from
Public Philosopher; Selected letters of Walter Lippmann
Edited by John Morton Blum.
New York, Ticknor & Fields, 1985, pp. 612-613.

Letter to Dean Rusk

September 22, 1964

Dear Dean:

I had lunch with Ambassador Dobrynin on Monday at the Soviet Embassy. After some chat about our election campaign, I told him that what was worrying me was the effect of the Soviet-Chinese quarrel on Soviet relations with this country and with the Western powers. Would Moscow feel that, to preserve its position in the Communist world, it had to move closer to the hard Chinese line?

His immediate retort was to ask me what would be the American line about agreements with the U.S.S.R. after the election was over. I said I supposed we would want to go on with the search for agreements which would lessen the tension. But why did he not answer my question? He then said that coexistence with the United States was an unchangeable Soviet policy — it was "the law" — but it would mean a great deal to the government whether we in our turn showed ourselves willing to negotiate further agreements.

About everything? I asked. Well, he replied, we have "principles" which we cannot give up. Such as? "We cannot let Cuba be attacked . . . we are on the side of peoples fighting colonial rule."

Then I asked him if he thought the Sino-Soviet conflict could be composed. He was non-committal and appeared to be puzzled about this. And then I asked him if it were composed, would it be on Chinese or Soviet lines. "It would be composed," he said, "only on the Soviet policy of coexistence." He then asked me whether I thought the U.S.A. would ever change its attitude towards China by changing its policy in Taiwan. I told him he must know that we would never abandon Taiwan, but that, personally, I thought it conceivable that eventually there could and would be some arrangement for the guaranteed independence and neutralization of Taiwan.

My net impression was that he very much wants resumption of the improving relations which had evolved since October 1962, but that on the record, the U.S.S.R. will oppose us verbally and by parliamentary maneuvers in the UN on issues affecting Southeast Asia, Cyprus, Cuba, the Congo,' etc.

I enjoyed our talk the other day.

NOTES:

1. Anatoly F. Dobrynin, then Soviet ambassador to the United States.
2. With the peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis.
3. The United States had at this time increased the size of its forces in South Vietnam; the Greeks and Turks, both members of NATO, were contending for increased control in Cyprus; relations between the United States and Cuba, still the recipient of continual Soviet aid, remained tense and suspicious, particularly because of Cuban intentions to expand the revolution elsewhere in the Americas; and rival factions continued to struggle in the Congo, where the parties preferred by the West were gaining the upper hand.