In the four Soviet “military districts” bordering on China, and in the Soviet client-state of Outer Mongolia, there are now deployed at least forty-three army divisions, out of a grand total of 168 in the Soviet army as a whole; there are also some 100,000 heavily armed border troops, elite forces of the KGB. In all, more than one-quarter of Soviet ground troops, as well as about one-fifth of the Soviet tactical airforce, are deployed against China.
The military balance in Europe, such as it is, already depends on the hostility between the Soviet Union and China, which offsets in great part the uneven competition between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Precarious as the equilibrium of forces in Europe undoubtedly is, it would be altogether overthrown if the Soviet Union were to diminish its forces on the Chinese border down to the numbers of the pre-1969 period, when no more than fifteen divisions manned the frontier now guarded by forty-three. By contrast, in the whole of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union holds only thirty-one divisions (albeit at full strength), and these divisions daily earn their keep in a way that the forces on the Chinese border do not: they serve the Kremlin’s political purposes by insuring the obedience of the East Europeans while simultaneously projecting power into Western Europe. No such political benefits are gained by the Soviet troops deployed against China.
But crude divisional counts hardly reveal the full dimensions of the military burden which China levies upon the Soviet Union. During the great build-up of the 1968-72 period, Soviet forces were at first sent out to the border areas with all the urgency with which troops are moved in a war: the soldiers had to live in field conditions, often in harsh circumstances, and their supplies were precariously conveyed. Had war broken out in the wake of the 1969 border incidents, as some hoped and others feared, the Soviet Union might well have suffered a characteristically Russian logistic defeat, before being able to inflict an equally characteristic technological defeat upon the Chinese. Many of the routes that linked Soviet encampments with the Trans-Siberian railway were unpaved tracks, fit for use by heavy trucks only in high summer and during the winter freeze; emergency airlifts would also have depended on landing strips usable only in good weather. Nor could the Russians accumulate the fuel dumps, ammunition stores, and stocks of essential supplies that would have been needed to bridge the gap between wartime consumption rates and the restricted capacity of their jerry-built supply network—which in any case was almost entirely dependent on the highly vulnerable Trans-Siberian railway. Beyond that, Soviet forces newly deployed on the Chinese border lacked the whole complex of facilities and repair shops needed to maintain the efficiency of their thousands of tanks, troop carriers, and guns. Perhaps the Soviet soldier is still a hardy creature who can survive and fight with very little in the Siberian cold and in the summer heat of the Mongolian steppe. But even if the comforts of the men could be denied, the needs of their equipment could not: late-model Soviet weapons are as complex and delicate as those of the most pampered of Western armies.
Although the number of divisions has ceased to grow since 1972, the effort expended by the Soviet Union on the Chinese border has increased very greatly since then. There has been vast construction, of bases and airfields, of workshops and hospitals, of roads and depots—often with materials brought at great cost from afar. This entire infrastructure is still now being equipped with the great mass of things needed to achieve self-sufficiency in places thousands of miles removed from European Russia; from electronic gear to hospital beds, from machine tools to washing machines, all must come from the industrial core areas. On top of all this, there is the additional cost of the Baikal-Amur railway now under construction, no doubt primarily for military reasons. Since it runs 200 miles or more to the north of the Trans-Siberian, the new rail link will offer greater safety from Chinese sabotage or outright attack; for the very same reason, its construction costs are enormous: the line must cross zones of permafrost where each culvert and bridge, and the very roadbed itself, must all be carefully secured with elaborate precautions.
Far and away the most costly single construction project now under way anywhere in the world, the railway is nevertheless a good investment: with distances of up to 6,000 miles from the core areas of European Russia, even the airlift capacity of both the Soviet air force and Aeroflot could scarcely provide the flow of supplies that would be needed in war. As for shipping, the choice is between the short northern route by way of the Arctic, usable only briefly in high summer and then with icebreakers, and the enormously long and easily interrupted sea lanes that connect the Baltic and Black Seas with the Soviet ports on the northeast Pacific by way of the Indian Ocean. In a war, this uniquely unfavorable geography would be the great equalizer between poorly armed Chinese and exceedingly well-equipped Russians, and it is also the great inflator of costs in peace. The enormity of maintaining a large army at the other end of the world is evident: while American forces in Europe have a maritime supply line some 3,500 miles long across the Atlantic, the shortest sea route from the Black Sea to Vladivostock exceeds 9,500 miles, and when the Suez Canal cannot be used, it exceeds 16,000 miles.
