Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 2
January 10 – In his half-hour televised CBS interview on Jan. 8, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s Adviser for National Security Affairs, spent all but the last two minutes explaining away the Carter administration’s hardening position on the PLO, A Palestinian independent state, and the increasingly insolent aggressiveness of the Israeli puppet regime. Brzezinski was full of half-truths and evasions, stale State Department platitudes and banalities, and blatant disregard for the probing reporters who sought at least one straight answer to the growing war danger in the Middle East struggle. Brzezinski seemed utterly ill at ease during the entire interview and several times resorted to repeating his vague generalizations and ambiguities designed to make presentable the new U.S. aggressiveness in the Middle East.
When he was asked about the Vietnam-Kampuchea border struggle, however, he immediately brightened up, becoming animated and almost downright cheerful. “I find it interesting,” he replied to a question, “primarily as the first case of a proxy war between China and the Soviet Union.”
The State Department the next day tried to qualify Brzezinski’s assertion by saying that the U.S. was “in no position to have a clear and easy set of answers” to the conflict, because of the alleged “thousands of years of enmity” between the two Southeast Asian nations.
James Reston of the New York Times, as well as the Christian Science Monitor, followed the State Department’s lead by seeming to contest Brzezinski. But Asiaweek magazine, published before Brzezinski’s remarks (although dated Jan. 13), says that the term “war by proxy” was “the phrase being kicked around,” indicating that the U.S. government is orienting its puppets and allies along the Brzezinski line. They are chastising him merely for coming out to quickly with it, and for breaching the rule of quiet (secret) diplomacy in these matters.
So that despite the State Department disclaimer, the Brzezinski position reveals the basic strategy of U.S. imperialism with relation to both the USSR and the People’s Republic of China.
Ever since the signing of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty in 1950, the U.S. and its allied imperialists and puppets have both overtly and covertly, directly and indirectly, pursued the objective of first splitting China from the Soviet Union, and then exploiting and poisoning the relations between the two socialist states.
This is an objective historical fact of preeminent importance in gauging the character of the contemporary epoch insofar as international relations are concerned.
Of course, this does not in any way diminish, let alone disqualify, the tremendous importance of the subjective factor involved in this struggle between the Soviet and Chinese leaderships. This is not the place to go over the origins and development of the political differences which ultimately led to the split and the deep antagonisms caused by it. [The reader is referred to the pamphlets “China: the Struggle Within” and “The Character of the USSR” – Ed.] Still, the overriding cause of the split much be sought in the objective factors – the struggle of imperialism against the socialist countries and the world’s oppressed.
In recent years, the strategy of the imperialists has become bolder. It is based on the hope of engulfing the USSR and China in a military conflict which would leave them a smoldering volcano.
Even during the “cooperative” periods (and we use the word advisedly), the objective of the imperialists has always been to encourage, promote, and incite a fratricidal struggle which would ruin the socialist foundations upon which both countries are based.
It should, therefore, be no surprise that the ears of the State Department and Pentagon, not to speak of the CIA, have been closely attuned to the unfortunate border conflict between two of the socialist countries in Southeast Asia who have carried on a magnificent and victorious struggle against imperialism. The interest of the U.S. is not so much concerned with the outcome of the fratricidal struggle between Vietnam and Kampuchea as it is with searching for an angle to deepen it and engulf both China and the USSR in the conflict.
Unfortunately for the imperialists, things have not developed to that stage and hopefully the border conflict can be resolved speedily by negotiation rather than by a protracted and dangerous military contest. The hopes of all progressive humanity must be based on a peaceable solution to the problem. The malicious delight that the imperialists and their puppets take at the fratricidal struggle bodes no good for all of the working class and all of the oppressed people everywhere. The longer the conflict continues, the more dangerous it becomes and the more the imperialist will focus on it. The consequences of further protracting the struggle can only set back the cause of the oppressed and the socialist perspective in general.
In this connection the proposal of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for an immediate ceasefire and the commencement of negotiations offers the best prospect for a solution to the problem. It is inconceivable that the Vietnamese people, their government, and its leadership who have struggled for over 30 years against the most formidable imperialist aggressors and have justly earned worldwide revolutionary prestige unmatched by any socialist country in recent years, would be willing to risk this hard-earned standing in the international socialist community and among the world’s oppressed just to snatch a piece of territory from a small socialist neighbor with whom they have fought arm in arm against the common enemy.
There is no objective verifiable evidence available which would in any way justify such a conclusion. And it is for this reason that we believe that the call made by the SRV to the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea to halt the fighting and commence negotiations is wise, just, and proper. It would be a relief and a very welcome one to all of progressive humanity if this military conflict were to cease and negotiations commence.
The continuation of this conflict, aside from the enormous damage to the socialist struggle on a world scale, can lead to consequences of a far more dangerous character than the border issue itself. It can bring into play forces hostile to the cause of the liberation struggle, not only in Southeast Asia but all over the world, and have a damaging effect on the working class and anti-imperialist solidarity.
The most immediate effect of the fratricidal struggle is clearly seen in the blow it delivers to the revolutionary forces in the so-called ASEAN countries – Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore – where the struggle against imperialist domination is of course still going on and where it earlier received a great deal of momentum from the Vietnamese and Kampuchean victories.
Unquestionably, the border struggle is a boon to the reactionary forces in these countries and bolsters the fortunes, even if only temporarily, of imperialist domination and aggression.
When Harrison Salisbury some years ago wrote a book entitled “War Between Russia and China,” it was not meant as an analysis or abstract forecast. It was meant to promote such a war, to encourage it by any and all means, for such a war would of course engulf the entire Eurasian land mass.
Brzezinski spoke Carter’s and the Pentagon’s thoughts in referring to the mythical proxy war. Their real thinking boils down to a malignant hatred of both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China as well as Vietnam and Kampuchea. Any development which opens up a possible avenue of exploitation for imperialist purposes is sure to be seized upon by the grasping hands of the Pentagon and Wall Street imperialism.
Not for one minute have the monopoly capitalists ever lost sight of a possible avenue which would promote their objective, not merely of a worsening or deterioration of relations between the socialist countries, but their mutual destruction. This is what has to borne in mind in evaluating the significance of protracting the military conflict between Vietnam and Kampuchea.
Last updated: 11 May 2026