The True Absurdity

It IS easy to understand the enthusiasm of so doughty a coldwarrior as James Burnham for U.S. diplomatic recognition of Red China (NR, June 23). For the present and the foreseeable future the Soviet Union is incomparably the world’s worst aggressor and one of its only two superpowers. Everything else in the realm of grand strategy is—must be—secondary to that towering central fact. We Americans may not like the Chinese Communists (or Tito, or apartheid, or Portuguese socialism, or a great many other things) very much, but our attitude toward them must inevitably be colored, indeed dominated, by our necessary preoccupation with the Soviet Union’s massive challenge to world peace and freedom.

If, therefore, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s recent trip to Peking has succeeded in widening the already broad chasm between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, or results hereafter in better coordination of Chinese and American resistance to Soviet maneuvers in Africa and elsewhere, that is all to the good. And if an exchange of ambassadors between Washington and Peking (as distinguished from mere “liaison officers”) would help matters along, it seems downright churlish to resist such “normalization” of relations on grounds of pure principle.

WA

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William A. Rusher

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It IS easy to understand the enthusiasm of so doughty a coldwarrior as James Burnham for U.S. diplomatic recognition of Red China (NR, June 23). For the present and the foreseeable future the Soviet Union is incomparably the world’s worst aggressor and one of its only two superpowers. Everything else in the realm of grand strategy is—must be—secondary to that towering central fact. We Americans may not like the Chinese Communists (or Tito, or apartheid, or Portuguese socialism, or a great many other things) very much, but our attitude toward them must inevitably be colored, indeed dominated, by our necessary preoccupation with the Soviet Union’s massive challenge to world peace and freedom.

If, therefore, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s recent trip to Peking has succeeded in widening the already broad chasm between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, or results hereafter in better coordination of Chinese and American resistance to Soviet maneuvers in Africa and elsewhere, that is all to the good. And if an exchange of ambassadors between Washington and Peking (as distinguished from mere “liaison officers”) would help matters along, it seems downright churlish to resist such “normalization” of relations on grounds of pure principle.