THE CHESSBOARD OF POWER AND POLITICS " By OWEN LATTIMORE E HAVE passed the period in our history when \ N ] aman could make his effort in life without taking into consideration anything but the opportunities, the challenges, and the competition within the safe shores of America. The American of this generation, even the American who wants to make his entire career in America, must take into his calculations not only conditions in America, but the state of the whole world in which America holds a commanding but not a dictatorial position. So rapidly has this change come upon us that it is difficult even to find words that have the same significance when used to describe the history of the past and to analyze the problems of today. The difficulty can be described by using some of the expres- sions taken from the game of chess which we borrow so fre- quently to describe international relations, diplomacy, and war. The king, the queen, the knight, the pawn, the bishop, and the castle are vivid symbols of society, of nations, and of armies. To check, to checkmate, to move or sacrifice a pawn—these are words that express both the position and the movement of units, each of which has a definite value of its own, an agreed relative value in comparison with other pieces, and prescribed moves which can be made on the board. Many of our concepts, especially those of politics, diplo- macy, and war, acquired their modern forms in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Chess and the affairs of nations reached their maximum similarity in the decades of “gentle- manly war” at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of theTHE CHESSBOARD OF POWER AND POLITICS = 175 eighteenth centuries when John Churchill, Duke of Marl- borough, blended and combined the arts of the courtier, the politician, and the field general. Our concepts of the nation, the state, and sovereignty; of frontiers; of treaties as modifying or confirming frontiers and sovereignties; of “possessions” re- garded as territories owned by other territories; of the “envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary” as the personal rather than institutional representative of the personalized ex- ecutive or sovereign—all are rooted in this period of history. Such concepts involve two assumptions. One is that rela- tionships change, as the positions change in chess. The other is that the units in themselves do not change. Most of the pieces can make only one kind of move, which no other piece can make unless it is of the same rank, The queen remains a queen, the castle a castle, the bishop a bishop. The sole exception is that a pawn which advances to the ultimate line may become a queen. In the same way it is—or was—assumed that a people re- mains a people of the same kind, and a state remains a state of the same classification. The sole exceptions are that, as a pawn may become a queen, so a people may rise to the rank of mon- archy by assuming sovereignty under a republic; and as a piece is taken, so a state may be taken by another state. These concepts and these assumptions remained valid right up to the threshold of our time. Until 1914, the small country called Greece was always a small country of a certain classifica tion, and the large country called China was always a large country of a certain classification. For long periods, Greece might be neglected; if so, it remained so little changed that the next time it came into play in the maneuvers between great powers, it still had virtually the same value. The same things were true of China. Roughly speaking, China was an important piece, a castle, but standing on a square away from the focal center of nineteenth-century chess. Greece was only a minor piece, a pawn, but standing next to the square of the Darda- nelles, which gave it an importance of position in the moves of queens, castles, knights, and bishops.176 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW Ic is in this respect that the present generation is witnessing a revolution—a revolution not only in politics and economics, but in concepts and the assumptions attached to concepts. The game of chess in the affairs of nations is no longer what it was. It has been lifted from Newtonian practice to an Einsteinian potential. A queen, today, if unwarily used, or even if left standing, not touched by the player, may degenerate into a knight, or some lesser piece, or even a pawn. In the same way a pawn may not need to be advanced to the ultimate line in order to become a queen, and an intermediate piece, like a bishop or castle, may either increase or decrease in value. Moreover, these transformations in the value of pieces may come about in two ways: either because the right move has been made, or not made, with the piece itself, or because of changes in the rela~ tive value of position, brought about by moves made with other pieces. In the politics of today neither Greece, a small country, nor China, a large country, is a fixed quantity in the moves of policy. Either country may undergo very great changes, in its internal character as well as in the relative importance of its position between other countries; and these changes may occur because other countries make policy moves involving China or