The Far East

ON THE WORLD TODAY

IN Asia men have been fighting and dying, in large numbers, since what we complacently call “the end of the war.” And these men have made history. Freedom has been won in Asia to an extent that has changed the components of power politics.

In Indo-China the nationalists, especially among the Annamese, would not take the French at their word, and fought to make the French take them at their word. As a result the French, who, like all colonial rulers, would have preferred to win a cooling-off period at no more cost than a high-minded statement of good intentions for the vague future, were compelled to recognize the Viet Nam Republic as part of the Indo-Chinese Federation.

In Indonesia the nationalists also fought to make the Dutch and British take them at their word. It is interesting that Dr. J. H. A. Logemann, Netherlands Minister of Overseas Territories, has admitted that Dutch willingness to concede limited recognition to the Indonesian Republic is influenced by the Viet Nam precedent. Neither Indo-China nor Indonesia has won full freedom — but neither of them would have won much freedom had they not gone beyond willingness to fight.

By fighting, they seriously damaged a cherished European-American myth and greatly strengthened a new Asiatic standard of performance. The myth — and it was a beautiful myth while it lasted — was that the rate and degree of emancipation among subject Asiatic peoples should properly be determined by the paternal wisdom of Western overlords. The new standard of performance is the proof that Western wisdom will sleep interminably unless jolted awake.

As so often happens, the British, whom Americans too frequently shrug off as slow on the uptake, have wakened to the rumble of time’s winged chariot more promptly than anybody else. When Prime Minister Attlee sent his cabinet mission to India, he broke one precedent by stripping the seven veils of circumlocution away from the words freedom and independence, which never before had been seen unclothed on India’s coral strand.

He broke another precedent when he admitted that nationalism has now permeated the Indian military forces. Previously it had always been taken for granted that there would be enough armed Indians who would be willing to earn their pay by suppressing the political manifestations of the unarmed.

To grasp the significance of their new policy, we must realize that the British have decided to forget the Indian Mutiny, when they successfully put down a national rising by force, and have chosen to remember instead the American Revolution, when they failed to put down a national rising by force. By so doing they have won a cooling-off period that really amounts to something.

Kuomintang versus Communist

In China, the question of civil war still dangles precariously between negotiation and fighting. It will take time for the Chinese to eliminate from their politics the irritations left by a hundred years of almost colonial subordination. The Kuomintang often behaves like a colonial government within a nominally free country. It would like to maintain the theory of paternal wisdom against the growing numbers of the people who insist on the right of participation in politics.

China becomes easier to understand if we recognize that the partial success of the Communists in establishing the right to political life very closely resembles the partial freedoms won by the Viet Nam Republic and the Indonesian Republic. As a corollary, the danger of further military action by the Kuomintang very closely resembles the danger of renewed military repression by the French in Indo-China and the Dutch in Indonesia.

A glimpse into the inner workings of the Kuomintang helps to explain the alternating drama of resort to force and willingness to negotiate. The Chinese, like the Russians, are prone to summarize their politics in slogans; but while the Russians prefer a flat-footed and frequently platitudinous slogan, the Chinese incline to cryptic slogans which sometimes have a “Confucius say" twist to them.

There is a hard core within the Kuomintang which admits that civil war against the Communists without American support would be disastrous, but still clings to the hope that, if it hangs on long enough, it can get a civil war with American support. The slogan of this hard core is “Loose at the center, tight at the circumference” — which, being interpreted, means “Be obliging in all negotiations with General Marshall, but be quick on the trigger in all dealings with Communists out in the sticks.”

The Communists, being just as Chinese as the Kuomintang, have retorted with maneuvers which are equally Chinese. Having moved into Manchuria more quickly without Russian transportation than the Kuomintang with American transportation, the Communists at first demanded an unconditional truce. The National Government countered with the demand that Changchun, which as the capital of Manchuria has great symbolic value, must be occupied by its American-trained, American-equipped, and American-transported regulars, a course which would advertise to the people of Manchuria the importance of the Government’s American backing.

Implementing its demand, the Government advanced on Changchun. The Communists’ reply came in two parts. First they fought very stiffly at Szepingkai, at the same time harrying the Government’s long lines of communication, to show how costly the conquest of Manchuria could be made. Then the Communist government evacuated Changchun without a fight — in this way, with Chinese indirectness, indicating that it would not insist on an unconditional truce, and at the same time, with Chinese courtesy, making a bid for negotiations. The way was thus opened for President Chiang Kaishek to satisfy honor by making his first visit to Manchuria since the end of the war.

General Marshall’s finesse

General Marshall has not yet been given the very great credit he deserves for his part in all this. While pessimistic reports were prophesying the complete collapse of his mission, he accommodated himself to looseness at the center and tightness at the circumference by a counter move of looseness at the circumference and tightness at the center. He made this move by publicly denouncing both the Communists and the Government for doubledealing.

The dexterity of his action was more quickly appreciated and admired by Chinese than by Americans. Its significance lay in the fact that the denunciation of the Communists was purely routine. Nobody ever negotiates with Communists without accusing them, or at the very least suspecting them aloud, of double-dealing. The Chinese instantly understood, therefore, that the real meaning of the statement was that the intransigents in the Kuomintang were being warned that Marshall knew what they were up to and would not stand for it.

