rather than an effort to resume normal state-to-state relations, that would not be likely to hurt the USSR. China is not on a warpath with the USSR any more than the USSR is eager to confront China in a military way – at least, not given present circumstances. On the contrary, this whole antagonism, which on occasion has led to localized military engagement, has an utterly unreal and even bizarre character. This dispute arises from long-standing ideological differences which have blindly led the two socialist countries into a dangerous impasse. Only imperialism can gain from a continuation of the present state of affairs in China and the USSR.
The presence of the two unofficial U.S. ambassadors of ill will to Peking and Moscow, Schlesinger and Harriman, is a remarkable example of the real objective of imperialism: to poison relations between China and the USSR and exploit their antagonism for the benefit of finance capital. Nothing could be more welcome than a reversal of the present relations between China and the USSR. It would enliven the revolutionary struggle of the masses against imperialism everywhere.
Even a mere bilateral declaration jointly made between the USSR and China, stating that each would make an earnest effort to resolve their differences – even such a small and apparently innocuous statement, if made jointly and acted upon earnestly, would go a long way to set imperialism back on its heels.
Last updated: 11 May 2026