THE SOVIETS are making their intentions plain in Europe. The Stalin era is definitely at an end. New methods quite distinct from those employed by the old dictator are in force. Mr. Khrushchev and his associates have clearly decided that nuclear war is too dangerous — despite their boasts of their ability to flatten American cities—and are shifting the conflict with the West to a basis which, in any case, suits them better.
As good Marxists (Mr. Khrushchev's claim) they must prefer a political and economic war to all-out military attack against their capitalist opponents. As good Russians they are cautious by nature; the history of their country shows a tradition for avoiding frontal attack. Above all, as good materialists, they cannot want nuclear ivar. They do not want American bombers to wreck the industries of which they are so proud, and which they have raised on the formerly virgin steppe by sheer, painful ruthlessness; American bombers can do this, and poison even Russian space with nuclear fall-out, though Russian ICBMs may be quicker off the mark and destroy American cities half-an-hour more rapidly. And since Mr. Khrushchev believes that communism is going to win this world he has no conceivable reason for wanting to destroy with his own rockets the loot in the West which he believes will fall to him eventually. He wants to take over London and Paris intact, not a radioactive desert he has created with his own missiles.
It is therefore reasonable to assume Mr. Khrushchev means what he says when he calls for a settlement in nuclear weapons and a Russian-American withdrawal from Europe. His move to political and industrial war is being demonstrated unmistakably.
Yet the ruling statesmen of the West persist in treating Russia as though Stalin were still alive. They are slow in understanding the great changes in strategy which the hydrogen weapons imposed from the start; they have no understanding at all of the remarkable ability of communism to change its tactics and adopt new methods of attack as changed circumstances dictate. Alarm is felt at the growing signs of fundamental economic trouble within their rocking inter¬national system, but there is no real appreciation of the extent to which communism will use this to disrupt the West.
Yet there have been warnings enough in Europe, and particularly in Britain, that everything had changed with the H-bomb. These came from Sir Oswald Mosley, whose pre-war predictions had been proved true, that a conflict with Germany would destroy British power and enhance Soviet power, not only militarily but also politically.
In March, 1950, Mosley published The European Situation, in which he wrote of the H-bomb:
"It seems that any concentration of industry or life itself can now be destroyed by any state which has the technical means to produce sufficient hydrogen bombs and to ensure their delivery. The protection even of space and the power of dis¬persal begins to disappear in face of such weapons.
"The Soviets cannot impose communism on the rest of the world with this weapon, even if they can obtain it. They can only make the rest of the world a desert, with the certainty that Russia, too, will become a desert. That is why wars between states in the old style may come to an end. We are reaching the period of the paralysed giants."
Nineteen months later, on October 27, 1951, Mosley wrote An Estimate of Soviet Intentions in the weekly paper Union. In this he pointed to the Soviet need, either to advance or retreat from their positions in Eastern Europe. They could not stay where they were, under the cloud of alarm and suspicion which Stalin had raised for the West, and they would not want to stay where they were in view of what they knew of the H-bomb. To advance would mean war, which all too likely they would lose in the end; to retreat, however, would bring certain advantages:
"It is possible and even probable that the Soviets will evacu¬ate East Germany and all the occupied lands of Europe. Certain strategic bases and raw materials may be retained. But not enough of Europe will be held to provide any excuse for an attack from the West.
"What will be the effect of this historically successful military manoeuvre translated into the political sphere? The first effect will be entirely to frustrate any possible design which may be entertained in Western circles, to attack the Soviet. The Soviet gesture in favour of peace would be so spectacular that it would be out of the question for any men or parties to carry public opinion with them in beginning any war. The second effect would be to throw the economies of the demo¬cracies into considerable confusion. Having been stretched and distorted to a war basis the economies of the democracies would be suddenly relaxed into a condition of almost certain peace."
Mosley further developed this argument in two subsequent Union articles: his War: East, West, or Nowhere? of February 16, 1952, and How to Oppose the Soviets of June 21 and 28, 1952. Had there been any precedent for Mosley's belief that a Soviet detente was coming? Russian history is full of strategic retreats in order to win decisively later on: that is how they broke the power of 18th century Sweden. Perhaps the most outstanding example in recent times was Lenin's policy at Brest-Litovsk, when he ordered Trotsky to sign away great territories to the Germans, in what seemed extreme defeatism, calculating on the other hand that the masses of German troops returning home would carry communism with them, a germ that would find favourable conditions in the " relaxed " and disillusioned Europe at the end of an exhausting war.
