Tensions with Russia
By A. T. Steele
Almost a year before Pearl Harbor, Arch Steele, of the Chicago Daily News foreign staff, took a trip into Japan and dug up startling facts about Tokyo’s plans against the United States. Then, to avoid censorship, he slipped back into China, and filed his now-famous series on “Japan Takes Aim.”
Since then, Mr. Steele’s accurate and uninterrupted war coverage has carried him into many battle zones – including Russia’s. And now – back in the United States for the first time in four years – he has written a fact-filled series on the task that faces us before we can come to final grips with Japan. The following is the sixth article in the series.
Spring has come to Asia and with it the seasonal rumors of impending Japanese attack on the Soviet Union. They are the same old stories that turn up every spring and autumn with clock-like regularity. And this season’s crop sound no more convincing than those which have gone before.
Russia and Japan may some day go to war, but it’s hard to believe that the time is near at hand. Japan, to be sure, would gain enormously from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet it would achieve nothing but grief were it to strike until and unless it were sure that by so doing it could knock Russia quickly out of the war. The impressive reserve power displayed by the Red Army in its winter offensive must have gone far to discourage the Japs from any idea that Russia was ripe for the kill.
As to Soviet policy, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that Moscow has no intention of opening a new front in Asia as long as the Red Army is preoccupied with Hitler – unless, of course, the Japs show positive aggressive intentions. Once again. The Russians and Japanese have renewed their fishing agreement for another year. This fits right in with the coldly realistic policy of the two powers and means little one way or the other. Had it not been signed, there would have been real cause for surprise, and the significance might have been great indeed.
Alarming prospect
Because of recent evidences of Russo-Japanese cooperating, there is a school which envisages the alarming prospect of Russia and Japan joining hands and going down the garden path together at the expense of the Anglo-Chinese-American war effort in the Pacific. Such conjectures can be given a semblance of reasonableness on the basis of long-range power politics, but they are dwarfed by a mass of evidence, historical and otherwise, which show up Russia and Japan for what they are – rival powers separated by a wide, deep chasm of differences. The bridge that links them is convenient but shaky, like most temporary structures.
There is, perhaps, one thing that could conceivably bring Russia closer to Japan. That is if the mistrust of Russia, which is so evident among some sections of the American public, grows into open hostility. Anti-Bolshevik suspicion is deeper in the United States than in any country I have visited.
While stressing moral considerations, it minimizes the cold, hard, all-important truth that Russia’s downfall would complicate enormously our problem of winning the war, not only in Europe but in Asia. A Soviet collapse would certainly prolong the war, perhaps by years, and possibly rob us of the absolute victory which we have set as our goal.
Whether the Soviet Union, after the defeat of Hitler, will choose to enter the Pacific War on our side, is something else again. You can amass plenty of logic on either side, but very few facts that prove anything. When I left China, I was laying even money that the Russians would be drawn in after the European phase was over. However, since coming home and seeing the state of mind of some Americans toward Russia, I have given up gambling.
Japs in Manchuria
Despite rumors of Russo-Japanese animosity, there is no indication that the Japanese have withdrawn a single soldier from the huge garrison which they maintain in areas adjacent to the Soviet frontier. In Manchuria, Japan has kept and is still keeping the most powerful concentration of military strength in the Japanese Empire – the elite of its troops, the best of its equipment.
The strategic proximity of Soviet bases to the heart of Japan is still as glaring a menace to Japanese security as it has ever been. The ideological gulf between Bolshevism and Shintoism is still as impassable as it has ever been. Moreover, in my 10 months in Russia, I found a whispered resentment against Japanese militarism as bitter as that which exists in the United States. And it is just as strong among Red Army officers and men as among the people.
Nor is it conceivable that the Japanese Army could be easily purged of the intense anti-communist indoctrination to which it has been exposed for years. The facts, of course, may have no influence whatever on Russia’s continued neutrality in the Pacific, if she chooses for practical reasons to remain neutral. But they made unconvincing the fears of those who suspect Moscow of adopting a deliberate policy designed to make Japan stronger at our expense.
China, too!
In China too, the enigma of Russia and its policies looms large. Only there, it is more immediate and direct, for the Soviet Union has a long land frontier on China. The problem of putting Sino-Soviet relations on a sound and lasting basis is complicated by differences between the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Parties, by the special status of such border regions as Outer Mongolia and Sinkiang and by uncertainty as to Russia’s post-war aspirations in Asia, of which Moscow has said little.
In Far Western Sinkiang, where Russian influence was considerable, Gen. Chiang Kai-shek has recently scored the first stroke in what may prove to be an important political coup. The chronic impasse between the ruling Chinese party, the Kuomintang, and the minority Chinese party, the communists, is still far from a fundamental solution. On the main immediate issue, the two parties are agreed; that is, resistance to Japan.
But each party is carrying on resistance in its own way, with its own armies and in its own territory. Though neither party has renounced the articles of cooperation by which they established a joint front against Japan, the only real connection is a loose liaison through resident emissaries.
Gen. Chiang’s policy has been unification of China by political means, if possible, but by military pressure, if necessary, when other means fail. Once, during the past year, a dissident group in the backwoods of Kweichow Province raised the banner of revolt. The uprising, small in scale, was apparently plotted and provoked by agents of the Japanese puppet, Wang Ching-wei, who took advantage of the economic crisis to fan popular resentment. The trouble was quickly and easily suppressed.