Foreign Relations: Hints of a Changing Equation

In the varying calculus of world politics, the principal constant is the fundamental conflict between regimes founded on repression and societies that aspire to liberty under law. The primary protagonists in the Cold War decades have been Communism and democracy; more immediately, they are Communist China and the U.S. And while there have recently been some loud expressions of doubt and counseling of weakness on the free world's side, there were scattered signs last week that the struggle may be going better than most Westerners had dared to hope.

In Viet Nam, where years of frustration have given U.S. officials a painful inoculation against euphoria, old hands almost embarrassedly admitted that things were looking up. "I'm almost afraid to say it," allowed an intelligence officer in Saigon, "but I wonder if the Viet Cong aren't hurting—and maybe even hurting badly."

Elsewhere there were other hints of a change in the equation of world affairs. In Ghana, where Kwame Nkrumah, one of Africa's last China lovers, had been ruthlessly consolidating a squalid little tyranny for nine years, a cadre of young colonels took advantage of the Redeemer's visit to Peking to redeem their nation from his rule (see

THE WORLD). In Indonesia, where Strongman Sukarno sought to refurbish his sullied image by firing Defense Minister Nasution, one of Peking's archenemies, anti-Communist students dared to howl their disapproval at the palace gates.

In Russia, a new five-year plan jettisoned Nikita Khrushchev's dream of overtaking U.S. heavy industry by 1970 and focused instead on a goal that Red China's rulers condemn as pure capitalistic decadence—making life more pleasant for the people. Throughout the world, Peking seeks to incite "wars of national liberation." Yet in Red China itself, noted Columnist Joseph Alsop, the regime's paranoid leaders have become so distrustful of the younger generation that they have shipped all members of the three upper classes at pace-setting Peking University to Sinkiang, the Chinese Siberia, "to improve their minds by a period of hard labor."

Clearly, neither in Ghana nor Viet Nam—let alone Russia or China—is a coup or demonstration or a series of advances and retreats any real premise or portent for the future. But the free world could take some comfort last week from the loosely linked chain of evidence around the world that repressive regimes were losing rather than gaining ground in their effort to impress mankind that liberty, Communist-style, is the wave of the future.