Kosygin's Second Thoughts

Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin has apparently spent most of his time with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson discussing the chances for peace in Vietnam. He must realize, along with most of the Red leaders in Eastern Europe, that as long as Communist China is preoccupied with its cultural revolution, the burden of supporting North Vietnam with arms and materiel will fall increasingly on the European bloc of Communism.

Kosygin, who has spent most of his career as an economic planner and administrator, is particularly attuned to the rising consumer demands in his country, and in the countries Eastern Europe. He probably feels that the mounting expense of aiding the anti-American forces is not justified by the immediate results. More important, it occupies a significant portion of the Soviet budget which he no doubt thinks could be better spent on domestic priorities.

At home, he confronts a situation analagous to the one which has hurt President Johnson. Russians and Americans have gradually come to expect, ever increasing amounts of government expenditures to improve internal social and economic conditions. The war has curtailed such appropriations. And citizens of both nations are undoubtedly having second thoughts about the economic wisdom of investing in a war of dubious strategic value, not to mention the moral and political implications.

Another factor that weighs heavily on the Russians mind is the chilling effect the war has had on the thaw in U.S. Russian relations of the Kennedy years. The Soviet Union can see that America is painfully evolving a policy which will work to her economic benefit.

The Russian leadership has several reasons to back some sort of negotiated settlement in Vietnam and further a détente with the U.S. It should be able to accept, as it did in Laos, a relatively stable non-aligned government in the South; it has never been very loud in supporting demands that all of Vietnam be reunified by force under Ho Chi Minh.

But the most significant statement Kosygin has made in London is that, as many commentators and diplomats have suggested recently, if American bombing of the North Stops, peace talks could get under way. That statement would seem to imply that some of the preconditions Hanoi had previously set for talks have been discarded. Recent reports from the North itself indicate that Hanoi's four-point formula no longer has to be accepted in its entirety before Ho enters talks. One of the four points-that the future affairs of South Vietnam must be settled according to the program of the National Liberation Front-has always been repugnant to the United States.

Kosygin, to his credit, has aparently conceded the futility of such a demand. For he, maybe Ho, realize that a twenty-year was culminating in victory is of little consolation at this time. The Soviet government has more pressing concerns than the possibility that a part of Vietnam may not become Communist. President Johnson would do well to appreciate Kosygin's attitude, stop the bombing, and end the war so that he, too, can get more done at Home.