The new escalation of the imperialist aggression in South-East Asia, with the invasion of Cambodia by American and puppet troops, has once again highlighted the crying disparity between the concentration of international counter-revolutionary forces on the Indo-Chinese peninsula and the dispersion of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist forces throughout the world. The lack of a strong and coordinated response to this attack has confirmed the idea of the imperialist overlords in Washington that they did not go wrong in their calculations and that the Kremlin will not react. This conviction remains unquestionably the main factor encouraging imperialist aggression in the world today.
Confidence in the passivity of the Kremlin is not the result of pure speculation on the part of American imperialism. Every time Washington has escalated its aggression—from dispatching the first “military advisers” to South Vietnam and the Tonkin Gulf “incident” up to the invasion of Cambodia—the Pentagon and State Department military and diplomatic experts have not been satisfied with “estimating the risks” of more massive Soviet intervention. They have observed what was going on in Moscow and the area. Their conclusions have not been based on suppositions but on the facts.
For example, in the wake of the Geneva accords on Laos in 1962, for which the ground was prepared by the Kennedy-Krushchev meeting in Vienna, the American imperialists stepped up their military intervention in the country without Moscow doing anything whatever to discourage them. One Sullivan, former U.S. Ambassador to Laos, could boast before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee: “I know of no direct diplomatic protest by the USSR to the royal Laotian government and it is for sure that they have never made one to us.” (Le Monde, 4 June, 1970.) It can hardly be disputed that such an attitude on the part of the Soviet bureaucracy encouraged the extension of the imperialist aggression to South Vietnam and North Vietnam.
This whole scenario has been repeated for the third time in the Cambodian affair. After the reactionary coup in Pnom Penh—when Norodom Sihanouk has established a government in exile and a united front of struggle has been officially proclaimed between the Cambodian resistance movement, the NLF of Vietnam and North Vietnam—the Soviet bureaucracy still keeps a diplomatic mission accredited to Lon Nol’s fascists. For good measure Moscow maintains the fiction that this puppet regime—which formally called the American imperialists and their Thai mercenaries onto Khmer territory—is “neutralist”! And the Kremlin “warns” this government that if it continues to commit acts of this sort . . . civil war might break out in the country.
The fact is that this civil war has been raging for years, that Lon Nol and his coup d‘etat represents only one episode in this civil war, that Cambodian “neutralism” has been broken down by explosive social contradictions which have led almost all the Khmer people to line up either with the revolutionary or the counterrevolutionary camp. All of this the masters of the Kremlin pretend not to notice. What admirable “disciples of Lenin” these are . . .
Repeating the ultra-opportunist analysis it advanced at the time of the massacre of over a million communists and socialists in Indonesia, the Soviet bureaucracy has gone so far as to accuse the Chinese of having “provoked” Lon Nol’s counter-revolutionary coup by its “adventurism” and “great-power nationalism”. Chinese “nationalism” has nothing to do with the Cambodian civil war where no direct Chinese intervention has made itself felt. As for the accusation of “adventurism”, it is misplaced on three accounts. First because it smacks of a reformist and Social Democratic conception of the class struggle—a conception that fascism is a response to the ultra-left, extremist or communist threat. Next because it is completely out of line with the facts. The Chinese, in fact, repeated the opportunist error they already committed in Indonesia, giving 100% approval to the “left Bonapartism” of Norodom Sihanouk, who put the very Generals who would eliminate him in their positions. And finally this accusation is out of place because in reality it is directed against the Vietnamese revolutionists, whose ties with the Red Khmers are well known. Thus it represents a despicable betrayal of those who have been on the firing line in the battle against imperialism for years.
The panic the Soviet bureaucracy feels at the extension of the revolutionary process in Southeast Asia is not a fear of the risks of an extension of the war throughout the world. To refute the hypocritical pretexts often advanced on this score by the lawyers for the Kremlin, we need only recall the much bolder Soviet intervention in the Near East. And this is despite the fact that this area is much closer to the zones that are vital for imperialism, thereby increasing the risks of a direct confrontation between Soviet and American “advisers”. But the Kremlin regards Nasser as a trustworthy figure, capable of canalising the revolutionary process in the Arab world and staying within the strict limits acceptable to the Soviet bureaucracy. On the other hand, the Vietnamese revolutionists and their allies are “stubborn and irresponsible” men who turn up their noses at the compromises brewed by Moscow and Washington. They are capable of keeping a revolutionary fire going that is slowly spreading to a growing number of countries.
