ABSTRACT
Since national liberation was conceived by Lenin as a conflict of wits, it is in the field of psychological warfare—the contest for public confidence as to which side is likely to win—that the defence encounters its most taxing dilemmas. The dilemmas caused by indirect methods centre on processes of modernisation and of democratisation. It was an essential element in the Zhdanov strategy to confront developing countries, excolonial or other, with national liberation before they had completed either of these processes. The commonest of all tactical dilemmas is the police officer's nightmare: how much force to use in any incident. All Marxist Leninists are trained to provoke strong action, if possible against the innocent, and to insist that arrest of a rioter who is a trade unionist or a mullah amounts to government suppression of trade unionism or of Islam.