Greece, or they may occur if China and Greece have been left alone, but moves have been made with regard to other countries. W This new volatility of the pieces with which the moves of high policy are made is part of the worldwide process of change which we associate with the rise of Soviet Russia, These changes, however, while associated with Russia, and affected by changes in the character and status of Russia, are not solely caused by Russia. An example is that great shift in the world composition of forces which is frequently but too loosely described as Russian pressure on the British Empire in the Middle East. The Rus- sian pressure exists, but it exists in association with two other major phenomena—the decline in the economic and militaryTHE CHESSBOARD OF POWER AND POLITICS = 177 solidity of British power and the vast new outreach of Ameri- can power. It is accompanied by the stirrings of nationalism in the Middle-Eastern countries—a development of which Russian policy can take advantage, but which was not in itself created by the existence of Russia or the Russian form of government. All of these phenomena, moreover, are also associated with changes in the composition of world forces resulting from the defeat of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Britain’s relative weak- ness was not caused either by Russia or America. It was brought on by the strain of a war for survival. The increases, both abso- lute and relative, in the strength of America and Russia were not won by encroaching on Britain. They resulted from the’ fact that Russia and America, especially America, emerged from the war with enough vigor to take over new spheres of policy, and with an increased prestige in the minds of peoples beyond their frontiers, while Britain did not. The weakening of the colonial part of the structure of the British Empire and the weakening of other colonial empires have contributed to the current trend toward thinking that the whole world is going through a process of irreconcilable divi- sion between two great and opposite centers of power—the United States and Russia. The phenomena of such a process are also evident in Europe. One state after another appears to be gravitating, as a satellite, into the orbit of one or the other of the two greatest powers. The latest are Greece and Turkey, gravitating into the American orbit, and Hungary, gravitating into the Russian orbit. In other countries, like Germany, the gravitational pull tends to rend the nation apart. Soviet-occu- pied Germany is more and more sharply marked out as a sphere of unilateral Soviet activity, and less and less a sphere of agreed action between allies. In the same way the American, British, and French zones are coalescing as a field in which American policy and activity are dominant. While this process of division, or of polarization, as it is now frequently called, dramatically commands our attention, we also have need to think in a quite different dimension. In fact,178 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW it is the pressure on us not only to think in more than one di- mension, but in more than one dimension at the same time that imparts to the chess game of international policy the Einstein- ian quality of changeable value in the pieces with which the game is played. Tl Itwas to deal with just this need for thinking in more than one dimension that the United Nations was created, for which the world owes a special debt of gratitude to American statesman- ship. For while the United Nations is a creation of world thought, its structure and the parts of the structure to which different functions are allocated are largely the result of study and planning in America during the war years. The United Nations came into being only because it was acceptable to both America and Russia. It marks the maximum of agreement be- tween America and Russia, short of world government, just as the “cold war” marks the maximum of disagreement be- tween America and Russia, short of world war. The question whether we are to have world war again in our time depends on whether America and Russia can agree on “One World” within the United Nations, or continue to diverge in a “Two- World” polarization. Mr. James F. Byrnes, in the first im- portant statement he made after leaving the office of Secretary of State, said that war is not inevitable. “On the contrary,” he said, “I believe we can make the peace and we can keep the peace. I realize the difficulties. But we can overcome these difficulties. We have made clear to the Soviet Union that it cannot dictate the terms of peace. We must also realize that the United States cannot dictate the terms of peace.” If neither of these two powers can dictate the peace, then we must, in thinking in the new dimension of the United Nations, consider another order of political and historical change. We must evaluate something else besides the tendency of a largeTHE CHESSBOARD OF POWER AND POLITICS 179 number of countries, very different from each other, to be drawn into the orbit either of Russia or America. We must also try to evaluate each country’s own inherent trend, its tendency in and of itself either to sink to the value of a pawn or to rise to the potential of a more