REALISM WINS
The cover of Time magazine (February 13, 1989) carried the bold headline: “Comrades Again.” It was well known that although China and Russia were both communist countries, they had been at odds for at least 30 years. Now, the two nations were moving closer. The cover story of that issue focused on this change. Inside, the headline read:
“To mend a rift — An era of hostility is coming to an end.”
China and Russia share a 4,500-mile border, yet for three decades their relations remained strained. In 1959, after returning from a trip to the United States, former Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev made a brief stop in China and met Mao Zedong. That meeting ended badly. From then on, no senior official from either country visited the other. After this long stretch of hostility, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze visited Beijing in February 1989. The declared purpose of the trip was “peace and development.” One outcome of the visit was the announcement that the Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev would soon travel to China (Time, February 13, 1989).
Commenting on this surprising shift between two rivals, a Chinese official said:
“The difficulties that Beijing and Moscow now confront have brought us closer to one another.” (p. 7)
A Russian official expressed the same thought even more openly:
“We are very close to understanding how new relations should develop. We have both made mistakes in the past.” (p. 6)
When China and Russia realized that their hostility was harming them both, they decided to end their pointless conflict and establish friendly ties. To reach this decision, they had to admit their past mistakes. They agreed to drop their demands against each other. They chose to accept what had once seemed unacceptable—so they could build a better future. This is what is called realism. Without such realism, success in today’s world is not possible.
The United States, Russia, and China are among the most powerful nations in the world today. When even these major powers can only survive through realism and reconciliation, how can weaker nations expect to thrive by pursuing a policy of confrontation? In such situations, the path of realism and reconciliation becomes even more essential for weaker nations than for the powerful ones. The report is reproduced below.
New Spirit of Cooperation
UNITED NATIONS, December 6, 1988.
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV, the last Soviet communist party leader to address the general assembly, pounded a shoe on his desk and assured Americans that “we will bury you.” Mr Mikhail Gorbachev’s arrival 28 years later starkly underscores the transformation in the U.S.-Soviet relations since he took control of the party. In diplomatic circles today, the talk is of cooperation, mutual interests, and multilateral diplomacy. Confrontation between the capitalist and socialist systems has taken a back seat. U.S. tycoons who Mr Gorbachev and his staff hinted at a visit to Wall Street, the antithesis of Soviet ideology. In 1960, Khrushchev was enraged over the then UN secretary-general, Mr Dag Hammarskjold’s action in sending U.N. peacekeeping troops to the Congo, then a key Soviet client state. “The general assembly of 1960 was the greatest circus in the history of the United Nations,” recalls Mr Brian Urquhart, who then was under secretary-general in charge of peacekeeping operations. Sometimes crude, profane and easily angered, Khrushchev created the most memorable scene in the history of the U.N. debate when he interrupted a delegate’s remarks by pounding a shoe on the Soviet delegation’s desk for a point of order. “Khrushchev got so abusive that the Irish president of the assembly, Mr Freddie Boland, broke the gavel in calling him to order,” said Mr Urquhart. Mr Gorbachev is likely to provide no melodramatic fireworks. Unlike Khrushchev, Mr Gorbachev has rejected the idea that capitalism and socialism are mutually exclusive. This stress on cooperation in areas of mutual interest has been spilling over for some time into the UN.
The Soviet Union has in recent years relinquished its practice of vetoing many security council actions, and has negotiated consensus positions with the US, China, Britain and France. This new spirit of cooperation has led to the political settlement in Afghanistan and the cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war, both of which would have been unlikely under the confrontative Soviet style of Khrushchev or Mr Leonid I. Brezhnev. Under Mr Gorbachev, the Soviets have been promoting an aggressive though hazy new plan for comprehensive international security, in which the UN would play a key role in monitoring, verification and peacekeeping. Mr Gorbachev has also suggested that rulings of the world court, now merely advisory, be made binding on U.N. member-nations, especially security council members. In his speech to the world body, Mr Gorbachev may expand upon previous Soviet proposals, which have included the establishment of a world space organisation, halving all nations’ earmarked troops for a standing army of U.N. peacekeepers, establishing a U.N. navy to escort commercial shipping in danger zones, and U.N. monitoring of disarmament and international arms sales. The US and other Western allies have lauded parts of the Soviet security proposals, but feel the whole package is too vague to endorse. A U.N. visit by a Soviet leader is a rarity—the foreign minister usually delivers the annual address to the general assembly. Between Khrushchev and Mr. Gorbachev, the only other top-ranking Soviet visitor was then premier Alexei N. Kosygin, the head of the Soviet government apparatus but less powerful than party chief Brezhnev, who came to the UN in 1967 to support Arab complaints against Israel. Mr Kosygin held a summit with the U.S. president, Mr Lyndon B. Johnson.
The thaw in East-West relations since Mr Gorbachev’s ascension to power is all the more striking when compared with the tensions that prevailed at the UN only five years ago after the Soviet downing of Korean airliner flight 007, with the loss of 269 lives. The “Soviet foreign minister, Mr Andrei Gromyko, planned to come to the UN to explain his country’s actions, but the governors of New York and New Jersey denied permission for his plane to land at their commercial airports, and the state department insisted on a landing at a military base. Mr Gromyko cancelled his visit. In the meantime, homeless activists angered by Gorbachev’s plans to visit New York city’s opulent Trump Tower are inviting the Soviet president to a homeless shelter and food line to get “a more balanced and realistic view of our nation.” (The Times of India, December 7, 1988).
