This is simply an early manifestation of the process of the bowing out of the United States as a military power in the Far East-and we don't know what the future results will be. I merely say it is a process that may have some serious negative results before it is through and we had better watch very carefully and not simply assume it is something with no disadvantages for ourselves.

Mr. Nix. The United States has had a longstanding amicable, profitable relationship with the Republic of China, Taiwan. Do you think that relationship has been eroded to any extent and, if so, to what extent by our relationship newly established with the People's Republic of China?

Mr. HINTON. Well, it certainly has been eroded very profoundly although perhaps not very suddenly, because what we did could be seen ahead of time by the Chinese national representatives and they have been able to make certain adjustments to it. I would say, as a matter of fact, they have adjusted as gracefully as could be expected.

There is no question that relations are not what they were before the first Kissinger visit to Peking in 1971, and it is a testimonial to our position that we are the only country that has a full-fledged diplomatic mission in Taiwan and a full-fledged liaison office in China. The Japanese, for example, do not have in Taiwan a representation such as we have on the mainland.

So, in effect, we do benefit in this and many other ways from our unique position. But certainly, as I visited virtually all the nonCommunist countries of Asia this year, I found a very widespread concern and uncertainty with what the United States was going to do with respect to Asia and their countries.

Before we began to disengage, I think in 1969, we were generally doing too much and people wanted us to do less. Now that we have started to do less, people want us to do more. This is testimony to the way human nature operates.

I think perhaps we have gone from one swing of the pendulum in an extreme degree to a swing in the other direction that is excessively fast and excessively pronounced, but this is simply American policy, and it is our policy.

Mr. Nix. Mr. du Pont.

Mr. DU PONT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Professor Hinton, I understand the traditional rivalry and the traditional fears that exist between the Chinese and the Soviets as you touched upon them, but one of the factors that seems to be missing in terms of the possibility of any real conflict between the two is the economic motive. Do you see any economic factors that would tend to pit the Soviet Union against the Republic of China in military conflict?

Mr. HINTON. No, honestly, I do not. I think this has been a very minor factor in their relationship. One can make a case that it contributed to an existing political tendency, added a dimension, but they certainly would not have come to their present state on account of economics; in fact, in some ways they complement each other nicely if they choose to engage in expanded trade.

Mr. DU PONT. Specifically, I would think that the potential clash along the northern frontier of China and their common border is totally devoid of any economic interest. My little knowledge of the region indicates there is really not much there worth fighting over.

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Mr. HINTON. That is true, and of course, the old myth that the Chinese would like to colonize Asia is just that-a myth-even though there are some Russians who, in a very emotional sense, seem to take it very seriously. The Chinese themselves have thought it wise since the spring of 1969 to say flatly that they do not intend to get back any significant amount of territory from the Russians.

The Russians, by the way, have never officially and publicly acknowledged, to the best of my knowledge, that they understand the Chinese. They still keep talking as though the Chinese really intend to get back large areas.

I entirely agree; in fact, the whole territorial issue is essentially a phony.

Mr. DU PONT. Now, given the fact that there really aren't any economic interests involved, and given the fact that it is a continuing ideological tussle between the two, what would your recommendation be to us as to the policy of the United States toward this ideological conflict? What should we do, if anything?

Mr. HINTON. I think we should do a little more than we have done. We have to make a decision, it seems to me, how important mainland China is to us and how important Chou En-lai is. While I don't agree with the interpretation that is favored on Taiwan, he is in deep trouble at the hands of the Maoists, I do think he is under some pressure.

I am not sure exactly what we can do to help him. I don't have anything specific to offer. We should see if there is something we can do, because it would be very bad for us and, I think, the rest of Asia if he should be overthrown and some sort of coalition, possibly extreme Maoist and military, should come to power. It is far better to recognize some of the demons you know than some of the demons you don't know. Although we should not sell out Taiwan, it does seem to me that he could use something from us at this point.

Mr. DU PONT. So you would advocate a somewhat expanded-if I can use that word-relationship with the People's Republic?

Mr. HINTON. Yes, and I also think they need a little more done for them with respect to the Soviets, at least in terms of security. We have really not said very much in public, although we have certainly said something to the Soviets in private, about how we feel about the possibility of their attacking the Chinese, and I think it should be known publicly to be such rather than to be communicated directly and privately with the Soviets, and not in the public domain.

