disparaging atomic weapons and relying on the Soviet deterrent. Khrushchev's statements were referred to approvingly, with the added suggestion that the United States was effectively deterred thereby. After President Eisenhower's rejection of Khrushchev's second letter as abusive and intemperate, Moscow may have felt the need to restate its position so as to allay or forestall any feelings of desperation on the part of America that might prompt her to rash action.13 On October 5, Khrushchev said in reply to a question put by a TASS correspondent: The Soviet Government has openly and unambiguously stated, in messages to President Eisenhower, for example, that if the United States starts a war against our friend and ally, the Chinese People's Republic, the USSR will fully honor her commitments under the treaty of friendship, alliance, and mutual aid with the CPR and that an attack on the CPR is an attack on the USSR. Does this contain the slightest hint that the USSR is, as President Eisenhower would have it, ready to take part in a civil war in China? No, we have stated and do state something quite different: The USSR will come to the help of the CPR if the latter is attacked from without; speaking more concretely, if the United States attacks the CPR. The Soviet Government has thought it necessary to make this warning as the atmosphere in the Far East is such that United States interference in Chinese internal affairs has brought the United States to the very brink of a direct military conflict with the CPR. And if the United States steps over this brink, the USSR will not stand aside. But we have not interfered in and do not intend to interfere in the civil war which the Chinese people are waging against the Chiang Kai-shek clique. The arrangement of their domestic affairs according to their own discretion is the inalienable right of every people. The intention to get back their islands of Quemoy and Matsu and to free Taiwan and the Pescadores is the internal affair of the Chinese people." This statement has been interpreted by a number of observers as a clarification and moderation of the statements made earlier by Khrushchev. While Khrushchev continued to assert that an attack on the CPR would be considered an attack on the USSR, he did not define or convey clearly what he would consider to be an "attack" on the CPR nor what his response would be to various kinds of United States actions against CPR forces in different contingencies. In these respects Khrushchev's statement on October 5 of his commitment on behalf of the CPR was somewhat more ambiguous and more restrictive than his earlier ones. For example, Khrushchev's statement left open the possibility that United States military operations in defense of Taiwan and the off 18 Note, for example, the Pravda "Observer" article of September 25, 1958, which contained Moscow's first reference during the crisis to a danger of accidental war: The concentration of United States armed forces in the Strait area "has reached such a degree that a . . . mad sally by some American generals can lead to a military catastrophe." Concern might have been reinforced by the newspaper report that the following statement in the speech by Secretary of the Air Force Douglas to the Air Force Association had been reinserted on the authorization of the Department of State: "So our most modern fighters are on the spot, ready to meet the threat of the Chinese Communists. And make no mistake, our fighter-bombers and light bombers are capable of using highexplosive bombs or more powerful weapons, if necessary." (See The New York Times, September 28, 1959.) 14 Khrushchev's answer to question put by TASS correspondent, October 5, 1958, Pravda, October 6, 1958, in CDSP, Vol. 10, No. 40, p. 1. shore islands which did not involve action against the Chinese mainland might not be considered an "attack" against the CPR which required a Soviet military response. Nor did Khrushchev unequivocally state, in the event of defensive action involving United States nuclear attacks on Chinese air bases, that the bloc's reaction would go beyond an intensive exploitation of the cold war aspects of the event. Yet this omission does not permit us to conclude that he meant that bloc reaction would definitely remain within the confines of the cold war. A United States action that appeared out of proportion to the stakes involved might call forth an equally disproportionate reaction. There was also bound to be a point at which the domestic prestige of the Chinese regime might be compromised to an extent that the Soviet Union would find intolerable. Moreover, a range of potential United States actions could be interpreted by Moscow, rightly or wrongly, as reflecting intentions to take further actions of a kind that Moscow could not tolerate. The key factor, however, in any such determinations was that the Soviet Union, not the CPR, would be the one to make the crucial decision. Immediately after Khrushchev's statement of October 5, there were further signs that China was anxious to withdraw from the crisis. On October 6, P'eng Teh-huai offered to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Nationalists on Taiwan, and announced a week-long suspension of the bombardment of the off-shore islands.15 Already two weeks earlier, at the time of Khrushchev's letter to President Eisenhower and Gromyko's demand in the United Nations that the United States withdraw from Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait, Ch'en Yi, clearly in an effort to counter United States cease-fire proposals at Warsaw and possible U.N. action toward a two-China solution, had chosen to drop any distinction