Lenin miscalculated: most German ex-servicemen in the end became anti-communist in the ranks of national-socialism. Never¬theless communism flourished for a dangerous time on the streets of post-war Europe as the result of the economic confusion and the Marxian "internal contradictions" which followed that war.
Mosley therefore had ample grounds for his warnings. Yet he was the first, by some years, to foresee the decisive impact on policies the hydrogen weapons would bring: ending Stalin-type aggression, under the fear of nuclear war, and indeed inducing the Soviets to seek a detente in Europe, to reduce the danger of the democracies making war in a crazy return to the old device for getting rid of their economic over-production.
By no means would this put an end to Soviet schemes for bringing down the West. Indeed, it would simply move the struggle on to ground where the Soviets have always felt at home—the arena of political war, hastened and intensified by economic breakdown in the West.
Sir Oswald Mosley's predictions covered the period 1950-52; Professor George Kennan has now aroused world-wide interest in his series of Reith Lectures broadcast in Britain at the end of 1957. Mr. Kennan is a former American Ambassador in Moscow, and widely regarded as leading United States authority on the Soviets. His lectures have raised a hubbub of controversy on an international scale, yet Sir Oswald Mosley's articles of five to seven years before were received in utter silence. The Establishment and its press, radio, cinema and TV have for years adopted this tactic toward a political figure they dislike; no doubt, in addition, he was too advanced for them. But we are living (and so are they) in a very dangerous world: their petulence, vanity and failure to see the truth when it is pointed out to them may destroy us all yet.
Mr. Kennan's contention is that the danger from communism (and he makes clear that the Soviet leaders not only hate the Western system, but its peoples as well) is political, not military. "Nothing in the Marxist doctrine," he says, "suggests that the triumph of world communism is planned by force of arms. The Russian danger is mainly political, and for this reason European Communist Parties are more of a menace to the West than the entire Red Army."
Mosley made the same point in June, 1952, when he wrote: "Realism in the Soviets must therefore avoid open war in the West. It is now fairly plain that they are trying to do so. Their game is obviously to avoid a military decision and to fall back on their well-tried political measures of agitation and concealed violence."
He had already written in March, 1950: "...the Soviets can observe no reason for their desperation in the present situation. The reckoning of the Soviets, on any objective analysis of this situation, must be that they can afford to wait. Their Marxist creed, also, teaches them that they can afford to wait, because their opponents will collapse through their inner contradictions and the general rottenness of their civilisation. So any realists in Moscow will ask why they should climb trees to pick apples which will fall into their hands in any case; particularly if climbing this tall tree at present means almost certainly a broken neck, and the fruit will be all the riper for waiting."
He had also at that time explained why, as Mr. Kennan says, "European Communist Parties are more of a menace to the West than the entire Red Army ":
"It is probable that we are entering a period of almost com¬pletely new forms of struggle, for which the past has only slight and partial lessons. In deep character the coming struggle will be a battle of ideas ... At some point in the future the Soviets are, therefore, certain to carry the battle of ideas beyond the ordinary political struggle into the sphere of political violence. They believe they will win on this territory because they have a long experience in various forms of political violence, and have a long start in training for1 this struggle."
The basic Russian determination, says Mr. Kennan, is to exploit weakness in Western society. Armed force is a precaution, a weapon to be available in the last phase of capitalist collapse; but not a major instrument. There has been too great a simplification of Soviet motives by observers in the West, who believe the Soviet threat is mainly a military threat. This could be ended, they think, by one last glorious " summit" conference, when West and East could lie down in perfect amity. Yet this view completely ignores something far more important, the communist mentality itself, an outlook on life not only with an implacable hatred of Western civilisation but also an outlook which is the product of forty years of distorted Marxist reasoning and practice — blinkered by the theories and limitations of a materialistic ideology.
The Soviet leaders, Mr. Kennan continues, can never be influenced by paper treaties, but only by situations. For this reason he avers that general disarmament cannot be settled until certain political questions, territorial questions, are first resolved:
"It is true that armaments can and do constitute a source of tension in themselves. But they are not self-engendering. No one maintains them just for the love of it. They are con¬ditioned at bottom by political differences and rivalries. To attempt to remove the armaments before removing these sub¬stantive conflicts of interest is to put the cart before the horse. At every turn we are confronted with the fact that here is no way of evading these specific political problems—for the main part territorial problems—in which all this tension and trouble has its real origins."
