Triveni Journal
1927 | 11,233,916 words
Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....
By Prof. M. VENKATARANGAIYA
Every age has its own political fashions. It has become the accepted fashion of the present day for heads of States to undertake trips to foreign countries, meet their opposite-numbers, exchange views on all world problems and issue a joint communique at the end. Such visits are increasing in number and frequency. They are supposed to create mutual understanding and remove causes of tension. They are considered to be necessary in supplementing the routine work done from day to day by the regular envoys and ambassadors stationed in foreign capitals. In any survey of international affairs these visits have to be taken into consideration.
It is true that the communiques issued consist mostly of platitudes saying that all the major problems of the day were approached with a common purpose, that the talks were conducted in an atmosphere of cordiality and friendship, that the discussions were quite frank and that every effort was made to have the different viewpoints correctly understood. In spite of their platitudinous nature the communiques are valuable for the light they throw what the statesmen of the day consider to be the most significant international issues which have to be talked. If the communiques issued in the course of the last three months are analysed from this standpoint, it will be found that the problems which are engaging the attention of statesmen today are: (1) Disarmament; (2) the changes in Soviet Russia; (3) the situation in the Middle East; (4) the re-unification of Germany, and (5) the Far East. It is round these that international affairs are revolving at present.
Disarmament is a longstanding problem. It has gained in importance in recent years because of the armament race that has been going on in the atmosphere of the cold war. Resources that can be usefully spent on raising the real income of the people and their standard of comfort have been diverted to build armies, navies, air-craft, atom-bombs, hydrogen bombs and all kinds of conventional weapons. Defence expenditure is everywhere on the ease and in some countries, including Soviet Russia and Britain, it has become too heavy for the people and their governments to bear. This race in armaments has also been responsible for the growth of mutual suspicion among the great powers and the increasing world tension. One special aspect of this phenomenon is the stockpiling of atom and hydrogen bombs and the large number of nuclear test explosions undertaken by the United States and Soviet Russia. These explosions have contaminated the atmosphere and it is felt that the radio-activity which they have released is undermining the health and strength of people in very many countries–especially of Asia–as it is in Asia and its neighbourhood that these nuclear tests are being made. Protests have therefore come from Japan, Indonesia, several islands in the Pacific, India and other countries against nuclear tests and statesmen therefore had to give careful consideration to such protests.
It is against this ground that the Disarmament Commission of the U. N. O. and its sub-committee have been considering the general problem of disarmament in recent months. It is unfortunate that no agreement could be arrived at owing to the cold war atmosphere that still divides Soviet Russia and the Western States. In these discussions they have become divided as usual into two opposing camps, each putting forward its own proposals and unwilling to come to some kind of compromise. One peculiarity of these proposals has been their changing nature; Changes of course are good as no discussion is possible if each party rigidly adheres to one set of views, but it has So happened in these debates that when a new set of proposals was made by one party the other party brought another set of new proposals, with the result that the gulf dividing them continued to be as wide as ever. The problem of disarmament is therefore no nearer solution today than what it was five years ago, even though its harmful effects heave become graver and more serious in the interval.
The issues in this problem have to be clearly understood. There is first a reduction in the size of armies. The latest position is that Soviet Russia has reduced the strength of her armies by 600,000 last year and proposes to reduce it 1,200,000 now, irrespective of what other States do. Moreover she has accepted the Western proposal that the big powers–U.S.A., U.S.S.R. and China–should each have a maximum strength of 2,500,000 and that Britain and France should each have 750,000. She however is against any of the other States having more than 200,000 each. This is not acceptable to the Western powers as they have already decided that Western Germany should be rearmed and that she should have an army of 500,000. On the question of Germany no compromise is possible and this has created a sort of stalemate.
There is next the question of the use of nuclear weapons in war, the destruction of the existing stock-piles, the cessation of their future production and the cessation also of further nuclear tests. On these there has so far been no agreement. First because of the insistence that all issues connected with disarmament should be simultaneously settled, and second because of differences in regard to the constitution and powers of the organ of control for seeing that there prohibitions and cessations are really put into effect. Britain has expressed herself in favour of limitation (as distinguished from prohibition) of nuclear tests.
