UNITED STATES AND THE COMMUNIST WORLD
85
out of the United Nations. It is virtually at war with North Korea and actu-
ally at war with North Vietnam, both of which it has kept out of the United
Nations.
The differences in policy toward these states reflect differences in their
policy toward the United States and these differences spring more from
national interest than from ideological differences. The ideological cold war
has been an element in creating mutual suspicion and inhibiting mutual
trust, but actual relations with each communist state have been affected
more by the principle that hostile acts invoke retaliation and friendly acts
invoke reciprocity. Nationality and pride seem always to be more important
than ideology in international relations as de Gaulle both declares and
illustrates. To discover the values which underlie the actual policies and
decisions of governments one must hunt beyond official ideology.
The enduring interests common to most sovereign states have been
security, including territorial integrity, respect, and political independence;
freedom in the exercise of domestic jurisdiction and development of dis-
tinctive culture; influence, including prestige, power position, status, spheres
of influence, alliances; and prosperity, including technological development
and access to trade, markets, and raw materials.7
Since conflicts in these interests have developed between states of similar
ideology, and opportunities for fruitful cooperation have developed between
states of different ideology, both ideological blocs have tended to break up.
China, Yugoslavia, and Albania have broken from Soviet leadership, and
other European satellites are tending to do so as they search for more trade
with the West. A visitor to these states finds that official guides emphasize
the national distinctiveness of the country and say nothing of communism,
and often less than nothing of Kremlin leadership. In Russia people are
interested in security and prosperity and worried by United States encircle-
ment. Soviet pressure on the “satellites” has relaxed since the intervention
in Hungary in 1956. There is doubt whether they would prove allies or
enemies if the Soviet government tried to move through them to expand in
the West, and one can detect no evidence of such a policy. Russia is worried
by Chinese aggressiveness in regard to boundaries; by its play for leader-
ship of the communist movement in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; and
by its noncooperation in assistance to North Vietnam or in promoting a
negotiated settlement of that conflict.
China, whose revolution is most recent among the communist states,
seems to be the most interested in expanding communist ideology but its
major aims appear to be national. China desires to end the humiliation it
suffered from Western aggressions and interventions in the nineteenth cen-
tury. It wants to gain full recognition as a great power and leadership of
the communist movement, at least in Asia. It would like to recover the