Writers and Politics

by Conor Cruise O'Brien

  It is for Englishmen, and not foreigners like the present reviewer, to say whether these prospects seem inspiring or alluring from an English point of view. To many outsiders they will seem menacing. What exactly is all this concentration of “independent deterrence” required for? To defend Western Europe against the Russians, according to Mr. Mander. The communist will to aggression is unsleeping and America might not use nuclear weapons to defend Europe against Russian attack. This combination of hypotheses does not seem quite plausible enough to supply by itself the motive power for a European nuclear directorium such as is urged here. The demand for “independent deterrents,” both in Britain and France, has perhaps had less to do with fear of Russian invasion than with the memory of occasions—Suez and Dien Bien Phu—when partly for lack of “independent” and decisive weapons, independent policies had to be abandoned. A Western Europe with a concerted—or more or less concerted—foreign policy and a nuclear armoury could afford to conduct its business in the Middle East, in southern Africa, in the Far East and perhaps in Eastern Europe with much less deference to American, Russian or Afro-Asian opinion—and therefore to the United Nations—than the governments of France and Britain have been able to permit themselves in recent years. For some sections of the right—and not only in France, Britain and Germany, but also in South Africa, Portugal and elsewhere—this is understandably an attractive idea, and it is correspondingly alarming both to the newly independent countries and to those who fear that the combination of nuclear weapons and politique de grandeur may endanger world peace.

  Mr. Mander—who is not himself Suez-minded—does not examine the interesting question of what the independent policies of his West European nuclear-armed “directorium” would be likely to be. On the whole he seems to invite us to assume that the “directorium” will be content just to sit there and deter the communists. He is at pains to stress the need for this because of the “coordinated strategy” for our destruction which international communism has been able to pursue, no less under Khrushchev and Mao than under Stalin. The latest campaign began during the autumn of 1957. At that time

  Krushchev removed his last important rival, Zhukov, from the Party Presidium. The success of the sputnik showed that Russia would soon be in a position to threaten America. Centrifugal tendencies in Russia and in Eastern Europe had been checked. “Revisionism” was in retreat. In Poland Gomulka had won a measure of internal autonomy, though at the price of subservience to Moscow abroad. With the affairs of the Communist bloc in reasonable order, and America in the grip of a serious recession, the stage seemed set for another period of advance. There was the Turkish crisis in the autumn of 1957; the Middle Eastern crisis in July, 1958. The Quemoy crisis of August, 1958, led on to the second Berlin crisis in November. Between 1958 and 1961 the guerrilla campaigns in Laos and South Vietnam were renewed; the infiltration and satellisation of Cuba completed. In June, 1961, at Vienna, Krushchev presented Kennedy with a fresh Berlin ultimatum. In August came the Berlin Wall and the virtual annexation of East Berlin.

  Looking back, the period 1957–1962 bears all the marks of a coordinated campaign, comparable to the offensive of 1947–1952.

  At first sight the accumulation of events and dates seems quite impressive, but closer examination shows some odd flaws. Thus, it is true that both the fall of Zhukov and the so-called Turkish crisis occurred in the autumn of 1957, but it cannot be true, as Mr. Mander suggests, that Khrushchev unleashed the Turkish crisis as soon as Zhukov’s fall left him free to begin his “coordinated campaign.” It cannot be true, because the “Turkish crisis” —which was a war-of-nerves affair conducted by the Soviets mainly in the press, on the radio and at the United Nations—occurred before, and not after, the fall of Zhukov. The fall of Zhukov in fact precipitated not the beginning but the end of the “Turkish crisis.” Anyone who was present at the United Nations in those days will recall the tension among Eastern European delegates at the height of the crisis—immediately before the fall of Zhukov—the jubilation with which many of these delegates, especially the Poles, greeted the news of that fall, and the almost contemptuously casual way in which the Soviet Delegation “switched off” the Turkish crisis once Zhukov was out of the way. But one does not need to have been at the United Nations: the Annual Register for 1957 shows that the Turkish crisis began in early September, reached a peak in mid-October and was publicly declared at an end by Khrushchev on October 29—three days after Zhukov’s dismissal. I am not concerned to prove a relationship—such as some well-informed Poles believed to exist—between Zhukov and a “tough school” in the Kremlin, but what is certain is that Zhukov’s fall was not, as Mr. Mander suggests it was, the signal for an offensive—on the contrary, indeed. This has important implications for our view of Khrushchev’s Russia and its international policies, and Mr. Mander’s misrepresentation of the order of events has its implications for our view of his argument generally.