Mr. DU PONT. Well, now, as a final question, how about the other side? That policy would suggest to me that we are going to come down a bit harder on the Chinese side of the scale. What about our relationship with the Soviet Union in following the policy which you outlined?

Mr. HINTON. Well, I like to think that they go beyond their desire not to see us move too rapidly with the Chinese. In the first place, they need us economically; they need us with respect to working out some sort of settlement in Europe, as well as, of course, for purposes of arms control.

I doubt very much that the issue, important though it is to the Soviets certainly, alone could be enough to lead them to-I do think it is something that we would have to manage very carefully with an

eyedropper, as it were, and not in large doses, but I think that this general direction of movement would be one that is in our interest.

Mr. DU PONT. So your conclusion is that the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union is at such a point that we can afford to be pro-Chinese without seriously injuring our relationship with the U.S.S.R.?

Mr. HINTON. A little more so than now, I would say. A large part of our problem is, of course, because of our weakening military position in certain respects, plus the domestic problems that you know about; our hand is not as strong as it might be in dealing with the Soviets.

They, too, have domestic problems, and we may be in a position, I think, to take better advantage of their own internal problems than we have done, rather than letting them play upon ours, as they have tended to do so far. This is another error that we can't afford.

The trouble is: Given the trend in this country, this kind of policy is regarded as unworthy of a democratic country-and the case can be made, of course, that it is, but I think this is not the case. You have to seek the better results and cannot worry so much about the pure intention.

The cold war is not necessarily over, and simply to pronounce it over, as many people have done, is to open up in one's mind all sorts of pleasant and relaxed notions. Not that we should consider ourselves engaged in something like the Chinese or the Russians, but rather that we have to take a long term view of the relationship, which is, if not essentially an adversary one-I think it is, as a matter of fact-at least a troubled one, rather than thinking of it as a relationship that has equally beneficial results for both, as we have tended to do in the last couple of years.

Mr. DU PONT. Professor, I don't know whether I agree with your thoughts on policy or not, but they are well presented and they give us some food for thought, and I appreciate your testifying. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Nix. Just one other thing, Professor. You say that a short time ago our relationship with Taiwan, the Republic of China, has, of course, suffered some erosion. Now, how do you calculate that loss-and obviously it is a loss-with the possible gain to the United States through its present relations with the People's Republic of China?

Mr. HINTON. Oh, I think on balance it has been to our advantage to do what we have done or to have done roughly what we have done. I think there are even some people in Taiwan who would agree, a little sadly, that it has been benefited on the whole from a combination of the Sino-Soviet confrontation and American-Chinese policy and that the smaller non-Communist countries, including theirs, unfortunately have to pay something of a price.

Obviously it is easier for us to say than them but, on balance, something of the sort was necessary, particularly in view of the SinoSoviet confrontation, which, as I say, if we had not done anything about it, could have led, as early as 1969, to some kind of war that the Chinese almost certainly would have lost, with very destabilizing results with the region and, I think, very bad effects on our interest. Mr. Nix. Mr. Ryan.

Mr. RYAN. I want to thank you, Dr. Hinton, very much for a very fine statement. Your presence here today is equally appreciated. Thank you very much.

Mr. Nix. Our next witness is Prof. Carl Linden, of the Institute for Sino-Soviet Studies, George Washington University. Doctor, would you please take the chair. You may proceed, sir.

STATEMENT OF CARL A. LINDEN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, INSTITUTE FOR SINO-SOVIET STUDIES, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mr. LINDEN. Shall I just begin?

Mr. NIX. Yes.

Mr. LINDEN. Well, I thought I should make it clear at the beginning that I am not a specialist on Sino-Soviet affairs as such. My special area has been in the past close attention to the career of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, so I will be looking at the relationship from that perspective, and I will be placing the relationship into a broader context. Now we Americans in the course of our experience with the Soviet and Chinese Communists have been of two minds about them. In the heat of the various East-West crises and conflicts since World War II, we have been inclined to look upon them as ideological doctrinaires bent on prosecuting hot and cold wars against the United States and her allies. On the other hand, when a Khrushchev or a Brezhnev come here to the United States and look and act not much differently than everyday politicians, or a Mao and a Chou cordially receive the President of the United States in a goodwill visit and the air is suddenly filled with talk of détente, accommodation and normalization of relations, we are inclined to think that Communist doctrines cannot be so very important to the Soviet or Chinese leaders after all. We are easily attracted to the latter notion since we as a people tend to take a commonsense view of politics as a practical affair of competing but usually conciliable interests of individuals, groups and nations. We are ready to believe that ideology goes by the board when what we conceive to be real interests are at stake.

The truth of the matter, however, is that the two views we have alternately held about the Soviet and Chinese Communists are not really contradictory. They are only partial and misleading impressions at different points in time of political leadership whose character and outlook have not appreciably varied, but whose policies and strategies have shifted and changed. Sometimes these shifts in policy as in the recent period change the very face of East-West politics. What is difficult for us to grasp is that the Soviet and Chinese Communist leaderships find no insuperable difficulty in squaring MarxismLeninism with hardheaded opportunism in the pursuit of their material and national interests. Marxism-the articles of faith of Marxism-Leninism and its political practice which is very much in the Machiavellian tradition are but two sides of the same political teaching the first-the articles of faith-justifies the second-the political practice.

Despite the dramatic changes in the Soviet-American and SinoAmerican relationships and the summitry of the recent period, nothing, in fact, has happened to suggest in the slightest that either the

Soviet or Chinese have abandoned Lenin's precept that all politics, domestic and foreign, boil down to the question of "who wins?" or "who dominates whom?" in the world "class" struggle.

In this view of things ideology and force are no strangers. MarxismLeninism and the lexicon of uninhibited power politics are bedfellows. While this is clear enough to any historian of the East-West conflicts of the 20th century, these facts of life of Communist leaderships are most manifest in the long and bitter history of internecine struggles among themselves. The Sino-Soviet dispute is the most recent and momentous of such struggles.

The Sino-Soviet dispute has been difficult to resolve despite repeated efforts by various Communist leaders, including Brezhnev himself, precisely because it combines something of the character of a bitter

(religious war and pure power struggle. It has this double character

not in spite of but because at its heart is an ineradicable core of ideological and doctrinal issues. Since neither the Soviets or Chinese have abandoned the deep conviction that politics is war by other means and war but a means of politics, it should have come as no surprise to us that the spectre of a Sino-Soviet war raised its head at various times, especially in the period since 1969.

It is true that the Sino-Soviet split, like most of the factional conflicts in the history of Communist politics, did not begin in arguments over the basic ideology but rather in a fight over practical strategies. But such fights have been hard to contain and quickly becomes a winor-lose-all matter, and very often a life-or-death matter for the disputants as it was most recently in the case for Mao's fallen heir Lin Piao. The soundness and ultimately the success of a practical strategy is the only way for adherents of the Marxist-Leninist secular faith to determine the ideological or revolutionary impeccability of a leader or party.

Now I think it is interesting in this respect that Mao's original complaint against Khrushchev was that that Soviet leader was failing to exploit fully the newly acquired Soviet strategic nuclear and rocket potential in a vigorous prosecution of the struggle against the West, and especially the United States. Later of course, Mao used this same argument to charge Khrushchev with the sin of "revisionism." But at the outset we do not find Mao asserting an independent claim to leadership of the movement but rather urging Khrushchev and the Soviet leaders to exercise a more militant leadership of the Communist world/ in the East-West conflict. He even went so far as to berate the Soviet leadership under Khrushchev for dropping the traditional and militant characterization of the Soviet Communists as the "vanguard" for the term "center" of the Communist movement-the latter term connoting a looser, less centralized Moscow-led movement. In sum Mao began his fight with Moscow in the role of being more Catholic than the Pope. In any case, one area where Mao's criticism of Khrushchev most clearly struck home was the charge that he had neglected to exploit and develop Soviet nuclear-strategic and military potential and use it effectively in international politics. Mao did not fail to point out and the Soviet leaders did not fail to recognize that Khrushchev's 1962 Cuban missile fiasco starkly exposed the weakness of the Soviet strategic posture in relation to their main adversary-the United States.