These, then, are the dimensions of the indirect strategic benefit that the hostility between the Russians and Chinese already confers upon the West. Whether or not all the true resource costs emerge through the fog of Soviet accounting methods, these costs are real all the same. To the extent that they figure as military outlays, they must ultimately restrict the effort channeled into the military competition between the Russians and the West. For it is by now generally agreed that the Soviet armed forces claim for themselves a fixed proportion of the gross national product. Accordingly, the Soviet military resources absorbed by the confrontation with China must be reckoned as withdrawn from the competition with the West.
_____________
A prudent strategy would not lightly accept this state of affairs. In the free benefit that the Russo-Chinese confrontation confers upon us, there is a great dependence, and therefore a great risk. As things now stand, a diplomatic adjustment between Moscow and Peking could quite suddenly undermine the military balance in Europe and beyond, by freeing some of the Soviet forces now held in Asia for redeployment against NATO.
Both Sovietologists and Sinologists assure us that the hostility between Russians and Chinese is deeply rooted and many-faceted, being cultural-historical and also territorial as well as ideological. But there is no need to disagree with the experts in order to fear the worst. We may agree that a reconciliation of souls is entirely improbable. But even the most guarded and tactical of détentes might suffice to bring about a mutual force-reduction agreement on the Russo-Chinese border, and that in turn could easily release Soviet forces sufficiently powerful to undermine the already precarious equilibrium between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Since the processes of decision in both Moscow and Peking are so secretive, and thus eminently well-suited to the diplomacy of surprise, the danger of a sudden accord is always present, and we should not dismiss it as lightly as many now do.
But prudence seems to be out of fashion. No calls to reduce our strategic dependence on the Russo-Chinese rivalry are to be heard. Instead, there are insistent voices that argue for a much more active exploitation of this rivalry. From Senator Jackson and others in opposition and from some in high office in the current administration, we hear that the United States should play the “China card.” The phrase is opaque, but the intended meaning is clear enough.
The premises of the argument are incontestable: the hopes of the Kissingerian détente have now been exposed as vain; the Soviet Union, obdurately bent on achieving a broad military superiority, is steadily advancing over the West in one category of forces after another, and is already acting in a seriously disruptive fashion abroad while being more than usually nasty at home. As for the strategic-arms limitation negotiations, they have already failed in substance, whatever the formal outcome, since even the most ardent advocates of a new SALT treaty now concede that it will not preserve strategic stability—and that of course is the only valid goal of the exercise.
The argument developed from these premises also has an undeniable plausibility. Having tried our best to reach a stable accord with the Soviet Union, we must now face the brutal fact that we have failed—perhaps because our well-meaning intent has been mistaken for weakness, or perhaps because our weakness is all too real. Now, the argument continues, we must move to apply real pressure on the Russians, in order to force them into the mutually beneficial accommodation which they so obstinately refuse. This can best be done by strengthening China. To the extent that China’s relative power increases vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, the Russians will be forced to divert still more of their power to the East, and will therefore have to moderate their conduct in the West, and also refrain from adventures in Africa and elsewhere. A harder variant of the argument does not merely seek to engineer an improved modus vivendi with the Russians, but rather hopes to achieve a more definite solution, by mobilizing Chinese power to the point where the Russians will be reduced to paralysis on all other fronts.
Beyond this, the “China Card” argument diverges into different prescriptions. One school of thought stresses the military dimension, and some already advocate the outright supply of American weapons and production know-how to the Chinese. Again, the underlying military logic is sound: American forces are manpower-limited, while those of China are equipment-limited. A given stock of modern weapons added to American inventories can yield only a marginal increase in capability, while the same weapons, if supplied to the Chinese, could have a multiplied effect. In one frequently cited example, it is argued that many Chinese infantry divisions could be made fit for combat against Soviet armored forces at a modest cost, if supplied with anti-tank missiles. As it happens, this is not true, for elementary tactical reasons (artillery can easily suppress anti-tank missiles), but the flawed example does not vitiate the argument: it is certainly true that the vast potential of Chinese military power is now severely limited by certain narrow deficiencies which reflect the inadequacies of the Chinese industrial base. In some cases at least, these shortcomings could be remedied fairly easily with Western help.
