News Clips: Massacre in Tiananamen Square (1989)

Foreign Policy News Clips: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Foreign Policy News Clips: 1979-1990, edited by Harry Kreisler

9/17/89: Massacre in Tiananmen Square

The Clips

Editor's Note

This issue of the Clips focuses on recent events in China. What happened there was a variant on a common set of problems confronting Marxist-Leninist states because of their relative decline and the possible collapse of their ideology. As crises unfold in the communist world the recurring question for the United States and the international community is: What is the appropriate response?

The Crisis of Communism

Marxist-Leninist regimes have come to be perceived both as internally and externally as having failed. They are incapable of meeting the consumer needs if their population. They have stifled the vitality of social groups. They are increasingly incapable of retaining the support of their own people. The failure to recognize and fulfil the national aspiration of indigenous ethnic and regional groups has become a source of national resentment and discontent that raises the possibility of civil war if not anarchy. Even the militaries serving these regimes are aware that by failing to master the successive waves of innovation of the computer/microchip revolution national security and international standing is being jeopardized.

Responding to these challenges, however, requires a reorganization social and economic life and a recognition of the rights of the individual and of national and other groups. However, to move too far in that direction could ultimately threaten the leading role of the communist party. Therefore, the Marxist-Leninist states are caught in the horns of a dilemma. To be legitimate in the eyes of their citizens these regimes must ensure a standard of economic and social fulfillment that matches the standards reached by capitalist states. By such measures most communist states do not so well. However, to correct their deficiencies and to match their capitalist competitors threatens the legitimacy and survival of the vanguard role of the communist party.

In China, the party leadership sought to address some of these problems by reforming the economy through opening to the West. There was to be no political liberalization. The contradictions of such a course of action were increasingly apparent. In the Tiananmen Square, the social forces unleashed with the student democracy movement elicited a crackdown and massacre by factions of the party and the military.

As other Marxist-Leninist regimes grapple with the variations of these problems, they will be affected by the uniqueness of each national setting. Nonetheless alternative scenarios equally volatile are not difficult to conjure up-ethnic strife spilling over international borders; sudden massive movements of people across borders; regional collapse of an Eastern European economy; the overthrow of a reformist communist regime by the military; eruption of civil war leading to a struggle over the control of nuclear weapons by factions within the ruling circles. The complexity of the problems faced by these regimes as they reform, together with the enormity and pace of the changes in the communist world suggest that such scenarios are not unthinkable.

As the Marxist-Leninist states confront these challenges, the U,S., the West, the international community will have to respond. The policy environment is daunting one. In a context of rapid change the West's ideological adversaries are in a sense fulfilling the West's preferred rapid outcomes, that is, moving toward liberal democracy and capitalism. In addition, they are doing this as the world's television cameras watch. By its policies, can or should the West attempt to aid the communist regimes as they reform in order to prelude the development of crises with serious international implications? Does the West have the option of doing nothing? If not, how much aid and under what conditions to achieve what ends -- capitalism? liberal democracy? the breakup of Communist empires?

Articulating a U.S. Response

In defining its relationships with the U.S.S.R, Eastern European and the People's Republic of China, the United States is confronting the most important set of challenges since its response to the consolidation of Soviet power after World War II. For the last forty years, the doctrine understanding and addressing the challenge of the Soviet power an international communism has been containment and its derivatives -- "the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points." In settings like Eastern Europe and People's Republic of China, even support for Marxist-Leninist states that had broken with Soviet Union was undertaken, because the primary goal of U.S. foreign policy was to contain Soviet power.

Now the leader of Soviet Union has become the leader of reform in the communist bloc. The remarkable change in the foreign policy and domestic policies of the Soviet Union and many other Marxist-Leninist states calls into question the continuing validity of containment as the primary paradigm for addressing the Marxist-Leninist states. A new doctrine is required to guide U.S. policy because reality is moving beyond the situation envisioned by Kennan's analysis.

Throughout the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy has been characterized by buoyant activism. The US's pre-eminent role as leader of the West meant that it could shape the response to the Eastern bloc. Now as the next chapter of its relations with the communist world is being written, the United States 's response has been one of cautious indirection, benign neglect mixed with symbolic support for progressive forces within the Eastern bloc.

Several reasons can be offered to offered to explain U.S. conduct. First, divisions within the U.S. government over whether the Cold War is truly over may make doing nothing the preferred option. To stand pat is to split the difference between the factions in the bureaucracy. On the one side are marshalled the hardline realists who asked, "why help Gorbachev if such aid only benefits Soviet hardliners in the long run"? on the other side stand the softline idealists who argue that supporting change makes sure that the reformists will succeed.

Second, the administration may not want to undertake any initiative that could be perceived as interfering with the internal affairs of another state or that might threaten a reformer like Gorbachev or a conservative like Deng when their survival is perceived as coincident with U.S. national interest. A third explanation for the cautious strategy is the rapidity of the events unfolding in the communist world. Why reach into someone else's can of worms.

Finally, the Bush administration's chosen souse may be the result of a new international reality: the United States government no longer has the economic resources to take the lead. The recent economic summit in Paris was quite a revelation of the changing standing among the Western powers: President Bush transmitted Walesa's plea for economic aid; at Chancellor Kohl's suggestion the Western leaders decided to turn leadership of the search for a response to Poland's request over to Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission.

The most fundamental problem confronting U.S. foreign policy as it faces these momentous changes in the communist world is the lack of doctrine for mobilizing the government and public opinion around a set of options consistent with U.S. strategic interest, U.S. values, and the maintenance of U.S. economic power. A precondition for such a doctrine is answers to questions like the following:

What does the United States want to have happen to the Marxist-Leninist regimes? What is the theory guiding our understanding of what is going on in the communist world?
What is the relation between economic reform and political reform in these countries? Which comes first? Does it matter? How does the one define the limits of reform? Can too much reform be a bad thing?
Is there a point at which the demand for ethnic or regional autonomy goes too far? Would the breakup of Soviet Union or, for that matter, of China be a good outcome for the West?
What are the implications of these changes in Marxist-Leninist states for the international system, its leadership and stability? What kinds of events in the Eastern bloc could destabilize the international system? Does the West have the capacity to guide the process of transformation through a judicious package of carrots and sticks?
Who should lead the Western alliance in the effort to respond? Because Japanese and Germany coffers are filled to the brim, should they assume a leading role? Is either country capable of formulating a global vision with regard to changes in the communist bloc?
How will the West and especially the United States deal with its own domestic constituencies, such as human rights groups and business interests, in addressing these problems? How will it handle popular reaction to unpleasant events? Are Marxists-Leninist states differently situated with regard to U.S. strategic interests so that, for example, repression in China requires a different response than repression in Czechoslovakia. How can U.S. public be made to understand the diplomatic and strategic importance of such nuances? Can a fragmented government in the United States, with the executive and legislative branches often pursuing different foreign policies conduct an effective, coordinated policy?

It is in the context of this set of problems that the event in Tiananmen Square can be seen. Deng sought economic modernization without political liberalization. At Tiananmen he found himself unable to control the social forces that his policies had unleashed. In examining coverage of the Chinese case, this issue of the Clips addresses some of the policy dilemmas confronting the U.S. and the West as they react to change in the communist world.

Harry Kreisler