The only way peace could be accepted as a Soviet trading motive would be to define peace as the Soviet leaders themselves have defined it in the past, not in their propaganda but in their party teachings.
“The peace policy of the proletarian state,” according to a Comintern Congress resolution of 1928, “certainly does not imply that the Soviet state has become reconciled with capitalism ... It is merely ... a more advantageous form of fighting capitalism, a form which the U.S.S.R. has consistently employed since the October Revolution.”
Lenin, in a statement which was reprinted in 1943, said that “every ’peace program’ is a deception of the people and piece of hypocrisy unless its principal object is to explain to the masses the need for a revolution, and to support, aid, and develop the revolutionary struggle of the masses that is starting everywhere. ...”
There is no evidence that the new Soviet regime has overnight embraced free-world ideas about peace and warfare. To the disciples of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, the world is always in a state of warfare. The warfare waged by them is three-fold: psychological, economic, and military. Military action is a last resort, but psychological and economic action never ceases. Stalin did not invent this concept, though he put it into action on a large scale. Nor was it exclusively Russian. The German military philosopher, Clausewitz, whose mid-19th century writings were carefully noted by Lenin and Stalin, wrote: “Disarm your enemy in peace by diplomacy and trade, if you would conquer him more readily on the field of battle.”
A Mixture of Motives
Hence the question arises: Can the Soviet trade offensive be explained as a campaign of “economic warfare”?
That depends on what is meant by economic warfare.
Paradoxically, many people think of economic warfare as meaning economic action in which economic considerations are relatively unimportant, and the gaining of political or psychological advantage is dominant.
If economic warfare is taken in this sense, the answer to our question is “no”. The explanation of the Soviet trade offensive is not that simple. The Soviet Union and its satellites have economic needs. They use foreign trade to serve those needs. We have noted in this report how they determine what imports they want from the free world, and then develop a program of exports to pay for the imports. They are not in the Olympian position of being able to pick and choose these imports and exports solely on the basis of whether the choice will help them deceive, confuse, embarrass, or divide the capitalistic West. Therefore it is a grave oversimplification to assume, as some people do, that the Soviet Communist’s every action in the market places of the world inevitably brings him advantages in international politics.
On the other hand it would be an even greater mistake to assume that economic considerations always govern; that because the Soviet-bloc governments often use normal trading channels and devices they must be looking upon trade through the same eyes as the businessman of Indianapolis, Manchester, or Stockholm; and that politeness at the bargaining table is the undoubted mark of innocently “economic” commerce, free of ulterior motives.