London: Now that the race wars of the coming decade are beginning to cast their premonitory shadow, it may be useful to look at some of the factors underlying the current disintegration of one of the few hopeful inventions in the field of race relations: the British Commonwealth. By using this topic as a starting-point, we may arrive at conclusions applicable further afield—as far removed indeed as China’s “cultural revolution.” For the threatening upheavals in Africa, India, and the perimeter of China, do seem to have something in common. But first a glance at what is happening in those regions where until recently it seemed that orderly progress had become possible: the formerly British-controlled territories of the African continent.
To single out the problems of these newly independent countries is not to assert that their case is hopeless, or that their affairs are worse managed than those of other regions. Nor is it to cast any special reflection on the performance of their elites. There have been disappointments—Ghana being the outstanding case—but by and large the Africans have surprised their critics by throwing up an unexpectedly large number of competent politicians, and one or two genuine statesmen. Few of the expected disasters have actually occurred. The unending shambles in the Congo is probably the fault of the Belgians. And by comparison with the usual crop of uniformed assassins and civilian pickpockets in Latin America and the Middle East, even the shadier African politicians do not look particularly disreputable.
The current mood of pessimism in London is due to something more fundamental than the oddities of Dr. Nkrumah or even the recent tribal bloodletting in Nigeria. It stems from a growing conviction that these troubles, like those of the Congo, must be expected to continue for some decades. Allied to this depressing picture there is the mounting tension between Europeans and Africans in those parts of the continent where British and other European immigrants have settled in large numbers: principally the Union of South Africa and the neighboring territory of Rhodesia. These areas, not accidentally, are foremost in industrial development, so that black-white cooperation is most threatened where it is most needed. Nigeria and the Congo (not to mention the former French territories, which merely squabble among themselves, but are otherwise peaceful) present simple problems. Their regimes are busy trying to make nation-states out of tribal conglomerations, and this effort, while doubtless a lengthy business, is no threat to anyone, and does not preclude tolerable relations with the West. The potential explosive lies elsewhere: in South Africa, and in the British attempt to mediate the Rhodesian quarrel.
The extent to which this topic has altered the political climate may be judged from the fact that the continued existence of the Commonwealth is no longer taken for granted even by its stoutest defenders. Since last autumn, it has become evident that its survival is not a top priority either for the British or for most of their African and Asian associates. The twenty-three member governments (their number, paradoxically, is growing all the time) still value the “club” as a convenience, but they no longer place Commonwealth solidarity ahead of all other considerations. This change of sentiment has been most dramatic among the British, who used to worry over threats of walkout, whereas today such warnings are greeted with a mixture of irritation and indifference. Nor is this attitude confined to Conservatives impatient with the growing number of Afro-Asian members. It has spread to Liberals and Labourites, and is certainly shared by the public at large. The Commonwealth is now seen as an association which imposes burdensome commitments and acute embarrassments, while yielding small influence and prestige. Above all, it is perceived as a focus of racial tensions from which virtually everyone in Britain would now like to withdraw.
The Rhodesian entanglement has served as the test of genuine, as distinct from rhetorical, commitment to the goal of racial cooperation. By this standard it may be said that the British have opted for a quiet life not bedeviled by the specter of race conflict. Rhodesia offered a readymade challenge to the kind of statesmanship the Labour party was supposed to embody. Its recent “rebellion,” pitting two-hundred thousand whites against four million blacks, could have been resolved by a simple assertion of British sovereignty (in law still applicable), plus a general “declaration of intent” to the effect that the country’s independence would eventually be recognized on the basis of majority rule. Mr. Wilson, with his usual talent for making the worst of all possible worlds, missed the chance to win a painless victory which would have given him the prestige he craved for. He could have ended the rebellion in forty-eight hours by a suitable show of force (probably not even involving any bloodshed). He preferred two years of dithering, endless maneuvers that lost him the confidence of the Africans without winning the esteem of the Europeans, and at the crunch could not even bring himself to utter the saving words “majority rule,” for fear of offending the white “moderates.” The upshot has been a tangle which at the time of writing looks insoluble, with Rhodesia drifting simultaneously toward internal violence and external reliance upon the Union of South Africa: itself the biggest keg of dynamite on the African continent.
Meanwhile, British public opinion, already lukewarm about Africa despite the relative success of self-government in Kenya and elsewhere, has stiffened against further concessions to African nationalism. In the Conservative party, the drift has now reached the point where a majority would probably welcome the departure of some of the Afro-Asians, while an increasingly influential right-wing faction has come out publicly in favor of a racial alignment grouping Britain and the “Old Commonwealth” of white-settler nations (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) with the United States and South Africa: the argument being that South Africa and Rhodesia are worth more economically than all the African states now clamoring for a boycott of these two outcasts. As one of the proponents of this line, Mr. Patrick Wall, put it (see the London Daily Telegraph of September 8, 1966), “Is it worth losing these economically powerful countries to maintain the questionable friendship of certain African members who are already actively increasing their association with the Communist powers?” Here the economic argument serves to underpin an emotional commitment to white-settler solidarity, but it also camouflages an unspoken conviction among Conservatives: namely, that the coming showdown with China is going to involve an Afro-Asian rebellion against white dominance. Those who hold this view are among the advocates of an “Atlantic” alliance grouping in one bloc all the defenders of “white” civilization. No doubt they have their counterparts in the United States and elsewhere.
While officialdom resists this trend, it has no convincing alternative to offer, for the Commonwealth is becoming unpopular. It is increasingly regarded as a nuisance by the convinced “Europeans” (many of them liberals and socialists) who want Britain to join the Common Market, and for different reasons by the Tories who refuse (as they put it) to be dragooned into a campaign against white settlers for the benefit of the new African states. Multi-racialism still has its defenders—it is after all the establishment creed, as well as being the only possible formula for a worldwide grouping which enables Britain to exercise some influence in Africa and Asia. But skepticism is mounting. One can hear it said that if the Commonwealth does not break up over Rhodesia, it will break up over some other issue—a renewal of the conflict between India and Pakistan, or a clash between Singapore and Malaysia. On the last occasion when they met, the Asian members held their peace while the conference wrangled over Rhodesia. This spectacle is unlikely to be repeated. Suppose Pakistan brings up the Kashmir issue, or India demands to know whether she can count on united backing against China? For all the headlines it has been getting, Africa is essentially a less important continent than Asia. Currently, the global storm-center is in the Far East. Continued absorption in African problems can only result in making Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the other Asian members, feel that the Commonwealth has become an irrelevance. Certainly Vietnam looms larger in their eyes than does Mr. Smith’s rebellion in Rhodesia. Yet Rhodesia has symbolic importance, since what is at stake is precisely the multiracial principle on which the Commonwealth is founded. If Britain cannot successfully arbitrate this conflict, then the idea of a worldwide association of states and nations cutting across racial boundaries (and across the frontier dividing the rich from the poor) will have to be abandoned.
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II
What is involved in such an admission can be measured against the menacing backdrop of impending trouble in South Africa—whose government withdrew from the Commonwealth in 1962 rather than subscribe to racial equality. Coming at a moment when the British government had just made its first tentative move to “get into Europe,” this withdrawal portended a major reassessment of the Commonwealth’s place in the world. Four years later, matters had reached the point where a moderate Conservative spokesman saw nothing but disintegration ahead:
Two countries have already left the Commonwealth because their racial policies were unacceptable to the rest. The federations of Central Africa and Malaysia have broken up for racial reasons, and that of Nigeria is in serious trouble. Racial resentments have been rife in Canada, Guiana, Ceylon, and threaten the Union of India. Cyprus is virtually partitioned. The Government of Kenya is taking repressive measures against an Asian minority. Even the mother country has experienced racial strife.1
The reference to Canada is somewhat irrelevant—what is going on there hardly fits the pattern of “racialism,” being rather reminiscent of the endemic nationalities conflict in Belgium. Cyprus perhaps bears some resemblance to Palestine (not mentioned by the author, though its partition in 1947 set the ball rolling). The other areas have the added misfortune of being poor and undeveloped, as well as strife-torn. India, the largest and most important, still includes some forty million Moslem citizens who must dread the prospect of another war with Pakistan. For good measure, the Indian Five Year Plan has been a failure (though officially this is not admitted) and the country now faces the prospect of a growing food shortage. Something like a disintegration of the administrative machine appears to have set in at the provincial level, but the spokesmen in Delhi are as optimistic as ever. It is true that Indians have a marked capacity for wishful thinking. Even so, it comes as a surprise, after the failure of the Third Plan (1961-5) to get the economy off the ground, to read official statements such as that “the country, at the beginning of the Fourth Plan, is poised for a faster growth during the years to come.” Faster than what? The Third Plan absorbed an investment of almost 14 billion dollars, and at the end the average citizen was slightly worse off than before. The Fourth Plan has been described as “a carbon copy of the Third, only twice as big,” and the bazaar wags are already saying that when it is completed the average Indian will be twice as badly off. Whether or not this happens will, it seems, depend on the monsoon and other climatic factors. If all goes well (but why should it?) food-grain production will have risen by 50 per cent in five years, and even so India will have to import 20 million tons by 1970 to keep from starving. In reality it is improbable that the country will be able to feed itself, even with the aid of American shipments. As in the past, officialdom is taking a gamble on the weather:
The Plan exercise therefore hinges once again crucially on the performance of the Indian farmer and his pair of bullocks. Since between them they contribute something like 50 per cent of the national output, it is they who carry the glittering modern steelworks and petrochemical plants on their backs. When they fail, as they did last year, everything else goes to pieces.2
It is worth staying for a while with these prosaic facts and figures. They are not, of course, peculiar to India, but for a number of reasons India’s case is the worst of the lot. The public is now slowly beginning to digest the meaning of documents such as the United Nations “progress report” of October 1966, summaries of which have appeared in leading American and European newspapers.3 What immediately catches the eye, of course, is the expected jump in world population—from 3.4 billion in 1965 to 5 billion in 1985: an extra 1.6 billion people to feed, of whom one billion will be in what it is now customary to call the “developing countries” (400 million of them in China, North Korea, and North Vietnam). But the joker in the pack is the disclosure that even if all plan targets are reached, the gap between the rich and the poor countries will widen still further. On the most hopeful assumption, gross domestic output per head of population in the “developing countries” is expected to rise on average from 133 dollars in 1965 to 255 dollars in 1985. Meanwhile the industrial nations (including, of course, the USSR) can confidently expect to double their already tolerable income, bringing it to an average of 3,000 dollars per head in 1985 (5,000 dollars for North America, as against 160 dollars for India). At the lower end of the scale (in effect for three-quarters of the world’s inhabitants) food will still be the most important item in 1985, and it is by no means certain that India and the rest will actually have got beyond their present starvation level. Even to get rid of their worst calorie shortage they will have to double their food output. After that, they will merely go on suffering from protein deficiency. . . .
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In a rational world some of these problems could be solved, or at least eased, by regional cooperation. In the words of the FAO report summary printed in the London Times of October 19, “it should be possible for Near East countries to supply those of East Africa with cheap fertilizers, while surplus food production in East Africa—particularly meat and maize—could go some way towards meeting the Near East’s growing food deficit.” This remark affords an interesting sidelight upon a region which only recently possessed a political center: both East Africa and what is conventionally known as the “Near East” used to belong to the British Empire, which may be the reason why their problems are still followed with interest in London. The same cannot be said of Southeast Asia, if one excepts Malaya and Singapore; but then this part of the world has come to benefit from Washington’s special attention. If nothing else, fear of China will probably see to it that the area is not neglected. Whether the system of alliances sponsored by the United States will effectively cut across the division between the haves and the have-nots, remains to be seen.
Meanwhile the future shape of things can be accurately guessed from the recent upheaval in Indonesia. No one (not even the authorities in Jakarta) knows exactly how many people were slaughtered in the villages following the suppression of the Communist rising. The true figure may be between a quarter of a million and twice that number. What is known is that the massacre also had a racial aspect: since China was supposed to have backed the abortive coup, and since the Chinese minority was unpopular (though for reasons having nothing to do with Communism, the Chinese element having mostly been made up of shopkeepers and petty merchants), there ensued a large-scale outbreak of racial murder for which the anti-Communist campaign afforded an excellent cover. By now, in the tranquil phrase of the London Economist (November 5, 1966), “The Indonesians seem to have stopped the killing of their local Chinese, but are in no loving mood towards the large proportion of the community that survived.” Nor, for that matter, is there any love lost between Chinese and Malays in what is left of the federation of Malaysia (minus Singapore). The virtual breakup of the federation was hailed by the Indonesian government, in an official statement, as “a victory for the Malay race”: a phrase that caused consternation in (mainly Chinese) Singapore. These are the realties of Southeast Asian politics today. It is just as well to be clear about the significance of a term such as “nationalism” in that part of the world. What it comes down to is the slaughter or expulsion of ethnic minorities, whether Indians in Burma, Chinese in Malaya and Indonesia, or Tibetans in China. Against this background, the determination of the Singapore government to preserve a British base in its territory occasions no surprise. But what happens when the British pull out, as in the 1970’s they are expected to do? Americans who pride themselves on their country’s new status had better be warned that they are going to inherit this seething cauldron of hatred and massacre, along with all the other imperial responsibilities they are now busy acquiring.