Next there is the question of the solution of the major political problems like the unification of Germany, of Korea, Viet-Nam etc. It is the view of the Western powers that the problem of disarmament is closely linked up with the solution of these political problems. They point out that so long as these are not settled by peaceful negotiation there is a danger of the outbreak of war to solve them and that disarmament would adversely affect their chances of winning in such a war. It will therefore be a risky step for them to disarm when world tensions still exist.
There are also other issues involved. There is for instance President Eisenhower’s plan calling for aerial inspection of important military centres so that any sudden attacks like the Japanese Pearl Harbour attack might be prevented. It is however the case of Russia that this has nothing to do with disarmament.
So the endless debate goes on. Proposals and counter-proposals are ever on the increase. But disarmament is receding. It is true that Soviet Russia has unilaterally reduced her forces by more than a million and a half. But no one knows what the original strength of her armies was and at what figure it stands after this reduction. Consequently no significance can be attached to this unilateral action.
The conclusion that follows is that so long as there is suspicion between Soviet Russia on one side and the Western powers on the other, disarmament on any substantial scale is not possible. These suspicions have to be removed. And it is this that gives importance to the political changes in Soviet Russia.
Reference has been made to these changes in the last survey. Soviet aggressiveness in the past is attributed by the new rulers of Russia to Stalin. They now argue that Stalinism is dead; they are determined to revise his policies to cultivate understanding with all the countries and adhere to the principle of peaceful co-existence. They point out to their acceptance of Titoism, their signing of the Austrian treaty and their visits to several countries as evidence of this change. It is for the Western powers to recognise the reality of this change and to reciprocate friendship to the new rulers of Russia who are so anxious for peace and goodwill. Such a response from the West–it is argued–will result in the removal of mutual suspicion and bring about disarmament automatically.
An the Western powers are not agreed that there has been a real change in Soviet Russia. It is for instance the view of the Americans that Soviet leaders have not given up the ideal of spreading Communism in the whole world, that. consequently they continue to threaten the existence of democratic freedom and that they have not given up their control over their satellites in Central and Eastern Europe. They also point out that the present rulers of Russia are more active than Stalin in the Middle East and Africa, that they are stirring trouble in these areas and that their object in all this is to put an end to whatever influence the West has in such areas. They are supplying arms to countries like Egypt; they are giving them economic aid; they are sending their technical experts and they are using their weapon of propaganda for undermining the prestige of the West. In these circumstances the Americans refuse to believe that there has been any real change in Soviet Russia.
Britain has not gone to this extreme. She thinks that there is some change but it is not substantial. Even if it is substantial it will not be consistent with her commitments to the United States and the North Atlantic Alliance to embark on a course of policy opposed to that of the United States. It is a policy of ‘wait and see’ that she is anxious to adopt.
French statesmen do see a change in Russia. Moreover their traditional hostility to Germany drives them towards Soviet Russia. But they too are swayed by conflicting emotions. France is a member of the North Atlantic Alliance. She has in recent years cultivated a close association with the United States. She is also enraged by Soviet policies in the Middle East as these have strengthened Egypt which in the French view is behind the Algerian nationalists.
It is true that in the recent Conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers Pandit Nehru strongly impressed on the other members that Soviet Russia has really changed and that it would be best to recognise this and put an end to the cold war mentality. His colleagues might have been influenced morally by his views but it is not quite certain whether, tied as almost all of them are to the wheels of the American chariot, they feel free to act in accordance with their moral convictions. Besides this there are statesmen like Chancellor Adenauer of West Germany, whom Pandit Nehru met and with whom he discussed the world situation, that are still not convinced that there has been a real change in Soviet policy.