For example, the Chinese have a large number of old but still useful jet fighters; their great weakness is that they lack air-to-air missiles. A supply of these relatively cheap munitions could go a long way toward improving the air balance with the Soviet Union. Given a greater effort, with the supply of some modern jet fighters (as well as many more missiles), the Chinese might be able to offer a real challenge to the Soviet Union’s air superiority in the border areas, and this in turn would activate the much larger capability of the Chinese ground forces, now virtually neutralized by their utter vulnerability to Soviet air power. In this way, a relatively modest contribution of advanced weaponry from the United States could generate a disproportionate increase in overall Chinese military power, thus triggering the cycle of Soviet redeployment to the East, and retrenchment in the West.
Others who also see the “Chinese card” in a military vein would have us refrain from direct supply, leaving the task—or rather the market—to the Europeans. The United States has in fact already acted on this advice: the jet engines of current first-line Chinese fighters are now being produced in a factory which was equipped by the British, with American permission (some of the technology originated in the United States).
_____________
Another school of thought is perhaps more influential: it does not necessarily exclude the supply of military equipment but prefers to stress diplomatic means. It calls for a rapid “normalization” of U.S. relations with China—characteristically accepting Peking’s terminology in which it is “normal” that diplomatic relations should require the prior abandonment of our defense treaty with Taiwan and the withdrawal of recognition from the Chinese government on that island. In the “diplomatic” formulation of the argument, the aim is not to apply direct military pressure on the Soviet Union and there is no compelling mechanical logic at work. Instead, the claim is that if the leaders of Moscow were confronted by a pattern of close and harmonious dealings between Washington and Peking, they would feel compelled to redress the balance. This in turn would require them to soften their policies toward the West, in order to compete with the amity that Peking already offers.
There is also an economic school of thought, which advocates the liberalization of trade and technology transfers to China, with or without full diplomatic relations, and even in the absence of outright sales of military equipment. The expectation is that Chinese industrial progress would accelerate rapidly, with a consequent increase in the ultimate military potential that the Chinese economy could sustain. In this formulation, the Russians would be driven to seek an accord with Washington in the hope of arresting the flow of advanced technology, or at least in order to position themselves for a future in which China would become much more powerful.
Both the diplomatic and the economic versions of the “China card” argument have collateral attractions that owe very little to the essential strategic logic of the argument. Their advocates have thus been fairly effective in building coalitions with those who are interested in the chosen instrument even if indifferent—or even hostile—to the strategic purpose. For example, there is a group, amply represented in the current administration, whose members are eager to abandon Taiwan, but not at all interested in opposing the Soviet Union more strongly. Some in this camp are academic Sinologists, who simply believe in Peking’s claim that the continued existence of a separate government on Taiwan amounts to a perpetuation of the Chinese civil war; often motivated by a sense of guilt over the Western exploitation of Chinese weakness in the past, these men feel very strongly that the United States is helping to divide the Chinese by maintaining diplomatic relations with Taiwan and continuing to guarantee its security. Oddly enough for experts in Chinese history, they accept the pretense that there is only one China, even though in the reality of history China has more often been divided than united. As good Sinophiles, many seem much more concerned with Peking’s sensitivities than with those of Washington, and are notably indifferent to the harsh price in credibility, prestige, and self-regard that the United States would have to pay if it were to abandon the longstanding alliance with Taiwan.
Others motivated primarily by the urge to repudiate Taiwan are not driven by the scholarly provincialism of the pro-Peking Sinologists, but rather by deeper and darker emotions. As a residue of the travails of the Indochina war, we now have among our foreign-policy elite some who can see virtue only in those who scorn our values and reject our mode of life. These are men and women who hold it terribly urgent to achieve amity with Hanoi and Havana, and who automatically assume that any American-oriented regime in the Third World must be corrupt and unworthy—for who but the corrupt would want to emulate our ways, or seek the friendship of an America itself corrupt and unjust? Some who hold such views are now in high and relevant office. With some impatience these officials may pay attention to Japan or Korea, countries clearly too important to be denied, but they have no time at all for the Singapores or Taiwans of this world; their conversation will frequently refer in excited tones to their dealings with Vietnamese or Cubans, but the extraordinary progress achieved by the laissez-faire economies of East Asia leaves them indifferent. The fact that living standards have risen so swiftly from abject poverty to a modest prosperity, the fact that these nations are vibrant in their dynamism, does not attract their praise; nor do they appreciate the pro-American orientation of these countries—indeed it is that above all which ultimately condemns them.
Neither the pro-Peking Sinologists nor those whom we may as well call McGovernites truly support the geopolitical aim of the “China card” strategy; in fact, in the policy debate the McGovernites are prominent in their belief that the Russians should not be pressured but rather conciliated further. But both groups are content to join the coalition, as the best way of securing the abandonment of Taiwan, a goal which they pursue with peculiar intensity.