between the off-shore islands and Taiwan and had described the hostilities between the PRC and the Nationalists as a civil war.16 The same opposition to a two-China solution was the keynote of P'eng's statement of October 6. With the passing weeks, it became the basis on which the Chinese tended increasingly to rationalize their inability to take the off-shore islands without risk of a major war. This was clearly evident from an article, entitled "Chinese Strategy in the Taiwan Strait," by Anna Louise Strong, long-time spokesman for the Chinese Communists, in the November 1958 issue of New Times. Attempting to explain the "brilliant" though "bewildering" strategy of P'eng Teh-huai, Miss Strong maintained that Peking could have taken Tsinmentao (Quemoy) by warfare or by bargaining with Dulles. But, she argued, To take Tsinmentao at present without taking Taiwan would iso- 15 NCNA, Peking, October 6, 1958, in SCMP, No. 1871, October 9, 1958, p. 45. 16 Ibid., September 20, 1958, in SCMP, No. 1860, September 24, 1958, pp. 46-48. Peking could have taken Tsinmentao in battle ("though at risk of wider war," and "at a cost"), but there was good reason for not doing SO: At present world opinion mobilizes more readily around Tsinmentao than around Taiwan. If this island and Matsu were taken by the Chinese Communists, the United Nations might perhaps be induced by American pressure to set up a trusteeship on Taiwan. But nobody except an insane person would discuss trusteeship for Tsinmentao. In her analysis of a future strategy, Miss Strong echoed Mao's thesis that you must despise the enemy strategically while respecting him tactically, and demonstrated once again that without atomic weapons China's objectives were geared to the long haul: 17 Peking intends to achieve its aim [apparently, the withdrawal of the United States from the Western Pacific] by political and moral pressure, mixed with occasional "shooting and not shooting," by pressure within the lands of the Pacific and from all the world's people, without permitting the pressure to develop into a major war. Peking, wise in political strategy, believes this can be done. This, I think, is why nowhere in China do I find the fear that infects most of the world: fear of an atomic war. It is not ignorance but confidence that Mao Tse-tung was right when he said: "It is not atomic bombs but the man who handles them. He is still to be educated." " 18 This brief survey of the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis permits several conclusions: 1. The crisis was designed to test United States responses in the Taiwan area in the light of the changes in security calculations that had occurred since mid-1957. The Chinese intended to take the offshore islands if they could do so without major risk (that is, through interdiction). In a larger sense, the Chinese hoped to demonstrate to the Russians that the new Soviet strategic posture could prevent the United States from introducing tactical nuclear weapons into the conflict, that United States intentions in the area were less firm than the Soviet Union believed, and that, consequently, Chinese objectives in the area could safely be supported by the Soviet Union. 2. In view of the fact that Chinese military operations in 1958 never passed the point where they could have elicited a United States nuclear response, it would appear that the Chinese were not prepared to accept the risks involved in trying to take the islands against determined United States opposition. 3. It would also appear that the Soviet Union was not prepared to become involved in a nuclear war for the sake of China's political and military ambitions. There were undoubtedly certain United States actions against the mainland of China that the Soviet Union would have found intolerable. The timing of the Soviet Union's official pronouncements on its deterrent shield, however, suggests (a) that they were made only after the risk that they might have to be implemented 17 This thesis was publicly reaffirmed on October 31, 1958, with the publication of a collection of Mao Tse-tung's statements entitled "Imperialists and All Reactionaries Are Paper Tigers." (NCNA, Peking, October 31, 1958, in CB, No. 534, November 12, 1958, p. 12.) 18 Anna Louise Strong, "Chinese Strategy in the Taiwan Strait," New Times, published by Trud, Moscow, November, 1958, No. 46, pp. 8-11. had been much reduced, and (b) that any Soviet military commitment on behalf of China was probably not automatic and predetermined but would be decided on the basis of a careful Soviet evaluation of the actual situation. 4. The crisis failed to confirm China's estimate of the existing balance of forces; rather the nature of the United States response tended to support the uncertainty present in the Soviet estimate of the existing strategic balance. 