The Far East

ON THE WORLD TODAY

BECAUSE the Philippines are such an unimpeded field for American action, there can be seen the emerging characteristics of American policy under the Truman administration. These characteristics are strongly conservative. They reflect both the machine politics of President Truman himself, and the Administration’s far-reaching appeasement of conservative Democrats and conservative Republicans.

Philippine independence will be inaugurated on July 4, and this will fulfill the letter of America’s commitment. Strong American influences helped to elect Manuel Roxas as the first president of the independent Philippines instead of President Osmeña. The maneuver is another example of our strongly conservative policy. Osmeña is a man of the right; Roxas stands much further to the right. In Philippine politics he is grouped with Andrés Soriano — MacArthur’s chief aide and political adviser in the Philippines — as a fellow-traveler of fascism and an ideological admirer of Franco.

Our preference for Roxas therefore underlines a growing consistency in Washington policy. In Europe, we shall continue to resort to every possible device to evade the issue of Franco Spain. While we do not want to be labeled as the friends of Franco, we feel that we must at all costs not allow ourselves to be identified with the enemies of Franco. In the Philippines, however, we are actually aiding the friends of Franco.

Special privilege for Americans

Not only are the outlines of policy becoming clear; even the details of method are being revealed. It is an essential characteristic of an independent country that no non-citizens should have advantages or privileges over other non-citizens. The same concept forms the very heart of the traditional American Open Door policy, whether applied in China or elsewhere.

Yet the Tydings and Bell Acts provide that Americans shall have advantages and privileges which are withheld from all other nationals. Only Filipinos and Americans are to be compensated for war damage, though in heavily damaged Manila a third of the loss was suffered by Chinese. The result of this discriminatory proposal would be to refinance the Americans and place them securely out of reach of their competitors.

In addition, it is proposed that the Philippines shall be required — in other words, ordered — to amend the important clause of their constitution stipulating a minimum of 60 per cent ownership by Philippine citizens in public utility corporations and corporations which exploit the public domain and natural resources. It is now proposed that Americans, but not other nationals, shall have equal rights with Filipinos in this respect.

Other moves were High Commissioner McNutt’s attempt to invalidate settlements of debts made during the Japanese occupation (which would have meant that American creditors could collect their debts in more valuable money), and his proposal to lift President Osmeña’s moratorium on debts. As there are more American creditors than debtors, this would have been yet another way of strengthening American economic interests at a time when Philippine economic interests are weak.

President Osmena protested strongly against some of these moves. President-elect Roxas has protested against nothing. The explanation is that Osmena was writing the last words of a chapter of Philippine history that is closing. Roxas is squaring away to write the first words of the new chapter.

As long as the Philippine independence movement involved a need for continuing pressures of manifold kinds, to hurry up the Americans, even conservative leaders had to mobilize not only right-wing support, but support from groups to the left. Habituated to this need, Osmena, though a representative of the landed interests, has been willing to make at least moderate concessions to the numerically strong tenant farmers.

Roxas, man of opportunity

With full independence in the Philippines there is an opportunity (one must distinguish between opportunity and need) for a new type of leader. A man can now make a career for himself if he will make it his aim to control the country instead of representing the people of the country. To achieve this aim he must have outside support, in order to be able to dispense with the essentially democratic process of welding together groups having varying interests.

Roxas has now come forward as such a man of opportunity. With American bases in the Philippines, troops will be at hand in an “emergency.” And with the American Congress in charge of tariffs and trade quotas, and with American financial and trading interests refinanced and given a head start, Roxas will not need to court his own people.

He will decide, on behalf of his American backers, who gets what. Therefore, the Philippines appear to be launched on a “banana republic” future — to use a phrase familiar to us from our dollar diplomacy in Central America and the Caribbean. The important consideration may be, not what happens to the Philippines, — for which we have a moral responsibility, — but what Asia is likely to deduce about American intentions in Asia.

Japanese policy (made in Missouri)

Japan is developing into an interesting halfway station of American policy. There have been murmurs about General MacArthur’s cordial relations with Roxas, Soriano, and the friends of the Spanish Falangists in the Philippines. But it can be said without hesitation that in Japan MacArthur has promoted representative government more successfully than Washington has promoted it in most other countries.

It sometimes appears that Washington has a trembly feeling that labor unions and leftist parties in foreign countries are a little too representative. In Japan, MacArthur has given them a clear field, weighting the odds against them only by holding the elections early enough to favor the old conservative machines against the hastily assembled leftist campaign machinery.

The maneuver worked to the extent that the Diet elected was very strongly conservative. A few Communists and other leftists, however, were elected by heavy votes in their individual constituencies. Since conservatives got wide representation with the aid of machine votes, while leftists got small representation backed by heavily concentrated votes, the Japanese Diet may be described as a trick thermometer which registers cold more than it ought to, and heat less than it ought to. We may therefore expect continuing leftist pressures in Japan greater than the leftist representation in the Diet would indicate.

The question-mark future of Japanese leftism and liberalism is a reminder that MacArthur, like other proconsuls of America’s new world-wide power, is sensitive about Russia. A Russian request for information about the MacArthur purge of politically undesirable Japanese was met with a panicky “Quick, the Flit!” filibuster by a MacArthur aide. MacArthur quickly changed his representative on the Allied Council for Japan, naming a civilian, the able George Acheson of the State Department, who is his political adviser.