There are several others who wish to wait before they change their attitude towards Soviet Russia and they are influenced in this by another consideration. They expect that, in course of time, Soviet Russia will become weak in consequence of rebellions in the satellite States like Poland and Czecho-Slovakia and that will be the time for them to really negotiate with her. They think on these lines because they expect that what happened recently in the industrial city of Poznan in Poland would happen in course of time in other places also. Here there were in June serious riots started by workers in one of the leading factories. They were of course suppressed, but the authorities realised that it was hunger that was at the root of these riots and that effective steps should be taken tQ provide bread to the workers. This was all a highly revealing situation. Communist countries are generally pictured by propagandists as places where the labourers and peasants are rolling in comfort, and that the best thing for all other countries in the world is to overthrow the feudalist and the bourgeoise regimes and to substitute Communist governments in their place. It is therefore a matter which would be a real eye-opener to many that workers in a Communist country like Poland should complain of hunger and take to rioting in their desperation. The fact of the matter is that in all these countries, including Soviet Russia, the rulers are fanatic admirers of rapid industrialisation on the basis of planning. What the West took a century and more to accomplish they are trying to achieve in a decade or two. This is possible only when workers are compelled to work on starvation wages, when a high proportion of national income is compulsorily saved and invested in the production of capital goods instead of consumer goods, and when regimentation is resorted to in running factories and agricultural farms. This is the cost which has to be paid if under-developed countries are anxious to get rapidly industrialised and this is what happened in Poland. The Poznan riots are inevitable under circumstances like these.
There may be political reasons also for the outbreak of these riots. The Poles are a highly patriotic people. Poland is one of the countries which may be considered as the birth places of modern nationalism. The iron hand of Soviet Russia is perhaps not in a position to completely destroy Polish nationalism. The poznan riots may be a faint indication that patriotism is not dead among the Poles. It is quite possible that Stalinist terror has not succeeded in killing it, that his successors might be feeling that terror is no longer a practicable policy and that there should be a relaxation of the Soviet iron control. The riots might have been the first fruits of such relaxation.
Whatever it be the Western powers are not yet sure that there has been a real change in Soviet Russia and they are therefore unwilling to substantially change their attitude towards her.
The situation in the Middle East has not become very much improved from the point of view of world peace. There are several sources of trouble here. First there is the Arab-Israeli dispute. The Arabs do not like the existence of the State of Israel in their midst. They want to put an end to it if possible. On this all the Arab States are at one. If they can’t destroy it they wish to deprive her of some of her territory, to compel her to take the refugees and prevent her from utilising the waters of the Jordan river in the way she wants to utilise them. There is now only a truce between them and this is supervised by aU. N. Commission which has been meeting with all sorts of obstacles in doing its work.
The second source of trouble is the rivalry among the various States in the Middle East apart from Israel. They are now divided broadly into two blocs. Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Syria are in one bloc; Iraq, Iran and Turkey in the other. In between them are Lebanon and Jordan. The first bloc is opposed to the Baghdad Pact. It is completely anti-Western. It is led by Egypt with which Yemen and Saudi Arabia have recently entered into a military pact. Preliminary steps for a federal union between Egypt and Syria have also been taken recently. Jordan has partly broken away from her old ally, Britain. Colonel Nasser has become the President of Egypt and holds uncontrolled sway over her twenty-two millions of people. He is determined to put an end to the British and American influence in the Middle East. And in recent months he has come closer to Soviet Russia. He has been driven to take this course by the British and American refusal to finance the Aswan Dam on the Nile on which rests to a great extent the future prosperity of his country. It was a mistake on the part of these two Western States to have refused the aid they previously agreed to grant. This has made Egypt more anti-Western than before and the trouble in the Middle East is consequently on the increase.
A third Source of trouble is the unrest in Algeria and in Cyprus. Algeria is a French colony and the nationalist revolt in it has been going on for a fairly long time now. In Cyprus the Greek majority is determined on the island being united with Greece; the Turkish minority is against it. The British who are its present rulers want to hold it as their military and naval base. Turkey is also in favour of British control as the island is very near her coast.
A fourth source of trouble is the increasing interest which Soviet Russia is now taking in the Middle East. She has come with offers of economic aid and technical assistance. She has become a competitor of the Western powers in extending her economic influence in this area. She is putting into effect the principle of competitive co-existence.
Although in Europe there is the unification of Germany and although in the Far East there are problems connected with Formosa, the unification of Korea and of Viet Nam, it is the growing trouble in the Middle East that is engaging the attention of statesmen. The trouble is bound to continue so long as the States in the area are divided among themselves and thus give an opportunity for the big powers to interfere with their politics. There does not seem to be any way out of this trouble at present. Time alone can overcome it.