Needless to say, the wider coalition built around the economic version of the argument represents a variety of business interests. Very few of our corporate executives are sufficiently naive to see a vast consumer market in China: Lancashire may have once believed that the world’s demand for its cotton goods would be doubled if only the Chinese could be persuaded to lengthen their coats by a couple of inches, but it is all too obvious that the United States has long ceased to be competitive as a supplier of cottons or any other simple consumer good. But, given Peking’s new willingness to trade, there is certainly a significant potential market for American industrial machinery and all the ancillaries, from computers to heavy vehicles.
And then of course there are the oil companies. Contrary to popular belief, the attention of oil executives is not entirely absorbed by the exacting business of lobbying for fiscal advantage, or conspiring to fix prices; the oil companies do retain an interest in finding oil and gas. Some years ago much was heard about China’s supposedly vast offshore oil deposits, but very little was known in fact. The claim that there was “big oil” in the sea reflected highly superficial evidence: the geology is compatible with oil deposits; it does not guarantee their presence. Not much more is known now, but given the chance, quite a few U.S. oil companies would be willing to spend millions to explore. Thus their powerful voice is added to the industrial interest which sees a potential market in China.
_____________
One does not expect to find strategic wisdom among McGovernites, or pro-Peking Sinologists, and still less is it due from businessmen in search of more business. As for the government officials who are now the chief advocates of the “China card,” their motives may be properly strategic rather than sentimental, ideological, or commercial, but these men are after all among the chief makers of the Carter administration’s inept foreign policy, and perhaps one should not expect much from them either. By contrast, it is disheartening to discover that some of our most accomplished strategists have now joined in the call for a de-facto alliance with China, explicitly suggesting that this should be a military alliance.
It seems that after all the years of our troubles with the Soviet Union a transference of purposes has taken place, from the positive of preserving Western security to the negative of opposing the Soviet Union. It is of course true that the Soviet Union remains by far the most powerful of our adversaries, and there is every reason to believe that this will be true in the future also. Nor can one disagree with the contention that it is now a matter of high urgency to muster additional strength to oppose the steady course of power-accumulation which the Soviet Union has followed for fifteen years and more. Finally, one may agree also that the West is in fact losing the military competition, and that a strategic remedy is now needed. But the “China card” is the most unstrategical of remedies, being rather a tactical “quick-fix” writ large. Only its unpremeditated consequences will be strategic in import—and exceedingly unfavorable.
There is no point in engaging in a preliminary argument over the willingness of the Chinese to cooperate in the scheme. Until Mao’s death it was the position of the Chinese leaders that they needed no technological know-how from the outside world, that they would trade no raw material for industrial imports, and that in weapons China would be strictly self-sufficient. Now Peking’s policies appear to have been reversed on all these points. There can be no reliable prediction of what the Chinese might do with an enhancement of their military power, but at present they are certainly willing to receive Western help in industrial and military-industrial technology—though no purchases of actual military equipment appear to have taken place as yet. As for Peking’s willingness to cooperate on a purely diplomatic level, we have now only the promise that after “normalization,” much can be expected. It should be noted that others who do have full diplomatic relations, such as the British, privately complain that there is still no real diplomatic intercourse with the Chinese, and that their embassy in Peking transacts very little real business. But one may suppress doubt on all these points and proceed to assume with the advocates that China would in fact be willing to cooperate, since a Chinese refusal would dispose of the whole “China card” argument in any case.
The problems, then, arise from the consequences of the move, and not from its feasibility. It is the essence of strategy to evaluate choices in the knowledge that each move will trigger a reaction, and that the net accounting of results must include not only what we do, but also what others will do in order to counter our own actions. The first consequence of our playing the “China card” may be predicted, at least in general terms, with great certainty: if we act, the Soviet Union will react. How? If the Russians were to decide that the threat of a Sino-American alliance was not merely ominous in its long-term consequences but also dangerous in the short-term, they might be driven to use force against China. It is of course most unlikely that the leaders in the Kremlin would become sufficiently desperate to resort to a nuclear attack or to a full-scale invasion, but the broad military superiority of the Soviet Union in both conventional and nuclear forces, on land, at sea, and in the air offers a whole repertoire of military moves which China could neither defeat nor deter.
