The Far East

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE MOSCOW Conference was an important step in the development of good relations between the United States and Russia. That process is more advanced in the Far East than it is in Europe, because in Asia it concerns mainly the two principals and is less complicated by the interests of the other great powers.

The dominant role that we played in the occupation of Japan for the first six months after V-J Day, whatever the measure of our success or failure, also made it easier to arrive at a modus operandi, because we avoided the impasse which four-power division of Germany presents. We could therefore share some of our responsibilities with other powers in an orderly and possibly constructive manner.

The question as to whether there should be any sharing is no longer debatable. It is clear to most people that the wretched, disorganized countries of the Far East can neither be ignored nor be restored to prosperity and order by our own unaided efforts. The important issue is the terms on which responsibility is shared.

Our policy, it appears, is to attract the Russians into as many international arrangements as possible, in order to break down Russia’s isolationist tendencies and long-standing suspicion of the Western powers.

The Russians made a measurable contribution to the defeat of Japan by holding down thousands of Japanese troops in Manchuria as well as by their final entry into the war. But even if the Russians had not lifted a finger to assist in the war against Japan, even if they had sold scrap iron and oil to our enemy, it would still be to our long-term interest to have them represented on the Allied Control Council in Tokyo and on the Far Eastern Advisory Commission in Washington.

In the pattern of developing world government, or at least world organization, the law will lag behind practice. We are building where and as we may, measuring success or failure by modest yardsticks. We are keeping close to political realities, knowing that the pace of the team is that of its slowest member.

The Moscow Conference broke the deadlock over the Far Eastern Advisory Commission, which the Soviet Union had formerly refused to join, and also made some provision for eliminating the division of Korea into two parts.

It did not solve the basic issues between us and the Soviet Union, but it at least provided the machinery through which they could be worked out. We arranged to tackle a common problem jointly, and in closer coöperation than we have so far achieved in Europe.

Capitalism or communism for Asia

It would be fatal to begin our joint work with the Russians without admitting frankly that we are trying to get along with a system of organized power vastly different from ours. Whatever we may have in common with the Russians as individuals, we have very little in common with them in institutions and political practices.

Moreover. Russian communism today is not the isolated and struggling movement it was a generation ago, when the Bolsheviks were arguing whether or not they could have socialism in one country only. We are faced more and more with the problem of whether or not we can have capitalism in one country only, for conventional capitalism is dead in Europe and greatly modified in England.

In most of Asia, and especially in China, there can hardly be reconstruction and rehabilitation without strong and continuous government control and planning. The only lasting basis for world peace lies in the development of world economic security. How are we going to get along with an economic system so radically different from our own?

In practice the problem comes down to the immediate question of those Far Eastern countries in which the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States have varying interests. We can better understand what is going on in Asia if we admit the differences in the way the great powers project themselves to their weaker neighbors.

Colonial dependence

The British, the Dutch, and the French, who were largely responsible for the economic and political pattern of Far Eastern countries before the war, have brought to a high level of development the colonial relations which still persist in southeastern Asia and Indonesia. By political control the home countries secured the benefits of unequal exchange of cheaply produced raw materials and expensively manufactured goods.

In varying degrees, sometimes willingly and sometimes not, they prepared the colonies for eventual emancipation. But because of the relative decrease in military and economic strength of the home countries, Britain, Holland, and France are much more dependent upon their colonies than formerly, and therefore much less willing to let them go, unless they have guarantees of world trade unhampered by high tariffs and free of restrictions due to violent economic nationalism.

American sentiment is largely anti-imperialist and acutely aware of some of the contrasts in the Pacific. It is embarrassingly obvious, for example, that after forty years of Japanese occupation, plus five years of international trusteeship, the people of Korea are to be considered fit for independence, while the Indonesians, after three hundred years of Dutch rule, are not. The Koreans are vociferous in their objections over even the five-year delay.

The new American imperialism

In our concern for the independence of other countries, we are expressing the best parts of the American tradition. But in taking steps to ensure that countries such as China shall develop along democratic lines on the American pattern, we are not always aware that to countries such as Russia, which have different ideas of political organization, our actions are viewed as an extension of American imperialist influence.

The Truman statement on our China policy is, in this connection, a significant declaration of foreign policy. For the first time we went on record with a modification of our age-old policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, by stating that, “ a breach of the peace anywhere in the world threatens the peace of the entire world.”

From this premise Mr. Truman argued that it is a vital interest of the United States and all the United Nations that the people of China overlook no opportunity to adjust their internal differences promptly by methods of peaceful negotiation.

This definition of our attitude towards civil disturbances in other countries is a further contribution — of which the statement by Robert H. Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States at the war trials, was the first — to the development of a theory of world government.