important piece. What are the inherent trends of postwar colonial nationalism? Of civil war in China? Of the Hindu-Moslem line of cleavage, the lines of cleavage between British India and the Indian Native States, and the many other cleavages that cut across India? What are the inherent trends in France? In Hungary? In the Balkans? Even in Britain? For the alternative significance of Britain as an equal partner of America and Britain as a junior partner of America has by no means been finally settled. The multiplicity of quantities to be determined, and of in- dividual and relative values to be computed, creates its own problems in the methodology of political science and inter- national relations. It is doubtful whether our society can any longer rely on the individual as a solitary expert in international relations. During the war the old idea of the rifleman as the basic, self-contained combat unit was more and more super- seded by the concept of the combat team, closely co-ordinating a variety of techniques. That tendency is being carried on under civilian conditions. To achieve balanced analyses, and to work with reliable estimates of trends projected into the future, we must organize groups of men and co-ordinate their work. That is why the Department of State has set up a plan- ning group to work on long-range policy, and that is why, in the universities, we must think in terms not of individual ex- perts but of schools of international relations, and link the study of international relations with our schools of history, of economics, of politieal science, and of geography. And that is why today, speaking as an individual, I cannot pretend to give universally valid answers to the worldwide questions I have raised, All that one man can do is to draw on his knowledge of some parts of the world as a contribution to the evaluation of what is going on in the world as a whole.180 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW IV There once happened to me something that I can offer as a parable of our times. I was travelling on a litte river steamer near the frontier between China and Siberia. The decks were crowded with peasants going back to their homes after the conflict between China and Russia in the winter of 1929-30. The fighting, and their flight from home, had heightened their interest in international questions. They all came to stare at me, and to comment and speculate on so strange a creature as an American. An old woman looked at me, half unbelieving. “Well, what are Americans?” she asked the crowd. “A tribe belonging to Russia, or a tribe belonging to us?” “They're a separate country,” said someone in the crowd. That kept the old lady thinking a long time. At last she got it thought out. “Well, then,” she asked, “if they are a separate country, with nobody ruling them, are they afraid of us or are we afraid of them?” “Are they afraid of us, or are we afraid of them?” That is a question that is likely to crop up many times in the next few decades. In the now famous report on China which he presented to the President on the eve of becoming Secretary of State, Mr. Marshall drew attention to one important difference between an American concept and a Chinese reality. “In pondering the situation in China,” said General Marshall, “one must have clearly in mind not the workings of small Communist groups or committees to which we are accustomed in America, but rather millions of people with an army of 1,000,000 men.” Is this comparison an important guide to the composition of forces in China? Is the statement defeatist, in view of the over- all American policy of attempting to halt the spread of Com- munism everywhere? In my view, the analysis is sound and the statement is not defeatist. It indicates, rather, a profound realiza~THE CHESSBOARD OF POWER AND POLITICS 181 tion of the important fact that processes which are similar to each other can yet have important differences in different countries. The analysis must be taken in conjunction with other evalu- ations in the Marshall Report. The Report refers not only to important characteristics of the Communist movement in China as a whole. It also refers to the fact that some Communists are extremist and intransigent and to Communist propaganda of “deliberate misrepresentation and abuse of the action, policies, and purposes of our Government.” It likewise refers to ex- tremists on the other side, very pointedly revealing General Marshall’s knowledge of a “dominant group of reactionaries who have been opposed, in my opinion, to almost every effort T have made to influence the formation of a genuine coalition government,” who “have evidently counted on substantial American support regardless of their actions.” Finally the Re- port draws attention to “a splendid group of men,” the liberals who are not fanatically bound to any party tyranny or creed of power. Succinctly the Report reveals to us a country of great di- versity. It isa country which, on one of the longest frontiers in the world, has common boundaries with Soviet Russia, one of the two giant powers whose mass and concentration of power give them a polarizing magnetism in international affairs. Yet it is a country which also unmistakably lies within the field of interest