The Eagle Prostrates Before the Sugar Mouse – Folha de S. Paulo, December 10, 1972
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
The contradiction could not be more glaring.
On the one hand, signs of the deterioration of communist regimes around the world are accumulating on the horizon.
Just a few months ago, for example, Russia aspired to conquer the entire old continent. The strategy to achieve this had already been chosen: establishing a pan-European federation from the Urals to the Tagus, with its seat of power in Moscow. This ambitious plan would not be so difficult to carry out. Most European governments are short-sighted and weak. Thus, they lack the capacity to discern what is fallacious in the European Federation project and to resist the thousand propaganda pressures that favor it. Once the Federation was formed, the real difficulty would lie in creating habits of submission, poverty, and irreligion among Western European populations, over which communism would gradually spread like a cloak of insecurity, hunger, and crass materialism. However, this difficult prospect did not seem to worry the Kremlin despots.
A few days ago, the daily press reported that Moscow is abandoning its plan for pan-European federalization. At the moment, it seems to expect the Western powers at the upcoming pan-European conference in Helsinki to simply (simply!) recognize the “Brezhnev doctrine” and accept the Iron Curtain as a fait accompli. In short, to legalize the status quo under international law. As for the conquest of Western Europe, this would depend on the use of more subtle methods at a more opportune time.
What is the reason for this enormous change in goals? According to international news reports, the political and economic difficulties behind the Iron Curtain are mounting to such an extent that the Kremlin will be happy if it can maintain the communist regime and the cohesion of the satellite nations with the Moscow metropolis. And so it no longer feels strong enough to extend its sphere of power to new countries.
The situation in the West is no less unfavorable for communism. It is clear that the masses are deeply conservative and unimpressed by Marxist propaganda. Communist circles are shifting from a dogmatic, aggressive tone to a mellifluous, conciliatory one. Just a few days ago, Carlo Galuzzi, the Communist Party’s prominent leader in the Italian parliament, publicly stated that his party has changed and now accepts (he did not say to what extent) the spirit of profit, the law of supply and demand, and the alternation of power with other groups, and opposes the systematic nationalization of the means of production. I have no doubt that this is merely an electoral maneuver. But to what extent must a party leader be aware of the unpopularity of his party’s ideology to flaunt a program markedly at odds with it as a means of recruiting supporters?
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Other signs of weakness could be added, not only in Russia. Let us turn our gaze from Europe to Asia and consider Red China. It is insistently demanding the withdrawal of American troops fighting in Vietnam. Why, then, does it not also demand the withdrawal of the US fleet patrolling the stretch of sea between Taiwan and the mainland? As far as I know, that fleet is still there. Its mission is to prevent the two Chinas from attacking each other. Now that the United States recognizes Taiwan as a territory subject to Beijing de jure, if not de facto, it would be up to Mao to demand freedom of movement in relation to the rebel province and tell his friends in Washington the classic “go home.” Why doesn’t the yellow leader do so? Why does he apply different standards to Vietnam and Taiwan? It is because the Chinese communists fear that, once freed from the obstacle posed by the Yankee fleet, Taiwan will land on mainland territory, and they know perfectly well that the Chinese population would join en masse in the nationalist offensive against the Beijing despots.
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Why dwell further on the instability of communist regimes today? A hungry and agitated Chile, just a stone’s throw away from us, is being relentlessly choked by General Prats, while Allende campaigns abroad.
And here is the glaring, scandalous contradiction I mentioned at the beginning of this article.
If the communist regime’s weakness is evident in Russia and China, it is even more so in Cuba. Fidel Castro has failed miserably at sugar production. His worn-out demagoguery is on recess. His endless harangues have ceased, and even his beard has lost the terrorist symbolism that made it famous in days long gone.
Why then not liberate Cuba? Could there be a more beautiful application of the principles of continental fraternity than joint action by the three Americas to dethrone the ridiculous tyrant in Havana?
Kennedy may cite the risk of world war as justification for his pacifist policy toward Cuba.
But the Russia of 1972 can do nothing more to support its small, distant island colony. China need not even be mentioned, as it lacks the military power to risk a new war.
I insist: why then do the three Americas not impose a total economic blockade on Cuba, followed by political pressure and, if necessary, a small military expedition to the unfortunate island—all the better if composed of volunteers—to liberate it?
I believe a complete result could be achieved even without a military expedition. However, I think it would be well worth it if it required shedding a little blood of communist executioners. The bonds of race, tradition, culture, and, above all, religion that unite Brazil and Cuba make my soul yearn for this swift and noble solution.
However, what is actually happening?
Precisely the opposite. After yielding ground to the paper bear and the paper tiger, the American eagle seems willing to bow meekly and be intimidated by the Cuban mouse. This is the meaning of the Washington-Havana negotiations that have just begun.
Nothing is more contradictory to the decline of communism than this American humiliation.
However, the Nixon administration appears to have an insatiable appetite for humiliation.
