Taiwan Today

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION by L. Larry Leonard, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1951, 630 pages US$6.00 This book can be used as a textbook for college students in Free China. Although it may be too much for a one or two-term course, there is much that can be omitted if the teaching hours are limited. The book is to a great extent an objective and balanced account. It shows how the individual governments make use of world organizations in their conduct of foreign relations and brings home to us the significance of these institutions in the family of nations. The author treats the subject from the point of view of international politics rather than international law. He dwells on the vital political problems of international organization and describes its actions in detail. In the first part, the book gives a general survey of the history of international organization. In the second part, it deals with the political activities of the League of Nations and the United Nations. In parts three and four, it gives a full account of the social, economic and trusteeship activities of the two world organizations. A brief survey of the development of international organization since the start of the Korean war in 1950 is included in the epilogue. As was shown in the Korean war, the Security Council as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations has been largely destroyed by the obstruction of the Soviet Union as an effective instrument for the maintenance of peace and security. In view of the difficulty in making any revision of the U.N. Charter in the face of Soviet opposition, the Free World was in danger of letting the U.N. degenerate into a laughing stock. In order to remedy the situation the Acheson Plan was adopted. Under this plan, the veto-free General Assembly would take over from the Security Council the role of safeguarding world peace and security. Prof. Leonard gives a clear and vivid analysis of this new development. The reviewer would not quite agree with the author when he declares that the nature of the United Nations is "that of a family of Nations and not of an anti-Communist crusade." The truth is that a divided family of Nation cannot contribute to the growth of international organization, nor can it promote the welfare of its individual members. History furnishes numerous ham pies of international organizations or alliances which failed owing to lack of cooperation of their members. For instance, the League of Six-States against the State of Tsin in the Warring States Period of Chinese history broke up when its members nursed different ambitions. The Quadruple Alliance in Europe in the first quarter of the last century ceased to be a working organization as soon as its members had no unity of purpose. More recently, no sooner had the Axis powers cherished aggressive designs than the fate of the League of Nations was doomed. One of the obligations of a member of the United Nations is to observe and abide by the principles of the Charter. These principles are, among other things, for peace, freedom and cooperation. Soviet Russia and its satellites, judging from their behaviour in the U.N. during the past eight years, are not for peace but for war and conquest, not for freedom but for the enslavement of the world's peoples, not for cooperation but for obstruction to international amity. As to the unwarranted action of the Soviet Union in walking out of the Security Council anti other U. N. organizations in order to blackmail the U.N. into unseating the delegate of the Republic of China, Prof. Leonard makes the following comment: "The serious incident raises the fundamental issue of the relationship of the organization. When one government does not have diplomatic relations with another government, can multilateral negotiations around the international conference table be maintained? In practice, states have seen no anomaly in this situation and have sat at conference tables with delegates of governments which they had not recognized. The position taken by the Soviet Union was therefore without precedent. It worked serious hardship within the United Nations at the very time when that organization provided the only link between the East and West." (p.85) In conclusion, Prof. Leonard pins his hope for the future on the continued presence in the U.N. of both the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. He writes: "the great powers could look to the U.N. Charter for the principles to guide them in their negotiations, to the facilities of the U.N. council chambers and staff to assist them, and to the mediating influences of the lesser members states. So long as the United States and the Soviet Union continue to participate in the United Nations and to leave the door open to negotiation, as serious as the crisis in their relations may be, there is hope for settlement. (p. 550) Prof. Leonard refuses to see the irreconcilability of International Communism and democratic freedom. He naively counts on a Soviet promise as on our own good faith. He thinks that a settlement with the U.S.S.R. on any problem of importance wiII be of lasting effect, as international agreements among democratic states usually are. Prof. Leonard may sometime be disillusioned. He may come to realize that International Communism uses language not to communicate ideas but to mislead people. We submit that, so long as the U.S.S.R. and some of her satelIites remain member states of the U.N., that body will not be able to live up to its ideals as set forth in the Charter. C. Y. CHAO SOVIET POLICY IN THE FAR EAST 1944-1951 By Max Beloff Issued under the Auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Oxford University Press. 