ON public occasions, including Communist Party Congresses, Nikita Khrushchev exudes confidences, pretends to see the imminent "downfall of capitalism and the establishment of Communism." But a hard-eyed realist in the Communist camp must recognize what many a Western pessimist does not: the cold war is by no means going all Russia's way. Area by area, the real view from Moscow shapes up something like this:
∙WESTERN EUROPE. Soon after World War II, Western Europe seemed ripe for Communism. Yet France has not had a Communist in its Cabinet since May 1947; the Italian Communist Party, biggest in the West, has shrunk from a peak of 2,500,000 to 1,700,000 last year. Economically, Free Europe is in an unprecedented boom and moving toward political unity—the result of a remarkable alliance between capitalism and democratic socialism. All of this confounds Leninist-Stalinist dogma, which in 1952 predicted that the industrially advanced nations would destroy themselves in a shooting war over foreign markets. The combined industrial potential of Western Europe, the U.S. and Britain will for an indefinite period far outweigh the potential of the Red bloc.
∙ASIA. Moscow engineered the neutralization of Laos, and is forcing the U.S. to pour even more military aid—possibly even troops—into shaky South Viet Nam. But also in Asia, Red China's immense economic crisis will surely force a cutback in industrial goals, just as the 1958 crop failure required a drastic revision downward of the "Great Leap Forward." In the Philippines, Burma and Malaya, Communist rebellions have been almost completely erased. Perhaps more important, spectacular industrial gains in Japan have undercut the influence of the divided local Communist Party and moderated the anti-Americanism of the left-wing Socialists, which reached a peak two years ago when anti-U.S. riots forced Ike to cancel his visit. And in India, while aging Nehru's neutralism is still highly irritating to the U.S., the country's atmosphere has lately been more friendly toward the West.
∙AFRICA. In the newly independent states of Africa, the ruling political spirit is extreme nationalism with often vicious or childish anti-Western overtones, but this does not necessarily mean that these new countries are going Communist. Moscow may find it difficult to bind this willful, unpredictable force to a Soviet-made troika, even in the cases of such left-leaning states as Ghana, Guinea and Mali, which sent "observers" to the Communist Party Congress. Nigeria, the most stable former colony south of the Sahara, and the Brazzaville group of twelve former French territories are especially suspicious of Red intentions. The Congo, once Moscow's sharpest spearhead in Africa, may be inching toward stability even though Communist embassies are reappearing in Leopoldville.