Sino-Soviet Relations and Arms Control. by Morton H. HalperinReview by: Thomas B. LarsonSlavic Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 153-154Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2493939 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 14:50

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Slavic Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 14:50:40 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS I53

Soviet-Turkish relations, an area where the author appears at his best. Another part is devoted to Soviet-Iranian relations, and a small chapter to Soviet-Afghani affairs. A variety of Western and Russian material was consulted, but, surprisingly enough, only one Turkish-language source, no Iranian, and a few translated sources from either Turkish or Iranian are listed in the twelve-page bibliography.

The study is much more descriptive than interpretive and should, therefore, be viewed with an understanding of the inherent qualities and limitations derived from such an approach. Some interpretations appear doubtful. For example, in the sub- chapter dealing with Far Eastern affairs, an area basically outside the scope of this study, the author, asserting that the Americans intervened in 1919 on behalf of the Czechs, overlooks the main United States purpose, that of checking Japanese expansion (page 67). The Armenian question and its implications in Soviet-Turkish relations (pages 95 and following) is not treated objectively enough-an easy re- proach to make but a difficult one to correct. Otherwise, the treatment of events seems more often objective than not; the author is open-minded, perhaps even sympathetic in the presentation of the early Soviet foreign policy in the area.

The attraction felt for Moscow by the Turkish nationalists of the early 1920S

recalls the present state of affairs, although this feeling has visibly shifted southward, from Ankara to Damascus and Cairo: "The Asian leaders did not seem to fear the communists and believed at that time that Soviet ideology was much less of a menace than was the presence of the imperialist powers in their countries" (page 46).

In conclusion, this is a useful study, somewhat limited by its descriptive narrative approach.

City College MICHAEL RYWKIN City University of New York

Sino-Soviet Relations and Arms Control. Edited by Morton H. Halperin. Cambridge, Mass., and London: M.I.T. Press [1967?]. Pages vi, 432. $10.00.

This volume binds together under hard covers a collection of articles already distributed in one form by the Center for International Affairs of Harvard Uni- versity. Even though several of the essays were also published in the China Quarterly or Orbis, probably this new publication can be justified as a way of making the articles more accessible to libraries and students. However, there is no unified theme to the volume, which assembles writings on rather varied topics, somewhat in the manner of a journal. Even the title could mislead a scanner of headings, because several of the articles are not concerned with arms control at all. These latter in- clude speculative discussions by Harold Hinton, Malcolm Mackintosh, and George H. Quester on possible Chinese, Soviet, and American attitudes toward a United States-China crisis. In addition, the editor throws in an account of the 1958 Quemoy crisis and a rather peculiar piece on Soviet-Chinese Communist "coalition behavior" from 1921 to 1965.

The essays directly concerned with arms control questions offer useful surveys by specialists of the manner in which Soviet and Chinese policies on disarmament and arms control have diverged as part of the more general Sino-Soviet split. The USSR became seriously interested in negotiating arms-limitation agreements with the United States and other Western states just as China was pushing her develop- ment toward a nuclear status independent of the USSR. In a review of "The Nuclear Test Ban and Sino-Soviet Relations," Walter C. Clemens points out that while the treaty has been and will remain an irritant in Russo-Chinese relations,

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 14:50:40 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

I54 SLAVIC REVIEW

China did not have to pay an onerous political price to carry on its test program in defiance of the treaty. Oran R. Young discusses "Chinese Views on the Spread of Nuclear Weapons" in an article tracing the favorable stand of the Chinese toward acquisition of nuclear weapons not only by China itself but by other socialist states and their more ambiguous stand toward such acquisition by nonaligned and neu- tralist states. While the Chinese Communist desire to preside over their own nuclear weapon arsenal is perfectly understandable, the reasons are less clear for the Chinese willingness to see countries such as India and Japan have a free hand to equip them- selves with such weapons. Nor do the authors explore very much the factors leading the Chinese to oppose a nonproliferation treaty as well as the test ban treaty, since the former would hamper Chinese freedom of action far less than the latter.

The Soviet side of Sino-Soviet differences on disarmament matters gets less at- tention in the book than the Chinese side, but Helmut Sonnenfeldt assesses "The Chinese Factor in Soviet Disarmament Policy" in a thoughtful and cautious essay. While the Soviet policy makers have had to keep an eye on Peking, Sonnenfeldt tends to minimize the extent to which their behaviour can be explained by con- siderations of Chinese attitudes. The fact that the Kremlin leaders went ahead with the test ban treaty and now push for a nonproliferation agreement, knowing full well that the Chinese would not and will not sign, suggests that the main advantage perceived in Moscow lay elsewhere than in fettering Chinese freedom of maneuver in the nuclear arms race.

Most of the authors cover developments into 1965, and therefore the book does not, despite its publication date of 1967, reflect the fact that the arms control is- sues have declined in importance as occasions for Chinese and Soviet polemics in the most recent period. This decline has no doubt been due largely to the change of Soviet leadership and subsequent lessened attention to general disarmament, the shift of focus from test ban to nonproliferation, and the sharpening of tension over Vietnam with the enlargement of the war there.

The book would have benefited from more rigorous editing. Thus, Morton H. Halperin writes on page 141 (correctly, I believe) that the Soviet rejection on June 20, 1959, of a Chinese request for a sample atomic bomb could hardly have been connected with Khrushchev's visit to the United States, since the invitation was not tendered until July. Yet on page R2o Malcolm Mackintosh connects the Soviet refusal of June 2o with the fact that "Khrushchev was preparing for his meet- ing with Eisenhower and the Camp David talks."

Columbia University THOMAS B. LARSON

DIMrrUR ANGELOV et al., eds., Bulgaro-rumunski vruzki i otnosheniia prez vekovete: Izsledvaniia, Vol. I: XII-XIX v. Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Bulgar- skata akademiia na naukite, 1965. Pages 438.

This volume inaugurates a series planned by the Bulgarian and Rumanian academies of sciences to illumine, in a spirit of cooperation and fraternal amity, problems and issues affecting the history of both countries. Such problems and issues abound. Liv- ing next to each other along the banks of the lower Danube, Bulgarians and Ru- manians have intermingled and interacted ever since Slavs migrated through Dacia. In the past the effect each people had on the other was a source of much national- istic history-writing on both sides of the Danube. Since 1944, when the Red Army imposed fraternal unity in the area, there have been notable efforts to create mu- tually acceptable interpretations on questions which arouse national sensitivities.

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 14:50:40 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions