By Rocket to the Summit

WHEN the Russian rocket scored a bulls-eye on the the American spy-plane, it shattered the illusions of many of those who believe in summit talks. With less than a week to go before the summit Christian Herter, boss of the US State Department arrogantly retorted to Russian protests—we shall carry on with similar flights. And Russia in turn threatened action against the American bases.

For months now the canons and bishops have been blessing the summit banners. This Sunday, Hewlitt Johnson is due to speak at an eve of summit rally in Trafalgar Square, and no doubt he, too, will enlist the services of the good Lord. The Labour leaders, Left and Right wing, can only gaze hopefully at the capitalist statesmen and hope that all will be well. Conforming to Moscow's dictates the Stalinists trot dutifully behind Macmillan beseeching him: 'Speak for Britain.'

Meanwhile for the capitalists, it is business as usual. Britain and America continue to increase their arms expenditure. France has tested two atomic bombs with the promise of more to follow. The US has got the 5,000-mile-range solid fuel ICBM Minuteman missile ready for action. Off Long Island the Navy submarine 'George Washington' is testing underwater launching tubes for the deadly Polaris missile. The 3,000-mile-range Titan missile is ready to go, already well tested.

At the end of last month the House Appropriations Sub-Committee decided to concentrate on 'offensive missiles and bombers' and to throw out 'expensive defensive systems'. Committee Chairman, George Mahon, explained the meaning of the word deterrent in his dictionary by saying 'you launch an attack before an aggressor . . . no other deterrent can be relied on.'

American magazine 'Time' made the blunt comment: 'It (the Commitee's policy) was miles away from the concept of "preventive war".'

Not above politics

In the meantime, Eisenhower has been giving some sharp lessons to those who insist that the summit is above politics. Warning that he would tolerate no interference with military expenditure by welfare schemes, he threatened Congress that he would fly back before the summit was concluded if 'domestic requirements pressed him'. He meant if Congress passed a billion-dollar housing bill and a bill granting Federal employees a 20 per cent. rise in pay. One White House official stated: 'If the Democrats want to make sure that Nixon doesn't go to the summit then they had better not mess around with spending bills while the president is gone.' For the American Communist Party who want to protect Ike against the 'more reactionary sections' of big business, this must present quite a problem.

A carte blanche for zealous military chiefs to launch a rocket whenever they think necessary; bigger military bills and the dropping of even the most modest welfare proposals are the prices demanded by American capitalism of those who want Eisenhower at the summit.

Chinese sceptical

Unlike the Russians, who constantly sing their paens of praise to the summit, the Chinese are cynical about Eisenhower the 'peacemaker'.

On April 12 the 'Peking Daily' reprinted in English an article by Yu Chao-Li which had originally appeared in 'Hongoi (Red Flag), organ of the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

Making the point that 'certain representative figures in US ruling circles seem to be paying greater lip service to peace than hitherto', Chao-Li says: 'They hope to create the illusion among people that Eisenhower and his kind are capable of laying down the butcher's knife and turning into buddhas'. Chao-Li might have added that amongst those representatives creating illusions in Eisenhower, the Kremlin is not the least guilty.

After Khrushchev's autumn visit to the US, Moscow described the course of Washington as one 'genuinely in favour of peace' and as one being consistent with the 'new reality of the nuclear age which has made war impossible.'

Chao-Li then goes on to say, 'today, just as Lenin pointed out more than 40 years ago, the danger of war still lies in the imperialist system. . . . There has been no change whatever in this fundamental nature of imperialism since the end of World War II.' Chao-Li is absolutely correct in this analysis of imperialism, but then he must explain how it was possible for both Soviet Russia and Mao's forces to find themselves allied with the British, French and American imperialists during the last world war.

Chao-Li's endorsement of Lenin's position on imperialism certainly comes slap bang against the line of the Russian Salinist leaders. At the 20th Congress in 1956 the delegates voted that 'capitalist countries can be persuaded to abandon war and to co-exist peacefully with those countries that have overthrown capitalism.' But Chao-Li speaks for a government which will not be represented at the summit and which is fearful of the deals that may be made there by the imperialists and the Soviet bureaucracy.

The Chinese know full well that the replacement of Syngman Rhee by Huh Chung and General Soong Yo Chan doesn't end the tensions on the Korean peninsula or obviate the danger of war. The conditions that led to war in July, 1950, still exist. All the Americans have done is to change the jailers of the South Koreans.

In Japan, despite student riots and socialist opposition in the Diet, Premier Nobuseke Kishi is intent on ratifying the US-Japanese security pact. Mao and his government understand exactly who that pact is aimed at.

The position of the Chinese Communists—for there can be no doubt that Chao-Li wrote with the full authority of the Party—is a correct one. Their characterization of the type of peace sought by American imperialism as 'nothing but a peace with US global domination . . . a peace in which socialism is eliminated, and revolutions in all countries are strictly "verboten"' sums up not only the summit plans of the Americans, but also those of the British and French imperialists.

The status quo

Fearful of the revolutionary forces in Africa, dismayed by a turbulent middle-East, with the pro-NATO regime of Turkey's Adnan Menderes beginning to founder, unable to maintain stable pro-capitalist regimes in Asia, world imperialism is bursting at the seams. In the metropolitan countries, the working class forces still remain intact and undefeated and show their fighting power in repeated industrial battles with the employers.

At the summit the imperialists will seek to obtain guarantees from the Soviet Union which will permit them to ride the storm. No lasting and stable peace can be built at Geneva, but what can arise from that conference are a number of cynical agreements designed to maintain the status quo—for what else does peaceful co-existence mean?

For the international working class, the status quo means, north and south Korea, Viet Minh and Viet Nam, east and west Germany, French Algeria, Verwoerd's South Africa, stinking little slave-owning oil kingdoms like Saudi Arabia and the subordination of the class struggle to the 'politicians of peace'.

The acceptance of past summits has led to the very conditions that today threaten world war and nuclear destruction. The reliance by Gaitskell, Gollan, Mollet, Thorez and Foster on the representatives of capitalism to secure peace has prevented a working class struggle against war.

The international Labour movement must recognize that today the forces for world peace are powerful and strong, but that they are not to be found in the gilt and mirrored palaces at Geneva. Only the independent struggles of the working class can stop war, because only that struggle is directed against the capitalist system.