Most urgent, he believes, is the problem of the future of Central and Eastern Europe. Here he strongly criticises the way in which the last world war was allowed to come to an end. He points out that the authority of a united German Government was expunged on German soil and throughout large areas of Eastern Europe: Soviet and Western armies met in the middle of this territory and took control before there was any adequate agreement over its future permanent status.
This situation was the result of the "unconditional surrender" policy. So much for the men who ran the war. The West, says Mr. Kennan, faces this problem today. The question is how to remove it. The East European satellites in par¬ticular are veritable powder-barrels: another Budapest or East Berlin might start off the nuclear conflict which Russia and the West both dread today. (This is precisely the situation of danger to which Sir Oswald Mosley pointed in 1950-52; the Soviets could not remain passive under this threat, they must advance or retreat. The possibility of an explosion makes a decision urgent: the grave risk of a fatal accident is indeed an incentive for both sides to a settlement.)
Yet it is clear, says Mr. Kennan, that Russia will not withdraw from the satellites without an American withdrawal in the West. " The mere fact of Soviet withdrawal, without any equivalent with¬drawal on the Western side, would create a general impression of a defeat for Soviet policy in Eastern and Central Europe generally." Russia would "lose face"; an intolerable thing.
For the time being, then, we seem to have deadlock: the Soviets wanting withdrawal from a situation bristling with perils, but held there partly by " face " and partly by mistrust of the West—which in fact is governed by stupidity and failure to wrest the diplomatic initiative from the Russians rather than by any deep cunning.
What does the West fear today? The Russians invading West Germany if the Americans withdrew? Or would the Russians also withdraw if the Americans moved out? The question, Mr. Kennan asserts, is not whether Moscow "wants" a reunited Germany within an evacuated European zone: it is a question of whether Moscow could afford to stand in the way of it if a general evacuation were insisted upon by the West:
"Gomulka not long ago promised the Polish people that the day the Americans leave Germany he will take up with the Soviet Government the question of the departure of Soviet forces from Poland. And it is clear that as Poland goes, in this respect, so goes the rest of the satellite area. Mr. Khrushchev has not specifically demurred at Gomulka's sug¬gestion; on the contrary he has, in fact, even murmured things himself, from; time to time, about a possible mutual withdrawal of forces, although he has intimated that the price of a Soviet withdrawal might be somewhat higher than what Gomulka implied."
Mr. Khrushchev has indeed "murmured" offers to this effect. On November 17, 1956, he announced at a diplomatic party in Moscow:
"If you withdraw your troops from Germany, France and Britain—I'm speaking of American troops—we will not stay one day in Poland, Hungary and Rumania."
On February 20, 1957, he was reported in the New York Herald Tribune as saying to Mr. Alsop:
"Soviet troops would be withdrawn to the national territory of the Soviet Union from all the countries in Europe where they are now stationed in accordance with existing treaties and agreements.
"Meanwhile, Western European countries would also with¬draw their troops stationed in the territories of other Western European countries.
"The United States would also withdraw its troops to American territory from Europe and Asia, and along with that would go the liquidation of all foreign military bases."
The Times of June 3 last carried a report of his address to the American people over the Columbia television network, in which he made the same offer. Later in that month, June 18, he repeated his suggestion to the editor of the Japanese paper Asahi Shimbun. In East Germany, during a series of bitter speeches and comments on the stand-pat resistance of present Western leaders to real dis¬armament, he nevertheless stated for the fifth time what Sir Oswald Mosley has called "The most important thing said since the war." His fifth offer was reported in The Times of August 8, 1957.
Could the Russian leader now turn round (if Western statesmen were to take him up and press him to such an agreement for a general withdrawal from Europe) and refuse to talk? As Mr. Kennan puts it, could he afford to stand in the way of the semi-independent Poles and their centuries-old dislike of Russian troops, after Gomulka also has talked in similar terms?
If he did, the West has a simple course. Sir Oswald Mosley pointed to it immediately after the first Khrushchev offer: "Whether it be reality or bluff, the answer is the same: get into the ring with him, instead of getting out of the drawing room because he is rude. If it is bluff, call it; then you hit communism. If it is real, pin him down; then you win European freedom.
