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p The change in the world balance of power in favour of socialism, at work now for several decades, is a natural and irreversible process. It does not, however, develop in a straight line, rather it has to contend, interact and clash 95 with the various forces functioning in the world, particularly in the struggle between socialism and imperialism in all its diverse forms.

p Besides the general trend outlined above, it is possible that shifts due to changes in the political situation will influence the struggle. Imperialist forces endeavour to use the multiplicity and complexity of modern international relations to maintain their positions and prevent the forces of socialism and social progress from improving their positions. They try to undermine socialism both in individual countries and on a worldwide scale, to manipulate the contradictions, difficulties and mistakes that crop up as world socialism develops. Now and then they attain a certain amount of success, managing to gain a temporary shift in the balance of power in their favour—not on a global scale but locally, at one of the various sectors of international relations.

p Indicative in that respect is the development of international events in the early 1960s, associated primarily with the changes within the socialist system. At that time the complicated nature of the notion of balance of power was very much in evidence. The events of those years showed the mounting importance of such an element in the correlation of forces between the two systems as the situation reigning inside the world socialist system. After socialism had become a world system and consolidated its international positions, the mutual relations between the socialist states came to have more and more importance in the world balance of power.

p The internal unity and absence of antagonistic contradictions is an important advantage of socialism over capitalism. As Lenin put it “private property divides people ... whereas labour unites them”.  [95•*  The friendship and solidarity of the socialist states play an exceedingly important part as a source of the strength of each socialist state. Moreover, because of the extensive and all-round co-operation between these countries, the importance of the socialist community in the world balance of power as a whole very much surpasses the simple arithmetical sum of the strength of the individual 96 states. Conversely, any temporary weakening of the internal strength and unity of the world socialist system has an adverse effect on the international situation, weakens the socialist position and enhances the possibilities of imperialism. The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev, analysing the results of the political course of the Chinese leaders, said in June 1969: “There has arisen a new situation which is having a grave negative influence on the whole world situation and the conditions of the struggle of the anti-imperialist forces.”  [96•* 

p The imperialists attach great importance to using the current foreign policy orientation of the Chinese leaders in the political struggle against world socialism and the liberation movement, and they make virtually no effort to conceal this. A prominent American diplomat, Robert Murphy mentions this point with satisfaction.  [96•**  In their book Power and Impotence. The Failure of America’s Foreign Policy, the American writers E. Stillman and W. Pfaff also stress that “the net effect of Chinese assertions within the communist movement has aided the United States, not harme.d it”.  [96•***  The anti– Soviet and splitting position of the present Chinese leadership and the manifestations of individual nationalistic trends in some socialist countries are being used by bourgeois propaganda to assert that world communism is being eroded, or that it indicates a reversal in the balance of power.

p Imperialism also strives to make use of the new stage in the national liberation movement, to take advantage of the fact that Asian and African countries which have obtained their national sovereignty are interested in gaining financial, technical and food assistance from capitalist countries. The social differentiation within the developing countries, the expansion of their economic ties with the major capitalist states and the downfall of progressive regimes in some developing countries are bound to have an effect on the overall international balance of power.

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p The temporary difficulties within the world socialist system and the national liberation movement are being exploited by imperialist powers in order to activate an aggressive policy. Aggression is organically part of imperialism, but it rears its head differently in different circumstances. In a situation that is not conducive to imperialism the chances of launching imperialist aggression are limited. Imperialism normally retreats when faced by a superior force. For the sake of saving its skin, it has to reckon with reality. In other circumstances, the aggressive nature of imperialism has greater scope for action, as is evident from the history of international relations in recent years.

p During the 1960s, these aggressive tendencies in the policy of the United States and some other imperialist states (the war in Vietnam, Israeli incursions into Arab territory, the escalation of American aggression into Cambodia and Laos) were due not to an absolute growth in its power, but to other factors, including some temporary difficulties being faced by progressive forces.