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III
In the short run, needless to say, none of this compares in importance with the emergence of China as a nuclear power and the extra twist thereby given to the Sino-American confrontation. It is only when one tries to fit the nuclear factor into the geopolitical context that one begins to get a notion of the sort of “world order” likely to emerge in the 1970’s, when most of China’s neighbors will be living under the threat of Peking’s nuclear blackmail. The October 27 missile tryout was clearly timed to coincide with Mr. Johnson’s descent on Manila. According to the official Chinese communique, “the guided missile flew normally and the nuclear warhead hit the target at the appointed distance, effecting a nuclear explosion.” It seems to be agreed that the range of the missile was probably between five hundred and seven hundred miles—still a long way from the intercontinental weapons China is expected to have in ten years, but already quite enough to worry the Japanese and others in the region. To cite the Economist once more, “It so happens that the perimeter of Peking’s missile range is just about concurrent with the Chinese view of their rightful sphere of influence.” Had they so desired, the Chinese could in fact have dropped their missile on Manila while Mr. Johnson and his six Asian allies were in conference. No doubt, they had sound reasons for refraining from so dramatic a gesture.
It is also arguable that, as between China’s medium-range potential and America’s long-range arsenal, most of the smaller Asian countries are likely to feel safer on the American side. But this sort of reasoning appeals to diplomats and soldiers rather than to the man in the street. The latter is quite likely to say that there would be less cause for worry if the Americans were to remove their bases. Then, indeed, China would be the paramount power in the region, but what of that? Someone has to call the tune, and as long as there is no threat to his person, the average inhabitant of, say, Laos or Thailand may well come to feel that a degree of subservience to Peking is not too high a price to pay for the preservation of what passes for peace and quiet in that part of the world.
At this point one is apt these days to encounter the argument that (knowing or sensing all this) Washington is busy, all of a sudden, trying to improve relations with Moscow. This is doubtless very true. It is also somewhat irrelevant, though for reasons having little to do with the Vietnam war which is always mentioned in this connection. The fact is that even if the slaughter in Vietnam could somehow be halted and some sort of acceptable compromise patched up, the problem of containing an increasingly nationalist and bellicose China would still loom as large as ever. Nor is it altogether easy to see what the Russians could do to make it easier.
If the experts can be trusted, there is at present no disposition in Washington to take China seriously as a military threat. It seems to be believed that, with the present balance of forces, American land power does not have to be permanently employed on the Asian mainland, and that the forces now in Vietnam can safely be withdrawn once this particular war is over. For technical reasons, Korea is seen to be the only area in which Chinese ground forces could rapidly be deployed on such a scale as to make any difference. For the rest, China’s capacity for making trouble is thought to be limited to “wars of liberation” on the Vietnamese pattern, and the Pentagon seems to think there is a military answer to this particular challenge. In short, China is regarded as a paper tiger. It is also thought that the rift between Peking and Moscow is now past mending. All the news coming out of Moscow and Eastern Europe these days suggests that the Soviet leaders are increasingly pessimistic about the conflict—even to the point of reckoning quite seriously with the future possibility of a Chinese military threat along the Soviet Union’s Asian border.
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It is tempting to conclude from all this that the task of keeping China under control is certain to push the U.S. and the USSR closer together—all the more tempting since the Chinese themselves never tire of proclaiming that the imperialists in Washington and the revisionists in Moscow have already made a secret pact to set up a world directorate. In point of fact, there are few signs that this is about to happen. On the other hand, there is some evidence that the Kremlin is exploiting Peking’s verbal belligerence, and Mao’s semi-crazed domestic tyranny, for the purpose of reinforcing its own hold over most of the Eastern bloc. In a situation where America and China confront each other as enemies, and where China seems to have temporarily gone mad, it is comparatively easy for the Russians to win prestige and popularity all over Asia.