278 pp. US$4.00 The period chosen by Mr. Max Beloff for his work under review is of great importance both for the Chinese people and the other peoples of the Far East. The year 1944 was a turning point not only in the armed struggle between the Soviet communists and Hitlerite Germany but also in the war between the Axis powers and the Allies as a whole. Having been convinced of the eventual victory of the AIIies over Germany and Japan, the Soviets began to look forward to a quick expansion of Communism in the post-war world. As a result of their machinations combined with their military operations, their dream did come true in East Europe. As to post-war Asia, the real obstacle to the Communist expansion, in the eyes of Moscow, was still the Republic of China, in spite of her suffering from eight long years of war against Japan. From 1944 on, Moscow began to direct the larger part of its slanderous propaganda against the Government and leaders of the Republic of China. It may be recalled that when the Sino­ Japanese War broke out in July, 1937, the Soviet Government immediately gave its concurrence to the conclusion of a pact of non-aggression with the Republic of China. Before June 22, 1941, when Hitler began to attack Soviet Russia she was, in fact, the only country which supplied China with a certain amount of war material, though she exacted profitable payments for them. During that period the Soviet press and radio were used to hail the heroism of the Chinese people under the able leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and to praise every measure taken by the Chinese Government just to insure that the Japanese Army would be bogged down in China. The sharp contrast between the two types of Soviet policy, towards China in the two dif­ferent periods serves to show that the fundamental attitude of the Soviets toward China remained unchanged. It was only their tactics that were changed in order to adjust themselves to a new situation. During the first stage of the Sino-Japanese war, Stalin wanted China to be strong enough to resist Japanese imperialism. At a later stage of the War when Stalin saw that the Japanese Empire was going to be vanquished, he decided to order the Chinese Communists to start armed rebellion against the legitimate government of China. The fall of the Chinese mainland into the hands of Chinese Communists greatly encouraged Moscow to organize the military adventure on the Korean peninsula. What Stalin expected from this aggressive war was a quick victory over South Korea. If his plan were successfully carried out by his North Korean agent Kim II-Song, Stalin would have been able to put the whole Korean peninsula under his direct control, thus being in a better position in the Japanese peace negotiations to be carried on between the Allied countries and Japan. The intervention of Chinese Communist "volunteers" in the Korean war serve to show the coordination of activities of all the Soviet satellites. The decision of the United Nation to fight Communist aggression in Korea was more than Stalin bargained for "The successful" conclusion of the peace treaty between Japan and the Allied countries (except countries of the Soviet bloc) under the auspices of John Foster Dulles followed by a bilateral treaty of peace between Free China and Japan scored two major failures for Moscow. As the book is written on the basis of materials gathered mainly from the Soviet press, and especially due to the author's "objective" manner, the reviewer is led to believe that the author must be one of those gentlemen who would never recognize a robber to be a robber unless the robber made his confession in black and white. For instance, there seems to be no room for doubt that the Korean war was the result of I Soviet instigation. However, the author writes: "Thus when the North Koreans made a direct attack across the 38th parallel there was nothing precise that could be pointed to as indicating Soviet responsibility or even foreknowledge. Later on, however, the North Korean success led some students to take the view that the Soviet Government had deliberated planned the attack. It is of course that but for the help given by the Soviet Union in equipping and training the North Korean forces, the successes they gained would have been inconceivable just as at a later stage in the war, they depended on Chinese assistance. But the precise nature of the coordination existing between Moscow and the Chinese and North Korean Governments at the time remains obscure." (PP. 182-83) The author twice mentioned the word "precise". Although we arc not sure what tolerance the author would permit in his conception of precision, we can be reasonably sure that in this connection the author will find nothing precise from the materials published in the Soviet press. There are quite a few other points in the book, which need some clarification. From early September, 1945, the Soviet Command in Manchuria began to carry