It is understandable in view of this cynical attitude by the Soviet bureaucracy, which willingly grants to the petty-bourgeois nationalist Nasser the planes and pilots it refuses to its own “comrades” in Indo-China, that the Indo-Chinese have moved back towards Peking.* The difference in the treatment Norodom Sihanouk has had in Peking and Moscow has not escaped any international observer, just as it has not escaped any observer that the imperialist aggression against the Khmer people has not aroused a single protest demonstration in the Soviet capital. In the eyes of the Kremlin, the close collaboration between the united front of the “Khmer resistance, the Pathet Lao, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam” and Peking constitutes added justification for reticence towards the Indo-Chinese revolution.
In order to exploit this more sharply rightward course of the Kremlin, the Chinese leaders have moderated somewhat the excesses in their denunciation of the “new czars, accomplices and allies of American imperialism”. It has been noted that Mao's May 29th statement on the new world-wide rise of the anti-imperialist struggle concentrated all of its fire on Washington. There was, in fact, a total absence of diatribes against the “new czars”. This was doubtless the price Mao had to pay to obtain a new alliance with the North Koreans, who moved away from him when the “cultural revolution” reached its highest pitch, as well as to achieve closer collaboration with the Vietnamese. After years of failures and growing isolation, this represents an appreciable success for Chinese diplomacy.
Of course, the Kremlin is continuing to aid the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and this material help plays an important role in the Vietnamese revolution’s capacity for resistance. But this carefully doled out assistance has just one function and one function alone. It is enough to enable the Vietnamese to hold on, awaiting the “compromise” that the Kremlin is trying to negotiate behind the scenes. It is absolutely insufficient as a response to the scale of crimes that imperialism is committing against the peoples of Indo-China. Above all, it is insufficient to assure their victory.
In these conditions, the denunciations—which moreover are less and less numerous—coming from Moscow, of Peking’s purported “sabotage” in the supplying of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with arms seem suspect, to say the least. We are and remain advocates of a united front of all the anti-imperialist forces, including all the bureaucratised workers states, for the defence of the Indo-Chinese revolution. But it is clear that in order to really aid the cause of this revolution, such a united front must include two precise provisions.
It must safeguard the complete political independence of the revolution, that is, be accompanied by firm resistance to any attempt by the Kremlin to get concessions, in return for increased arms deliveries, which would threaten the survival of the revolution. (Moscow follows a tradition in this regard which began with the Spanish Civil War and continued through the Yugoslav and Greek civil wars, the first Indo-Chinese war, and so on.) Secondly, in the event of a stepped-up response to imperialism, those on the firing line—and the Chinese must be included among these—must get a clear guarantee of support against an escalation of imperialist aggression. Such a guarantee, moreover, is the best means of discouraging the escalation which looms up on the horizon every time a new phase of imperialist aggression in South-East Asia fails to produce the expected “victory”. In recent days, there has again been talk in circles close to the Pentagon of the threat of a nuclear war.
It is the Kremlin's refusal to meet these two conditions which is the principal cause of the lack of a real anti-imperialist united front for the defence of the Indo-Chinese revolution. The sectarianism and verbal excesses of the Maoist bureaucracy are only a secondary cause. And this is all the more true inasmuch as this sectarianism could not be kept up for long in the face of any practical gesture by the Kremlin. The cause of the Vietnamese revolution is so dear to the masses of the world and to the masses who consider themselves communists that all ideological claptrap will vanish in the face of a definite action supporting this revolution. If the Chinese really send volunteers to Cambodia, as it has been claimed they will in circles close to Sihanouk, the criminal passivity of the Kremlin will stand out even more.
This passivity is already felt to be so intolerable today by the world anti-imperialist forces that the Communist Parties of capitalist Europe, although they also are ultra-opportunist and right-wing, found themselves forced to issue a common statement in the wake of the aggression against Cambodia which was clearly to the left of the Kremlin's formal protestations. The Italian and French C.P.s have even organised anti-imperialist rallies that have mobilised tens of thousands of people. But one is still struck by three facts. These rallies were much less militant than the spontaneous demonstrations in the United States, in Germany, and in Italian cities like Milan. They were not coordinated internationally. They were carefully planned to prevent any spill-over of the anti-imperialist struggle into working-class action, although the PCF [Parti Communiste Francais—French Communist Party] and the PCI [Partito Communista Italiano—Italian Communist Party] control the main union federations in their respective countries.
The new revolutionary vanguard arising internationally is naturally in the front ranks of the anti-imperialist struggle. It is concentrating its efforts on broadening and radicalising this struggle, developing better international coordination, and extending the fight into working-class activity which can stay the criminal hand of the imperialist aggressors.
Nothing could better confirm the necessity and the urgency of building a revolutionary international, the necessity and urgency of building the Fourth International, than this crying disparity between the indignation of the masses of the world against the imperialist aggression and the dispersion of their efforts to halt this aggression and deal it a stinging defeat.