Vol. 4, No. 26 September 9, 1966
SARTRE CALLS ON SOVIET LEADERS TO DETER WASHINGTON |:
The indictment of Soviet and French Communist party policy on Vietnam contained in the August issue of Les Temps Modernes, the monthly magazine founded by Jean-Paul Sartre, has stirred up a : heated controversy in Left circles of France. The statement of its. = editorial board, entitled "Capitulation or Counterescalation," calls upon Moscow to fix a line which the U.S. militarists cannot transgress without meeting with graduated reprisals. It proposes that. the Soviet leaders, who command the necessary deterrents, warn Washington that one more step on the escalator, such as bombing the dikes
New York, N. Y. 10010. HPs
of north Vietnam or crossing the seventeenth parallel, and they, too, will order appropriate action.
The editors view this as the only way to stop the U.S. imperialists from plunging further ahead on their reckless course in Southeast Asia. They fear that, if the Kremlin remains passive in the face of stepped-up American aggression and fails to react in a firm manner at this critical juncture, the Pentagon will be emboldened to crush and occupy north Vietnam and destroy China. The Soviet Union would then confront the grim alternatives of general capitulation or general war and might submissively sign a global "Munich agreement.” ©
The Nouvel Observateur, a weekly edited by individuals on the right wing of the Unified Socialist party, immediately took excep- _ tion to the reasoning and recommendations of Les Temps Modernes in a piece by Jean Daniel. He declared that "the editorial writer should logically have concluded his article by calling for hostile demonstrations, not before Washington's embassies in various countries, but in front of the Soviet embassies." He argued that the thesis of Les Temps Modernes had a paralyzing effect because it shifted responsibility onto the Soviet Union.
In reality, Daniel said, "problems are no longer posed as they were in Marx's or even in Trotsky's day." While it is necessary "to save the revolutionary idea," it is also necessary to avoid "the inyolvement...which leads to total’ war.":Since the French Left had no chance of influencing the Soviet Union, its role was to deepen the divisions among the American people over Washington ' s policies before "the Vietnamese vanish under the bombs.
In a reply to Nouvel Observateur the editors of Les Temps . Modernes protested Daniel's distortion of their position. To seek to justify inaction on the grounds that the American ruling class is led by a pack of madmen, is a false argument, the editors contended. "America cannot disregard a Soviet ultimatum; she cannot wield reprisals against the USSR; or else she would deliberately choose world war. You reply that this is precisely what you are afraid of. You fear that the United States would take no notice. You believe in 'American madness,' while we. believe, with good reason, that the policy of imperialism, in all its horror, is perfectly rational.
~The editors argue that the supporters of Nouvel. Observateur's views will be unable to influence. U.S. policy before it is too late... "On the other hand, the USSR...is the foremost socialist power. Its policy, to.the extent that it is decisive for the international strategy of the workers' and anti-imperialist movement .-- an inter-_ national strategy without which there can no longer be any local revolutionary. victories -- is the concern of.all revolutionaries and all socialists..."»Should not our role then-be,.they ask, "to assure the socialist camp that its warning of counterescalation would be .. hailed with approval, with relief and hope by our peoples, because journals like yours, would have prepared them to call for such a desired Soviet response and consider it legitimate and necessary...
Kosygin has more right to affirm that 'I am a citizen of Hanoi' than Kennedy ever had to proclaim 'I am a Berliner.'"
; The Temps Modernes rejoinder concluded that the advocacy of such a line by the French. left would facilitate a favorable decision by. Moscow. oo
The French Communist paper, 1'Humanité, which so faithfully. echoes Moscow, is by no means of this opinion. Its August 19 issue” carried a vitriolic editorial in true Stalinist style scoffing at-. "the armchair strategists of St.-Germain-des-Pres who want to brandish nuclear weapons" while sitting in their