The Pacific War

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE Quebec Conference is likely to be as important to the Pacific war as was Casablanca to the European. The creation of Lord Louis Mountbatten’s command hardens one of the softest parts of the ring around Japan; it brings into focus one of the most neglected areas in the conflict — Burma, Thailand, Indo-China, and Malaya. It commits the Allies to an offensive on the mainland of Asia. The long plea of China for a campaign in Burma has at last been answered — at least by declaration of intention. The creation of this command fulfilled a promise made many months ago.

The Southeast Asia Command, by drawing our attention from the fighting in the Southwest Pacific, reminds us that one of the roads to Tokyo starts on the borders of India. We have to operate across the Indian Ocean from naval bases in Ceylon. We have to fight our way across or around some of the most difficult mountain country in Asia.

The appointment of Lord Mountbatten is a good one. He is a man without any Far Eastern past, and therefore free from slowly ripened prejudices about that area. He is young enough to combine experience with flexibility and resourcefulness. He is a cousin of the King, and therefore likely to get the fullest measure of support for the enterprise.

China fills the vacuum

The decisions of the Quebec Conference, in so far as they affect the Far East, reopen the whole question of the relations between East and West. For over a year and a half the prestige of the Western empires in the Far East had fallen to such an extent that it was low even in the United States. The retreat of the British and the Dutch and the collapse of the French left a vacuum in Asia in which Japan went unchallenged except for the voice of our one Asiatic ally, China.

I luring these long months the only leadership offered to the people of continental Asia was that from Chungking. Now that we ourselves have to face the political problems connected wdth our return to the Asiatic mainland, we may see in better perspective the contribution that Chiang Kai-shek in particular has made to our cause in that part of the world.

In a series of statements which deserve far more attention than they received, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek maintained during this period the dignity of the Allied cause and attempted to define its purposes. In his address to the people of Thailand and in his more recent speech of July fj of this year, Chiang Kai-shek has given as much expression to the hopes and aspirations of Asiatic peoples as was possible within the context of the United Nations.

A new view of Asia

The organization which will deal with political warfare within Lord Mountbatten’s command will involve a part of the world which for long has been an extension of the European political system.

In our own State Department, French Indo-China is listed under the European branch and Burma under the Middle East. Whatever the iniquities of Japanese rule, the Japanese have created for us a political problem of no small proportion. It is not necessary to exa£gerate the importance of the Indian Independence Army organized under the leadership of Bose, or to exaggerate the reality of Burma’s “gift of independence.” in order to realize that we must look on this area of the world with new eyes.

This is no conflict in wThich open covenants can be easily arrived at during the course of operations. Those who now demand the blueprints for the new Pacific order should remind themselves of the complexity of the political arrangements that Japan destroyed.

The silence of responsible officials in London and Washington on the disposal of peoples and territories after the defeat of Japan is not in itself an indication of reactionary tendencies. It is much more an indication of lack of thought and preparation. The dilemma of Germany has been before us for many years, but there has been comparatively little thinking in concrete detail about the problem of Japan. Our study of it is progressing; through several government agencies we are preparing for military government, for relief, and for reconstruction. But these preparations are only at an elementary stage and are far from being coordinated.

There is, as yet, no new framework of agreed political principles by which we can measure the hopes to be held out to subjugated populations. It is not too early, however, to anticipate the defeat of Japan, at least in some of the more populous territories she now holds.

When Japan goes down

Do we proceed on the assumption that the Japanese Empire will be reoccupied, piece by piece, until the homeland is reached? Or would it be wiser to anticipate a collapse of the Japanese homeland? Do we prepare our minds for Russian intervention in the later stages? Is it possible that Japan may yet give up before Germany?

The relative positions of the United Nations in the Far East would naturally differ under these differing circumstances. To take but one assumption: if Hitler were defeated first and Holland were restored to her former position in Europe, the Dutch would be able to play a much more independent role in the Pacific. Certainly it is difficult to discover any general principles which cover all these contingencies and in the light of which specific appeals can be addressed both to free and to subjugated peoples in Asia.

The principle of legitimacy received such a bad name through Japan’s dealings with China that it does not fall on fertile soil. The principle of self-determination is not one which can he put into effect at the present stage for all the peoples with whom wre shall deal. By the time we return, Japan will have created sufficient political confusion to make intelligent appeals in Western terms a difficult business.

The co-misery sphere

Japan is creating such economic misery in the outer zone of her empire that the first necessity will be economic rehabilitation rather than political reconstruction. It is more likely that the appeal which will carry the most weight among subjugated peoples will not be the Four Freedoms m the abstract, but freedom from want in particular.

Compelled by shipping and transportation difficulties, as well as by the changing fortunes of war, to give up her earlier dream of an integrated Co-prosperity Sphere, Japan is forced to make Burma, Malaya, and other territories as self-sufficient as possible. This she can do only by allowing thousands to die and by drastic reductions in the standard of living — reductions which are partly responsible for the epidemics of cholera and plague. Meanwhile Japan is telling the people of Southeast Asia, whose economy was bound up with that of the world, that they owe this opportunity to achieve self-sufficiency to the generosity of the Japanese.

