Daily Times

Some interesting feedback on my article last week necessitates clarification of my position on Stalin, as some friends thought I sounded defensive towards him. Following the Munich Agreement, Hitler annexed the Sudetenland in October 1938 and then invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939. There was no doubt in which direction the Nazis were planning to move. In mid-August 1939, just weeks before WWII broke out, Stalin approached Britain and France to enter into a military pact against Hitler. In the Sunday Telegraph dated October 18, 2008, Nick Holdsworth revealed that papers kept secret for almost 70 years show that the Soviet Union was willing to send one million troops to the German border. For that to happen, Stalin wanted to cross the Polish border, but that idea was rejected by both Britain and France. Holdsworth writes, “Such an agreement could have changed the course of 20th century history, preventing Hitler’s pact with Stalin, which gave him free rein to go to war with Germany’s other neighbours.”

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed a week later on August 23, 1939. No doubt, the Soviets had been negotiating secretly with Hitler as well as with Britain and France: all options had to be considered to prevent an attack. It provided time to the Soviet Union to hasten its military and industrial production. Hitler nevertheless invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Did Stalin expect the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to be an honourable arrangement between him and Hitler to divide and rule central and Eastern Europe ever after? I doubt that. Nazism’s two great villains of the piece were Jews and communism and he believed that communism was a Jewish conspiracy.

With regard to Stalin’s crimes against his own people and party comrades, which were later exposed by Khrushchev, I have no hesitation in condemning them without any reservation. However, I still maintain that there was a chance to bring the Soviet Union into a global project aiming at cooperation and peaceful development and Roosevelt’s overture stood a fair chance. During the war Stalin had kept his pledges and even Churchill attested to it, but then went on to deliver his famous Iron Curtain speech of March 5, 1946, which upped the ante in the emerging Cold War rivalry. We can also remember that many years later the Americans did try another strategy with China and found the latter willing to forgo world revolution. In fact, the Chinese outsmarted the Americans by becoming the craftiest exponents of capitalism.

With regard to the Marshall Plan, I must put it in perspective. The Soviet Union was technically not excluded but it was clear that it was meant to contain the spread of communism. Among the preconditions were that there would be a single European economy and Eastern Europe was to become a producer of agricultural products while Germany, which wreaked havoc upon the world, especially on the Soviet Union, was to benefit most. It was impossible for Stalin to accept such terms even if he was willing to compromise in less categorical ways.

Professor Ishfaque Bokhari advised me to highlight how the Cold War impacted the Third World. This I shall do presently, but let me touch something internal to US society and politics. Even if the US constitution proclaims a strict separation between state and religion and was in that sense the first explicitly secular state in the world, it was a long time before “All men are created equal” became a reality. Although slavery was abolished in 1863, its evil legacy continued to drag on into the 1960s in the southern states. When such news travelled to other parts of the world it created quite a stir.

Moreover, the CIA masterminded a number of reactionary coups. The overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq of Iran in 1953 was the most notorious CIA undertaking. On the whole, the United States banked on Saudi Arabia to counteract Gamal Nasser of Egypt and other Arab radicals as the Middle East oil reserves became increasingly crucial to the world economy. Additionally, post-Eisenhower, the tilt towards Israel became permanent.

However, as leader of the liberal-capitalist world, the US continued to exercise considerable ‘soft power’ (a dubious term indicating the attraction and enticement of a power instead of intimidation and fear). It not only helped the restoration of Western Europe but of Japan too and, in fact, Pakistan was one of the earliest beneficiaries of US aid. Later, Southeast Asia considerably benefited from friendship with the Americans. Also, it would not be fair to say that they favoured autocrats over democrats. On the whole, US foreign policy remained geared to the principles of liberal democracy, free enterprise and an open society, but such principles were easily subordinated to the policy of containment of the Soviet Union.

On the global stage the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 demonstrated American will to risk nuclear war with the Soviet Union and the world was saved just in time from unprecedented destruction and suffering because Khrushchev ordered the missiles programme in Cuba to be abandoned. Fidel Castro was initially only a patriotic leader who wanted to rid his society of corruption and oppression. It was US opposition that drove him towards orthodox communism. In any case, Cuba never became a closed and controlled society such as other communist states. My friend Farooq Shah, who recently had a wonderful holiday on that tiny island, tells me that Cubans are poor but happy, content and very friendly.

Nothing did more harm to the US prestige and moral leadership of the world than the bloody and bitter Vietnam War. The International War Crimes Tribunal set by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell was a telling indictment of its crimes against humanity. For people of my generation, that image of a tiny Vietnamese girl whose skin flayed as a result of being hit by a napalm bomb is etched forever. The CIA also masterminded the overthrow of the elected government of the Marxist Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. The US support for Latin American military juntas increased even more strongly.

Moreover, in the 1970s the United States was put on the back foot as opposition and resistance to its war in Vietnam increased on American university campuses and among intellectuals. The Cold War then shifted to Africa and caused enormous suffering to its people.

(To be continued)

The writer has a PhD from Stockholm University. He is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University. He is also Honorary Senior Fellow of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. His latest publication is The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012; New Delhi: Rupa Books, 2011). He can be reached at billumian@gmail.com