"A real business conference should immediately be called to consider it, and, if we get nowhere in private, we should insist on a public session where the Soviet position could be exposed to the world. By such means we can force them out of these occupied lands in the end; not by war but by political struggle, as we always insisted. If they say things like that and do not mean them, if they are then exposed publicly again and again as liars and tricksters, the whole political position of communism throughout the world will be finally destroyed."
Mr. Kennan in fact believes that this method would not be neces¬sary; once the Russians withdrew from their satellites the great danger would not be the Red Army returning: "We must get over this obsession that the Russians are yearning to attack and occupy Western Europe, and that this is the principal danger. The Soviet threat, as I have had occasion to say before, is a combined military-political threat, with the accent on the political."
If American forces withdrew from Europe, he considers that the defence problem of the continental countries would be
"... primarily one of the internal health and discipline of the respective national societies, and of the manner in which they were organised to prevent the conquest and subjugation of their national life by unscrupulous and foreign-inspired minorities in their midst."
For example, by Communist Parties. To guard against this, he recommends forces which might be
"... paramilitary ones, of a territorial-militia type, some¬what on the Swiss example rather than regular military units on the pattern of the second world war."
It is clear that Mr. Kennan has reached much the same conclusion today as Sir Oswald Mosley did in 1950-52. His emphasis on the political danger rather than military threat has run also throughout Mosley's writings ever since the war. Mr. Kennan indeed uses almost the actual expression in pin-pointing the real communist danger (his " combined military-political threat, with the accent on the political") which Sir Oswald used in The European Situation, written in March, 1950:
"The Soviets will make a decisive advance into active political war. It will be a war of infiltration, conducted by political guerrillas who are now being trained, either under the guise of police forces or entirely in secret, within those zones of Eastern Europe which are under Soviet control. The struggle will then traverse the political-military borderline."
This is not to say that Mr. Kennan contributes fully to the ideas which Sir Oswald Mosley has developed for Europe. Mr. Kennan is an historian, not a political leader. He appears not to think of Britain as part of Europe: he talks of British troops leaving the Continent with American troops.
Again, he lays great emphasis on the German question itself, visualising Germany as outside of N.A.T.O. This has been seized on with glee by the professional German-haters of the British Left, such as Mr. Bevan, who publicly claims he was a Kennanite before Kennan. (Yet his paper Tribune did not mention Khrushchev's vital withdrawal proposals until they were six months old.) Mr. Bevan's concept of Europe is undoubtedly a neutralised Germany in the middle, kept isolated under the suspicious glare of a "security" partnership with the Russians (and the headquarters in Moscow?) and with perfidious Albion running loose on the outside, living on dollars but nevertheless snarling at Washington to show her "independence."
That is not quite what Mr. Kennan means. For example, the latter in his lectures hailed the "exciting" recent progress of European countries in welding themselves into a single economic whole. Mr. Kennan must be considered sufficiently a realist to agree that a single economic whole must also be a single political whole, to be viable in this dynamic world. That is certainly true of his own country. The whole tone of his Reith Lectures suggests that a man of his breadth of mind looks upon Europe as a coming entity in every way. Therefore Germany cannot be isolated.
Where does Britain fit into this entity? With military and terri¬torial deadlock in Europe (which can only be broken by new leaders, or science, or both) the Soviets are fast moving into the new form of conflict, economic warfare, plus political warfare. Britain is the most vulnerable target in that new-style war: she is in fact indefensible.
The world is entering the turbulent state of affairs experienced in the last world depression. And the lesson of the 1930s is that countries form self-defensive economic groupings when their trade is threatened. Two big self-sufficient groups exist today: Russia and America. Another one is forming: Europe. What is Britain going to do—stay out in the cold, and so take the full blast of the Soviet economic offensive that is now invading the Commonwealth with the deliberate intention of breaking Britain's markets there?
Undoubtedly world events will soon make up Britain's mind. It is probable now that the new Soviet tactics, entering new forms of war, will bring the downfall of present leadership in the West. In doing so it will release a new dynamic, thrusting up new leaders in the fundamentally anti-Marxist West.
Nothing less than a new dynamic is needed to break the dangerous deadlock with the Russians, and achieve real settlement based on differing systems working out their destinies in separate and self-contained areas of the globe.
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