Optimistic Foresight and Slumbering Pessimism – Folha de S. Paulo, December 25, 1968
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
The dictators in Moscow and Beijing are naturally reflecting on their achievements in 1968. Feeling triumphant, they can easily convince themselves that since the disastrous Yalta agreements, there hasn’t been a year when they’ve gained more advantages.
Indeed, these achievements have been so impressive that, out of fear of backlash from public opinion in the free world, the leaders of international communism are hesitant to promote them openly. I invite the reader to join me in evaluating the progress communism has made this year, precisely to encourage this healthy and beneficial reaction as much as possible.
The United States’ formidable power has conceded to a much weaker adversary in the Far East. The Johnson Administration is steering South Vietnam to the negotiating table in Paris like a lamb heading to the slaughter. Everything suggests that Johnson will pressure Saigon to accept communist participation in the government to end the fighting. Once this happens, American troops will likely head home, leaving Vietnam’s brave anticommunist fighters in the lion’s den.
Only them?
Faced with American weakness, what resistance can Laos, Thailand, and other regional nations mount against new attacks by communist imperialism? Make no mistake: if the Vietnamese disaster is completed, the governments of neighboring countries will start to feel pressure from local communist parties to accept “collaboration.” To prolong the suffering, these governments will eagerly or reluctantly welcome communists into “apolitical” ministries like Education, Labor, and others. Consequently, a few more nations will fall just like Vietnam. The mere thought of these events is enough to trigger a political and social earthquake that will shake everything in the Far East that is not yet communist. The impact of this quake will ripple across Oceania, significantly affecting Australia itself.
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As I write these lines, I see many optimists of the Christian-Democrat Party (CDP) kind smiling with their typically sour compassion at my “pessimism.” With their sentimental optimism and false cleverness, I can imagine them saying, “Dr. Plinio does not understand that Johnson is playing a very subtle game in the East. By handing South Vietnam over to the beasts, he is whetting communism’s expansionist appetite and securing peace for the world for a long time to come.”
It is easy to cite the example of Chamberlain and Daladier: What did they really achieve by letting Hitler take over Czechoslovakia, other than a brief period of peace?
In truth, the current concessions in the Far East won’t even lead to a few brief and temporary days of peace. This is especially clear in the case of Korea.
Indeed, while Vietnam is tragically suffering at this moment, North Korea is sending wave after wave of guerrillas into South Korea. Therefore, the communists opened another front even though their previous conquest was incomplete. North Korea finally hints at releasing Pueblo sailors, only to cause the Americans to accept making new concessions.
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As these events unfold in the Far East, the last remnants of Czech resistance in Central Europe are fading. According to recent reports, Tito, who initially appeared defiant during the Soviet invasion of St. Wenceslas’s land, is now trying to make “cautious” statements about the Soviet threats looming over Romania. In short, everything behind the Iron Curtain in Europe is under Russian control.
It is obvious that the British withdrawal has created a vacuum in the Indian Ocean that Russia can fill at any time. The Mediterranean, that ancient “Mare Nostrum” of the free world, is now more threatened by Soviet power than it was by that of Mahomet. Therefore, in historical terms, the picture of communist influence seems complete.
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It seems necessary to complete this difficult picture with what is happening in a sea far more significant and noble than the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, or any other. It is the vast, spiritual, and most sacred ocean of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.
In this area, 1968 marked a turning point. A thousand seeds of confusion and decline, which we had been fighting since the turbulent days of 1943, when we published In Defense of Catholic Action, finally bore fruit. The crisis quietly emerged from behind the scenes through sacristies and churches, then spread into public squares. It infiltrates even the smallest corners without mercy or pity. Today, anyone who repeats the once true and glorious phrases about Catholic opinion as an unbreakable shield against communism would be met with laughter or pity. This is the most tragic fact of the tragic 1968.
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Is this the work of a pessimist? Who really is the pessimist? Is it the sentinel shouting warnings in hopes that the urgency of the moment awakens remaining energies for victory? Or is it the one inside the citadel, dismissing the alarm: “There is no danger. In fact, the enemy is not so detestable. Above all, there is nothing to be done. Let me sleep until he enters, for all is lost.”