The possibilities are many, and there would be no point in examining each. But it is instructive to examine one or two of the alternatives. To take one large option, the Soviet Union might launch a limited offensive to seize territory in some part of the vast border lands of China where the population is small, non-Chinese, or both. For example, the western province of Sinkiang, already half surrounded by Soviet territory, is as large as one-third of the United States but its population does not exceed twenty million—half of them being minorities of Turkic stock, and by all accounts extremely unhappy with Peking’s rule. A conquest of Sinkiang would be a straightforward military operation for which the highly mobile Soviet armored forces would be eminently well-suited, and the Russians would have little to tear from guerrillas in a land of deserts which has neither the jungles nor the men which made Vietnam so irreducible. As for Chinese nuclear retaliation, this would be inhibited by the great imbalance of forces: in a nuclear exchange all Chinese cities of any size would unfailingly be destroyed. And finally, the Soviet Union could mitigate even the international political costs, by claiming (with merit) that the peoples of the Sinkiang were in need of liberation from Chinese colonial rule. The outcome might then be the creation of a Turkestan People’s Republic, a client-state on the lines of Outer Mongolia, whose existence already so well serves the interests of Russia while diminishing China.
But the major purpose of a Sinkiang move would be achieved in the process rather than in the actual result: the Peking regime would be undermined internally by the exposure of its military inadequacy, and the American alliance would be shown to be hollow. Indeed, that particular aim could also be achieved (with much less risk) by a far more restrained use of Soviet military forces. Should a pattern of orchestrated border incidents and other threatening moves induce the Chinese to seek urgent help in materiel, they would then discover that the total number of battle tanks, guns, and anti-aircraft weapons that the United States could promptly supply would not suffice to equip more than one or two of their 190 divisions. In fact, even the total inventory of American ground weapons of the army and marines, of the active forces and reserves, would not be enough to equip half the Chinese army with modern weapons.
_____________
Other Russian moves might also involve force but less directly. For example, the Soviet Union might sponsor a North Korean invasion of the South. By all accounts, the ruler of North Korea, Kim II Sung, would need very little encouragement. If a second Korean war were to break out, the military outcome would be in doubt, but one may safely predict the political consequences: if Peking joined in support of the North, this would destroy the American alliance, since U.S. troops would then find themselves engaged in combat against an enemy supported, if only verbally, by the Chinese. In such circumstances, the United States could hardly maintain harmonious diplomatic and trade relations with Peking; still less could American weapons continue to be supplied to the patron and ally of an enemy.
Alternatively, if Peking remained neutral, it would lose all influence over North Korea, Soviet troops would then no doubt be stationed in that country, and this alone would greatly weaken China: the very important Manchurian provinces would then be surrounded by Soviet forces on three sides. Further, if Peking suffered this great loss in order to stay neutral, it would then expect the United States to act swiftly to defeat a Russian-supported invasion. But any Korean war would create a world crisis and NATO would also be calling for reinforcements; in such circumstances, the United States with its diminished forces could not send a powerful army to Korea. Thus, instead of a prompt and clear American victory, a messy holding action would ensue. Peking would then discover how severe are the limits on American power that Soviet military efforts and American parsimony have jointly imposed. This too would be apt to lead to a breakdown of the alliance, since the Chinese would then see greater safety in conciliating a powerful Soviet Union than in continuing to rely on a weak American ally.
There is no need to evoke every conceivable war scenario, for the same lesson emerges in each case: far from being a substitute for American strength, the “China card” would require a prior augmentation of American military power as the essential precondition of so risky a move. Otherwise, a violent Soviet reaction could not be reliably deterred, nor defeated. This of course makes nonsense of the whole scheme. That the military logic of the “China card” is ultimately self-defeating should not after all come as a surprise: given the present balance of power, the relative strength of the United States can scarcely be expected to increase through an alliance with a China that is altogether more vulnerable to Soviet attack than the United States could ever be.
A warlike Soviet reaction would be highly dangerous, but it is not the only response available to the Russians. Indeed, they might inflict still greater damage upon the West if they were to follow the ways of peace. What would happen if we carried out the scheme, and there was no prompt Russian military reaction? Through the importation of industrial equipment, of military technology, or of actual weapons, the Chinese would eventually become stronger; it is then envisaged that the Russians would allocate more and more of their military power to their eastern frontier. The nations of Western Europe would then, no doubt, diminish their military effort; in the face of a decline in the Soviet forces ranged directly against them, the parliaments of Europe would hardly refrain from cutting military budgets, and Congress would no doubt follow.
