Philip E. Mosely
Essay
Oct
1967
THE cataclysmic defeat of the Soviet-backed Arab coalition-primarily the United Arab Republic, Jordan and Syria-in the third Arab-Israeli war has highlighted the basic dilemmas that confront Soviet policy-makers in their unremitting efforts to win friends and enlist allies within the "Third World" of the underdeveloped nations. It has raised to the nth degree the question of Soviet goals and Soviet means. Behind Mr. Gromyko's quick political footwork, which has been designed to rescue Russia's Arab allies from the consequences of their rash challenge and at the same time to overcome the serious blow suffered by Soviet prestige, the Kremlin and its advisers are undoubtedly engaged in an "agonizing reappraisal" of aims, strategy and tactics. The outcome of that review will have momentous consequences for the Third World, for the Soviet role in world politics and for Western and particularly American policy.
Essay
Oct
1964
The recent journey of Nikita Khrushchev to the United Arab Republic, and the more extensive travels of Chou En-lai to Asian and African countries, have pointed up the new context of an old dilemma of Soviet and, more generally, of Communist policy. Should Communists-in-power give vigorous political, economic and strategic backing to non-Communist and nationalist régimes in order to strengthen them and thus weaken the "imperialist bloc?" Or will this strategy lead, through the development of effective non- Communist régimes, to blocking the spread of Communism? Or would it be more profitable in the long run for Moscow and Peking to direct their support only to avowed or potential supporters of Communist doctrine and revolutions?
Essay
Oct
1963
The long-heralded and twice-postponed conference between the Chinese and Soviet Communist spokesmen, held at Moscow in July, was overshadowed, at least for the outside world, by the dramatic publication of the exchange of letters between the two Central Committees. The breakup of the conference was hardly softened by halfhearted assertions of a mutual intention to continue the discussions. It is hard to discern any useful topics for new negotiations until one or another or both parties to the quarrel have made some rather drastic changes in their ideological claims or their practical policy aims. The two facets are inseparable, of course. Quarrels among Communists have been a recurring feature of a movement that claims political omniscience and a monopoly of messianic foresight, and are normally clothed in recondite scholastic terms. But their ideological disputes are always waged over real questions of power and policy.
Essay
Oct
1962
In the deeply divided world of today, one main obstacle to achieving a genuine state of peaceful coexistence is the gap in the meanings attached to these two words in different societies and political systems. The gap is, of course, just one additional example of the estrangement of vocabularies that besets every effort at direct and sincere exchanges of ideas across or through the ideological and psychological barriers. Words like "democracy," "freedom," "progress" are, as we know only too well, employed in very different and even opposite senses in the two worlds.
Essay
Jan
1962
During the Party Congress, which met in the new Kremlin theater from October 17 through October 31, the attention of the world was divided almost equally between the vivid and almost daily attacks on the "antiparty group" of Khrushchev's repentant and unrepentant rivals and the clear if somewhat muffled Sino-Soviet divergences over revolutionary strategy. The first of these "sensations" was obviously orchestrated in advance, and each spokesman for the central leadership was assigned a larger or smaller dose of "revelations" to pepper up the otherwise somewhat routine speeches. The second, which came to a head early on in a dispute over the future treatment of the recalcitrant Albanian Party, was clearly unplanned, and it has left a wide-open field for speculation about its implications for the future.