p Many imperialist ideologists made haste to claim that the balance of power was changing in favour of capitalism. While, for example, Walter Lippmann was cautious in expressing this idea, maintaining that the world balance of forces in the early sixties was becoming rather more favourable to the Western community, other authors shouted from the roof tops about the “super might” of the United States. An illustration of such hasty and superficial conclusions is an article by the French journalist René Dabernat entitled “There Is Only One Super Power”, published in Le Monde on October 27, 1965. Elsewhere, the same paper wrote, “We have now entered a world of a monopoly type, in which one sole super nation dominates the others to such an extent that it finds itself more or less in a position of hegemony.”  [97•* 

p Yet a deeper study of reality refutes these conclusions. It would, of course, be wrong to deny that certain difficulties exist within the socialist system. It would be just as wrong, however, to see these processes as an indication of organic 98 weakness of world socialism, or to talk of capitalism gaining the upper hand in the balance of power.

p The problems within the world socialist system differ in nature from the contradictions at work in the imperialist camp and can be overcome as world socialism develops and grows stronger. It is indicative that the political course of the “Left”-wing splitters was condemned by Communist and Workers’ Parties throughout the world, in particular, at the International Meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1969. The Meeting made it quite clear that the Soviet Union remains the leading force in the socialist system, and that its military, economic and political strength are the foundation of the world balance of forces that is favourable to socialism.

p One must bear in mind that the decisive influence is being exerted by factors that conditioned the main trend in the changes in favour of socialism and to the detriment of capitalism. Since the middle of the 1960s, the Soviet Union and most socialist countries have implemented important economic measures and have once more attained economic growth which greatly exceed those of the capitalist countries. As a result, the share of the socialist countries in world industrial output increased around 27 per cent in 1955 to roughly 38 per cent in 1967, with the Soviet Union accounting for 20 per cent.  [98•* 

p Important events in the military and technological sphere in recent years have affected the Soviet-American competition. Despite the forced pace of nuclear-missile production by the United States at the start of the 1960s, the Soviet Union, as American sources admit, has considerably strengthened its defence capacity both in quantity and quality ( particularly in total megatonnage, intercontinental ballistic missiles, underwater launched missiles, strategic bombers, space satellites and anti-missile defence). As a result, despite the continuing growth of American military strength, most Western experts consider that a global dynamic equilibrium still exists between Soviet and American armed forces. Now, as 99 shown, in particular, by the results of the Soviet-American talks in May 1972, official US circles also base themselves on recognition of the strategic equilibrium. This important element in the international situation continues to restrict any opportunity and the likelihood of direct aggression by imperialism against world socialism as a whole.

p The centrifugal tendencies within the imperialist camp are of advantage in international affairs to socialism and other progressive forces; these tendencies include a deepening of inter-imperialist contradictions, the erosion of the foundations of the aggressive military blocs, the weakening of the dependence of many capitalist countries on the United States, and the appearance of “polycentrism” within the imperialist system. Virtually in every serious international crisis and conflict, the socialist countries and the national liberation movement are today faced not by a united front of imperialist powers but primarily by American imperialism.

p The consistent peaceful policy of the Soviet Union and other socialist states promotes these tendencies and encourages a change in the whole structure of the international relations that developed during the cold war period. The trend towards an easing of tension in Europe—the main area of direct confrontation between the major forces of the two world systems—has been a fact of paramount importance in recent years.

p The course of international relations over the past few years shows the utter untenability of the claims by imperialist ideologists and politicians that a single super power, the United States, dominates the world. Under pressure of facts, most bourgeois authors have had to recant and admit that the imperialist powers do not have the upper hand militarily over the world socialist system.

Typically, there has been a growing activity recently in the purely political sphere by medium-sized and small states, sometimes even in the face of opposition by the US imperialists, and a relative limitation of American opportunities actively to affect the course of international events. There is, however, a certain danger in the mounting relative independence of these smaller nations in international affairs, inasmuch as conflicts between them may nolens volens act as

100 a detonator of a new world war; at the same time, fresh opportunities arise in the struggle against the most aggressive forces of contemporary imperialism. Back in 1916, Lenin wrote: “The dialectics of history are such that small nations, powerless as an independent factor in the struggle against imperialism, play a part as one of the ferments, one of the bacilli, which help the real anti-imperialist force, the socialist proletariat, to make its appearance on the scene.”  [100•*  The international action of the Soviet Union, “a real anti– imperialist force”, and the other socialist states has led to the growing relative independence of smaller countries in the world alignment of forces and in world politics. And this enhanced role is attributable not to military factors (in some cases they are purely economic and in others—political and moral).