and policy of the other great polarizing power, the. United States. This relationship can be reduced to its starkest essential by saying that even if China were totally annexed by the Soviet Union, it would not thereby be withdrawn from the field of American interest and policy. Nor would the declaration of an outright American protectorate withdraw China from the field of Soviet interest and policy. It is not surprising that in such a country there exists a Com- munist Party which has never criticized Russian policy, even during that touch-and-go period, before Pearl Harbor, when182 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW Russia sent arms and planes to the Chinese Government for the war against Japan, without sending any to the Chinese Com- munists. Nor is it surprising that the other major party, the Kuomintang, makes reliance on America the keystone of its policy. These are significant facts, and they are part of that polarizing process which is one of the major world trends today. But they are not the only significant facts. It is also significant that Chinese Communist practice differs in many ways from Russian Communist practice. It is signifi- cant that the Chinese Communists, as a minority movement fighting for survival, have perforce drawn on non-Communist allies. A large part of their rank and file is non-Communist. The countryside which supports them is peopled with peasants who are fighting primarily for the private ownership of land and the right to be represented in government. These peasants have arms in their hands. They can be led by the Communists, if the Communists go in the direction in which they want to be led. They cannot be dictated to either by the Communists, whom they are now following, or by the Government, which they are now resisting. Thus a situation exists in which the mass weight of millions of people is able either to widen or to limit the scope of the armed and organized parties in a great many ways, including active resistance, passive resistance, non-participation, partial and conditional support, and full support and alliance. Such conditions as these are a major consideration both in China’s internal politics and in the policies which other countries may plan to project into China. It is equally significant that on the Kuomintang or National- ist side reliance on America does not imply rapid or full democ- ratization any more than the common Marxist philosophy of the Chinese Communists and Russia implies either speedy com- munization or extensive Russianization. It is interesting to quote in this connection some recent remarks by a well-known statesman of the Chinese Government, Harvard-educated, who has held very high diplomatic and executive appoint-THE CHESSBOARD OF POWER AND POLITICS 183 ments. Writing on “Understanding and Misunderstanding of the Americans Concerning China,” he says: ‘The Americans misunderstand China in some ways and understand her in others. . . as to the process and objectives of China’s moderniza- tion, the Americans do not always understand. The Americans believe in liberalism. In the economic field, liberal- ism means individualism and private property, which in their opinion constitute the foundation of national prosperity in the United States and other countries... . “The line of demarcation between government-operated industries and private industries shifts with the trend of the times. But the Chinese must pursue a middle course, keeping at an equal distance from the Soviet and American economic systems. Thus we have in China a confrontation between a collectiv- ist group and an anti-collectivist group which is so irreconcilable that it is being fought out in an exceptionally bloody civil war. Yet we also have the paradox that, as reliable American observ- ers report, the Communists not only tolerate private enter- prise but encourage it by tax-reduction and other rewards, while on the anti-collectivist side the important anti-Commun- ist statesman whom I have just quoted can quite calmly insist on the necessity for limiting private enterprise and for keep- ing China apart from the American system as well as the Soviet system. There is something familiar in this Chinese insistence on working out a Chinese solution to Chinese problems. It reminds us that Britain, though voting Socialist, is as anti-Communist as we arc. Nationalization in Britain is evidently not a step to- ward sovietization. It seems rather to be a partial and experi- mental limitation of the familiar forms of capitalism, carried out by a voted evolution and not by armed revolution. To the British example can be added that of Italy, where Premier De Gasperi, who is not only anti-Communist but anti-Socialist as well, has said that “Free capitalism can never again rise in Traly.”184 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW Vv Just one more thing, which I mention because it has been demonstrated on a far wider scale in China and colonial Asia than in the Western world, though in Europe also its im- portance was demonstrated in the resistance movements against German and Italian occupation. There has arisen a significant duality of military standards which is of primary political im- portance. In wars between states, the