The new colonial burden

The responsibilities, therefore, of the colonial powers have increased as their prestige has declined. The truth of the matter is that the Japanese have put back the clock in large parts of Asia in such a way that when we return we shall be compelled to take charge of peoples who under normal circumstances might have been ready for some measure of selfgovernment. No native government will be able to undertake the sanitary and public health measures which wall be necessary even to protect our own troops.

All this partly explains the curious state of our thinking about Asia. Early in 1943 it was widely assumed that the colonial system was bankrupt and would never come back; today it is assumed that the British will return to Malaya and Burma, that they will have a large say in the disposition of Thailand and French Indo-China, and that the Dutch will return to the Netherlands East Indies.

As for ourselves, whether we recover the Philippines before or after 1946, when they are due to receive independence, a great deal of American assistance will be both necessary and welcome. Responsible officials of the United States, at least in public, are taking no stand on the colonial issue as it affects areas other than the Philippines: our attitude is mainly a hangover from an earlier period.

What of the Philippines?

The whole question of the Philippines must be thought out anew. Political freedom, as such, is not the most important issue. The real question is the relation of the Philippine commonwealth to the rest of the world. We geared the economy of the Islands to our own, and then gave them the promise of a political independence which, when achieved, would have thrown them into economic disaster. The Japanese have changed that economy to fit their own. What are we going to do about it when we return? The key to our planning, for both the war and the peace, is the honest realization that the Asia we are accustomed to thinking about no longer exists.

The horror, devastation, destruction, and disease which will lie in the wake of Japanese retreat will demand our control whether we like it or not. The minds of men will have been warped grotesquely by years of terror and lies. The native leadership which had developed under the Western empires will have been either eliminated or defiled. No competent native bureaucracy will survive Japanese rule.

One of the tragedies of this war is that Japan in the name of freeing Asia has not only made it necessary for the West to conquer it again, but has also undone the constructive achievements, modest as they were, of Western imperialism.

No wonder we are approaching the problems of the East with reserve and caution. There are no readymade answers, no political slogans that have any relation to political realism.

Who is responsible for Asia?

The first step to end the chaos of Asia is not the invention of slogans for a billion subjugated people, but the formulation of our own intentions towards them. In this connection the shape of things to come can be deduced from the practices of Allied military government and relief and rehabilitation operations. It is too early as yet to see the pattern, but not too soon to state the choice. The choice is between a return to nineteenth-century imperialism and a new type of combined operations, which will strive to elevate to political maturity a large part of the human race.

Pressure to make that choice and to formulate it in acceptable terms comes mainly from our ally, China. Our past is such that, if we do not clarify our attitude towards the future, we shall continue to be judged by that past. The Mountbatten command argues an Anglo-American responsibility for the future of Southeastern Asia. The decision taken at Quebec restores to some extent the balance of Western influence in the East. While China welcomes military assistance, she is all the more anxious to know whether she is to share in, or compete with, the new political responsibility. The Chinese can undoubtedly make considerable contributions to the campaign if we encourage them to do so.

But the Chinese will naturally time their offensive according to their judgment of our intentions towards them. The Burma Road may well be reopened, but it will be some time before any considerable military assistance can be given to China, except in the air. Even now, only two or three thousand tons a month are going over the Himalayas. The tide of war will probably swing around Southeast Asia and not penetrate far inland.

Realistic leadership now holds back China’s last great reserves until the Japanese have been dealt a much more serious blow than they have yet received. But it will most certainly be to China’s interests to throw in her full weight when the proper time arrives, for her position at the peace table will be judged, not by her years of suffering, but by her final contribution in the last stages of the war. The degree of enthusiasm with which she fights will depend on the character of our political decisions as well as our military offensives in Southeast Asia.

The time during which this decision must be made is running out. If events follow their present course, China may be right in assuming that Anglo-American power will dominate Asia and she will be permitted a limited brilliance. There is little that China can do to change our attitudes, because it is possible for us to win the war without her vigorous cooperation, if we so insist. But the hardening of this attitude towards China is certainly one of the surest ways of guaranteeing that the next world war will begin in Eastern Asia.

We need our policy now

The prospect of defeating Japan, it may be argued, is sufficiently remote, and the Ear Eastern interests of the Soviet Union sufficiently obscure, to justify a temporizing attitude towards the future of Asia. But we are just as likely to stumble unexpectedly into situations demanding basic decisions of policy in Asia as in Europe. When the Japanese collapse, they will collapse quickly.

In this connection one new fissure has opened up in the massive front that Japan presents to the world. Under the pressure of American offensives, the Japanese have been compelled to swallow their own propaganda line that Japanese always fight to the last man. The evacuation of some ten thousand men from Kiska and the flight from Bairoko were admissions to the world that the Imperial Army is not invincible. Surely this is further evidence that the political and social structure of Japan is fundamentally unsound.

Now that the tide of battle has turned, the Japanese, like the Germans, are caught in the dilemma of their own short-term propaganda tactics. Japan’s leaders were apparently afraid that their people could not absorb another ten thousand dead heroes, and that the public appetite for honorable suicide was severely limited. The picture with which they sought to frighten us — the picture of hundreds of islands which must be conquered one by one — is now modified and sooner or later must be abandoned. We have liegun to call Japan’s bluff.