Moscow Sides With Nixon Against Peking Universally condemned by world public opinion for escalating the war in Indochina, the target of explosive opposition by the American people sick and weary of the killing and the whole dirty involvement of the U.S. in SouthEast Asia, Nixon in his worst hour of need TW. received unexpected consolation and succour from the Kremlin.
Under guise of a warning about the expanding influence of Peking in Indochina, and exposing Mao's "adventurist tactics", the Kremlin sank a knife in the back of the national liberation movement in South-East Asia.
The move was made through publication of an article in the June 5 issue of New Times, a Soviet government foreign affairs weekly. The author, "M. Ukraintsev" (thought to be the pseudonym of a high official in the Foreign Ministry), accused "Mao and his followers" of "undertaking practical steps for asserting Chinese domination in South and South-East Asia."
"To do so," the Kremlin spokesman asserted, "Peking tries to create an atmosphere of permanent internal conflict in the whole region."
What about the dirty colonial war conducted by U.S. imperialism for five years and more? What about the imperialist army of more than 400,000 troops? What about the mass slaughter conducted by the Pentagon? What about Nixon's new escalation of the war into Cambodia?
Peking, not Washington, is blamed for the overthrow of the Sihanouk government in Cambodia last March 18th and the imposition of the pro-American Lon Nol regime: "The meddling by the Chinese in Cambodian affairs is one of the factors that pushed the rightist forces of Cambodia to a governmental overthrow and closer relations with the American imperialists.
Even bourgeois newspapers in the U.S. are of the opinion that the overturn in Cambodia was a CIA operation.
The New Times article openly attacks the struggle against the American intervention as Peking inspired:
The Peking leaders, pressing their adventurist tactics on some segments of the Communist and national-liberation movements in South-East Asia, are trying to use them as tools for asserting Chinese domination in Asian countries and to condemn them to defeat and destruction."
This is an invidious way of saying that the victims are to blame for the aggression. It was that way in Hitler's time, too. The victims always "provoked" the Nazis into doing what they did. And should Nixon decided to resort to "tactical" nuclear weapons, it will be because he was "provoked" into it.
If the Soviet leaders are worried over the possible growth of Maoist influence in SouthEast Asia, they have ample means to offset it. Stepping up Soviet military aid to the insurgents would be the best demonstration that the Kremlin matches revolutionary words with revolutionary deeds.
The accusation of "adventurism" is particularly misplaced in the face of Nixon's escalation of the war into Cambodia when the masses have no choice but to resort to arms to defend themselves against the invading troops The Kremlin's statement concerning the struggle in Indochina amounts to a declaratior that the war is Peking's affair. To say that the Indochinese are doomed to "defeat and destruction" is an invitation to Nixon to step up the war if he sees fit. Moscow will not lift a finger: Its case has been made-Mao is to blame, let China face the consequences.
Western imperialism took the statement of Moscow's attitude toward Nixon's escalation a contirmation that the Kremlin does indeed intend to abandon the struggle in Indochina ir favour of further "rapprochement" with Washington. The New York Times, for exampl commented on 6th June:
"The Western diplomats [in Moscow] note that an intensified anti-American campaign begun early last month had dwindled sharply ir recent days. It was widely noted in diplomatic circles that Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin, who questioned President Nixon's integrity not long ago, seemed to go out of his way Tuesday to tell the Apollo 11 astronaut Neil A. Armstrong and Ambassador Jacob D. Beam to send Mr. Nixon his greetings and 'heartfelt gratitude' for a piece of moon rock presented by Mr. Arm strong."
By attacking the struggle of "some segments of the Vietnamese and Cambodian people as adventurist" and implying their own neutrality, the Soviet bureaucrats are only encouraging the Pentagon to plunge ever deeper into South-East Asia. And until Nixon is forced to withdraw, there is growing danger that he will expand the war until it bursts into a nuclea conflagration.
The Moscow bureaucrats have short memories. What was the central aim of German imperialist policy? It was to "roll back" the revolution in the Soviet Union. Stalin's kowtowing to Hitler and getting the German Fuhrer to sign a "peace pact" did not save the Soviet Union from invasion.
The aims of American imperialism do not differ in substance from those that led German imperialism to plunge humanity into two world wars.
From the standpoint of the elementary needs of the defence of the Soviet state, full support to the revolutionary struggle in Indochina is an absolute necessity. The new zigzag taken by. the Soviet bureaucrats is a betrayal of the interests of the Soviet people as well as of the people of Intercontinental Press