PERSPECTIVE MON DIALE
50¢
‘ Kosygin Substitutes UN HANDS OFF THE © Talk for Action in Mideast ARAB REVOLUTION .
True Story Emerges
of Egypt's Casualties
Bertrand Russell Scores
Israel as Aggressor
Fourth International Calls
for Support to Arab Cause
China’s H-bomb --
a Deterrent to War
An Underground Document
Guerrillas Serve Notice
on Guatemalan Butchers
PETER BUCH, at Militant Labor Forum in New York June 16, denounces Israeli government a aggression in the Middle East. Formerly active in the Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist Canadian Labor Backs Zionist youth group, Peter Buch expressed the views of the Socialist Workers party Vietnam Antiwar Rally at the well-attended forun.
New York, N. Y. 10010.
KOSYGIN SUBSTITUTES UN TALK FOR ACTION IN MIDEAST
Kosygin's ploy at the United Nations proved to be a tragicomic business. Tragic because the Soviet Union, the strongest workers state and the world's second power, once again displayed such woeful weakness in leadership and followed policies so inimical to the interests of the world revolution and to the defense of the USSR; comic because of the way in which the aims of the Kremlin bureaucrats showed through their clumsy maneuvers. Washington, for certain, was taken in least of all.
Kosygin's objective was to repair the damage to Soviet prestige in the Middle East by loud denunciations of U.S. imperialism and its Israeli partner and by eloquent. oratory in behalf of the Arab victims of the Israeli blitzkrieg. What was lost in substance by the failure to act in the decisive moments of the Middle East crisis, Kosygin hoped to recover -at least on a surface level -- by verbal fireworks.
But the State Department refused to offer even the few conciliatory, demagogic phrases about favoring an Israeli pullback which the Kremlin needed to picture its UN maneuver as a success.
In fact, Johnson utilized the visit of the head of the Soviet government to New York for a Texas-style joke -- he invited this cackling goose to a “summit conference" in the very den of the Washington foxes.
Kosygin was wary, however. He understood the importance of collaborating in "keeping up appearances" and the need for meeting with Johnson to accomplish this; but couldn't this meeting be arranged elsewhere than in Washington? Say around Manhattan?
After this response to the impudent White House invitation, it was a matter of utter indifference whether Kosygin spent the rest of his time rubbernecking at the skyscrapers or inspecting such attractions as New York's subway system. He had defaulted even on utilizing the UN sounding board to give Johnson a public brush-off.
The Texas con man decided to give the Soviet sucker a break. He offered to meet him "half way." Kosygin accepted. And so came the famous "Spirit of Glassporo" conference June 23 in the small town not far from one of America's greatest egg-laying centers. It was a fitting finale to Kosygin's UN performance.
The damage dealt the Soviet Union by the failure of the Kremlin leaders to come to the aid of the Arab countries after the Israeli government pulled its version of a "Pearl Harbor" was much greater than is still generally realized. It compounded the damage done by the catastrophic policy of failing to rally adequately to the cause of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Political commentators in Washington at once began talking in terms of an altered relationship of forces on a world scale between the West and the Soviet bloc.
While this is an undoubted exaggeration, it does reflect the mounting selfconfidence of the war hawks in Washington and the resulting increase in the danger of a U.S. "preemptive strike," say in the direction of China's nuclear installations.
-In the Middle East, Soviet prestige sank to such a low that even the Kremlin must have become worried. The reaction to the Soviet failure was well indicated by the observation reportedly made by Nasser to the Soviet ambassador when the latter called on him in Cairo a few hours before his "resignation":
"Your attitude has convinced me that the United States rules the world. I cannot fight all alone against the universe. As for the Soviet Union, after our capitulation, it will be nothing more than a fourth-rate power." (Quoted in Le Monde, June 20.]
Further food for thought was provided Kosygin by the fact that while he was reading his prepared speech at the United Nations, the People's Republic of China announced the successful testing of a hydrogen bomb.
This feat was estimated by experts in the West as indicating that by 1970 China will have a most formidable stockpile of nuclear weapons, thus emerging, on the "deterrent" level at least, as the world's third power.
Khrushchev repeatedly boasted that under his guidance the Soviet Union would overtake the United States in its standard of living by 1970. This boast, if not sheer demagogy, was at least an illusion. But it does appear that by 1970 China will catch up with the Soviet Union in its capacity to offer a modern military reply to any aggression by U.S. imperialism. This also signifies a formidable challenge to Soviet pretensions to leadership among the underdeveloped countries. The challenge is all the more real in view of the political bankruptcy of the Kremlin.
The explosion of China's H-bomb made Kosygin's fireworks at the UN sound like a wet sputter.