Can Moscow Deliver?

In the current phase of the cold war cycle, the main Soviet diplomatic gambit is to provoke the U. S. into extraordinary measures by offers of Russian trade and military and economic assistance. This “ploy” seems to be working well in the Near East, where we are offering our help on the Aswan and Jordan projects in return for an easing of Israeli-Arab tension and such other concessions as we can negotiate.

The awkward aspect of these projects is that it is unlikely that they can be carried out on an expedited basis without inflation. Certainly the Aswan project, on the ten-year completion basis of Egyptians want, cannot fail to produce inflation. This Would suit the Kremlin very well-—it has never forgotten Preobrazhenski’s characterization of inflation as “the machine gun that attacked the bourgeois regime in the rear.” The role of inflation in the capture of China is still fresh in their minds, not to mention North Vietnam. India lies ahead— the apple of the Soviet eye.

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In the current phase of the cold war cycle, the main Soviet diplomatic gambit is to provoke the U. S. into extraordinary measures by offers of Russian trade and military and economic assistance. This “ploy” seems to be working well in the Near East, where we are offering our help on the Aswan and Jordan projects in return for an easing of Israeli-Arab tension and such other concessions as we can negotiate.

The awkward aspect of these projects is that it is unlikely that they can be carried out on an expedited basis without inflation. Certainly the Aswan project, on the ten-year completion basis of Egyptians want, cannot fail to produce inflation. This Would suit the Kremlin very well-—it has never forgotten Preobrazhenski’s characterization of inflation as “the machine gun that attacked the bourgeois regime in the rear.” The role of inflation in the capture of China is still fresh in their minds, not to mention North Vietnam. India lies ahead— the apple of the Soviet eye.