emphasis is now on the most technologically advanced weapons and on incredibly swift, annihilating, and paralyzing action, The greater and more industrially developed the states, the more important is this emphasis. At the same time, however, the ability to coerce peoples, within states, has markedly diminished. In the great age of em- pire building in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and even nineteenth centuries armed conquest was quick, cheap, and paid for itself in immediate dividends. At the present time, as we have seen in Indonesia and Indochina, armed reconquest involves costs on a huge scale, amounting to heavy long-term investment for an uncertain return. Even in civil war, as is being demonstrated in China, popular movements with very simple arms can in- definitely withstand expensively equipped armies, and for the duration of the conflict can almost totally remove immense areas from the world market of production, trade, and consumption. The biggest problem inherited by the postwar generation is the interaction of these tendencies. On the one hand, the polarizing tendency seems to be strongest in the West. The line drawn across Europe is being drawn more sharply week by week. On the other hand, the line may never be drawn so sharply in the East. It is in Asia that the tendency toward de- velopments of a different kind is most marked. The dominant characteristics of these Asiatic developments are experiment and compromise. In none of the Asiatic colonies can true inde- pendence be immediately established. One of the most favorable examples is that of Burma, whose independence was negotiated amicably in 1947; but Burma, though juridically independent,THE CHESSBOARD OF POWER AND POLITICS 185 will not for a long time be functionally as independent as, say, Cuba on the one hand or Finland on the other. Yet it must also be conceded that the Asiatic colonies cannot be reconquered and returned to anything near the full colonial status of 1941. The remoteness of full functional independence must, therefore, be weighed against the impossibility of a return to full subjec- tion. In China, the long and costly civil war shows no signs of ending in full military victory for either side. The probabilities are increasing that ultimately there must be compromise re- sembling the solution which General Marshall was sent out to China to advocate, which he nearly achieved at that time, and which American policy may yet achieve. One of the most important signs of the times has been the relative success of British policy in India, which is the British equivalent of the American policy in China, It does not draw a line. It does not fix a permanent solution. It is not hailed with triumph by anyone. But it can be accepted by the majority, because it offers the conditions under which all can work toward something new. VI Trends of this kind indicate the possible emergence of a “Third World,” or a cluster of third worlds. These intermediate states and societies would stand between the Two Worlds of America and Russia, mitigating their polarity but not eliminat- ing their rivalry. If these Third Worlds prove eventually to have an independent survival value, their growth and development may lead to a reintegration of the Two Worlds of America and Russia in the One World of the United Nations. If, on the contrary, they succumb entirely to the polarizing hostility of America and Russia, the Two Worlds of America and Russia will become like the two halves of an atomic bomb: our One World will be liable to a disintegrating atomic explosion if ever the two critical masses approach within the critical distance. Within the Third-World zone, the policies of both America and Russia are still hesitating and experimenting between the186 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW alternatives of division and adjustment. There are those in America who support the Marshall Plan because they con- sider it an essential preparatory step toward war with Russia. There are others who support it because they see in it a way out of war. There is an equivalent duality in Russian policy. The Russians support the New Democracy in Eastern Europe although, from their point of view, it falls far short of the uni- formity with the Russian system which would be necessary as a preparatory step toward incorporation within the Soviet Union; but at the same time they are suspicious of and hostile to the “third force” in Western Europe whose ideal is a compro- mise between outright socialization and uncontrolled capitalism. The final problem is whether the tendency toward sharp division will spread from Europe to Asia, or whether the tend- ency in Asia toward new developments will eventually be re- flected in the rest of the world. Asia allows, geographically, more room for maneuver than the steadily narrowing con- fines of Europe. It offers, economically, new resources and new markets. Politically, settlements in Asia will result in new repre- sentatives and new voices in the United Nations. Changes of this kind may not come in time to prevent war. But it is only out of such changes, reflected in the United Nations, that the tension of a long armistice can be eased enough to permit the building of a long peace.