One-way street

The incident had an important by-product in the further weakening of the American position on the handling of Japanese reparations, which has been badly bungled in a number of ways. The basic American case is that the disposal of Japanese assets as reparations is a matter of joint concern to all nations which played a major part in the defeat of Japan. This sound case has been undermined by an American tendency to be unilateral in method and hectoring in manner.

The Allied Council precedent in Japan implies that Russians may not question what Americans have done. Other precedents suggest a theory that Americans may query what Russians have done. Demands have been made that the Russians let in an American mission — not an international mission — to see exactly what the Red Army has done in North Korea and Manchuria.

The full record of American and Russian notes on the subject has not been published, but in the record, as far as it has been disclosed, there is a suggestion that China has complained to America, and America, on China’s behalf, to Russia. The procedure carries on and develops the tendency for the Chinese government to behave as if China were a protectorate rather than a fully sovereign country, and for the United States to treat it as such.

In the immediate circumstances it does not even occur to the American public, which feels friendly and protective toward China, to stop and think about the implications of this trend. In the long run the Chinese public, which has come out of the war flushed with nationalistic feeling, will react in a chip-on-the-shoulder way both against its own government and against America.

Korea, orphan of democracy

Korea is one of the saddest orphans of a democratic victory over imperialism. Supposedly, Korea is to become fully free in its internal administration and in its relations with other countries after only five years. If this program can be carried through, it will make an important break in the whole extensive log jam of colonial emancipation.

We have made about as bad a beginning as we could. The Russian military occupiers of the north and American military occupiers of the south have been told to work out an agreement with each other. In and of itself, such an approach is a cardinal error. What is needed is not agreement in Korea between . American and Russian generals, but agreement about Korea, in Washington and Moscow, between American and Russian policy-makers.

The situation illustrates, in its purest form, the most irritating problem in the whole scope of our international policy: Are the Korean, Manchurian, and Iranian situations the cause of bad relations between the Kremlin and the White House? Or are Korea, Manchuria, and Iran merely arenas in which we squabble as a result of the fact that there is no meeting of minds in Washington and Moscow?

The Roosevelt formula was: Agree in the world capitals, and apply in the peripheral areas the policies agreed on. The Truman formula seems to be: Turn on the heat in the peripheral areas, in order to force agreement in the world capitals.

In Manchuria we have a special variation of the pattern because here the Truman directive under which General Marshall operates is nearer to the old Roosevelt point of view. General Marshall himself is a heroic figure, and unfortunately a rather lonely figure, in his dogged insistence that there must not be a civil war in China, with one side backed by America and the other by Russia, and that the way to prevent it is to get an agreement at the top between the Chinese leaders. Afterwards the agreement can be applied in the field.

The Chinese muff a fast one

While General Marshall was in Washington for consultations, the Chinese Central Government tried to bring off a fait accompli — and lost. The Russians had said: Agree first, and then we will get out of Manchuria. The Chinese had retorted: Get out of Manchuria first, and then we will see if we can agree.

The Russians were outstaying their welcome, and though they hinted broadly that they were not “intervening” more than the Americans elsewhere, the world press and world opinion were against them. The evidence that they had stripped Manchurian factories made all the difference. In the second skirmish the Russians, giving way to Chinese insistence, pulled out — and did it so fast that the Chinese government, pushing against a door that was no longer barred, fell flat on its face.

The government had compounded its errors by failing to come to an agreement with the Communists before entering Manchuria, and by underestimating the obstinacy of the Manchurian Chinese, who strongly resent any attempt to impose on them a regime which they have not chosen. The government also counted too much on its ability to overawe Manchuria by sending in American-trained and American-equipped troops, with the hint that this meant American approval.

Reports now reiterate what ought to have been understood before. One of the strongest Communist propaganda appeals is that “Chinese should not fight Chinese.” The troops sent into Manchuria had thought that they were going to disarm Japanese. Thrown into combat, they were disgusted at taking part in a civil war, and some of them surrendered easily.

The present ascendancy of the Communists in Manchuria is just that — an ascendancy, not a mastery. It is an ascendancy created primarily by mistaken government policy, not by the persuasiveness of Communist arguments. The dominant factor in Manchuria is the Manchurian Chinese population. These people are anti-Japanese, anti-collaborationist, and against being pushed around by the National Government — but not separatist. They are not pro-Russian (the Russians contributed to that by their behavior during the occupation), and they by no means favor Communist forms of government.

If the Communists are to retain their present ascendancy, they will have to .do so by continuing to convince the local people that they have interests in common, not by trying to impose their own interests on those of the people. If the National Government wishes to retrieve its position, it will have to do so by making concessions to the demand for local selfgovernment, combined with the right of representation in national politics.

Since no one dominates Manchuria, stabilization of the situation by agreement is still possible, or at least is not impossible. The government, however, having risked a gamble and made a mistake, has had to accept its losses by conceding better terms to the Communists and to the local Manchurian “states’ rights” movement than would have been necessary if the mistaken show of force had not been attempted.