Final Phase Backgrounder: Moscow and Beijing's "One Clenched Fist"

During the days of overt communism in Eastern Europe, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China feigned enmity, publicizing their hostility with manufactured border skirmishes and other diversions. On December 25, 1991 the Leninist strategists in Moscow offered the world a Christmas present: the USSR was going to implode and communism would be outlawed. Somewhere in the Kremlin there was chuckling and the tinkling of glasses of vodka.

Following the much-ballyhooed demise of communism in Russia, the "ex"-communist leaders of Russia saw fit to establish a strategic partnership with their former, openly communist "enemy" in China. The result? The Trans-Asian Axis, in which the Moscow-Beijing Axis assumes the leadership role. Fast forward to "Peace Mission" 2005, the first-ever joint military exercise between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China. (See blog, "Communist Bloc Military Updates: Peace Mission 2005, Sino-Russian military coordination begins.")

Anatoliy Golitsyn, a KGB officer who defected to the West one December thirty years before, however, had warned the West of the ruse. Few listened. Those that did lost their jobs. Golitsyn's prediction, published five years in advance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, follows:

After successful use of the scissors strategy in the early stages of the final phase of policy to assist communist strategy in Europe and the Third World and over disarmament, a Sino-Soviet reconciliation could be expected. It is contemplated and implied by the long-range policy and by strategic disinformation on the split.

The communist bloc, with its recent accretions in Africa [PT: Namibia, 1990; South Africa, 1995; Congo, 1997] and South-East Asia, is already strong. European-backed Soviet influence and American-back Chinese influence could lead to new Third World acquisitions [PT: Venezuela, 1998; Brazil, 2002; Argentina, 2003; Bolivia, 2005] at an accelerating pace. Before long, the communist strategists might be persuaded that the balance had swung irreversibly in their favor. In that event they might well decide on a Sino-Soviet “reconciliation.” The scissors strategy would give way to the strategy of “one clenched fist.” At that point the shift in the political and military balance would be plain for all to see. Convergence would not be between equal parties, but would be on terms dictated by the communist bloc. The argument for accommodation with the overwhelming strength of communism would be virtually unanswerable. Pressures would build up for changes in the American political and economic system on the lines indicated in Sakharov’s treatise. Traditional conservatives would be isolated and driven toward extremism. They might become victims of a new McCarthyism of the left [PT: political correctness]. The Soviet dissidents who are now extolled as heroes of the resistance to Soviet communism would play an active party in arguing for convergence. Their present supporters would be confronted with a choice of forsaking their idols or acknowledge the legitimacy of the new Soviet regime.

-- Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies for Old: The Communist Strategy of Deception and Disinformation (New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1984), pages 345-346.