5. Even as military activity continued, China's main objectives were moving more directly to the political plane. The aim now was to resist any two-China solution, and, by such devices as intermittent cease fires and odd-day shelling, to maintain a "safe" level of tension in the area high enough to make it embarrassing for the United States to compel a Chinese Nationalist evacuation of the islands (that is, an evacuation that would be attributed to Chinese Communist military pressure); low enough to prevent an expansion of hostilities that might prematurely involve China and/or the Soviet Union in a nuclear exchange with the United States. Such a state of chronic, moderate tension would serve the long-term political-military objectives of Communist China in the Far East, which call ultimately for the control of Taiwan and the retreat of America from the Western Pacific. The 1958 Taiwan crisis not only confirmed the impossibility of China's achieving even local objectives in the face of United States opposition without overt Soviet backing but also had the incidental effect of demonstrating the poor quality of Communist China's air force, whose Mig's were outflown tactically by the outnumbered F-86 aircraft of the Chinese Nationalists even before the latter began using the Sidewinder. This failure was never publicly admitted, but the air force's poor initial performance and subsequent inability to take counteraction must have pointed up to Peking the inadequacies of China's equipment and training programs. This recognition, together with the ambiguity surrounding the Soviet deterrent shield, could only have underscored for the Chinese their general military weakness on the international scene. THE LONG-HAUL APPROACH Developments of the last quarter of 1958 and the first half of 1959 reinforce our hypothesis that during the course of 1958 the Chinese had accepted a strategic estimate that recognized, temporarily at least, China's weakness and the limitations on military activities that such weakness imposed, and subordinated immediate military goals to the long-range achievement of political, economic, and military objectives. The long-haul approach was dramatically reaffirmed in late October, and at the same time it became evident that the Chinese were revising upward some of their evaluations of Western strength. Transitional strategic concepts, pending China's own development of nuclear weapons, appeared to dominate Chinese military thinking. In fact, as the commune movement gathered momentum, the PLA [People's Liberation Army] was increasingly mobilized for internal economic purposes; the professional military officers who might have challenged its enlistment in such nonmilitary activities were further curbed. At the same time, however, the pursuit of scientific development in the interest of national defense and under Party leadership clearly remained a major, long-term objective. These developments took place within a framework of Sino-Soviet security arrangements that still did not appear to have been fully defined.. On October 20, Shih-chieh Chih-shih first published the short collection of Mao Tse-tung's writings, under the title "Imperialists and All Reactionaries Are Paper Tigers." It was reprinted in the Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao on October 28,19 and, in expanded form, in the October 31 issue of Jen-min Jih-pao. The latter edition included such statements as: "Capitalism had reached a decrepit, moribund state"; "All reactionaries are paper tigers"; and "United States military bases on foreign territories are all nooses around the necks of the United States imperialists." It also quoted Mao's reply to Anna Louise Strong, in 1946, as follows: The atom bomb is a paper tiger with which the American reactionaries try to terrify the people. It looks terrible, but in fact is not. Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass annihilation; the outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new weapons. 20 In addition, however, the collection included certain excerpts from Mao's Moscow speech of November 18, 1957, published here for the first time, in which Mao, having called the reactionaries "paper tigers," insisted nevertheless that "strategically we should despise all enemies, and tactically take them seriously." 21 The picture in late October was in keeping with standard communist propaganda practice whenever one line is being abandoned in favor of another. As earlier themes were reiterated, there was evidence of a new orientation, which seemed to include a re-evaluation of previous assumptions with respect to Western weakness. The same anomaly was noticeable in November in the publicity campaign for the study of Mao's paper-tiger writings. A Jen-min Jih-pao editorial of November 12, which dealt with the recently published collection of Mao's statements, again depicted the United States as unsheathing its claws, baring its fangs, and brandishing atomic weapons, and warned the people to recognize the true nature of the paper tiger and not to overestimate the might of the Western imperialists. But the editorial ended on a different note: Viewed from the over-all situation of the struggle, the way their relative strength is developing, and the essence of the matter, the imperialists and all reactionaries are paper tigers and the revolutionary people have every reason to despise them. But in the actual struggle against the imperialists and on specific questions, revolutionaries should pay great attention to the enemy and concentrate their strength in the battle so as to ensure the winning of victory. . . 22 19 Ta Kung Pao (Hong Kong), October 28, 1958, in Union Research Service, Vol. 13, No. 9, October 31, 1958. 20 Mao Tse-tung, "Imperialists and All Reactionaries Are Paper Tigers," in CB, No. 534, November 12, 1958, p. 8. There are several versions of Mao's reply to Miss Strong. That given in Shih-chieh Chih-shih reads: "The atomic bomb is a paper tiger and has not much use. Is it not that the goats on the boats near Bikini survived the atomic bomb?" (See Ta Kung Pao [Hong Kong], October 28, 1958, in Union Research Service, Vol. 13, No. 9. October 31, 1958, p. 127.) For the version given by Miss Strong in her book Dawn out of China, published in 1948, see pages 1 and 2. 21 Mao Tse-tung, "Imperialists and All Reactionaries Are Paper Tigers," in CB, No. 534, November 12, 1958, p. 11. 22 JMJP, November 12, 1958, in SCMP, No. 1897, November 19, 1958, pp. 6-8. |