  Again, what evidence is there to show that the Middle Eastern crisis of July 1958 was part of a communist “coordinated campaign”?

  The crisis in question consisted of a military putsch in Iraq, followed by landings of American and British troops in Lebanon and Jordan, and by Arab and communist protests against these landings. Are we to believe—and if so on what grounds—that Kassem’s revolt against Nuri was planned and precipitated by the Soviet Union and China? Or is the sole fact of propaganda against the Western landings enough to sustain the theory that international communism caused the Middle Eastern crisis of 1958? If the Russians and Chinese had sent their armed forces to the Middle East at that time—as the Western powers did—Mr. Mander’s case here would be considerably stronger.

  In the same year, the Quemoy crisis, according to Mr. Mander, “led on” to the second Berlin crisis. The words “led on,” in Mr. Mander’s scheme of things, imply that the two “crises” were part of a planned political offensive. Mao at Quemoy was softening the Westerners up for Khrushchev to squeeze them in Berlin. Were the relations of the two great communist powers as close as this, and of this character, even in 1958? Mr. Mander’s “coordinated campaign” theory requires them to have been so, even up to the autumn of 1962 and perhaps beyond. We are asked to believe that this agreed strategy, and not any local needs or initiatives, also determined the renewal of the guerrilla campaigns in Laos and Vietnam. This is unlikely even on Mr. Mander’s own showing. Referring to the earlier period (1947–52) he speaks of Stalin, while blockading Berlin and raping Czechoslovakia, also “ordering”—as part of his “strategy”—“the communists of SouthEast Asia onto the barricades.” This was a failure generally, but “in one country”—Vietnam—“the strategy was conspicuously successful.” “Ironically,” Mr. Mander adds, “the Viet Minh had launched the offensive independently of both Stalin and Mao.” Any irony involved would appear to be at Mr. Mander’s expense, for what he is saying is that the only part of his much-emphasized “strategy” which came off was not a part of the “strategy” at all.

  There is more to this than a breakdown in logic—although that is significant enough. What is more significant is the distortion of political perspective. Mr. Mander is so preoccupied with the great game of international strategy that he fails to consider those realities—movements of peoples, classes, sects—which in any given country so often take the distant “strategists” by surprise. On Berlin, certainly, the communist strategists can create or end crises at will, but in most of the world, in the poor regions, communism spreads—or communisms spread—not because of Stalin’s or Khrushchev’s skill in pressing buttons, but because of the failure of local parasite ruling classes and because of Western insistence on propping up these ruling classes until their last gasp. When in answer to a Ho Chi Minh the West pins its faith to a Bao Dai or a Madame Nhu, the Kremlin needs no strategy—just time.

  Mr. Mander might well agree with this—there are few to defend the “anti-communist strong men” of Asia and Africa once the public-relations varnish has b
egun to crack—but his thesis, with its “realistic” emphasis on power, weapons and high strategy, tends to distract attention from people onto objects and remote abstractions. Even on his chosen plane he is hardly, as we have seen, a reliable guide: a serious matter in a field where overconfident advice, insofar as it may influence the thinking of those in power, may bring us all just that much nearer to annihilation. Thus his very shaky account of the international communist “offensive” of 1957–62—an account which, in addition to its other defects, coolly omits mention of the 1959–60 “spirit of Camp David” rapprochement, ended by the U2—concludes that “the Cuba debacle of October 1962 seems to have forced a pause, possibly a temporary armistice.” The moral suggested is that toughness is the only way to hold in check the communist will to aggression. Corollaries: (1) those in Britain who urged caution over Cuba were in the spirit of Munich (a very odd parallel, considering the positions of Cuba and of Czechoslovakia); (2) the West Germans should have nuclear weapons. If this advice is sound, it can only be so by coincidence, for the chain or argument by which Mr. Mander reaches it is demonstrably defective. If coincidence fails, and “tough” advice is unsound, it could, if taken, prove fatal.