There are signs that this is happening. Thus Indonesia, having broken with Peking, nonetheless conserves its ties with Moscow. It is not without interest that the Russians seem to have urged the formation of a new, legal, and pro-Soviet, Communist party in Indonesia, to replace the shattered hulk of its Maoist predecessor. If the military rulers of Indonesia should take the hint, we may witness the spectacle of Moscow trying to reduce Chinese influence by way of playing the national-Communist card. In an area where all the nations surrounding China—above all India and Japan—are actuated by a mixture of fear and respect, this strategy offers the Russians larger dividends than a straightforward deal with America. For the same reason, it seems unlikely that Moscow will discontinue its limited support for North Vietnam. Unlike the Americans, the Russians are not involving themselves in any war there. On the other hand, they are not renouncing their role as the protectors of revolutionary movements. For the Soviet Union to appear openly aligned with America would be self-defeating. Just because China is a threat to them, the Russians cannot afford to do without the support of local Communist forces.
Lastly, there is the impact of China’s internal upheaval. Of this it may safely be said that it has already confirmed Moscow’s worst fears by pushing the army leaders to the forefront. Out of the clash between the ossified party apparatus, which Mao is apparently trying to dismantle, and the juvenile Red Guards, the army seems certain to emerge as the real winner. In this context it is immaterial whether—as the Russians seem to think—Chinese opinion is being deliberately prepared for future hostilities against the Soviet Union. What matters is that, for the first time since Mao came to power, the army is taking precedence over the party. The discrediting of the party goes hand in hand with the eradication of the last faint traces of pro-Soviet sentiment. Chinese Communism is being fused with the ancient chauvinist xenophobia. In future, China’s rulers will be free to move in any direction, untrammeled by ideological considerations, for the official ideology will have been reformulated so as to legitimize in advance any and every extension of China’s power—now declared to be synonymous with the cause of world revolution. The mass hysteria which has been worked up is unlikely to be guided into domestic channels: for the simple reason that there are none left. It is hardly possible to make constructive use, e.g., for economic purposes, of the kind of primitive emotion Mao has unleashed. There remains the task of “liberating” China’s neighbors—or those formerly Chinese territories now belonging to the Soviet Union.
If it were possible to treat Maoism as a phenomenon belonging uniquely to the “ideological superstructure,” one would have to pronounce it a forlorn hope. After all, what could be more utopian than to proclaim complete equality, and spartan austerity, as the aim of the revolution, at the very moment when China’s rulers are desperately trying to turn the country into a major industrial and military power? A modern industrial base cannot be constructed without a large degree of social inequality. Technicians and scientists must be given privileges, and the emergence of something like a class society must be tolerated. Mao’s egalitarianism made sense in Yenan, and during the first few years after the revolution, when it was a matter of winning the loyalty of peasants and workers, but it is inappropriate to the present stage. A country that wants this sort of Communism had better renounce the aim of becoming a major industrial power. Inversely, if China is to rival the U.S. and the USSR, Mao’s “cultural revolution” is a luxury it cannot afford. Whichever way one looks at it, the experiment seems foredoomed to failure.
But although this is true, it does not alter the fact that immense energies have been mobilized in the pursuit of a utopian goal—energies that must be discharged in one form or another. China cannot at one and the same time become a great power and a classless society. A choice will have to be made, and it will be made by the army leaders whom the last furious spasm of the revolution has hoisted into the saddle. When that time comes, China’s neighbors, and the remainder of Asia, will indeed have cause for worry.
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1 Angus Maude M.P., writing in the Daily Telegraph of September 6, 1966.
2 The Statist, London, September 16, 1966.
3 E.g., the New York Times and London Times of October 19, both reporting the statement made in New York the day before by Dr. Binay Sen, director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. It was in the course of this that he remarked, “If the rate of food production cannot be significantly increased, we must be prepared for the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.” See also the Indicative World Plan for Agriculture prepared by the FAO and summarized in the London Times of the same date.