p In these circumstances, to reduce the whole host of modern international relations merely to a bipolar system and to a struggle between two powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, as certain bourgeois writers only recently were doing, is to distort and oversimplify the international situation.

p The present international situation is extremely complex and features a multiplicity of forces which have their own axes to grind and conduct their own policy. Their action is certainly not always susceptible to control by the main forces in the world today.

p The present international situation confirms the view of the American foreign policy expert Harlan Cleveland in that ”. . .international politics is not a zero-sum game in which an inch gained by one player must mean an inch lost by an- other”.  [100•** 

p For example, the interests of such new “centres of power" as the European Economic Community far from always coincide with those of the United States; neither do the specific interests of individual states.

p Earlier, when cold war ideologists could simply fit the world balance of power into a bipolar scheme, the 101 elaboration and evaluation of a country’s foreign policy did not present a variegated compexity, and its policy was conspicuous for its straightforwardness. Nowadays, however, when the alignment of forces is much more complex, the foreign policy of individual countries is much more difficult to follow; it takes a more winding course, plays a relatively independent part in world affairs and is difficult to calculate. Seemingly, all this confirms the ideas of those who speak about an end of the bipolar era, about polycentrism and even the chaotic development of international relations. However, if we go deeper, if we analyse the root processes of world development, as the CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties do, and we see the class essence of international relations, then it is impossible not to recognise that the increasing polycentric tendencies do not remove the basic contradiction of the contemporary world, its division into two systems, nor does it diminish the role of the balance of power between them. Despite all the changes and zigzags of international development, the battle between socialism and capitalism and the correlation of forces between them constitute, as before, the most profound objective bases of the world alignment of forces.

p The sharp increase in the part which economic and scientific and technological rivalry between the two systems now plays in the class struggle between socialism and capitalism has been mentioned in the Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the 24th Party Congress.

p The Soviet Union’s greater position in the world today results not simply from its military and economic strength but also from its moral and political prestige. The advantages of socialism associated with the furtherance of socialist democracy, socialist humanism and socialist internationalism acquire ever greater importance in this process. The more successfully the noble ideas of communism are embodied in the daily life of the socialist countries, the more they attract other peoples and the wider are the possibilities for the Soviet Union and other socialist states to act in an effective and vigorous way in the international arena; and conversely. Leonid Brezhnev has said: “The way things shape out in our country, the successes in communist construction 102 largely determine the scale and depth of the influence exerted by the Soviet Union’s foreign policy on the international situation.”  [102•*  In turn, the success of socialist foreign policy guarantees the most favourable conditions for a further growth in the forces of world socialism and for greater attainments in building a new social system.

p On the whole, the alignment and correlation of forces in the world today are extremely complex, mobile and, sometimes, contradictory. Nevertheless, neither the fluctuations nor the arrival of new forces on the scene can mask the basic tendency towards a change in the balance of power in favour of socialism and against capitalism. This trend undeviatingly makes its way through a mass of chance diversions and temporary vacillations, for it is conditioned by the action of invincible deep-going social forces and reflects the objective laws of history. Let capitalism flatter itself by giving itself the edge in measuring Soviet and American relative military strength. The real world balance of power, understood by Lenin as “a correlation of real forces of all classes in all states”, has irreversibly shifted and continues to change in favour of socialism. That is the direction taken both by the objective laws of history discovered by Marx, Engels and Lenin and by subjective factors such as the classconscious and purposive activity of the advanced social forces in the world, and the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and other socialist states.

p A resolution of the CPSU Central Committee Plenary Meeting of June 26, 1969, says: “Soviet Union’s foreign policy is playing and will continue to play a major part in the general struggle of the anti-imperialist forces and in strengthening the might and unity of the socialist community, and serve as an effective instrument for undermining imperialist aggressive schemes, maintaining peace and asserting the principles of peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems and support for the popular liberation struggle.”  [102•** 

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In summarising the period of international development in the latter part of the 1960s, the CPSU 24th Congress stated that the Soviet Union and the fraternal socialist countries “have exerted a growing influence on a further change in the balance of forces in the world arena in favour of peace, democracy and socialism”.  [103•*