If men can be punished for crimes against humanity, then there must be a body, presumably “humanity,” against which the crimes are committed. President Truman’s doctrine says in effect that “ humanity ” shall act to prevent as well as to punish crimes.

Our idea of relations with other countries, stripped of political idealism, is to use all our influence to make them as similar to ourselves as possible in order the better to trade and live with them. Of the three main approaches now current in foreign relations, we think it is the most humane, the most flexible, and potentially the most conducive to political stability in colonial areas.

How the Russians work

The Russians have left no doubts as to the way in which they deal with their immediate neighbors. They believe in a satellite policy. They destroy the ruling groups where necessary and set up their own friends in power by direct and ruthless means. Beyond the ring of satellite states they play a straight power-politics game, undisturbed by the political coloration of the actors if their ends can ultimately be achieved.

In China, for example, they have supported both Chungking and Yenan at the same time, and in different ways. Their approach to the Japanese problem is entirely different from ours, for they work by remaking the social system, not by using the existing groups.

Much of our problem in dealing with the Russians is due to the contrast between their methods and the methods we are willing to use. We want entirely different things from what the Russians want, and go about getting them in ways entirely different from theirs.

We put a premium on political and social stability; we really want people to fashion their own way in political freedom, but with democratic methods. Our approach demands a high level of political participation, freedom of information, and economic competition.

The Russians go in for monopolistic political and economic systems, a low level of political participation, controlled information, and professional leadership of social change. They use the fait accompli. They know how to organize, control, and manipulate political power, and how to coördinate it with economic and military power.

Democracy, as Churchill once put it, is not a harlot to be picked up in the streets. The development of our way of life takes time, education, constant vigilance, a specific economic system. Democracy may vary from country to country, but certain conditions must exist or it disappears altogether. There must be a certain minimum of civil liberties, the rule of law, freedom of access to information, freedom of association.

Do these ideas, for which we fought, have any appeal in Asia? Can people who believe in them survive against the techniques of organized power as developed by the Communists?

It seems clear that a struggle for influence between Russia and ourselves will take place in the realm of social and political movements within other countries. This means that the really important facts about Asia are not statistics but attitudes, not political forms but political movements, not social conventions but social forces.

What we want

It is with the whole peoples, not merely the governments, of Asia that we shall have to deal if we are going to keep up with the Russians and find a way of living with them. It is commonly argued that the Russians know what they want and, with their monolithic state structure, go about getting it in a brilliantly integrated manner, and that the United States does not know what it wants.

The facts do not support this view, in spite of our admitted shortcomings. We took the leadership in setting up the Pacific Commission and the Allied Council, thus opening up the way to coöperation with the U.S.S.R. on terms much more constructive than those arrived at in Europe. The Truman statement of policy on China is forthright, honest, and politically adroit. No other country has produced anything to compare with it.

When the Siamese found themselves embroiled with the British in December over the terms on which they should end their war with the British Empire, the United States took a firm stand in protecting Siam’s sovereignty and brought about a modification of British demands.

We must continue to accommodate ourselves to the facts. If we are going to survive, the essential things we believe in must be acceptable to the rest of the world; they must have the vitality to attract men everywhere. The acceptance and projection of this attitude towards the highly complex and rapidly changing conditions of Asia is the first task of our government.

We do not mean that we should flaunt our virtues or beliefs in a sort of righteous exhibitionism before the world, as Pericles did before Sparta. We should then deservedly suffer the same fate as Athens. Rather we should accept our ideas for what they are — the most revolutionary and difficult of achievement in the world today — and express them in every way possible, but especially through a purposeful and integrated foreign policy.

Ideals versus the facts

There are some signs that we are beginning to face facts. The addition of an information arm to the Department of State is presumably in recognition of the new situation. The day has gone when we could afford to leave the understanding of America and American policies to the news agencies, whose purpose is to sell, not to inform; to the movies, which are geared to American tastes; to the irregular and accidental export of books, magazines, and American tourists.

If our policies can bear the light of day, why not put the genius of American publicity techniques behind them? We did it to keep allies during the war — why not to get allies for the peace? We must bear in mind that an information arm can be no better than the policies which guide it.

The Pearl Harbor investigation has brought out the lack of integration, before the war, of our political and military power. The danger of such lack of integration is patent. Since the war it has been a natural tendency for the War Department to correct this weakness by bringing all its influence to bear on the formulation of policy both at home and abroad. In fact, in the Far East nearly all of our policy-making representatives are generals; MacArthur, Marshall, Wedemeyer, and Hodge.

The Department of State has been slow to recover its pre-war position. The Moscow Agreement is important as the first big policy arrangement made for the Far East by the State Department acting in its own right. No good thing can come out of a fight between War and State. But there is every advantage in a continuation of the high degree of coöperation achieved between them during the war.