Jugoslavia: Crisis and Choice

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The crisis over Cuba and the Chinese invasion of India have had their salutary lessons for many nations and many political leaders-for none perhaps more than the neutralists. They have spoken up positively, as before, for peace and negotiation, against blocs and power politics. But what they have seen has attested to their relative inability to influence the course of events, or even to maintain solidarity in their own ranks, when the big powers are taking crucial decisions and the global strategic balance is at stake. A more pertinent question is whether, and how, the neutrals can safeguard their own vital interests.

Jugoslavia, in the past half-year, has had ample reason to be reminded that while it may be a prominent leader of the non-aligned group, it is also a small Balkan country whose fate depends in large measure on what happens beyond its borders and beyond its control. In Washington, the United States Congress singled out Jugoslavia as a special target of its displeasure. The new Trade Expansion Act withdrew most-favored-nation treatment from Jugoslav goods, and only the desperate efforts of the Administration and a slim majority in the Senate kept in the foreign aid bill the provision permitting economic assistance. In the nations of Western Europe, where attention is fixed on the shape of the new European community, Jugoslav concerns encountered little more than frosty indifference; and from President de Gaulle and Chancellor Adenauer something akin to hostility. From the other side of the world came the continuing barrage of Chinese Communist invective against "Titoist revisionism." From Moscow, in contrast, the Jugoslavs heard some conciliatory noises, but they were scarcely heartened by the results of the meeting held there in June of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance, which laid plans for an Eastern bloc more exclusive and self-contained than ever. At home, meanwhile, Tito and his colleagues found themselves engulfed in a sea of troubles largely of their own making. If they did not call it a crisis, it had all the earmarks of one, in which difficulties on the economic side were accompanied by an evident political malaise.