  Mr. Mander’s book nevertheless deserves to be read carefully, for the ideas he advocates, and the character of his thinking, are bound to attract powerful support. This is in many ways a depressing thought. His “get-tough-with-Russia” advice to Britain is probably a less serious matter than his specifically European ideas, for the kind of Europe which may take shape from such blueprints as his could, with its nostalgias and new-found strength—and France’s overseas involvements—be more dangerous to the world than is either of the present Great Powers. Mr. Mander, who admires General de Gaulle and has confidence in German democracy, tells us that there is no cause for alarm.

  Probably the most disturbing thing in the books here reviewed is that Mr. Fitz Gibbon and Mr. Mander apparently support Labour. “My sympathies,” says Mr. Mander, “are with the Left.” “My political adherence, so far as I have any,” says Mr. Fitz Gibbon, “is to the Left.” Mr. Mander also notes approvingly that a Labour government, “being always under pressure to take a strong British stand,” need not be expected, in foreign policy, to be necessarily “softer on communism” than the Tories. Both writers—and Mr. Howard also, if it please God to “change” Harold Wilson—hope that a coming British Labour government will make anti-communism a central plank in its foreign policy. It is perhaps possible that they may get their wish for they have some formidable allies on their right, and some electorally lethal arguments against opponents on the left. It is easy to suggest that those who warn against an anti-communist foreign policy must either wish for a pro-communist one or be dangerously naïve—in short, be either knaves or fools. Faced with this terrible fork, we have seen some left-wing writers begin by grovelling for the second option—“don’t mind me, sir, I’m no fellow-traveller, just a decent, muddled idealist”—and then recover their intellectual self-esteem by becoming tough, cynical anti-communists, beady-eyed birds in whose sight the net is spread in vain. If you are not anti-communist, they will tell you, you must be anti-NATO, and if you are anti-NATO, then you are virtually inviting the Russians to take over Britain. This is a telling line, which enables the speakers to “sell” to some socialists a world-wide system of political intervention which has nothing to do either with the defence of Britain or with anything else which a socialist could possibly approve. The “anti-communist” doctrine is designed to blur the vitally important distinction between telling the Russians that you will fight if they attack your allies—a valid and clear-cut non-ideological position—and telling the Vietnamese and others that you will fight to stop them from “going communist”—an outwardly ideological commitment of uncontrollable scope.

  An “anti-communist” foreign policy involves an indefinite number of such uncontrollable and therefore potentially explosive commitments. It also involves incessant interference in the affairs of the weaker states, the perpetuation of the system which has become known as neo-colonialism—a term which evokes smiles more readily in Britain than in Africa. These activities do nothing to weaken communism—which thrives wherever it becomes identified with the more potent force of nationalism—but they do increase the dangers of war, and widen the gap between white and non-white. Probably most of those outside Britain who desire a Labour victory hope that a Labour government will not only abandon these practices but will do its best to moderate the ideological and pseudo-ideological zeal of its allies.

  Against the realization of such a hope there are at work not only certain foundations, media, periodicals and pamphleteers but also those phenomena whose existence Mr. Mander notes with so much satisfaction: the need not to appear “soft on communism,” the “pressure to take a strong British stand.” These three books are designed to increase the pressure. Mr. Mander and Mr. Fitz Gibbon do so with some efficiency; we should be grateful to Mr. Howard for breaking the strain by making us laugh.

  * Constantine Fitz Gibbon, Random Thoughts of a Fascist Hyena; Peter Howard, Britain and the Beast; John Mander, Great Britain or Little England?