Even the Chinese who were thus rebuked appreciated Marshall’s delicacy in saving their face by this form of rebuke. They knew that the damage would have been hard to repair if, instead, he had reminded them that he had the whip hand, represented by his ability to delay the extending of American credits by withholding his approval.

“So sorry, General Makassaru”

While General Marshall has been slowly working his way out of a morass onto firmer ground, General MacArthur, who has stood foursquare on firm ground ever since he occupied Japan, has been reminded by a series of tremors that in Japan even the firmest ground is volcanic.

General MacArthur inaugurated in Japan a program that was genuinely American. He has had the sympathy and the backing both of the American government and of the American people. He has had the immense advantage of having all Japan, and every phase of Japanese life, completely centralized under his own one-man control. He has had no interference and almost no criticism.

Yet somehow things are not going quite right. General MacArthur is being forced to crack down more and more. The real source of trouble does not seem to be among the Communists and other radicals whom MacArthur let out of jail and whose parades and demonstrations he has since curbed. More serious is the fact that he has given the conservatives a generous opportunity to redeem themselves, and they have double-crossed him.

Instead of cleaning house, the reactionaries seem to have no shame in trying time after time to see how much dirt MacArthur will let them sweep under the rug. No rebukes have shamed them. They are always willing to try once more.

These conservatives, the Shideharas and the Yoshidas and the rest of them, and the Emperor too, become more unprepossessing as the months pass. They always posed as moderates. They always claimed that they were against militarism. They always said that what they wanted was to negotiate a place for Japan in the community of nations, not to conquer a place in the sun. From time to time their feet slipped and they expressed admiration for Mussolini and Hitler, or disillusionment with democracy, but they say now, with that embarrassed Japanese giggle, that that was because some uncouth militarist was shoving them.

Yet now that they have their chance, they are crowding MacArthur, instead of using the opportunity he has given them in the spirit in which it was offered. Every shift of top personalities, every discussion of cabinet possibilities, involves names whose mere mention is pure impudence, seeing that they belong, and belong beyond dispute, in categories affected by MacArthur’s purge directive.

Sometimes they try to wheedle MacArthur, asking him if he can’t make an exception, as in the case of Shirose Nasu, brain-truster for the military of a system of streamlined serfdom for peasants in North China, whom Yoshida, ominously enough, wanted as his Minister of Agriculture. Sometimes they just slip the man in and hope he will get by, as in the case of Hatoyama, who financed his own campaign and got himself and a lot of followers elected, and was doing nicely until the newspapermen caught the whiff of that old familiar fishy odor, and Headquarters cracked down.

Bowing all ways

MacArthur is not inept, but he is handicapped by the fact that he represents an America which is still living in the age of innocence. Perhaps the Americans in Japan have been misled by the servility of the “responsible leaders” among Japanese civilians. They forget that these men will bow to American wishes as far as they have to, because they long ago learned the knack of bowing, as far as they had to, to the Japanese militarists. Such resistance to the militarists as there was in Japan always came from the nameless, unorganized common people more than it did from the well-known and respectable “responsible leaders.”

And since these eminently respectable conservatives served militarism without making a moral stand, and are serving democracy only part time while the Americans are in Japan, it will not be surprising to find that they are using the rest of their time in preparing to bow to reaction once more if the Americans ever go; and if not that, then at least to cajole the Americans into tolerating a little reaction right now.

The American innocence carries over into Korea, where we have failed to see, right under our noses, an ideal opportunity to deal with the Russians on terms which might set the precedent for breaking deadlocks in several other parts of the world. The Russians have failed to see the same opportunity.

The Mongols and the Russians

One country in which the Russians seem to have an absolutely sure touch is Outer Mongolia, now officially recognized by China as well as by Russia as the Mongol People’s Republic. For this, Marshal Choi Bol San, the Mongol premier, is perhaps largely responsible. The Mongols have confidence in him because he is a moderate in Mongol politics and has never gone in for leftism for the sake of leftism. The Russians have confidence in him because, although a moderate, he has always been the leading advocate of friendship with Russia.

The long-standing friendship has been sealed in a curious way. Back in 1934 Mongolia and Russia made a gentlemen’s agreement, the obvious purpose of which was mutual defense against Japan. The existence of this agreement was revealed by Stalin in an interview with Roy Howard, which made headlines at the time. (This interview, incidentally, has recently been recalled by Pravda in an editorial — which is just one more reminder of the importance of the press in Soviet diplomacy.)

In 1936, the gentlemen’s agreement was converted into a written protocol, to run for ten years, ending in 1946. A few days before it expired, Russians and Mongols got together and wrote a new treaty of friendship and mutual assistance which word for word repeats the protocol it replaces.

This is a poker-faced answer to the speculation that Mongolia, after its independence had been recognized by China, would be annexed by Russia. The principal clause in the treaty, psychologically, is the one which specifies that “troops of one of the parties stationed by mutual agreement on the territory of the other party [for purposes of mutual defense] . . . will be withdrawn from the territory concerned immediately the necessity for it ceases — similarly to what took place in 1925 with regard to the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the territory of the Mongol People’s Republic.”

The fact that the Russians withdrew as they had promised has always been the bedrock foundation of Mongol confidence in Russia. The fact that they withdrew in 1925 was greatly facilitated by the improvement in relations at that time between China and Russia. On both counts this clause in the old protocol, repeated in the new treaty, seems worth thinking about in 1946 — and not for Russians and Mongols only.