out a deliberate policy of stripping Manchuria of its industrial equipment. On this matter Mr. Beloff writes: "The purpose of their (the Russians) action was that they want to destroy for some time to come the industrial, military potential existing there. And this suggests that the Russians did not expect Manchuria to be in friendly hands once their own troops had been withdrawn." (p. 38) Logically speaking, the author's suggestion is of doubtful soundness. When the Soviet Command decided to dismantle Manchuria of its industrial equipment, the relations between the Soviet Russia and China were governed by a Treaty of Friendship and Alliance effective for thirty yean. If the Russians honestly lived up to the said treaty, Manchuria would certainly be in friendly hands after their troops had been withdrawn. Again, on the question of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Manchuria, Mr. Beloff indicates that "during November (1945) the Chinese Government, according to the Russians, actually asked them to keep their troops in Manchuria for sometime longer. Other sources suggest that the Russians took the initiative in asking for a postponement of the evacuation on the grounds of the continued presence in China of the American marines." (p. 42) Since the question of the withdrawal of the Red Army from Manchuria had been the key to dissension between China and Soviet Russia at that time, which had actually led to the deterioration of the whole situation in China, Mr. Beloff's equivocal version of the affair is hardly tenable. It is evident that at the end of November, 1945, it was Marshal Malinovsky who made a proposal to Mr. Chang Chia-ngau, Chairman of the Economic Commission of the Generalissimo's Headquarters in Manchuria and Mr. Chiang Ching-kuo, then Foreign affairs Commissioner for the Northeastern provinces, to the effect that "according to the plan of evacuation agreed to by both parties, the Soviet troops should be withdrawn from the whole Chinese territory before January, 1946. In order to carry out this plan in time the Red army must immediately evacuate the Mukden area. But since there is difficulty for the Chinese troops to arrive in the area to be evacuated by the Soviet troops in such short time it seems advisable, should the Chinese Government agree, to revise the plan, according to which the Red arm y will begin its withdrawal on January 3, 1946. The evacuation will be completed within 20 days or at most one month." On December 14, 1945, however, Petrov, then Soviet ambassador at Nan­king, informed Dr. Wang Shih-Chieh, Chinese Foreign Minister, in terms which sounded as if the change of the date of withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Manchuria had been pro. posed by Mr. Clung Chia-ngau. It is obvious that Soviet Russia wanted to evade responsibility for the delay of the withdrawal of her troops from Chinese territory. It is equally obvious that Mr. Beloff has given credence to Soviet Russian documents. The eighth chapter of the book dealing with Soviet policy in Southeast Asia is written by J. Frankel, Mr. Beloff's co-author. The reviewer fully agrees with the remark made by Mr. Frankel that developments in Indonesia after World War II received considerable attention in the Soviet press which has traditionally given more prominence to Indonesia than to other parts of South East Asia. (p. 215). It may be noted here that on December 23, 1953, Pravda, organ of the CPSU, in a short communique announced that the Soviet Government had given its concurrence to the recent request of the Indonesian Government to establish an Embassy at Moscow. The Soviet Government, in turn, was also prepared to send its own ambassador to Djakarta. We may predict that with the establishment of the Soviet Embassy in Indonesia, subversive activities of Communist agents in that country will be much strengthened. In one of his reports, Chou En-Iai, the so-called premier of the Mao Tse-tung regime, declared that "the unity of the Chinese people and other peoples of Asia will certainly create a powerful and matchless force in the Far East which will rapidly push forward the great wheel of history in the movement for independence and liberation of the people of the Asian countries." On this statement Mr.Frankel indicates that "if such statements mean that Peiping regards itself as a primary source of inspiration at least where Asian countries are concerned, Soviet policy, which has rested on the absolute identification of world revolution and Soviet nationalism, would receive a blow more fundamental then any it has hitherto sustained. (p. 257) From the past records of Moscow's activities, it is evident that the Soviet imperialists have always preferred and tried to fight its struggles by proxy. Mao Tse-tung in fact is only one of the instruments of Soviet Russia for the realization of her plan of world domination. Mr. Frankel has not looked close enough into the nature of the relations between Moscow and its satellites. TSAI PA The Animal Instinct in Man As it has been discovered by post-Darwin philosophers that the primary force of human evolution is cooperation and not struggle as that of the animal world, so the fighting nature, a residue of the animal instinct in man, must be eliminated from man, the sooner the better. From the International Development of China by Dr. Sun Yat-sen.