  THE PERJURED SAINT

  This collection* of posthumous fragments—notes, letters, articles—is of little importance in itself. The main themes—communism, God, Whittaker Chambers—have already been thoroughly ruminated in the copious pages of Witness, and Cold Friday offers us no new revelations of any great importance about any of them. What the book does, however, is to raise again the interesting question of the liar as saint: the question of why this veteran liar should become a saint in the eyes of so many intelligent people who dislike lies, or say they do. That is the question I propose to discuss.

  In a piece of Cold Friday called “The Third Rome,” Chambers, who loved to educate his readers, especially about Russia, imparts some information about the Russian feeling for Constantinople:

  On that strange horizon, the Russian eye sees, flaring in imagination, the domes and minarets of the Second Rome—Byzantium (Constantinople, now Istanbul), by which Christendom and culture reached the steppes. It is a legendary vision, and the Russian does not call it Byzantium. He has his own special word for it: Tsargrad—the Imperial City, city of the Tsar (Tsar, the Russian form of Caesar). The depth of the special Russian feeling for Byzantium is perhaps suggested by the fact that Tsargrad alone, or almost alone, among the names of foreign cities is declined through all nine of the inflections of the Russian noun; is treated as a Russian word.

  One can imagine the confrontation before the House Committee:

  Mr. Nixon: Mr. Chambers, do you know the Russian noun?

  Mr. Chambers: I do.

  Mr. Nixon: How many inflections does it have?

  Mr. Chambers: Nine.

  Mr. Mundt: Thank you, Mr. Chambers, for that frank testimony, very different from some of the witnesses we have had here today.

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  Mr. Nixon: Mr. Noun, does Mr. Chambers know you?

  Russian Noun: It depends what you mean by “know.”

  Mr. Nixon: That’s not a very satisfactory answer. How many inflections do you have?

  Russian Noun: Six—you could call it seven if you include the archaic vocative.

  Mr. Stripling: Make up your mind. What is it? Six or seven?

  Russian Noun: It depends whether you count the vocative. You see …

  Mr. Mundt: We’re wasting our time. I’ve had enough of these evasions. Have you a relative called Tsargrad?

  Russian Noun: Yes—as a matter of fact he’s considered rather unusual in our family—he’s declined fully, in both components. Rather jolly, really.

  Mr. Nixon: You say Mr. Chambers doesn’t know you. Yet he has already—quite spontaneously—testified to this Committee about this little detail, which could hardly be known to someone not on intimate terms with your family. How do you account for that, Mr. Noun?

  Russian Noun: Well, you see, I di
dn’t exactly say he didn’t know me. We have met on a couple of occasions …

  Mr. Mundt: Now we’re beginning to get somewhere. Can you still not remember how many inflections you have?

  The Committee would undoubtedly have concluded that Chambers had told the truth, and that the Russian noun had nine inflections.

  It would remain the fact, universally recognized by grammarians, that the Russian noun has six or (counting the fossil vocative) seven inflections: not nine.

  Most didactic mortals find it painful to have discrepancies of this kind brought to their attention. Chambers, for whom this was a frequent experience, never seemed abashed. When one of his stories, in the Hiss case—an alleged trip with the Hisses to New Hampshire—broke down for lack of confirmatory evidence (hotel guest-list signatures) which should have been there if the story had been true, Chambers, in Witness, shrugged the matter off in masterly style. “Obviously,” he wrote, “if I had been lying, I would have taken care to contrive a better story, since there was no need to invent any story at all.”

  It would be hard to think of a better all-purpose stretcher for carting away broken-down lies than “obviously if I had been lying I would have taken care to contrive a better story.” Titus Oates could have used that. As for the “no need to invent any story at all,” that was a lie in itself. What Chambers needed—very badly at the time in question, which was well “pre-pumpkin”—was evidence to support his story of a very close association with Hiss. The New Hampshire trip would have been useful as evidence if it had proved “a better story.”