The Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr. Andrei Gromyko’s foreign policy speech ran on familiar lines, covering a wide but very familiar range of subjects. There were the usual flattering references to Mr. Khrushchev’s various pilgrimages in the cause of peace, as well as the inevitable reminder to the West of the “socialist might” which “rises in the path of aggressors” For good measure, Mr. Gromyko also condemned the Western military alliances, the U-2 and RB-47 incidents, the Polaris bases in Scotland and the Western designs in the Congo and Laos. But he made no new or positive suggestions to ease existing tensions; he merely advanced some of the reasons for their continued existence. His declaration that the Soviet Union was willing to extend a friendly hand to the U.S.President-elect, Mr. Kennedy, and his nostalgic remembrance of Soviet-American relations in the Roosevelt era, was a nice enough thought. But one doubts if a miracle could be worked at an extraordinary session of the U N with the chiefs of State participating. Experience shows that such a conclave tends to degenerate into a debate. What is required now is not a display of polemic skill by heads of government, but serious and purposive work at the diplomatic level to seek a basis for negotiation on each specific issue underlying East-West tensions. To suggest that such complex problems as the Berlin question, disarmament and brushfire wars in various parts of the world can be solved in a trice by heads of state verges on the facetious.
The only encouraging thing in the speech was the rejection of the inevitability of war and the acceptance of the fact that current political trends are such as would eliminate war “from the life of mankind.” This is of particular significance in view of the known differences of opinion within the socialist camp, in that it seems to suggest that in the socialist camp the Soviet Union’s views prevail over China’s.
26th December, 1960.