But as the process unfolds, it holds the seeds of its own unmaking. For the incentives to the Soviet Union of reaching a modus vivendi with China would grow in proportion to the rising costs of a continued confrontation. Peking would then be in a position to blackmail the West for still more aid, threatening to go to Moscow if its demands were not met. The Russians in turn would find it profitable to offer still greater inducements in exchange for a détente. At some point, the Chinese might well see an advantage in accepting the Soviet offer; détente and force-reduction agreements would ensue, and the Russians would next be free to transfer to the West a sufficient proportion of their forces in Asia to undermine drastically the European military balance. China, for its part, would be free to use its own military power against Taiwan, and to intimidate any other Western-oriented country in East Asia. The profound antipathy between Russians and Chinese would not invalidate this scenario. The Russo-Chinese conflict may indeed be organic, and incapable of ultimate resolution. Nevertheless, each side may yet deem it appropriate to reach a temporary accommodation, in order to build up its own strength for the final showdown by conquest and expansion at the expense of the West.
_____________
So far, the “China card” has been considered on its own terms, in the essentially tactical and short-term perspective of its proponents. But in contemplating such a momentous course of action, of such powerful effect, even the most feckless ought to consider the long-term consequences. What is the long-term goal of our policy toward the Soviet Union? We may all agree that in the immediate future we must act strongly to remedy the imbalance of power which our years of military decay and political confusion have caused. We may also agree that it is necessary to contain Soviet imperialism much more effectively than we have done of late. But what then? Is it our purpose, through a Chinese alliance, to drive the Russians into a corner of isolation and hostility, or even to conspire in their destruction? Or should, rather, our purpose be to encourage the peaceful transformation of the Soviet Union toward a more tolerable internal order and a more responsible external conduct?
Surely our long-term goal must be to achieve a gradual Europeanization of the Russians, through the spread of legality, the widening of individual freedoms, and the democratization of party and state. Already there is legalism, even if not at all the rule of law; at present, the procedures have little substance, as the recent trials have shown. But even this modest restraint upon despotism was entirely absent in Stalin’s day, when dissidents were simply shot in police cells. Our hope must be that legalism will evolve into legality through its own dynamic. But this result could hardly be expected in a Soviet Union isolated, and embattled against a Chinese military power enhanced by Western assistance. Already there has been some widening of individual freedoms; even with the recent retrogressions, these freedoms are much wider than they were thirty years ago, when indeed Russians were as unfree as man may become outside prison walls. Here our aim must be to encourage a reversion to the modest but encouraging liberalization of the early 1960’s, and then to stimulate progress very much further. In this case also, rising military tensions would defeat our purpose, and serve to promote a further restoration of the powers of the KGB. As for democratization, in truth there are no grounds for rational hope in this direction, even within the confines of the party, let alone the state, but we must hope nevertheless, and we should not preclude our own intent by adopting a strategy of encirclement that would serve to justify the disciplines of autocracy.
And what of our long-term policy toward China? Is it our true purpose to promote the rise of the People’s Republic to superpower status? The Chinese are perhaps more pacific a people than the Russians have been over the last two centuries or so, and of course they are wonderfully talented, and have much to contribute in all ways. To the extent that totalitarian controls allow, even in mainland China a Westerner may enjoy an improvement of his culture and a betterment of his manners by mere contact with the Chinese. But should we become the artificers of a great power which our grandchildren may have to contend with? Will they be grateful if we help to make China more powerful than it would be in the natural way of things? One thinks not.
_____________
By all means, then, achieve diplomatic relations with Peking—so long as these are obtained in equality, without any imposed diminution of our highly productive relations with Taiwan. Even the supply of military-industrial technology from Europe must be seriously considered, but only in very modest proportions, to reduce specific Chinese vulnerability to Soviet coercion. Beyond that, however, the “China card” should not be played. Instead, we should play the American card, mustering more of our own strength for our own purposes.
There is no strategy without a coherent political purpose, and for the United States there can be no political purpose on the world scene that fails to reflect our moral aims. It is obvious that at the very least these aims are utterly inconsistent with totalitarianism, and thus, of course, with Communism. Ultimately it would avail us little to resist one form of Communism by aiding another. The “China card” has all the appeal of a free lunch, but in strategy, as in economics, there is no such thing. In this particular case, the attempt to derive a free benefit from Chinese strength in order to spare ourselves efforts which we are very well equipped to make, would fatally compromise not only our strategic position but also our most fundamental political purposes.
